
China Could Use Medical Data to Blackmail Americans, Report Says - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/china-could-use-medical-data-to-blackmail-americans-report-says
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Tepix
Why are surprisingly few people worried about the highly confidential data
they trust their cloud provider with, yet when a company is Chinese, it's seen
as a big issue?

There's the well-known argument that cloud providers can't afford to snoop on
their customers - if word got out, they'd be out of business. I don't see why
the same argument doesn't apply to Chinese companies. As soon as they violate
the trust and someone finds out, they lose the future business.

~~~
pdkl95
> yet when a company is Chinese, it's seen as a big issue?

There is an obvious double standard, but remember that a toxic double standard
and malicious actions (by a state, private group, or individual) are not
mutually exclusive.

> if word got out, they'd be out of business

This is clearly nonsense, because we've seen this happen many times over the
last few years. This kind of idealistic view where markets solve monopoly-
related problems or overcome state-level power is just an idealized caricature
that doesn't really exist in reality. People often stay with bad service
either out of ignorance (people are busy and don't always recognize important
information immediately, or even have the necessary background knowledge to
recognize the situation as a problem. More often, there are other factors that
force their decision (e.g. no parent is going to leave a service if it's the
only way they can communicate with their kid. Even without those problems,
there is a psychological inertia that needs to be overcome when making any
change.

In reality, I've never met anyone outside the tech industry that actually
believes Facebook/Google/etc are truly trustworthy. Most people know they are
doing something, shady, but don't have the technical.background and experience
required to properly recognize data-related problems. They _don 't_ trust the
cloud provider, but also don't think it's a problem that affects them
directly. Most of the time, it doesn't even matter, because monopoly limits
their options, if they even understood that they had a choice.

~~~
Tepix
I haven't heard about a cloud company caught spying on its customers, have
you?

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gman83
Imagine if a foreign advesary had access to this data, as well as credit-
rating information like that obtained from the Equifax hack (not saying China
is behind that, but it's plausible) and information like that was obtained
from the Office of Personnel Management hack.

Then add some sophisticated big data analytics capabilities on top of that and
a troublesome picture emerges.

~~~
YarickR
Like, what kind of troublesome ? Care to provide more or less coherent and
realistic scenario ?

~~~
PakG1
I think parent is saying this would be an interesting way to mine a population
for marks that could be espionage targets with easily identifiable special
needs susceptible to temptation by foreign entities for nefarious goals. Did I
make that obtuse enough or what? :D

~~~
coldtea
Because there aren't 100 easier ways to achieve that?

~~~
PakG1
But then where would all the cool historical spy movies come from as time
passes?

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bigmonads
Next headline "America Could Use Medical Data to Blackmail Chinese, Chinese
Report Says"

~~~
duiker101
Or "America Could Use Medical Data to Blackmail Americans".

Oh wait [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2018/08/07/6360262...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2018/08/07/636026264/genetic-tests-can-hurt-your-chances-of-getting-
some-types-of-insurance?t=1550233346836)

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_archon_
Who owns my medical information? Who controls how it's used, aggregated,
disseminated, etc? If I want to be the only person who has my medical records,
going around to every provider and getting a copy before having them all
destroy theirs, is this possible?

~~~
Aeolos
Under GDPR, yes. Without GDPR, probably not.

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apercu
How about America vote for people who will install a national healthcare plan,
then the economic fear of medical data dissemination goes away.

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paulcarroty
Bloomberg remember me Alex Jones sometimes.

~~~
coldtea
Alex Jones is just blatant about it.

Remember NYT and Iraq's "WMD" used to sell a 1 trillion plus war?

Or most news headlines most of the time...

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dade_
I see the Ministry of Truth kept busy through the shutdown. How much longer
until Russia is our ally?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I don't see the problem, we've always been at war with Eurasia.

