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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."
And so what if one malicious worker has exclusive rights to view several hundred children? It doesn't matter if they have access to the whole database or not, even a "small pecentage" could be several hundred or thousand children. This is a pedaphile's ultimate dream.
The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked. "Child protection services will say, 'Hey, there's a warning flag from the police. There's another one from school. There's another one from the doctor," Brouwer said. "Something must be going on and it's time to call the parents in for a meeting."And how long exactly will these records be kept? Also, this would be a good way to usher in a country-wide database of this sortfor every citizen. Start with the children, saying its "for the good of the kids", and then slowly introduce a more inclusive database, which would go under some other guise. It would seem that a database of children "for their safety" might be easier to pull of then a citizenry-wide database at first.
Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move.This could have good uses, and assuming it was used exactly for the intent stated, this would be an excellent service. BUT, more often then not, these kinds of things get abused in some form or another. In every government there is some malicious back-room government worker who goes below the radar. These kinds of things get abused, and when it is a child at stake, the risks are even higher.
For the first time in a long while I actually believe the end justify the means used. In an ever growing world we are seeing more and more systems pop-up that are able to classify and trace citizen in any country. Most countries that do this immediately label the system as an anti-terrorism system and basically make your life a living hell when you want to fly. Holland (where I life) is actually going to use this system to do good. Track citizens to make sure that nothing bad happens to them.
In the town where I live, we had a small child die when here parents severely abused her. This was such a shock to the nation that an investigation was started. All the instances that are normally involved in child protection had one complaint. There was no central system in place to track problem children in the country. Basically you could abuse your child in one town, get caught, move to the next town with a clean slate. This has happened several times and the government decided to solve this problem. I believe this will do good and I also believe that the Dutch government are not going to abuse the system.
The great thing of living in Holland is that we have privacy issues up the kazoeks. For example, in the rest of the world when someone gets arrested the media can actually use his full name in press reports, no go in Holland. The guy that killed van Gogh is called Mohammed B. and is last name is never used! But they (the gov.) do keep pushing the limits. A while ago they sent out a massive SMS round asking for witnesses to some football violence. They basically asked the telcos to provide the Cell numbers of everyone that was in the stadium or near it when the incident happened. Results: some people were pissed off (logically) but they managed to catch around 30 people with this action.
I am happy to live in Holland and to be honest when I compare it to the US I feel safer and have more trust in my government.
Norway has this database actually. Everyone born or moving into Norway is registered and they keep track of your parents and grandparents, where you are born, the places you have lived, when you died and if you're married / living together with someone. Every appartment even has a unique number (Mine is H0101, which is the first appartment on the first floor) so in case of emergency they can pinpoint you fairly easily.
Harald
This particular database has no relation with tracking terrorists.
The proposal you refer to, does. You are right, we have a problem with politicians like Balkenende and Donner, who believe that they can control everything when they can monitor everyone.
But even more of a problem is that they believe that there is a war on terror to be fought against a hostile community. This belief came upon them when they had too close contact to the current president of the US. Said person indoctrinated them that troups should be sent to countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, to support a war against a phenomenon that they do not understand (and do not bother to understand).
As they really like to please people that appear to be powerful, the troups were sent. And now, they are faced with a "terror threat to the country". Instead of admitting that this is their own stupid fault, they try to cover their asses by inventing all kinds of stupid laws and regulations like the one you are referring to.
In fact:
- they are the real cause of the terror threat. when we had remained neutral there would have been no threat.
- they are exaggerating the threat, scaring people more than necessary
- the are introducing extra measures to constantly monitor people just in case
All in all they are just giving the terrorists what they want. First, give them a reason to attack. Then, scare their own people and take freedom-limiting measures.
Terrorists must be delighted by such a (mis)government! Everyone scared without having to throw a single bomb.
It's not the unlinked databases that 'stopped us from preventing several children being murdered'. It's simply incompetence of the organisations that are supposed to protect those children.
The cases that have been in the media in the last year (which are just a few examples, as 1 to 2 children *a week* are killed by abuse in the Netherlands!) are cases where the family was already under control of a child protection agency. The situation was known to the 'gezinsvoogd' (custodian? it's the person assigned responsibility over a child by the judge when there are serious problems) but they didn't react, or at least not very effectively.
The reasons this system doesn't work are simple:
1) The safety of the child is not a priority. In most of the agencies there is a huge pressure to make sure the child stays with the parents. Even if the parents have repeatedly physically abused the child! The reason given for this is that it is better for the psycologicaldevelopment of the child to stay with its parents. True, but first things first, please...
2) History is disregarded. Parents from who children have been taken because of abuse are allowed to keep their other children. Apparently this is a 'different relationship'. Go figure.
3) The organisations charged with protection of the children are both inadequately funded, and inadequately run. There is usually no clear structure or guidelines on how to deal with different cases, no place to get expert help (ie. no child psycologists available, and no budget to go to an external expert), no rules on how to keep records, even!
Fixing these problems is not done by linking databases. It's done by reorganisation of the system, and proper regard for children's safety as *the* primary requirement.
You're right in what you say - the US is (for all their talk of "t3h fr33d0mZ!!!!!1111!") far closer to becoming a fascist state than the Netherlands currently is.
Read The 14 Characteristics of Fascism by Dr. Lawrence Britt - the USA hits every single point square-on, with the possible exception of point 5 (rampant sexism), although the paper goes on to clarify "opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy", so maybe half a point then.
However, by instituting a system such as the Netherlands', they make it much easier to start monitoring their citizens and restricting civil liberties in the future - all you need is to not stop updating the database after the child passes 18, and you've got some of the scariest bits of 1984 right there.
Short version: The US is far further down the track, but the Netherlands just massively upgraded how fast they can catch up.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
"The difference is the action that is being taken. With the Gestapo, you could get killed for venting your thoughts. No way that this is going to happen by action of the Dutch government."
Currently.
Ten years ago in USA you couldn't be arrested, detained without trial, denied even minimal Geneva Convention protections and tortured and abused without restitution merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And the USA was widely regarded as the shining example of representative democracy and civil liberties to the entire world.
Your point?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself