Ten reasons to opt out of the NHS data grab today. 1/ NHS will take your sensitive data - STIs, mental health, ethnicity, sexual orientation - which it can sell to the private sector without any further permission from you... & anonymity is reversible... newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
2/ ... if you are thinking "OK where do I find the form" - do not Google it. Download this Type 1 Opt Out form from the NHS, fill it in and send to your GP either by email, post or hand it in asap... digital.nhs.uk/binaries/conte…
3/ back to the reasons... The data grab is being rushed. there is no public information campaign. Informed choice is not being created for millions of people. GPs fear it will dent our trust in them. newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
4/ Your data is not anonymised. It is pseudonymised. The NHS can, if given legal permission, re-link your name to your data. Who might be interested in that? US private insurers as they move in on an NHS broken by demographic pressures and spending cuts... newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
5/ The body overseeing the data looks like a mess. Its got the BMA, the Royal College and something called IGARD involved. WTF is IGARD? Good question... newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
6/ ... IGARD is a body of experts and laypeople which every week has to field requests from high-powered civil servants to allow researchers to use the NHS database... 3 out of 7 members are connected to the military... it's chair is a corporate lawyer... newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
7/ ... there is no professor of ethics on IGARD, no professor if information science. It's under-powered and in any case appointed by government... what's the problem with that? Well take a deep breath and think of Dominic Cummings... newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
7/ To deal with Covid, Dom wanted a dictatorship with "kingly authority ...pushing the barriers of legality, he is in charge of everybody, he can fire anybody and he can move anybody and he can jiggle the whole thing around”. newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
8/ If allowed, I would give permission for non-profits and universities to use my data, but not firms like Palantir or Google. But the NHS won't allow us to do that - you can't even opt out via the app... newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
9/ The 21C is a 3-cornered fight over data between govts, corporations and citizens: in this instance, the citizen isn't even supposed to be in the game. Even Conservative MPs can surely see the inequity of it? newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
10/ RWCS: You hand your data; it gets bought (for a trifle) by insurance and healthcare giants, or handed over by a Cummings-style "dictator" during a crisis; genomics and data processing then allow you to be priced out of insurance/healthcare... newstatesman.com/science-tech/2…
11/ Finally... remember Dom's whiteboard. It asks: Who do we NOT save? during the pandemic. If you want the tech-bros answering that question in future armed with data-lakes of your GP data, go right ahead, otherwise opt out now and ask govt to rethink the rules... 
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