My postcode and date of birth if sufficient to uniquely identify me. What you seem to miss is that this then acts as a key into the medical information held in this data set. If it was just the NHS number, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender that was available, nobody would have cared much.
That the electoral roll data is available is a further reason why this is bad: It means that by cross-indexing this data with the electoral roll or similar data, one can take the poorly semi-anonymised NHS data and undo a large percentage of the anonymisation, either completely or with a high degree of probability.
> What specifically are people actually afraid of with regard to this data set sitting on Googles servers? I just don't get the regular public outcry about NHS data.
The issue is not Google per se, but that this loose and fast handling with data that is in no way anonymous indicates that the government and consultancies involved does not in any way understand or respect the concerns people have about privacy and the protection of personal information.
We don't want, e.g., a future where employers can look up our health issues and decide to get rid of someone they see as a potential liability, or use it to help manufacture justifications to get rid of someone who is troublesome. Or one where relatives of someone with a cancer diagnosis receives ads about hospice care, possibly before they've even been told. Or any number of other gross invasions of privacy that this data becoming easily available could enable.
That the electoral roll data is available is a further reason why this is bad: It means that by cross-indexing this data with the electoral roll or similar data, one can take the poorly semi-anonymised NHS data and undo a large percentage of the anonymisation, either completely or with a high degree of probability.
> What specifically are people actually afraid of with regard to this data set sitting on Googles servers? I just don't get the regular public outcry about NHS data.
The issue is not Google per se, but that this loose and fast handling with data that is in no way anonymous indicates that the government and consultancies involved does not in any way understand or respect the concerns people have about privacy and the protection of personal information.
We don't want, e.g., a future where employers can look up our health issues and decide to get rid of someone they see as a potential liability, or use it to help manufacture justifications to get rid of someone who is troublesome. Or one where relatives of someone with a cancer diagnosis receives ads about hospice care, possibly before they've even been told. Or any number of other gross invasions of privacy that this data becoming easily available could enable.