Is this just a betrayal
of privacy or a “breach” by the UK Government? Can it be long
before the US follows the UK's lead?
If this is true, then
heads need to roll. And the sooner, the better.
Laura Donnelly reports:
The
medical records of every NHS hospital patient in the country have
been sold for insurance purposes, The Telegraph can reveal.
The
disclosure comes days after controversial plans to extract patient
data from GP files were put on hold, amid concerns over the scheme.
Those
in charge of the programme have repeatedly insisted that it will be
illegal for information extracted from GP files to be sold to
insurers, who might seek to target customers or put up their prices.
However,
a report by a major UK insurance society discloses that it was able
to obtain 13 years of hospital data – covering 47 million patients
– in order to help companies “refine” their premiums.
As
a result they recommended an increase in the costs of policies for
thousands of customers last year. The report by the Staple Inn
Actuarial Society – a major organisation for UK insurers –
details how it was able to use NHS data covering all hospital
in-patient stays between 1997 and 2010 to track the medical histories
of patients, identified by date of birth and postcode.
SOURCE: The
Telegraph.
Keep in mind that the
anonymization or pseudoanonymization promised by the government for
care data supposedly would not use date of birth and postcode, which
are two of the three pieces that increase the risk of identifying or
re-identifying patients. So why were all these data given to
insurers with such information reportedly included? Precisely so
they could identify and track individual cases. Did the patients
know and consent to their information being shared this way? Did
they know and consent to their information being used to increase
their premiums?
The SIAS paper can be
found here
(pdf, download link)
The world changes. We
don't need teach cursive, since “everyone” uses a keyboard to
“text” their “friends.” Now it is too difficult to “text”
so we need technology that lets us “talk” to “friends.” If
keyboards killed off the handwriting industry (quill pens and elegant
note paper) will speech apps kill the keyboard and perhaps phone
companies?
Messaging
Giant WhatsApp, Now With 465M Users, Will Add Voice Services In Q2 Of
This Year
Today Jan Koum, the CEO
of WhatsApp — acquired
by Facebook last week for $19 billion — delivered another news
bomb on top of last week’s milestone: he announced that the
messaging giant is finally moving into voice — a move announced at
MWC, the conference for mobile carriers that apps like WhatsApp are
squarely disrupting.
The move will put
WhatsApp — and by default Facebook — more squarely in competition
against the likes of KakaoTalk, Line, BBM and other messaging apps
that also offer voice services.
Interesting. Suggests
the Law School isn't too interested in things like Constitutional
Law, even if that seems to be one path to the presidency. (Maybe
these are the “Let's make lots of money” courses?)
http://www.bespacific.com/what-courses-should-law-students-take-harvards-largest-employers-weigh-in/
What
Courses Should Law Students Take? Harvard’s Largest Employers Weigh
In
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on February 23, 2014
Coates, IV, John C. and
Fried, Jesse M. and Spier, Kathryn E., What Courses Should Law
Students Take? Harvard’s Largest Employers Weigh In (February 17,
2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2397317
“We report the
results of an online survey, conducted on behalf of Harvard Law
School, of 124 practicing attorneys at major law firms. The survey
had two main objectives:
(1)
to assist students in selecting courses by providing them with data
about the relative importance of courses; and
(2)
to provide faculty with information about how to improve the
curriculum and best advise students.
The most salient result
is that students were strongly advised to study
accounting and financial statement analysis, as well as corporate
finance. These subject areas were viewed as particularly
valuable, not only for corporate/transactional lawyers, but also for
litigators. Intriguingly, non-traditional courses and skills, such
as business strategy and teamwork, are seen as more important than
many traditional courses and skills.”
Perspective. This is
how the Philippines sees it. I really like the graphics that
accompany this article. Makes it easy to see who was “for” and
who “against.”
How
the Supreme Court voted on the Cybercrime Law
The Supreme Court
ruling on the validity of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012
(Republic Act 10175) will be studied as a landmark case dealing with
modern everyday information and communication technologies (ICTs)
such as the Internet, cellular phones, and social media.
The 50-page majority
opinion – or ponencia – was penned by SC Associate Justice
Roberto Abad, who is set to retire this year on May 22. Five
justices, including the chief justice, were in the minority who
disagreed with some legal points in Abad’s ponencia – in
particular, the treatment of cyberlibel, cybersex, and unsolicited
commercial communications or “spam.”
Perspective, that's why
they hired Kurzweil – he's got one. Is Google trying to catch up
to IBM's Watson? Extend the self-driving car technology to Drones?
Replace teachers?
Ray
Kurzweil changing the landscape of Google with new focus on robotics
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on February 23, 2014
Guardian:
“Ray Kurzweil…believes that we can live for ever and that
computers will gain what looks like a lot like consciousness
in a little over a decade is now Google’s director of engineering.
The announcement of this, last year, was extraordinary enough. To
people who work with tech or who are interested in tech and who are
familiar with the idea that Kurzweil has popularised of “the
singularity” – the moment in the future when men and machines
will supposedly converge – and know him as either a brilliant
maverick and visionary futurist, or a narcissistic crackpot obsessed
with longevity, this was headline news in itself. But it’s what
came next that puts this into context. It’s since been revealed
that Google has gone on an unprecedented shopping spree and is
in the throes of assembling what looks like the greatest
artificial intelligence laboratory on Earth; a laboratory
designed to feast upon a resource of a kind that the world has never
seen before: truly massive data. Our data. From the minutiae of our
lives. Google has bought almost every machine-learning and robotics
company it can find, or at least, rates. It made headlines two
months ago, when it bought Boston
Dynamics, the firm that produces spectacular, terrifyingly
life-like military robots,
for an “undisclosed” but undoubtedly massive sum. It spent
$3.2bn (£1.9bn) on smart thermostat maker Nest
Labs. And this month, it bought the secretive and cutting-edge
British artificial intelligence startup DeepMind for £242m. And
those are just the big deals. It also bought Bot
& Dolly, Meka
Robotics, Holomni, Redwood
Robotics and Schaft, and another AI startup, DNNresearch. It
hired Geoff Hinton, a British computer scientist who’s probably the
world’s leading expert on neural networks. And it has embarked
upon what one DeepMind investor told the technology publication
Re/code
two weeks ago was “a Manhattan project of AI”.
If artificial intelligence was really possible, and if anybody could
do it, he said, “this will be the team”. The future, in ways we
can’t even begin to imagine, will be Google’s.”
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