Police will have 'backdoor' access to health records despite opt-out, says MP

Found on The Guardian on Saturday, 08 February 2014
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David Davis MP, a former shadow home secretary, told the Guardian he has established that police will be able to access the health records of patients when investigating serious crimes even if they had opted out of the new database, which will hold the entire population's medical data in a single repository for the first time from May.

"The lack of independent oversight and transparency is what's most worrying. People trust their GP, but who's heard of the Health and Social Care Information Centre or the four people who sign off on access to all our medical records?"

I would like to hear how that will be explained as a requirement to hunt down terrorists. There is no reason to do something as stupid as collecting your citizen's most personal and private data and give others access to it. The past has proven more than once that pseudonymisation does not protect privacy at all.