Google is doing for health what Facebook did for privacy:
Lawyers, medical professionals and tech experts have reacted with a mixture of horror and fury after it emerged that Google has been secretly acquiring sensitive medical data on millions of people without their knowledge or consent.
Questions were immediately raised around the ethics of the data-gathering operation – code-named Project Nightingale – as well as the security of patient data after the program was first reported on Monday.
Others called for an immediate change to privacy laws after Google and Ascension, the healthcare organization it has partnered with, boasted that the scheme is completely legal….
The data includes names, dates of birth, lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records on ‘tens of millions of patients’, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first exposed the story. Neither doctors nor patients were informed that the data-gathering was taking place or given the chance to opt-out.
This promises to going to go so amazingly and absurdly wrong that it won’t surprise me if there are calls for the US government to declare war on Google and nuke its offices before it’s too late. Remember, good people don’t have to remind themselves “don’t be evil”.