[yRetsyM]

What is actually happening here? A lot of rhetoric about the "Transfer of data" etc, but other times this just reads like a Google Cloud Infrastructure play, with some consulting on top.

Also - The deal was only just signed, e.g. the transfer hasn't happened yet?

There's a lot of hearsay in all of this reporting...

[briffle]

Note this key part:

Google has entered into similar partnerships on a much smaller scale with clients such as the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine. But in that case all the data handed over to the search giant was encrypted, with keys being held only on the medical side.

It sounds like they are migrating to Google Cloud for some of their infrastructure.. and someone (and the paper) are sure trying to raise a stink about it. its misleading in a few spots, but not quite lying, hard to tell if its intentional, or technical incompetence.

For example, all storage in google cloud is encrypted, and the keys are rotated every 24 hours by default. There is an audit log you can see, any time anyone at google touches your data. (very, very few people can actually access the keys)

[umeshunni]

Seems like a lot of fake news over a cloud storage deal

https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/inside-google-cloud/our...

[excalibur]

This is not "fake news" at all. This is the same factual event covered with a different spin. Use of the term "fake news" to describe reporting that is merely slanted in a direction you don't like--rather than presenting demonstrably false information as fact--is completely unwarranted, and is doing terrible damage to our social institutions.

[izacus]

This is a TEXTBOOK case of fake news - a newspaper owned by Google competitor spinning purchase of space on encrypted Cloud Storage and Google Apps productivity suite as a big medical data mining attempt by Google to drive a political agenda.

There are obvious concerns around data security here, but the article is very heavily distorting facts to drive outrage.

[mattkevan]

Also the Guardian isn’t owned by a Google competitor - it’s owned by the Scott Trust, an organisation set up specifically to maintain the paper’s editorial independence.

They have viewpoints which include a distrust of very powerful global corporations, and one you may or may not agree with - but it’s nowhere near ‘fake news’.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited

[excalibur]

No, it really isn't. The Guardian article is factually reporting on what the "whistleblower" told them, both via the video and in a separate interview. They did not fabricate any details, or make any claims they knew to be false. They made a cursory attempt to present the other side of the story. Sensationalized, yes. Slanted, yes. But not fake.

[chooseaname]

Thank you for stating this so aptly and concisely. People are throwing "fake news" around for anything and everything they don't agree with. It really is making it difficult to have a reasoned discussion with people when they just dismiss something so generally.

[dimator]

Well, that seems a lot less sensational than the article. Covers HIPAA as well.

[amsully]

Without reading the Business Association Agreement it is hard to determine if Google has 'Acceptable Use' of healthcare data. Storing in the cloud is one thing, allowing a Business Associate to siphon that data for other use is another.

[JohnFen]

It's not just a cloud storage deal. The medical data is being used by Google for research purposes (training AI, apparently). Who knows what else Google will do with it now or in the future?

The real problem, though, is that this data was transferred without even notifying patients, let alone getting their consent.

[mr_toad]

Personalised medicine is not about cloud services. It’s about using ML to target healthcare services, for example: predicting patient readmission risk. It’s pretty important, potentially life saving, and can also save millions.

Honesty it’s one of the areas where (in the right hands) I think the benefits of collecting large amounts of data for targeting services to people is justified.

Is Google ‘the right hands’? That’s probably worth debating.