Google, known for the most ironic corporate slogan ever (“Don’t Be Evil”), has accumulated the true wealth of the internet age: Information. Though we have repeatedly and often been reminded of the dangers of a neo-fuedalistic oligarchy, most have ignored that and soled their very being for a thirty pieces of apps and online quips. Oh, not only is the information you are voluntarily giving them allowing them to manipulate public policy, but also all the information that you never intentionally gave them being used by them for their own machinations.
One of the promises of Obamacare and similar such legislation was a promise that medical information could be easily accessed by your doctors at all time regardless of where you are or if they were the doctors who even contributed to your medical history. Such ease of access to allegedly save you life was offered with that very same promise that is wouldn’t “be evil”.
Turns out, yeah, it was evil.
“’Google is secretly transporting data to its own servers without patient knowledge or consent,’ the whisteleblower claims in the video.
“The video goes on to explain that the project has four stages. The first two move patient data, with patients’ names, to Google’s cloud.
“During stage three, Google uses Ascension’s data to build a framework in the cloud. Then during stage four, Google will mine Ascension’s patient information to run analytics and AI algorithms, sell or share data with third parties, and create profiles of patients that can be used for ads targeted to the patients’ healthcare issues. “
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was an empty promise:
“Although there’s a popular perception that the privacy of healthcare information is rigidly protected by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), that’s not really the case, said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, an advocacy group based in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“’What HIPAA really is, is a permissive data sharing rule,’ she told TechNewsWorld.
‘The public has been deceived.’
“HIPAA allows healthcare information to be shared for a number of purposes, including payment, treatment, research, law enforcement, judicial proceedings, public health, and healthcare operations, which is broken into more than 65 activities, Brase pointed out.
“’What Ascension is doing is using the healthcare operations section of HIPAA to contract with a ‘business associate’ called Google, which is perfectly legal,’ she said.
“’Patients have lost all consent rights to what happens to their medical records, unless there is privacy law in their state,’ Brase added.”
And yes, Google has your medical data, no different from the data that tells Google employees what your kinks and fetishes are. It says a lot when politicians from disparate wings on the political spectrum are beyond concerned:
“As to what changes are needed and who will sponsor them, both Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Josh Hawley, on opposite sides of the aisle, are watching the file. The latest word is that Google is facing (another) federal probe over this the issue. So perhaps some of the senators’ constituents are watching the file bulge too.”
Heck, when the British newspaper “The Guardian” is railing against a Silicone Valley leftist darling, you know that the concerned is more than just warrented.
But this goes beyond just medical data. It it about the establishment of a data and information collecting organization that would even shock and disgust the Stasi!
More and more universities and colleges, who for the most part had their own dedicated internet systems, if not outright helping build the modern internet, have abandoned their own services and outsourced to Google… who now have access to all the cutting edge research and raw data before the researchers expecting results even get said results!
Imagine the financial windfall of knowing all cutting edge research, including research from collaborations with industries and even national laboratories! Not even the spymasters behind the Soviet infiltration of the U.S. atomic bomb program could dream of such unalloyed access!
Google is the very embodiment of the classical Cyberpunk corporate villain… but this time with “yellow-scaled wingless dragonkin” who is also “an expansive ornate building”.
Evil was never supposed to be this messed up in the head…
