Google is facing a new class action lawsuit in the UK, which is related to the health data scandal that broke out in 2016. At that time, an application development project of its artificial intelligence department deepmind in the Royal Free NHS trust in London passed the data of more than 1 million patients to the trust without the knowledge or consent of patients.
The trust was later sanctioned by the UK data protection watchdog. It is understood that the agency found in mid-2017 that it violated the UK data protection law when signing the 2015 data sharing agreement with deepmind. However, the technology company avoided sanctions because it was hired by the trust fund to help develop application packaging for NHS algorithms. It is reported that the trust fund is directly responsible for sending patient data to it.
Interestingly, a few years later, the latest private lawsuit targeted Google and deepmind technology.
Mishcon de reya represents Andrew prism, the sole claimant. Prismall said it filed the lawsuit on behalf of about 1.6 million people whose records were passed to deepmind -- saying the lawsuit would seek compensation for the illegal use of patients' confidential medical records. It is reported that the lawsuit was filed in the high courts of England and Wales.
In addition, the law firm also confirmed that the Royal Free Foundation was not within the scope of prosecution.
"The claim is for the misuse of private information by Google and deepmind. This is common law. We can also confirm that this is a claim for damages," a spokeswoman for mishcon de reya told techcrunch.
The spokeswoman confirmed that a similar claim announced last September had stopped.
In a statement on why prism sued Google / deepmind, the party said: "I hope this case can achieve a fair result and end for many patients whose confidential records - without the patient's knowledge - are obtained and used by these large technology companies."
Ben lasserson, partner of mishcon de reya, added in another supporting statement: "this claim is particularly important because it should provide some much-needed clarification on the appropriate parameters that allow technology companies to access and use private health information."
The company pointed out that the source of funding for the lawsuit was the litigation financing agreement signed with litigation Capital Management Co., Ltd., an entity headquartered in Sydney, Australia, which is known as an alternative asset management company specializing in international dispute financing solutions.
In Europe, class action lawsuits against data abuse by technology giants have been increasing. One case is the long-standing consumer class action lawsuit against Google in the UK. Safari's failure to overturn its privacy settings in the UK's Supreme Court last year. However, prismall is prosecuted based on the abuse of private information in common law, so the failure of early cases in the UK may not be very relevant here.
However, this seems to explain why the previous lawsuit was suspended and a new lawsuit was filed. A spokeswoman for mishcon de reya told techcrunch: "it is correct that the previous claims are based on violations of the data protection act, while the new claims are based on misuse of private information."
Although the patient data scandal of deepmind NHS may look like old news, there was a lot of criticism on the response of regulators at that time - because the trust company itself did not face more reputation losses.
Although deepmind defended the privacy of its advertising technology parent company Google, saying that the latter would not have access to sensitive medical data after the scandal broke out, it then handed over its health department to Google in 2018, which means that the advertising technology giant directly took over the role of providing and supporting the application for the NHS trust fund and processing patient data.
Another issue is the memorandum of understanding signed between deepmind and the Royal Freedom Foundation, which provides for a five-year plan to use NHS patient data to build Ai models. Although deepmind has always claimed that it has not processed patient data for AI.
Last summer, the incident took a further turn when Google announced that it would close the streams app, which was still being used by the Royal Free NHS trust. Although Google announced its intention to disable the app, the Trust said it would continue to use the app - raising questions about the security of patient data after Google withdrew its support.
Although the technology giant may want to leave the whole incident behind by quietly shutting down streams, it now either has to defend itself in court and bring the NHS data abuse scandal in 2015 to the public again.