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

I wish this was a joke

[Bananatree3]

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.

Re:I wish this was a joke

[AftanGustur]

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 Even if that may solve some problems, it creates others realy serious. What this means is both that some grumpy social worker, on bad day, can flag a kid for life, and there is no way for anyone to put a judgement on the social workers decision. Also, gifted children often have behavioral problerms which can not be easily diagnosed for what they are.

Re:I wish this was a joke

[jcr]

While I suspect that this has good intentions

I think you can put that suspicion to rest.

-jcr

Re:I wish this was a joke

[E8086]

that could lead to profiling and profiling is wrong

So they can arrest the parents or take the kids away because in a semi-similar situation the kids were much abused or killed.

So when one abused kid who was charged with something at some time grows up and has kids and severly injurs or kills their kid, then some overzealious young gov't worker brown nosing for a promotion or raise or corner office uses that limited data to create a profile everyone who had jeuvinile charges thrown at them when they were a kid is now a suspect for possible child abuse.
I only said charge, not conviction and didn't say what it was for. It could be that some kid broke a neighbor's window while playing baseball when he was 9 and instead of accepting compensation from the kids parents, the kid-hating neighbor gets their DA friend to bring the kid up on charges to teach him a lesson and/or make an example for the rest of the neighborhood kids. Since that system is probably going to record everything, even something pointless like that during childhood can make them a future suspect. In the US you don't have to report legal charges, only convictions and most jeuvinile records are sealed when the person turns 18 and can be petitioned to be destroyed/removed from the permanant record. Yes, that's an extreme example, but possible that something that happened to you many years ago can put you at risk because someone 100yrs before did something similar and then did something worse. And no one caught it because not all law enforcement depts have access to all of it.

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)

ugh

[neurokaotix]

It's dangerous storing all information about people in one, most likely easilly hackable location.

Questions about this

[SB5]

Is this meant for control as in "Brave New World". Or is this meant for research? Knowing the Dutch, and the way this is worded, it seems to goal of this is noble. Whether it will stay noble is the question.

At Least We're Informed

[RAMMS EIN]

One good thing about the media in the Netherlands is that this new system has been visibly covered in the media. I can well imagine that it would have been swept under the rug in other places; after all, it's just various organizations dealing with children and their problems cooperating.

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.

Can someone enlighten me...

[jkrise]

why no country has attempted to do this sort of thing? For the entire world, there could be only 6 billion records - a single nation would need to have less than a billion - maybe a few million for most countries.

What can be the security implications for storing things like name, date of birth, sex, present address, etc. for all citizens? It's amazing that in these days of hi-tech gadgets and advances in storage, such elementary data is not available OR not reliably accurate.

Even population estimates have a more than 10% error rate for most nations. How can we plan for social welfare and emergency relief when we don't have accurate data? Amazing, really...

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.

Principle is *backwards*--WE should own OUR info

[shanen]

This is just the natural extension of what's been going on over the last few decades, and the movement to the governmental level is just the natural limit. The potential for abuse is enormous--and you can basically rest assured such power over individuals will be abused. Perhaps not so much by the Dutch, who are basically reasonable people (IMO), but there are lots of much less reasonable governments out there.

The operative legal principle should be that our personal information belongs to the individual, and if someone (even someone who works for the government and who "wants to help you") wants to store data about you, they should be required to store that information on YOUR PODS (personally owned data storage). Easy enough to use a checksum to prevent you from modifying the information, but if they want to see it again, they should be required to say why, and you should have the right to agree or disagree to their proposed use of your personal information.

Trivial example, if you want to borrow money from a bank, then the bank would have good reason to query your PODS for information about your financial history. If you don't agree to provide enough information, then the bank is not going to agree to the loan. However, once they've made the decision to loan you the money, they should store the records on your own PODS, and erase most of the personal information at their end. Once you've finished paying off the loan, they'd have no reason to keep any of your personal information (though the records would still be stored on your computer if you want them again, as for another loan).

