Davis’s data protection tract

David Davis contra Google and, perhaps, the Conservative leadership too.  That’s what we get this morning in a Times comment piece by the former shadow Home Secretary.  He’s taking issue with Tory plans to employ a free-to-use system like Google Health to store and manage all our health data.  Here’s the gist of his argument:

“Google is the last company I would trust with data belonging to me. In the words of human rights watchdog Privacy International, Google has ‘a history of ignoring privacy concerns. Every corporate announcement has some new practice involving surveillance’. It gave Google the lowest possible assessment rating: ‘hostile to privacy’. It was the only company of the 20 assessed to get this rating. It also said Google was leading a ‘race to the bottom’ among internet firms, many of which did little to protect their users. This highlights how careful we must be in using private companies to handle personal data.