Striking the Right Balance between Privacy and Public Protection

[Ian G Batten]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Ross Anderson wrote:
> to their records. I've never bought it. I've always believed that by
> creating a culture of promiscuous access to data whose subjects expect
> it to be private, the NHS is taking a risk that will blow up in their
> faces someday. Remember Alder Hey. Everyone knew for years that 
> researchers helped themselves to all sorts of chunks from patients,

That's all true, but is the issue there the data or the physical
material?  I think it's no accident that the issue blew up in
Liverpool, with a large Catholic population: faiths with a prohibition
on cremation are going to be a lot more complex over issues of tissue
retention than others.  I think the row at Alder Hay was much more about
emotional revulsion about bodies not being `whole', not the more complex
and abstract issue of privacy.  I don't for a second minimise the issue
(although as my parents both have wills donating their bodies to
medicine, and the only reason mine doesn't is because I've not got
around to doing the codicil, I can't say it bothers me overmuch) but I
think it's disjoint from privacy concerns.

> living and dead, without bothering to ask; research was clearly so much
> more important than manners, and the bloody patients might object, which
> might stop you getting your FRS (pardon me, cost thousands of lives by
> preventing medical advances :-)

And now it's blown up, people who might otherwise have consented wont'
consent because of the row.  Which is a good thing for the Home Office
to consider. 

> > However, it is apparently the scheme in The Netherlands (albeit for the
> > rather more serious (and lower volume) privacy invasion of actual
> > interception); so it must be possible to make it work !
> 
> I'd like to see it extended even to the PNC. if someone looks up my name
> and address from my car numberplate I'd like to be notified

Do you trawl the logs for accesses to your website?

ian