Who owns your medical records?

According to the Government they do. Your private medical information is in fact not yours, it is theirs. According to a report in this morning's Telegraph the Government plans to reject any patients requests not to have their information uploaded to the centralised database system that forms the backbone on Connecting for Health.

Sadly, this Government is so utterly obsessed with the centralisation of information in single point of failure IT systems we really shouldn't be surprised by this latest move. I've no doubt that anyone who objects to such information uploads on grounds of information security concerns and civil liberties will be labeled as being on the fringe.

However, this move goes much deeper than just simple civil liberties. It actually brings into question the relationship between the state and the individual at a core philosophical level. If we are the owners of our own bodies then we ought to be the owners of information relating to ourselves. This move by the Government shifts that concept of ownership away from the individual and towards the state.

What's more, when Connecting for Health is placed in context as yet another discreet element that forms part of a wider information network making up the surveillance society, it becomes far more sinister. After all, whilst the Government may hide behind claims of having "safeguards", it has also simultaneously promoted, quite openly, its intention to share our information with virtually anyone working within the state apparatus from national to local council officer level. At the same time it accepts that it may have information leak issues with our data it already holds.