Henry Porter writes:
The decision by Scotland’s Crown Office not to prosecute Dr Andrew Jamieson for accessing the emergency care summary (ECS) records of well-known people is interesting. Despite the absence of a conviction, the case involving footballers, politicans and BBC journalists is significant because it shows that big centralised databases are the enemy of privacy.
Jamieson worked at Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline where it was alleged he used the ECS system to look up the records of the prime minster, Alex Salmond, Jack McConnell, Celtic Football Club players, a newsreader named Jackie Bird and seven other BBC journalists.
Those involved were told last week that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute Jamieson following charges last March after the nature of the alleged breaches and medical reports on the accused had been considered. I suspect that one consideration was it was not in the victims’ interests that medical records were produced in court as evidence, which is understandable, yet it serves to underline the sensitiveness of the material that Jamieson is reported as saying he viewed it out of curiosity.
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