Facebook junks project to collect patients' health data: Report
San Francisco, April 6: In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data breach, Facebook has reportedly suspended a research project where it was in touch with several major US hospitals to collect data about their patients.
According to a report in CNBC late Thursday, Facebook aimed to build profiles of patients and help the hospitals, including Stanford Medical School and American College of Cardiology, figure out which patients may need special care or treatment.
"This work has not progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analysed anyone's data," a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC.
A Facebook statement said: "Last year Facebook began discussions with leading medical institutions to explore whether scientific research using anonymised Facebook data could help the medical community advance our understanding in this area.
"The project could have raised new concerns about the massive amount of data Facebook collects about its users, and how this data can be used in ways users never expected."
Facebook, however, told The Verge that the patient data would instead be used more generally.
"The project would not attempt to provide health recommendations for specific people. Instead, the focus would be on producing general insights that would help medical professionals take social connectedness into account as they develop treatment or intervention programmes for their patients," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Facebook has admitted that information of up to 87 million people, mostly in the US, may have been improperly shared with the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.
Private data of over 5.6 lakh Indian Facebook users was also compromised by a private marketing firm that later sold the personal details acquired through a quiz app to Cambridge Analytica.
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UN: India calls on international community to act together against ISIS, Al Qaeda
United Nations (PTI): India has called on the international community to act together against ISIS and Al Qaeda and their proxies, underlining that terrorism is an “existential threat” to international peace and security.
“Terrorism is an existential threat to international peace and security. It knows no borders, nationality, or race, and is a challenge that the international community must combat collectively,” First Secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to the UN Raghoo Puri said on Wednesday.
In remarks to the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) annual ambassadorial level briefing to Member States, Puri recalled the April 2025 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, carried out by The Resistance Front, a proxy of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN listed terror organisation. The terror attack led to the loss of lives of 26 tourists.
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“We must act together against ISIS and Al Qaeda and their proxies,” he said, adding that as a country which itself has been a victim of cross-border terrorism for the past nearly three decades, “India is acutely aware of the socio-economic and human cost of terrorism, especially for its victims.”
India added its voice in stressing on the importance of the Global Counter Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) as a central instrument for multilateral cooperation.
Puri said India will remain steadfast and engaged in the consultations for the 9th review of the GCTS, assuring full cooperation to co-facilitators Finland and Morocco during negotiations in the process.
Puri also highlighted that as Chair of the Counter Terrorism Committee in 2022, India has striven to bring these principles into the counter-terrorism architecture of the UN and into the debate on terrorism at the United Nations.
“Our follow up initiatives both in New York and around the world stand testimony to our commitment,” including the ‘Delhi Declaration’ - a landmark document to deal with the issue of countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes, an issue Puri said is of acute importance for several Member States.
In October 2022, the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), chaired by India that year, had organised a special meeting in New Delhi and Mumbai on the overarching theme of ‘Countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes’.
As an outcome of the special meeting, the committee had adopted the ‘Delhi Declaration’ on countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes.
India continues to work closely with the UN via its various entities to build capacity and make its partners future ready to take on the ever-evolving scourge of terrorism, he said.
