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Dutch to Open Electronic Files on Children

Posted by samzenpus on from the we've-always-been-at-war-with-eurasia dept.

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."

4 of 532 comments (clear)

  1. I wish this was a joke by Bananatree3 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise "red flags" in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems

    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.

  2. In Norway we have this database by Harald+Paulsen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    Harald
  3. Re:gestapo wtf by iawia · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:gestapo wtf by Shaper_pmp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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?

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    Everything in moderation, including moderation itself