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."

Comments

What's going on

[jeroenb]

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.

Curse or Blessing?

[RAMMS EIN]

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.

Re:I wish this was a joke

[wllf]

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.

Additional background information

[Frans Faase]

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.

Same scheme in the UK

[cardpuncher]

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.

Re:gestapo wtf

[igb]

You would expect the Dutch to be slightly more attuned to this. The roundups in 1942 were massively aided by the Dutch census of 1937, which included religious affiliation. And massive collaboration by the police and civil service, of course, but few European countries reacted to roundups of Jews with anything other than enthusiasm. 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.

ian

Re:I wish this was a joke

[molotov02]

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)

A bit misleading

[Anspen]

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.

Re:gestapo wtf

[DataCannibal]

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.

Re:Yeh but

[Scarblac]

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.

Re:gestapo wtf

[scaryjohn]

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.