Previous work on data privacy in federated learning systems focuses on privacy-preserving operations for data from users who have agreed to share their data for training. However, modern data privacy agreements also empower users to use the system while opting out of sharing their data as desired. When combined with stragglers that arise from heterogeneous device capabilities, the result is missing data from a variety of sources that introduces bias and degrades model performance. In this paper, we present FLOSS, a system that mitigates the impacts of such missing data on federated learning in the presence of stragglers and user opt-out, and empirically demonstrate its performance in simulations.

WASHINGTON – A U.S. senator on Thursday is seeking responses from Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Twitter Inc. on whether the U.S. companies have any data-sharing agreements with Chinese vendors, following a disclosure from Facebook Inc. this week. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat who is vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement he has written letters to the companies for information on data-sharing agreements, noting that since 2012 "the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and equipment makers like Huawei and ZTE has been an area of national security concern." Alphabet has said previously it has strategic partnerships with Chinese mobile device manufacturers, including Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., and Xiaomi, as well as with Chinese technology platform Tencent. It wasn't clear if Twitter has a partnership with any Chinese vendors. Alphabet and Twitter did not immediately respond to questions for comment.

The New York Times recently revealed that Facebook entered into agreements with at least 60 mobile device companies, giving them access to Facebook user data so that the companies could recreate Facebook-like features. Among those companies are four Chinese firms -- Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL -- which has spurred some concern among US lawmakers. Today, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) sent letters to both Alphabet and Twitter, inquiring as to whether they entered into similar data-sharing agreements with any mobile device companies based in China. "Since at least October 2012, when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released its widely-publicized report, the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and equipment makers like Huawei and ZTE has been an area of national security concern," wrote Warner. He then goes on to ask both companies if they've had agreements in place similar to Facebook's and if so, whether any Chinese firms like Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo or Xiaomi were included.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with New York Times reporter Michael LaForgia about the his story about Facebook sharing user data with several hundred companies.

Google and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust have announced a fresh five-year collaboration today, which will see the former's DeepMind AI used to improve patient care across the trust's various hospital sites. The partnership will focus on Streams, a mobile app the pair have been working on since late last year that's been approved as a medical device by the UK's health regulator. DeepMind will analyse blood test results as they come in and flag when patients might be at risk of acute kidney injury, proactively alerting carers through the Streams app. It'll go live across the trust in early 2017, and there are plans to expand the blood analysis to look for signs of sepsis and other causes of organ failure. The pair hope to add messaging and task management features over the course of the collaboration too, and Streams is said to be built on open standards that will allow other developers to easily add new services.

DeepMind Health, the division of the Google-owned AI company that's focused on building links to healthcare providers to drive the application of machine learning algorithms for preventative medicine, has inked a fresh data-sharing agreement with the NHS Royal Free Hospital Trust in London. It's the second agreement signed between the pair -- and it supersedes their original agreement inked last year, which ran into controversy after a freedom of information request by New Scientist revealed the volume of patient identifiable medical data (PID) flowing from the Royal Free to DeepMind, and raised questions about whether NHS information governance principles were being correctly followed. The data in question was being used to power an app called Streams, built by DeepMind but using an NHS algorithm to generate alerts on patients at risk of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI). At the time the collaboration was made public, last February, no details were provided about how much PID was being shared between DeepMind and the NHS -- leading to huge consternation when the scope of the arrangement emerged. The U.K.'s data watchdog, the ICO, began investigating complaints about the data-sharing agreement. The Streams app also ran into trouble when it was revealed DeepMind and the Royal Free had not registered it as a medical device with the oversight body, the MHRA, despite piloting the app in the Royal Free's hospitals.

It's fair to say that Google-owned AI company DeepMind's big push into the health space via data-access collaborations with the UK's National Health Service -- announced with much fanfare in February this year -- has not been running entirely smoothly so far. But there are more regulatory bumps in the road ahead for DeepMind Health. TechCrunch has learned the company won't continue using one of the apps it co-designed with the NHS until the software has been registered as a medical device with the relevant regulatory body, the MHRA. That's especially interesting given that this app, called Streams, has already been used for patient care in multiple NHS hospitals. The Royal Free NHS Trust previously told TechCrunch the app had been used by up to six of its clinicians in three "user tests" in its London hospitals. Which, put another way, means a profit-driven commercial entity has been involved in a real-world test of an unregistered medical device on actual hospital patients.

More details have emerged about the sweeping scope of Google/DeepMind's ambitions for pushing its algorithmic fingers deep into the healthcare sector -- including wanting to apply machine learning processing to UK NHS data within five years. New Scientist has obtained a Memorandum of Understanding between DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust in London, which describes what the pair envisage as a "broad ranging, mutually beneficial partnership, engaging in high levels of collaborative activity and maximizing the potential to work on genuinely innovative and transformational projects". Envisaged benefits of the collaboration include improvements in clinical outcomes, patient safety and cost reductions -- the latter being a huge ongoing pressure-point for the free-at-the-point-of-use NHS as demand for its services continues to rise yet government austerity cuts bite into public sector budgets. The MoU sets out a long list of "areas of mutual interest" where the pair see what they dub as "future potential" to work together over the five-year period of collaboration envisaged in the memorandum. The document, only parts of which are legally binding, was signed on January 28 this year.

Three weeks ago, New Scientist revealed that Google's artificial intelligence company DeepMind has access to the identifiable personal medical information of millions of UK patients through a data-sharing agreement with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. Now, a New Scientist investigation has found that Google DeepMind deployed a medical app called Streams for monitoring kidney conditions without first contacting the relevant regulatory authority. Our investigation also asks whether an ethical approval process that covers this kind of data transfer should have been obtained, and raises questions about the basis under which Royal Free is sharing data with Google DeepMind. DeepMind's partnership with the Royal Free provides it with fully identifiable information – including names, addresses and details of medical conditions – for the 1.6 million patients treated at Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free each year. It also includes complete data on all patients treated by the trust in the past five years.

An app being made by DeepMind, the Google-owned AI company, working in collaboration with the NHS Royal Free Trust in London and being used to help identify hospital patients who might be at risk of acute kidney disease (AKI) is not currently in use, TechCrunch has learned. The collaboration between the tech giant and a portion of the UK's publicly funded health service has drawn criticism for the breadth of patient data being used to power an app which targets a single medical condition. DeepMind and the Royal Free have also been criticized for not approaching the UK's medicines and healthcare devices regulator, the MHRA, prior to using the Streams app in hospitals. The MHRA is responsible for standards of safety, quality and efficacy for healthcare products, which can include software apps. It has emerged that DeepMind and the Royal Free Trust are now in discussions with the MHRA over whether the Streams app needs to be registered as a medical device.