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New Plan In UK For "Big Brother" Database
POPE Mad Mitch writes "The BBC is reporting that Tony Blair is going to unveil plans on Monday to build a single database to pull together and share every piece of personal data from all government departments. The claimed justification is to improve public services. The opposition party and the Information Commission have both condemned the plan as another step towards a 'Big Brother' society. Sharing information in this way is currently prohibited by the 'over-zealous' data protection legislation. An attempt to build a similar database was a key part of the, now severely delayed, ID card scheme."
They've already tried it once, and so has the FBI/DOJ, both of them dropping the ball and wasting millions of taxpayer dollars/pounds. A modest team of pros should be able to complete a project like this for far less money and in a reasonable amount of time, it's getting to where I don't think they actually intend to make these systems function, it's just a money pit. Another pork project for the IT consultancies who happen to know the right people.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
use GPG.
I, for one, welcome our new public servant overlords.
is to sell the mailing lists to raise more money for more pork projects.
OK, so they'll organise it just like in 'Brazil', then charge you for collecting your data?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Don't you want to be Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes in the UK? What is the problem?
It seems perverse that anyone would consider this a remotely reasonable plan.
The article doesn't look at the technical side of doing this at all, but its pretty obvious that todo what they are talking about doing here, it means restructuring the data for hundreds if not thousands of applications that are in use now.
Why is the UK government so gung-ho on these 'MegaIT Projects'?
Lets hope this dosen't get traction, but as with most things 'New Labour', I can only imagine this is signed and sealed now that the public are being made aware
This is where the UK needs a "Move On" to organise citizen opposition. Britons should stop thinking of themselves as "subjects".
The same writers who justifiably criticize Washington praise the Europeans and Canada. Yet, the British government seems to be just as indifferent to civil rights as Washington.
So, here is an interesting question: Which is the best protector of civil rights? USA or Europe?
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_ 201/l_20120020731en00370047.pdf
0 2dltr0014.html
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/20
Does GB intend to withdraw from the EU?
If so, the "Big Brother" talk is more than idle literary reference. We can move forward with renaming Britannia to "Airstrip One."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The good thing is, the entire system will fulfill all the requirements of Orwell's "memory hole."
The bad thing is, the entire system will fulfill all the requirements of Orwell's "memory hole."
Are all these IT Projects and police cameras actually a secret plot to harness George Orwell's spinning body as the primary power source for the U.K?
I lived in the U.K as a teen and always wanted return later. Now, the thought of returning gives me the creeps.
Winston would be so proud.
Vive la George!
My lasers trace, everything you do,
You think you've private lives, think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape, I'm watching all the time!
CHORUS:
I'm made of metal, my circuits gleam
I am perpetual, I keep the country clean.
I'm elected, electric spy,
I'm protected, electric eye.
Always in focus, you can't feel my stare,
I zoom into you, you dont know I'm there.
I take a pride in probing, all your secret moves,
My tearless retina takes, pictures that can prove.
Electric eye (in the sky)
Feel my stare (always there)
There's nothing you can do about it, develop and expose,
I feed upon your every thought, and so my power grows!
I'm made of metal, my circuits gleam
I am perpetual, I keep the country clean.
I'm elected, electric spy,
I'm protected, electric eye.
I'm Elected - Protected - Detective - Electric - Eye.
- Judas Priest, Electric Eye, 1982.
25 years ago, this was cheesy hair-metal dystopic science fiction.
Sucks to be us.
The UK is half "Europe" and half "America Jr." They track the US much more closely than the rest of Europe (if you hadn't noticed through the whole Iraq issue).
The UK already has a history of over budget information-sharing projects. In related news, the FBI also wasted $100 million on the fiasco that is the Virtual Case File database. If intel agencies are really interested in sharing data, maybe they should follow the CIA's example of using secure Wikis?
In any event, I agree with the other commentators that this is a pork project more than anything.
They both protect them differently. The USA protects the rights of the individual (like free speech and no gun control) while Europe protects the rights of the group (like restricting hate speech against groups and having gun control). This is mainly because they have implemented their systems differently. In the US rights that aren't delegated to the government are reserved by the people, while in Europe rights that aren't delegated to the people are reserved by the government.
They both have their good points and bad points. The US system will return to equilibrium in a couple of years and beat the European system in protections (even though we have a temporary crackdown today). You just have to rough it out for a couple of years.
FTFA: "Sharing information in this way is currently prohibited by the 'over-zealous' data protection legislation."
.. legislation is interesting. I think that many if not most of the citizens or subjects would consider any legislation that permits such information sharing to be over-zealous.