Lessons of History

[Budenny]

You would have thought the Dutch of all people would understand the dangers. In Holland before WWII the local authorities had records of the religion of their people. The reason was simple, so that contributions could be made to the churches on their behalf. All very reasonable and in keeping with tolerance and religious diversity. But come the invasion, it was very very simple to find everyone of a given religion.... It is not what these guys will use this stuff for, its what their successors may use it for.

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.

Wow

[DaveV1.0]

One stop Identity-theft shopping!

Weee!

Re:gestapo wtf

[WindBourne]

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.

Next, we ARE a lot closer than what we were even a decade ago. Now, that gov. are tracking citizens and listening in their voice and internet coversations, how is that different than what gestapo did to the average german citizen? Likewise, the reason why so many fought against FDR's Social Security was that they were afraid that the SSN could be used in part of a national ID (interestingly, the republican party fought it hard based on that). The more that a gov. tracks and listens, the easier it is for the next one, to extend that further. They all say that is for the "good of the nation" or for "homeland defense".

A good example is China now has forced abortion on women and forced sterilization on both sexes. We are not talking a 1-2 months abortions, but 9 month (ready to deliver). Now, with this kind of tech., how easy will it be for a gov. to say, oh, we know that you are pregnant by listening in on coversations. And yes, if China is doing this now, how soon will other govs. decide to do the same? Perhaps, they have decided that junior there does not have the genetic make-up that is desirable. But of course, we both know that a gov. would NEVER take that step. Right?

And no western gov. would ever spend their effort listening in on all their citizens.

And no western gov. would ever control the press by locking up foreign journalist (say known musleum reporters in a war zone) or allowing their own press to be owned by just a few friendly companies in which the CEO and "moderators" decide what is ok to print/tell/view.

And no western gov. would try to control those who do have intimate knowledge of deals

10 years ago, I would have though ppl crazy for thinking that a DB is bad. Now, In light of what has happened over the last 5 years, I have changed my mind.

Re:gestapo wtf

[sangdrax]

I would rather be concerned for countries which do execute people and do drag people to camps without judge or trail "for national security" and do invade foreign nations to expand their sphere of influence, all covered with a thick layer of propaganda and national pride. *That* is I call tending towards Fascistic nature.

But linking information that's already being gathered for decades without problems? That is, except the problems of unlinked databases, which stopped us from preventing several children from being murdered by their own parents recently.. How does wanting to prevent that even come remotely close to creating WW2 like scenarios?

It's the public consensus that creates WW2 like scenarios, not governments creating systems which could theoretically be abused if they really wanted to. They don't need new systems to be able to abuse them. You have to make sure they don't want to, thats the key.

In Norway we have this database

[Harald Paulsen]

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.

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:gestapo wtf

[iawia]

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.

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

[Shaper_pmp]

"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?

Re:gestapo wtf

[Shaper_pmp]

Yay! My first Freak!

But seriously, I wasn't trolling, I was attempting to make a serious point:

Merely because the current government in the Netherlands apparently isn't predisposed towards fascist/totalitarian behaviour, that's no reason to hand them the capability without thought.

Allowing the government additional powers isn't merely a question of "will they use it responsibly?".

It's actually a case of "will they, and every single government who comes after them, for the entire conceivable future of the country use these powers responsibly".

I'd submit that no "government" can be trusted for all time, since the people who make up each "government" change every few years, and while it's easy to restrict civil liberties and pass restrctive laws, these measures don't tend to be repealed by anything short of a revolution.

The (admittedly slightly emotive) example of the US was intended to illustrate this point - in the mid-90s you'd have been laughed at to suggest that the current situation would occur within 5-10 years, and yet the US has gone from shining beacon of liberty to the world to an unprecedented crackdown on civil liberties and an unprecedented drop in international esteem.

Apologies if you think I'm trolling, but that wasn't the intention at all. And when your Freaks list is at least as long as your Friends list, maybe you want to re-evaluate that hair-trigger on your killfile ;-)

Correction

[ifwm]

"children die because social services are hugely incompetent."

This should read "because PARENTS are hugely incompetent"

You're welcome.