I was distracted this morning by Mr Blair’s predictable difficulties with the TUC, and nearly everyone else seems to have missed it too. There was nothing in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph or the early edition of The Evening Standard about this. But this is the important UK story today. Congratulations to the Financial Times on actually reporting the plan to abolish privacy.
It was trailed a little way back by a selective leak to The Guardian, but now seems forgotten. The Information Commissioner is playing dead. Or perhaps he has been reduced to a depressive paralysis by the tedious presentation and appalling implications of HM Government’s Data sharing vision statement [pdf].
This Government wants to deliver the best possible support to people in need. We can only do this with the right information about people’s circumstances […] That is why Government is committed to more information sharing between public sector organisations and service providers. […] We recognise that he more we share information, the more important it is that people are confident that their personal data is kept safe and secure. The Data Protection and Human Rights Acts offer a robust statutory framework to maintain those rights whilst sharing information to deliver better services.”
I’m really not much reassured by assurances about “proper respect for the individual’s privacy […] supported by ensuring the security and integrity of personal information both before and after it has been shared”. How about not sharing it?
If you actually have privacy, you don’t need government Codes of Practice to tell bureaucrats how to ‘respect’ it. If you actually have privacy, then the private sphere is beyond regulatory intervention and ‘support’. If you actually have privacy, you actually have freedom.
While I have complete skepticism about the Gvt’s desire to do anything other than increase it’s power while not decreasing its popularity, I think that those who oppose increased sharing of data are fighting a hopeless cause.
I spend most of my working day dealing with companies that, basically, want to share data in order to increase their power. Usually, that data is about their customers.
It seems to be that the advantages of shared data are so great, and the technology so feasible, that no laws are really going to stand in the way. Experian’s data on you probably exceeds the Gvt’s – it’s certainly more useful and accessible. While Experian is not quite as large as the Gvt, and doesn’t have control of the police force, they are even less motivated to respect your privacy. In fact, merely by requesting my own credit record, and have a working knowledge of the system, I was able to find out my flatmate’s level of personal debt. Hoorah for privacy. I don’t recall ever in my life having signed any contract with Experian to use information about me.
The PDF document referenced in the article does mention the NHS Care Record Service. While in fact, nothing has actually been agreed or implemented on this, the discussions taking place are very sensible, and some of the ideas very interesting. If these were applied more widely to personal information, it would almost certainly be a Good Thing(tm).
There seems to be a fundemental difference in procuring of data, one is from the private sector resulting from voluntary trade, whereby both sides learn data from the other, and each has the capacity to share their new found information. The other is government that gathers data in the process of unilaterally intruding in peoples’ lives, taking their property and making them adhere to all sorts of regulations that do little but bolster the need for the bureaucracy. It is just insult to injury that they procure data that is potentially exploitable by others.
…and also through his backdoor ID cards, as I posted today.
I dimly recall, eons back, when “means testing” was a thing the left were against. Now these moonbatistas want to sniff and snoop into every nook and cranny of our lives. Perhaps my shoe size will help the nation.
There is no sense of surprise here that our betters are driven to gut personal sovereignty (of which privacy is a subset) rendering us as mere ciphers, or is it slaves? I have to admit that this is one reason that I stay in the US with very little incentive to come “home.”
Here, even in Brooklyn a somewhat over governed zone, there is some measure of liberty that means something to a few of us. After scattering the ashes of my dear wife Marilyn at the Statue of Liberty, I take these noxious assaults on Liberty very seriously, not that I didn’t before. My memories of her are intimately bound up with the image of Liberty and her belief that liberty was so essential, so much so, that her family have their ashes scattered there, she is the third after her parents to do this. The “Information Sharing Vision Statement” would have made her double up with laughter as though anyone would take it seriously as a benefit to Joe and Josephine Citizen.
Shared data will destroy any vestige of liberty in England. Neat that the Marxists don’t seem to ken this one….Why am I not surprised? Of course they are the government now and they know best. I remember when some of these twits were NUS student politicians, now they are doing damage for real. Scary biscuits!
There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea. Save to say that keeping it true and up to date would be a fearsome problem, let alone the inevitable security holes. Given that credit card data emerges from time to time on the internet, the incentive to blast this stuff out into the universe would be so tempting to the anarchists and other helpers the government will employ to oversee this data junk heap. There is of course the speculative data from informers, snitches and denouncers and other low life bottom feeders that could be troublesome.
ID cards, data links, bio data, snot profiles, or what ever, will never make our lives safer. All of it can be forged or stolen and faked in some way or other. If David Copperfield can make an elephant disappear how much easier is it to spoof this stuff? Very is the answer. Though I might be amenable to share my snot profile just in the name of security or is it efficiency?
Oppression of the proletariat by the Marxain dodos of the 60s generation is an irony in itself. Now were are to have more of this drivel in the name of efficiency and security. Data vision statements aside, the sheeple don’t seem to get the enormity of what is going on here.
Perhaps, a glance at the Annex A Glossary of the Information Sharing Vision Statement would unsettle most nervous horses. A moments reflection, just about what data banks are in the frame to be connected together at the starting gun, should scare even the dimmest bulbs . The usual bromides that all this will help more efficient targeting of services, while preventing fraud are suffused throughout this nasty little document. All so cuddly until the wolf bites. The only hope here is that those called upon the implement this stuff are as dim as the other dodos who thought it up in the first place.
Perhaps some enterprising soul will program a few back doors into all this dross for the sake of national safety. Here’s hoping.
Nuff said.
