This is a very curious article, I'm trying to work out the link between the two halves of it. Someone explain how I'm wrong but it very much seems like two different articles just mashed together.

Edit: Well I worked out the link, the chief constable is the reason there's a delay releasing more information about the theft but it's pretty tangential details considering it takes up a full half of the article. Maybe I'm just being too critical, I dunno.

> the force's comms department

Took me three reads of that to realise it's not a reference to "the force's control room" - bring back the PR Dept to avoid confusing an aging git please!

I agree, the weight of the article doesn't reflect the title. Perhaps there's a minimum length Vultures can post and thought that'd be a better use than Lorum Ipsum :) Still, it'll be interesting to see where this comments' thread goes, commentards aren't know for staying on the 'right' track[1] and this has got points[2] in-built!

[1] I plead guilty :)

[2] US: switch?

I'd expected the Copilot issue to appear here yesterday.

Maybe there's scope for a new el Reg category: "Who? Him?". It would be for people who submit slop in serious documents or leave printouts of, say, their planned resignation letter lying around.

It mirrored the lack of transparency shown by Westbury, and how they avoided flat out saying something like:

"We'd like to repsond with details of the Surgery case, but the PR staff is fielding questions about the chief's use of Bullshit Copilot AI reports to ban people from a public event"

Genuine question: what is the value of stolen medical data? Yes, it can be used for advertising or refusing insurance, but this is done on a bulk basis, and the few thousand (at best) patients of a GP practice won't amount to much. Blackmailing people with embarrassing diseases? The stigma of an STD is not what it used to be, and there was always a good chance of being traced back by the police (or the press).

The value?

Other than research companies loving this kind of information, and would love to directly invite people to drug/treatment trials, bypassing your GP...

Targeting people for ID theft. If you have a specific condition, someone who also has that condition would benefit from using your ID to get treatment when they're not actually eligible for it.

Apart from anything else a consultation with a GP is supposed to be private and this breaks privacy. It puts the practice itself in an embarrassing position and even more so if the culprit were to go and gossip about patients on a local FB page.

Replying to whole chain

There have been cases of people with access to databases of local residents looking up e.g. past partner, or possible future partner to check. Some years ago there was a report on the number of police officers and police civilian employees who had been disciplined for that kind of activity. Now thinking about the medical angle other kinds of information spring to mind e.g. pregnancy status, access to abortion services and so on. We don't know and won't until this comes to court if it does.

So could just be one or two records being accessed inappropriately and presumably copied in some way. Not a large scale data exfiltration.

Not long ago, I think some hospital staff were disciplined for accessing some well known person's records when that person was being treated at the hospital, when they weren't involved in treating this person/no professional clinical need to access the records

We just don't have enough information, it's all conjecture at this point. Two things would help narrow it down (1) the role of the "staff member that's not a direct employee", and (2) what was actually taken.

Could be anything from someone trying to sell/provide data to a third party outfit, to stolen hardware (as Doctor Syntax says below) that happened to have data on and so is both theft and a data breach.

I did fantasize about a Red Team Gone Wrong scenario, but that's really, really unlikely. It'd have to have gone so wrong!

Medical data can be very damaging.

I bought a used 500GB external drive from a store that specializes in selling old computers mainly collected from mental health facilities.

When I got home and plugged the drive into a Linux VM it contained Bitlocker encryption keys and a very weak password for an email server from Trend Micro.

Wanting to see if there was any more interesting data to be found I ran the drive through an open source data recovery program and was shocked to see that I had recovered several years worth of minor children's drug rehabilitation medical records.

After seeing what I recovered I immediately deleted the data from the VM and deleted the VM itself and tried to return the drive back to the computer store.

But when I chastised the owner of the computer store for not properly wiping the external drive (or two other laptops I had purchased earlier), the owner tried to play a Jedi mind trick by claiming that the only external drive they sold was a different color than the one I had just purchased claiming that the drive I had must have been purchased from a different store.

I had a printed receipt back at home plus I had bought the drive using my debit card which showed the name of his computer refurbishing store but he refused to talk to me further unless I produced the receipt(s).

I still have the drive untouched in my closet but don't know what to do with it

I don't know if it needs to be given to the authorities because technically there was a breach of privacy or to destroy the drive with a lump hammer or just overwrite the drive with: dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

USA it's a breach of HIPAA

UK would be a report to ICO and the health board the drive came from and cite the data breach.

Where the health board WILL want the drive back fur secure disposal

You have a couple of options depending no your objectives, eg. getting your money back, or advising of a breach. As CountCadaver says the originating org will "want to know". Was that gear sold officially, or nicked? If it was sold, the org is remiss in data protection. The shop could be "up for it" too - depends how big you want to make waves.

Where you are (jurisdiction) makes a difference. I'm UK, so will go with that.

Can you identify the (medical) org or health authority? If you can, you can contact either of them, or the ICO, The NCSC would advise too. Depends, like I said, on objective. I'd chat first before committing[1] if you're not sure. These options will almost certainly lose you your money.

If you just want your money back, plan the above and then go and threaten the shop with dropping them in it if they don't refund :) (You never got that advice from me tho!)

[1] Edit: I'd probs talk to NCSC if I was taking the reporting route.

Hmmm - IANAL, so don't know if the fact you "hacked" the data drops you in it... sorry. I'd still go with NCSC and nibble that bullet. (Using a throwaway phone and not giving PII :D )

Any lawyers about?

The circumstances in which someone who has leaked data can be charged with 'theft' must be quite limited - normally data breaches are charged under data protection legislation, or the Computer Misuse Ace for extreme cases.

Stolen USB drive or SD card? Or an entire PC?

I thought theft definition meant you permanently deprived someone (person, company etc) of something?

Is this person alleged to have also deleted the data?

Copying the data will be a computer misuse act crime (& for health stuff & personal data in general a mass of GDPR violations to make it a more serious data grab) but copying is not theft per se.

It's all a bit analogous of the old "you wouldn't steal a car" anti piracy campaign* abuse of the English language / making false equivalence.

*.. arguably that campaign involved violation of others rights e.g. font used, music sample used - both apparently unlicensed.

They may have stolen a pc.