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Dutch to Open Electronic Files on Children
Del writes "The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future. All citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database - including health, education, family and police records."
What is really going on is that the already existing files of different agencies are being coupled in an attempt to keep children in difficult situations from falling off the radar when for instance they move to a different city. Child protection services often didn't know about children moving into the city with problems in their past - in the old database the record would be closed and they wouldn't turn up in the new one until something actually happened (which is usually too late).
So I hope this is not interpreted as a terrible invasion of privacy - all the information is already collected by local governments. The only change is that moving from one local government's area to another doesn't mean those services lose all information.
I agree with you. While I suspect thtat this has good intentions, this is the same thing as the patriot act or even gestapo. Basically, it allows a small group in the gov. to control the information about an individual. All somebody has to do is think about how well credit cards are protected (2 major CC processing companies broken into in under 4 years with literally 10 million CCs exposed), or think in terms of what is happening here in America WRT to tieing SSN, drivers license, federal ID, and PATRIOT ACT.
We won WWII, but yet, much of what we fought against, seems like it is coming into being anyways.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The blurb (and TFA) are a bit misleading. They suggest that Dutch citizens will now be tracked ``from cradle to grave'', whereas they hadn't been before.
In reality, what's happening is that schools, police, and various organizations for the protection of children, psychiatric institutions, etc. are already doing this tracking.
What's changing is that they will now exchange information about which kids have caused or otherwise been in trouble.
The rationale is that by improving communication between these institutions, kids can be more adequately helped. For example, a school can receive information from a child protection institution that says the child is having trouble at home, and link that to the fact that the child is often missing from school.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The Dutch government has come under attack from the public because of some very nasty incidents during the last couple of years.
There were cases, highly profiled in the media, where children were abused and even murdered. In hindsite there were clues, but because the parents had moved a couple of times no-one had the whole picture. Child protection did not have information from there sister organizations from other cities, reports from police about the parents which would have provided vital clues about the home situation, were not available.
In general everytime something was going on with the children the people who had to judge the situation had to start from scratch.
What the government now proposes is under pressure from the public to do something and I think it is a good thing.
As much as slashdot loves the odd conspiracy theory left and right and as much as I distrust the Dutch government, I believe this is well intended. But it needs to be well thought out because the possibility of abuse is certainly there.
By keeping detailed files on every citizen "for their own good"?
A system which can later be handily used to flag if they're a Jew or not?
I don't know if it could be considered Nazi as such, but it certainly tends towards the Fascist nature.
In the past year, several times children have died because of molest, when several authorities where aware of things going wrong. In some cases ten or more different organisations where involved with a family but not knowing about each other. After the child died, it was realized that the life of the child could have been saved, if the organisations had been aware of eachother.
and this is not different from the situation as it is now. i personally know some people who work with troubled kids/families, and believe me, they try all they can to make very careful decisions.
negligence of one person can still exist. but in this system, at least all (independent) opinions are collected, which should have a neutralising influence. any professional social worker will look at a case as unbiased as possible. you must realise that the clients often have become very proficient at "fooling" social workers... in this case such a "red flag" could help in the line of questioning at the intake of a client in a new region.
There are strict rules with respect to which organisation are allowed to exchange information, and in many cases parents have to give written permission. I often had to sign such forms when dealing with various child health organisations and individuals.
Actually nazis used municipal records to identify and locate jews when they invided the Dutch. Before the WW2 the Dutch govermant had most advanced system on keeping records of it citizens. When nazis took over the country, they used this system for their benefit. That's the reason why so large percentage (75%) of Netherlanding jews died (104000 out of 140000).
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
A similar scheme (http://www.politics.co.uk/public-services/hodge-c hildrens-database-will-not-be-it-disaster-$7765060 .htm) is being planned for the UK. It follows the high-profile death of an abused child who was "known" to a variety of agencies who failed to communicate with each other. Whilst the motives appear to be virtuous, the possible implications of the scheme are serious and the benefits extremely dubious.
ian
Correct! We still have this system, the 'Bevolkingsregister' ("citizens' registry"). When I move to a new town, I'm required to register my new address at the local town hall. This is used for taxation, issuing passports and driver's licenses, the military draft used to be based on it, etc.
It contains at least links to my birth record, marriage certificate, my current address, and my Social Security number (a unique ID number).
Although I quite agree that this might have some huge possibilities for abuse, it helps save children.
Here in the Netherlands, every year there are a few high profile cases where children are extremely abused and/or killed. Usually, afterwards it became know that quite a lot of social services were involved into the family, but didn't communicate with each other or that records simply 'vanished' because the family moved. in result; children die because social services are hugely incompetent.
This system now automates the 'speaking to each other' part of the whole equation.
FYI; in the province of Utrecht, this system has already been tested for a few months, with excellent results.
I do completely agree this could be seen as a dangerous law, so far it actually does what it's meant to do; protect abused children.
(To tell the truth; we're surprised the government actually does something like this right)
First off, the gestapo did a LOT more than just murdering jews. They spent a lot of time monitoring as many of their citizens as possible. Basically, you did not dare speak out, as the person next to you may very well be SS.
Maybe the Stasi is an even better comparison.The tone of the article suggest something that not really the case.
First of all they won't suddenly start keeping a single, giant 1984 record. What they are proposing is to link the existing records of different agencies.