The use of the phrase over-zealous
My doctor doesn't need to know what my taxes were, nor does the tax man need to know what speeding tickets I've had. The only probable useful use of this information sharing by the government is to track people of covertly wrong reasons.
I'm pretty certain that the MI5 doesn't need to know how many people reported to the doctor for STD treatments, so what they are tracking is information that they shouldn't be collecting anyway. In spite of the surprisingly vast amount of information about private citizens that is available on the Internet, collating all government owned information about citizens will provide nothing useful in the war on terror or the war against drugs.
In case nobody was paying attention, the attacks in NYC and London were perpetuated by people that either already should have set off security bells, or by people who would not set off security alerts anyway. Creating this type of spying system will not deter terrorists, criminals, or any other group they might claim to be fighting.
Like gun control, if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them, and if you outlaw privacy, only outlaws will have it.
Its time that governments, especially elected ones, start learning that you don't force peace, but encourage it, protect it and these can only be done WITH the cooperation of citizens, not in spite of their rights or through sacrificing their rights for them.
Sure, they can read and record this and it still won't help them find any subversives. In fact, they will have only wasted money tracking my statements instead of focusing on using currently implemented laws and methods of upholding those laws.
I'm not against sharing data, but when it can be tracked back to individuals it necessarily becomes a kind of evil. Knowing the eating habits of all 37 year old men who have had minor heart attacks can be a very useful set of data, But also knowing their names and addresses, voting records, tax numbers, and what type of car they drive is not necessary to the usefulness of the information.
If this has been announced, rest assured that the implementation phase is already underway.
As has been said, now is the time to make this an election issue. I'm pretty sure that those present at the signing of the Magna Carta would not approve of this. Hmmmmmm
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Can't you realize that by opposing the government protecting us that you are supporting terrorism?
Think of the children!
Why do you hate our country so much!
Don't you all realize that the only way for us to all be safe is to surrender all our freedoms to the government.
We can appoint some really great man to control everything, so that nothing will be abused.
Sort of like some kind of Big Brother!
Bush is America's Big Brother! Sure he tortures people, but it's more like when your big brother gave you noogies... until you died. Yeah, like that.
You can only wonder if Tony Blair's decision is also the democratic decision of the People of the UK who vehemently oppose such controversial schemes. It boils down to the question: Can the UK at present still be considered a democracy when the PM repeatedly abuses his power that was initially entrusted in him by its citizens and now keep betraying his own country? I do not think so.
I like how that implies that they're not yet already there. Denial is aparrently the Thames now, not a river in Egypt.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Here's another interesting question:
IF you took it as established that there were going to be these systematic invasions of privacy and compilations of databases and whatnot...
As is currently being done by organizations within both government and corporate sectors...
Would you rather have this information legally protected and made obscure so only those with government authority or enough money and resources to assemble it themselves have access to this information?
Or commercialized so the rich and powerful get more access to it?
Or made public and available to everyone with universal access?
And why?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
If they care so much about that TV show, why don't they just Google it rather than making their own trivia database?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Is accessible by all agencies anyway, so having it in one place isnt really that big of a deal.
Now, once you start including private data ( such as ATM transactions, bookstore purchases, gas purchases, or private secuirty cameras ) and linking that data to governmental data, then we have some issues..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
One nice, big, fat, juicy target. It'll be nice not to have to break into all these different, incompatable databases all the time. Yep, should save a lot of work for the crooks when they're stealing laptops. Now they'll need only one. Very convenient indeed.
What?
britain is nothing like the rest of europe, in fact most countries within europe are nothing like each other. you use britain and europe as interchangable regions when they are not, british laws don't effect european countries. this fact obivously escapes you since your american and have no concept of the world past your own city block.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
<tinfoilhat> "This time will be different... we know went wrong with the last one." So, the USA or some black-ops group (e.g. within NSA, CIA, FBI, or some other TLA) pays some money to help out in building this. This new database tracks PEOPLE: brits, and non-brits, too. So George Dubya calls up Tony and provides and/or requests information at will. Echelon. Warrantless eavesdropping. First class mail interception. I wish it were otherwise, but given the past efforts of the current USA administration, it would (sadly) not surprise me in the least.</tinfoilhat>
The UK is half "Europe" and half "America Jr."
No. The US is the Original European Union. What they are doing in the old country is emulation.
What?
And will there be mutton dressed up as lamb?
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
Well actually Rove and Cheney.. Bush/Hitler is too stupid to take away any remaining civil liberties in the UK.
If Condi had children she would understand how important this is.
