medConfidential

NEW: UK asked Apple to backdoor iCloud encryption.

Backdoors create a massive target for hackers & criminal groups.

Dictators will inevitably demand that Apple do the same for them. 1/

www.ft.com/content/d101...

This is very good from @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

Of note “Greater efficiency in public services [from Digital ID] did not come out in the research as a high priority for the general public, who instead want to see other improvements in their daily lives.”

Or victims of crime?

Or would the Home Office want to link phone numbers required for the ID to the IMEIs of protestor devices?

Will people arrested at a protest for human rights action on Palestine have to unlock their phones to show their ID to the police?
bsky.app/profile/arts...

It’s Labour’s conference week, so the Government is announcing digital ID cards and re-announcing its politically-controlled centralised database of all of your medical notes.

medconfidential.org/2025/single-...

The NHS at a Crossroads: The App That Can Transform Britain’s Health The NHS at a Crossroads: The App That Can Transform Britain’s Health

Blair’s institute wants your ID card to link to the NHS. When the report says “the PM should lead”, the report authors seem to mean TBI institute.global/insights/pub...

Sam Smith from MedConfidential once again joins me on Everything Digital Health to discuss the pr... The NHS Single Patient Record - with Sam Smith of MedConfidential

A new episode of Everything Digital Health just dropped:

The NHS Single Patient Record - with Sam Smith of MedConfidential

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knp8bQJ47xg

Sam Smith from MedConfidential once again joins me on Everything Digital Health to discuss the pr...

Preston Byrne on X: "Ofcom has been sending several American clients pretty stupid letters over the last six months. Pinged the White House about it this morning. Got a callback 20 minutes later asking for recommendations for visa bans. What a time to be alive." / X Ofcom has been sending several American clients pretty stupid letters over the last six months. Pinged the White House about it this morning. Got a callback 20 minutes later asking for recommendations for visa bans. What a time to be alive.

This might get noisy - US threatening to ban Peter Kyle and ofcom from US travel over OSA heavy handedness against Americans x.com/prestonjbyrn...?

ICE Is Building a Nationwide Tracking System (and Your Data is In It) — Taylor Lorenz’s Power User Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co The U.S. government is quietly building the largest surveillance system in mo...

This pod by @taylorlorenz.bsky.social is about the US, but similar data linkage is happening in the UK for different political purposes - but political purposes are entirely dependent upon the interests of the politicians overcast.fm/+ABHI4Ur24Mg

tools Gov is encouraging / mandating your doctors to use... bsky.app/profile/jxf....

Apple Watch sensors are so good, it could provide the first pregnancy indicators Apple's latest research shows that using a combination of Apple Watch sensors and all Apple Health data, results in a remarkably accurate pregnancy detector.

NHS England will let Palantir and others develop algorithms to do this test this on NHS patient data, and Palantir's interoperability will allow "drag and drop" to the data mining tools that their US customers use against US women: appleinsider.com/articles/25/...

Secret Afghan relocation scheme set up after major data breach The existence of the scheme could not be reported until now because of a court injunction.

Data always leaks - centralising your GP notes under the control of Secretary of State will mean someone can do something like this (and they can’t relocate your medical history)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'My sister died without justice': Hospital staff violate patients' privacy A Freedom of Information request found that 59 members of staff at an NHS trust had wrongfully accessed patient records between 2020 and 2024

Starting to see how often access to patient notes is abused www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambrid...

YouTube video by Everything Digital Health The NHS Federated Data Platform Part 1: What Is It? with Sam Smith of MedConfidential

In the latest episode of Everything Digital Health I chat to Sam Smith of @medconfidential.bsky.social about the NHS Federated Data Platform

what is it for?
what does it do?
why is it so unclear what its purposes are?
why are we using #Palantir to build it?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs4B...

Parliamentlive.tv Science, Innovation and Technology Committee

But the following section included this great question from the Chair:

"Do you commit to this Committee that the Single Patient Record will be built on open standards, open source, and will not be proprietary"

parliamentlive.tv/event/index/...

Parliamentlive.tv Science, Innovation and Technology Committee

The Parliamentary Science, Innovation and Technology Committee was super interesting this week - not only did it have a section on NHS England's #Palantir Federated Data Platform with Louis Mosley:

parliamentlive.tv/event/index/...

Five rights and no more bsky.app/profile/mike...

Former ONS head was allowed to act ‘without check or balance’, says senior MP Committee probes UK Statistics Authority’s role in overseeing Sir Ian Diamond, who resigned as national statistician in May

This scathing assessment of the former leadership of ONS could equally apply to the unreformed leadership of HDR www.ft.com/content/a342...

Each time the Labour government takes its tech policy from the Tony Blair Institute (every time Labour talks about tech "innovation")

we need to remind them their "tech experts" are employed by the "Let's blockchain the genocide" organisation.

This is how shiny, banal evil looks, sounds, and is.

Looks like the 10yp confirms that the single patient record will be in FDP/Palantir (bottom right, page 84)

Exclusive: 10-Year Plan published without delivery chapter The government's 10-Year Health Plan has been published without a planned chapter on how the changes it proposes will be delivered.

It’s not helpful to laugh at the faceplant, but this is very funny www.hsj.co.uk/policy-and-r...

The plan has the vision of replacing GPs with chatbots and hospitals (it was written by the people who run hospitals, with those who make chatbots), so that point is right for a different reason

10 year plan: say goodbye to your data (and say goodbye to your GP)

medconfidential.org/2025/goodbye...

We’ll have a blog post when the embargo drops

What will happen to the IDS linkage system now IDS has been abolished

Tory health minister cuts links with private equity-backed group lobbying his own department A Tory health minister has cut his public ties with a corporate-backed group he founded, which was lobbying his own department in favour of changes worth millions of pounds to the biotech industry — w...

Remember this @mpgeorgefreeman.bsky.social from when you were a health Minister also simultaneously running a health data lobby group out of your Parliamentary office? web.archive.org/web/20160528...

George Freeman says: "I have always understood the need to be transparent in the work I have done for and with commercial clients and charities and am always willing to answer any criticism."

Really?

@england.nhs.uk decided that its own Privacy Enhancing Technology was "not initially processing Personal
Identifiable Data" so didn't need a DPIA. Weak, weaselling out of their duty.

It's like saying a car doesn't need safety features if it's currently empty.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/publ...

Entirely - if you were sequenced 5 years ago and get cancer next week, they’ll want to resequence you and your cancer on the same machine. But great for capital spending on machines

The UK Biobank sign in the background is very on brand… bsky.app/profile/rory...