Second, while the road the hell is paved with good intentions they do have a good reason for this step: in many cases tragedy could have been avoided if agencies had known important information that others had. An example is the rise of loverboys in the Netherlands: young men who use the emotional fragility of teenage girls to get them in to prostitution. Often the police knows about the men, but doesn't know what or who are the likely targets, while child protection services knows the girls but has no clue about the men.
Thirdly: the right to privacy is protected much stronger in the Netherlands that in the US. As a result identity theft is almost never a problem and there are very few cases known of clear abuse of government databases.
It's certainly something to be watchfull about but the step in itself isn't too worrying.
Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says:
1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.
Not sure if this applies, it seems pretty vague.
I think this is a very bad move, mainly since this ensures the entire next generation will have a file, (not that they don't already?) which will be accessed by people who are not yet in office or even alive now. But it could be experimented with by starting with individuals in office. It would fit on a CD.
If the cases in the Netherlands are anything like the cases that have been cited here in the UK as the reasons for us having a National Childrens Database, then it was not the "linking of information that's already been gathered" that would have prevented the deaths but people doing their jobs properly.
I'd be very surprised if it was any different in NL.
No but, yeah but, no but...
That's not true. We spend less money fighting drugs and have a smaller drugs problem than the rest of Europe. There are some cities that have put limits on the number of 'coffee shops' they wanted in town center, and perhaps a few had to close, but then normal bars and all other businesses are regulated too.
What's popularly regarded as failed is integration of minorites (i.e., muslim immigrants) into our society. There's a big divide there, mutual fear and anger, and the feeling that the values of Dutch society aren't shared by traditional Islam. That's what the big mess in our society right now is. Not a few harmless coffee shops.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
In a elaboration about my previuous post, I forgot to include a few things. Firstly; right now, al the system does is inform agencys already involved in a certain case, that other agencies are involved as well. This is important and isn't stated in the original newspost here. It was mentioned in Dutch news. It does not give a small group of people all rights about a person, it gives people already trusted with care (social workers, police, etc) information that more people are working on a certain case. secondly; arguments that this will mean that in 20 years everyone will be permanently tracked is a fallacy. Pointing out the potential problems & dangers is valuable, immediately jumping to big brother scenario's is not. Also; immediately linking this DB to WWII is just stupid. I quite agree with Godwin's law; you just lost the argument because you failed to provide any reasenable arguments but instead just turned to hysteria. thirdly; the Netherlands is not the USA. I'm pretty upset by your patriot act, but this isn't a copy. please don't treat it like one. So if people feel obliged to link this system to others; my personal comparison would be automated police records. So that someone committing a crime in city A can be caught in city B. thats just how I think about it though, I'm aware the comparison doesn't strech all the way. I do share the concern about oversealuous workers flagging somebody for life. From what I gather from the news, this would be difficult and involve a completely fake report. But I'm not quite sure. All I can say is that the trials so far have produced good results.
I'm a bit of a paranoid libertarian myself, but that link is horseshit. Fascism is a philosophy, not a mystery syndrome. And maybe some people in the Administration do have authoritarian leanings but... even under Dr. Britt's criteria we still fall short, if only by degrees
To say that the U.S. has military supremacy is the most far-fetched of them all. I could only find two cabinet secretaries who had military service listed in their Wikipedia biography: Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson. That's troublesome in its own right, but might explain why there are so many hawks in the Administration. Regardless, when you start getting into fascist military cults... you don't see Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld running around in military uniforms making up medals to give each other like Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, or dare I say it: Hussein's government in Iraq all did.
Again, it's not that I'm not scared: it could happen; we're inching towards it. But what's his face's attempt to force fit fascism into modern American society is a joke.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
It's instructive to note how few Dutch Jews survived the war with how many
Danish Jews did. In Denmark, there wasn't a population register with religion on
it, and the civil service behaved impeccably.
Impeccable? This is complete bullshit. You are comparing apples and oranges. Denmark never suffered an occupation regime:
"After the German invasion and military occupation on April 9, Denmark became an exception amongst the occupied countries. It formally remained a sovereign state and governed its own affairs, thus differentiating it with regard to international law and the practice of occupation. The situation in Denmark has even been characterized as an "anomaly" in German occupied Europe. This was foremost a consequence of a unique occupation regime. Unlike other countries, Denmark was not put under the control of a German civil or military administration. In theory, and more or less in practice, the basic social, political, and legal situation in Denmark remained intact."
In other words, Denmark was pretty much able to do whatever it wanted as long as it didn't provoke Germany into imposing a stricter occupation regime. Denmark did not defend itself, its government collaborated with the Nazis and never went into exile, and it was never part of the Allies.
In terms of occupation regimes, The Netherlands represents the complete opposite: a Nazi civil occupation regime. It was, like the states in Germany itself, and for instance Austria, and former Prussia in conquered Poland, ruled by a Nazi Gauleiter (Governor), the infamous Austrian Arthur Seyss-Inquart, from the outset. In all areas that were treated as original parts of the First Reich by the Nazis the jews nearly disappeared.
The Netherlands was militarily defeated, its government went into exile, it was at war with the axis nations, it never surrendered its sovereignty to anyone but only most of its terrirory, and the civil administration in the Netherlands was considered clearly illegitimate by the majority of the population.
The intermediate type of regime is represented by for instance northern France and the Balkan countries that merely suffered a German military occupation regime.
`You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.'
- Lyndon Johnson