PS Shouldn’t we have a right to see all this, warts and all, like we are supposed to do for our credit reports? Somehow I don’t think “they” would be too keen on that. Just how far would we be allowed to edit our nationally approved profiles? I would prefer a delete button option, no chance of that though!
I have a suggestion for data-sharing that will improve the governance of the United Kingdom no end.
The names, addresses, and full financial details (including but not limited to the tax returns, credit ratings, full employment histories, etc etc) of all civil servants, council workers, and all public-sector employees, should be published on the internet for everyone to see.
After all, if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.
When, and not before, this happens, I might take the trouble to consider the merits of this proposal.
Otherwise, since it emanates from the government, it is, ipso facto, evil.
Information taken by one government department will be shared with other government departments.
One can try and build “Chinese walls” if you like – but that will tend to lead to information that should not be shared still be shared and information that SHOULD be shared not being so (such as the failure of intelligence and law enforcement to share information about terrorists before the attacks in 2001).
Of course I stand with what has often been called the “old women”.
Walter Bagehot (the man who helped ruin the “Economist” journal in the 19th century and produced the over rated book on the British constitution) claimed he knew of an “old women” who opposed the 1801 census (the first census for centuries) on the grounds that the government had no right to know who was in a certain house – he found this amusing, but the government should have no such right (unless they are after a criminal and are either in hot pursuit or have a warrent). I would also (of course) have opposed the Births, Marriages and Deaths Registration Act of 1836.
And Winston Churchil (in his young statist stage) said only “old women” could oppose nationalization, government “national insurance” and eugenics (boy is that bit kept quiet) as “socialism”.
As a boy reading about these “old women” I had a picture in my mind of a Miss Marple type (not the film version – but closer to what the B.B.C. produced many years later as its television version of Miss Marple) looking with polite but penetrating gaze through the schemes of well meaning, but wrong headed, men – to the tide of evil that these schemes would let loose.
Oppose the right of government to demand information certainly – but to oppose government departments looking at information that other government departments have gathered (look at, via computers) is a waste of time.
The vast majority of people do not think in terms of particular departments – they already assume that once “they” have got the information it goes to all parts of the government, so they are not going to be shocked by any change that makes this happen more.
Here in the US they abolished maillist privacy in the name of protecting privacy. We are now allowed to opt out of being on maillists — an option too tedious to keep up with — instead of, er, having to opt in. Of course, this has resulted in a deluge of junk mail, and probably countless invasions of privacy.
They also abolished medical privacy in the name of protecting privacy. Employees at medical offices are required by law to give us a form each time telling us how our privacy is being protected. They fail to mention that the law that brought on this farce allows government functionaries to examine private medical records, where this had previously been banned, (if I recall) without a warrant.
If you see a politi-sham pushing a measure to protect your privacy, and it doesn’t solely involve repealing previous laws invading it, run!
What is so anoying is that the government declares what it wants to do – This Government wants to deliver the best possible support to people in need. and then sets about bootstrapping the excuse We can only do this with the right information about people’s circumstances
Can they ONLY do it that way? What is “best possible”? Considering that the political corridors are chock-full of lawyers, they should know that “best possible” is a highly dangerous term , like “best endeavours”. Measured and quantified in what way? It is a blank cheque for both information and resources.
Why not stop taxing people so much so they can be free to deliver help to the people they feel are in need?
Oh, get over it. Poor people have had no privacy since the 70’s. As mainframe computers got popular in social services, there was a Model City Integrated Social Services movement to integrate social services operations and CLIENT INFORMATION to best assist the client (public reason) and reduce welfare cheats (real reason). My mother worked for ISS in the computer division in the 70’s.
That’s what you get when you decide to be a slave er dependent of the government. You trade your personal information, time, and dignity in many ways for that check.
You miss the point, kentuckyliz. Perhaps because you are unfamiliar with the sort of government Britain actually has.
This is not about people who choose a dependent relationship with the state lacking privacy in those areas they surrender to supervision. That’s the pretext – bad one, though it is. (Why shouldn’t poor people have an expectation of privacy? If they don’t, in a democracy that is a risk to everyone’s privacy.)
Is is about the state using all that information it forces you to give up as a private citizen or a private business to enhance its power over you by unifying its organs. What I told the press was this:
(Why I said it in American spelling, I’m not sure – the Press Officer is from Norfolk.)
The basis of the UK Government’s argument here is, surely, that they know best. This underlies their belief that they have an intrinsic right (on behalf of everyone, the average person, or most people) to do what they choose. Also to have the most efficient tools to do it.
However, experience tells us that governments, including the UK Government, are wrong quite frequently. In many more cases, where they are not definitively wrong, neither are they definitively right; others have policies that are, more or less, equally good.
Now, there are some things that must be done by government (foreign policy and war/defence for example). There are some things that are best done by government (building and maintaining most of the roads, for example). However, there is a vast swathe of stuff for which doing it by government is choice rather than (economic) necessity.
On those things where government activity is, effectively, discretionary, surely government should not be allowed to make a case, unopposed and accepted, that the efficiency of those things is a primary and overwhelming case for anything else: that anything else including doing away with the privacy principles currently embedded in our law and, implicitly, in the UK’s (largely) unwritten constitution.
Thus I support Guy and others wholeheartedly in opposing these changes.
[Note. For the record, and to avoid confusion and pointless argument, I also support Guy and others in their objection to the National Identity Scheme as anything more than an administrative convenience that is either optional, or compulsory only on the minimal information of (a single official) name, date of birth, official contact address and some information (biometric and/or otherwise) to resolve problems with establishing/confirming/changing these things and attaching the information to a single human being, as far as that is practical and useful.]
Best regards