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November 04, 2006
Saturday
 
 
Not a surveillance society, a database state
Guy Herbert (London)  Civil liberty/regulation • Privacy & Panopticon • UK affairs
You don’t need identifiable personal information to understand trends and patterns, but British government data sharing focuses on pinpointing individuals. Some government departments are already planning to analyse public and private-sector databases for suspicious activity. The new Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is reviewing public and private-sector databases, to find data-matching opportunities that could highlight suspicious behaviour by individuals that implies they are involved in organised or financial crime. The SOCA consultation paper ‘New Powers Against Organised and Financial Crime’, says the public sector could share private-sector suspicions of fraud by joining CIFAS, the UK’s fraud-prevention service. It also proposes matching suspicious activity reports with data from Revenue & Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Passport Office and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) databases. This, it says, would be quite legal.
- from Share and share alike by Christine Evans-Pughe on IEE Networks. (Thanks to the great Chris Lightfoot for pointing out this piece.)

Naive foreigners with a belief in privacy and liberty may not understand that if in Britain you oppose state surveillance of just about everything, then you'll be accused of wanting to protect people who torture and/or murder children. The article in passing explains how, if not why.

Comments

In my copywriting capacity I've been working on this:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/02/yourmoney/mobile.php

You get a completely free mobile phone service so long as you submit to receiving advertising on your phone. This will also mean responding to questionaires on your preferences, delivered by text.

Obviously this will allow the company to produce a very accurate picture of the consumer, a bit like a nectar card, but more so. And you're getting something valuable in return, namely a free phone service.

People are comfortable with offering their information in this way, becuase they like the deal. But this kind of service becomes much less attractive to consumers if the government can legally move in on the database.

This is the modern business model, but how can we protect it?

I wonder if anyone on this site can bring themselves to recommend more legislation.


Posted by Gordon Comstock at November 4, 2006 02:53 PM

The Serious Organized Crime Agency sounds like it should be the bad guys in some James Bond spoof, altho nothing will ever top the Technological Heirarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.


Posted by triticale at November 4, 2006 03:02 PM

Surely U.N.C.L.E (United Network Command for Law and Enforcemen) topped T.H.R.U.S.H. every time ?

In terms of verbosity, how about the very real

FRONTEX =
European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union


Posted by Watching Them, Watching Us at November 4, 2006 04:32 PM

It's all there in Anthony Burgess' forgotten little gem titled "1985".


Posted by Das at November 5, 2006 12:07 AM
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