I'm a UK citizen and resident. In my experience government departments don't talk to each other and it does lead to problems for everyday people, this would be a valid way of working towards solving that problem. I'm sure our glorious leaders are aware of the benefits it will give them in controlling the population, and I expect they think it's a good idea. IMHO the bureaucracy has become so complex and unwieldy that even it's professional administrators can't keep up.
Of course this is a UK government IT project, so it is doomed to failure.
Postgres or MySQL?
Blair loves to copy Bush in everything. This is just another. The NSA had this a long time ago I'm guessing, and I'm guessing this whole operation will be run through sym links:) I'd bet he already has it, too. I'd be good if the EU had, um, a government to keep all this tracking together. I'm not afraid of just another database (I'm sure they're already everywhere) but with such clear disorganization the countries are showing in gereral, they might lose track of the operation. 1984 is the best distopia book, but I've heard of many that are just plainly that the world has too much knowledge, and society is just spinning off hopelessly.
Some of his past foibles for those that may not have followed his illustrious career as the Prime Minister who has turned Britain into a nanny state with a big, middle class-friendly smile. Well, I should be careful by qualifying that by saying it depends on how you look at it. Europeans may be wont to think that America is full of gun violence, that it's all like the Old West, but I go "HOLY SHIT!" when I read some of the stories that come out of Britain under Blair with yobs and how the police deal with them. I've lived my entire life in the South, in small towns and even the worst I have seen of police here pales in comparison to how much the British police seem to side with criminals against law-abiding citizens. I gotta be honest, I'd feel safer walking through any working class town in the South than the equivalent in Britain. Between violent criminals and politically correct, criminal-loving, politicized police, Tony Blair has done a lot from what I've seen in the media to totally fuck up Britain.
The U.S.A. is nothing like the rest of America. In fact most countries within America are nothing like each other. you use the U.S.A. and America as interchangeable regions when they are in fact not. The laws of the U.S.A. don't necessarily affect other American countries. This fact obviously escapes you since you are European and your grip of the world past your own city block is about as strong as the one you have on spelling and grammar.
Personal information stored in big brother database
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
...is a double bladed sword. This means it will also be easier for the bad guys to steal all your personal information. (Assuming you don't think your government is one of the bad guys; and a bigger assumption being that a government entity can accomplish this.)
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors.
We cant share simple media yet the governments and big bussiness can share all form of personal and private information on us. Why the double standards whats next well all are going to have to have a chip embeded in our hands?
Mutated by Scientists.
The terrorists of the future aren't in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any Mosque like our govt. would like us to belive. They're lurking in Downing Street, and Westminster.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown may lay the foundations for it, but sooner or later, our greatest fears will be of the government themselves.
Could someone please explain to me how this scheme is different than the Danish CPR-Register? We Danes have had it since 1968, and as far as I am concerned, I do not think Denmark has turned into a totalitarian state.
:)
In fact, the CPR scheme allows data to be easily accessed between different departments of the government and organisations. Also our CPR-number works as a global key to many services, making access that much easier. It's true that your dentist should not see your crime record, but I don't think that any agency in the UK will be granted any information that is not relevant to their role.
Then again, since I am Social Democrat, I guess I have a hard time agreeing with the fears that naturally plague Libertarians (who seem to make out a vocal part of this discussion) about such measures.
Let's keep things civil
Norway recently started something called "min side" (minside.no), which collects information from various sources and presents them in a uniform interface. While, in theory, no information is stored in the system itself, it is easy to see how the system could be abused by various agencies to query information from all the backends.
In all the arguments about Bush, there have been repreated suggestions that Blair is more intelligent than Bush. I do not think this is so at all. He has superior verbal fluency (he is a barrister, i.e. a talking lawyer.) But all the signs are that in understanding of the modern world, strategic grasp and understanding of the structure of, and problems of, society, he is every bit as blinkered and limited as Bush.
I'm sorry about this rant, but thank you for reading it. Meanwhile, if you _do_ share the misfortune of being English, please do something. Write to your MP. He will probably be a technical illiterate too, so try and spell it out very plainly without using jargon. Gathering all information about citizens into a big central repository accessed by many different groups - police, NHS, Civil Servants - is a recipe for disaster in a country where newspapers buy and sell informants every day. A country that cannot prevent newspapers from illegally tapping telephones, cannot prevent criminals, Ruper Murdoch and Lord Rothermere from gaining illegal access to such a huge centralised database. Until the Government can somehow fix the abuses of the Press and the opportunities for blackmail, they should never consider such a database.
