securing distributed partial medical records?

[Ross Anderson]

Quoting signup at bealoid.co.uk:

> I would much rather have all this on a spine, and have better
> training for staff about confidentiality, than have it scattered 
> across a bunch of different computers in different places with
> different staff, and maybe different training and cultures.

In the long run it's not the training and cultures that matter,
but the incentives. That's where a spine is different.

For example: a couple of years back a policeman went to one of
Britain's pregnancy charities and demanded a list of all their 
clients under 16. He was perfectly entitled to do that; it's
"actual evidence of a crime". The lady who runs it told him to
get lost, and he did. If he hadn't, it would have been a very
interesting ECHR case.

Can you imagine what the reaction would have been had the cop
approached a technician at a BT data centre?

The techie would be far better trained, and have a far better
understanding of "file locking, version control, access and
write levels / permissions". The gynaecologist didn't have 
such training: she had incentives, from a direct duty of care
to her patients, through to the survival of her business.

Ross