August 14, 2023

Concerns over Dutch medical sector’s use of Amazon cloud for patient information storage

Medical device manufacturers use Amazon’s cloud services to store data from hospital patients. That means that sensitive information about diagnoses and treatments goes from the medical specialist in the Netherlands, through the device’s manufacturer, directly to the United States, where intelligence services can access that data.

Follow the Money came to this conclusion after studying 147 contracts between university hospitals in the Netherlands and suppliers of medical equipment obtained through the Government Information (Public Access) Act.

The first thought is whether this sensitive medical data is adequately secured and encrypted. But that is not even the biggest problem, Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, a lawyer and professor of data protection in Leiden, said to FTM. Even giving Amazon the benefit of the doubt, believing that the tech giant protects data well, this is still a significant problem.

According to Zwenne, Amazon is powerless against the intelligence agencies in the U.S. If the NSA, FBI, or any other agency shows up with a warrant signed by a judge ordering Amazon to give up specific information, the company can do nothing but provide the requested data. “In America, a duty of confidentiality can also be imposed, the so-called gag order,” Zwenne said. “Amazon is then not even allowed to tell a hospital that it had to provide data to an intelligence service.”