Not content with selling off public services, is the government doing all it can to monetise us by means other than taxation by looking for ways of selling off aggregated data harvested from our interaction as users of public services?
For example, “Better information means better care” (door drop/junk mail flyer) goes the slogan that masks the notice that informs you of the right to opt out [how to opt out] of a system in which your care data may be sold on to commercial third parties, in a suitably anonymised form of course… (as per this, perhaps?).
The intention is presumably laudable – better health research? – but when you sell to one person you tend to sell to another… So when I saw this story – Data Broker Was Selling Lists Of Rape Victims, Alcoholics, and ‘Erectile Dysfunction Sufferers’ – I wondered whether care.data could end up going the same way?
Despite all the stories about the care.data release, I have no idea which bit of legislation covers it (thanks, reporters…not); so even if I could make sense of the legalese, I don’t actually know where to read what the legislation says the HSCIC (presumably) can do in relation to sale of care data, how much it can charge, any limits on what the data can be used for etc.
I did think there might be a clause or two in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, but if there is it didn’t jump out at me. (What am I supposed to do next? Ask a volunteer librarian? Ask my MP to help me find out which bit of law applies, and then how to interpret it, as well as game it a little to see how far the letter if not the spirit of the law could be pushed in commercially exploiting the data? Could the data make it as far as Experian, or Wonga, for example, and if so, how might it in principle be used there? Or how about in ad exchanges?)
A little more digging around the HSCIC Data flows transition model turned up some block diagrams showing how data used for commissioning could flow around, but I couldn’t find anything similar as far as sale of care.data to arbitrary third parties goes.
(That’s another reason to check the legislation – there may be a list of what sorts of company is allowed to access care.data for now, but the legislation may also use Henry VIII’th clauses or other schedule devices to define by what ministerial whim additional recipients or classes of recipient can be added to the list…)
What else? Over on the Open Knowledge Foundation blog (disclaimer: I work for the Open Knowledge Foundation’s School of Data for 1 day a week), I see a guest post from Scraperwiki’s Francis Irving/@frabcus about the UK Government Performance Platform (The best data opens itself on UK Gov’s Performance Platform). The platform reports the number of applications for tax discs over time, for example, or the claims for carer’s allowance. But these headline reports make me think: there is presumably much finer grained data below the level of these reports, presumably tied (for digital channel uptake of this services at least) to Government Gateway IDs. And to what extent is this aggregated personal data sellable? Is the release of this data any different in kind to the release of the other national statistics or personal information containing registers (such as the electoral roll) that the government publish either freely or commercially?
Time was when putting together a jigsaw of the bits and pieces of information you could find out about a person meant doing a big jigsaw with little pieces. Are we heading towards a smaller jigsaw with much bigger pieces – Google, Facebook, your mobile operator, your broadband provider, your supermarket, your government, your health service?
PS related, in the selling off stakes? Sale of mortgage style student loan book completed. Or this ill thought out (by me) post – Confused by Government Spending, Indirectly… – around government encouraging home owners to take out shared ownership deals with UK gov so it can sell that loan book off at a later date?
OUseful.Info, the blog... 