Pining for the fjords
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Yes_Mini ster)
"the new National Integrated Database: the detailed personal records of every UK citizen, which will be held on computer by the government"
England Prevails
When I was working on similar systems in America, we estimated (in our internal risk analyses) that information in a local police database accessible to the average user could be acquired by unauthorised outside users for about $1000. The corresponding figure for a national police agency database was about $10,000. If the information was more valuable than that, additional safeguards were needed. The UK Government proposal is basically flying in the face of that.
will it be using MySQL?
So this would be like the bank that I moved to, which offered to transfer all my direct debits, salary payments etc. from my old bank account to the new one automatically? The one where they made such a mess of a simple process that after several weeks of grief, I went into my local branch, demanded to see the manager, and sat there while he phoned head office and asked them to stop, please? I then contacted all the organisations involved manually, correcting the screw-ups and updating the bank account details, in less time than it took to fix the bank transfer department's mess.
The problem with all these grand plans is that they're great in theory. If everything works, and the data never leaks, and only trustworthy people have access to the database, it's all fine. But what if this doesn't happen in practice? What legal requirement is there for the government to keep the information 100% secure? Where is the law that says I will automatically be refunded all expenses incurred as a result of any leak, in perpetuity? Where is the law that says a court will immediately dismiss any action taken against me by any government department as a result of an error the government made in the mega-database? How will they put the horse back in the stable if (when?) the information in the database leaks to ID thieves? Where is the law that says the government will disclose any such leak to me in timely fashion? Where is the law that says the government must provide a simple, effective and fast mechanism for me to correct errors in the database when I become aware of them? (If you're about to cite the Data Protection Acts, where is the funding to increase staff levels at the Office of the Information Commissioner by a factor of three so that they can meet the workload they already have under the DPA and FOIA?) Where is the guarantee that the contractors brought in to implement the scheme will complete it for the originally agreed amount of money, or that this original amount of money will be less than the savings made by switching to the new system? You get the idea: things that work in theory do not always work in practice.
I always find it odd that it's called a debate. Of course I can go only by my own experience, which may not be representative of the entire population, but I've never heard anyone except a politician and a few people on obviously biased on-line boards speak in favour of the government's proposals for ID cards and the National Identity Register. Moreover, those surveys I have seen that should be representative of the population as a whole suggest that in fact, most people here are unconvinced of the benefits.
Am I the only person who thinks a debate is what governments call presenting a fait accompli to the population, and letting it hit the papers for a few days so they can claim they consulted the people on the matter before proceeding to implement what they'd already decided to do anyway?
No, they can't. Government is a big place (think what proportion of the population work for it!) and fortunately for us all, things aren't nearly as open as that today.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The Danish Society of Engineers
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Party % of seats %of vote
h tm">system where the votes are rigged</a>.
Labour 55 35.2
Tory 30.5 32.3
Liberal 9.6 22.0
We don't live under a democratic system, we live under a <a href="http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/uktable.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Given the typical government approach to security (one password and you're in to everything), do you really want your neighbour who works as a receptionist in the doctor's surgery to be able - even in theory - to view your tax records?
We already have that problem - she could work for the tax department.
Perhaps we should fund the government with a method that doesn't require invasive records on every citizen.
Already planned in the National Identity Register (the old scheme, already halfway to being abandoned couse they can't make it work...this news suggest it's now three quarters of the way to being abandoned) The plan was when you go for your compulsory interrogation and fingerprinting, they'll charge you for the privilege. Remember, this is the government that when it falsely imprisons people for decades, and is forced by the courts to pay 6-figure sums in compensation, subtracts board and lodgings for those years of imprisonment from the sum. The overwhelming all-seeing incompetent police state of Brazil, that charges suspects for the costs of their torture and interrogation, looks more and more predictive.
That can't be!!! I keep being told by Brits that America is a dictatorship!!! How could that be happening in Britain? 10+lmao points in their faces.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
"This fact obviously escapes you since you are European and your grip of the world past your own city block is about as strong as the one you have on spelling and grammar"
LOL thanks for that one. That really made my fucking day.
OK, I give up. I'm a "glass half full" person. Which one am I supposed to choose? :-/
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's sad, John Butcher died a week or so ago at the age of 60. There was an MP, one of very few, who understood technology and its importance, and even tried to explain why manufacturing was important to Mrs. Thatcher - and he was in the same party. (He was chairman of Texas Instruments UK at one point, I think.) He left Parliament in 1997, which was a pity.
Pining for the fjords
Let me guess, the concept and the feasibility study was performed by the same consultancy who gets to do the work if accepted.
Wasn't that the same problem "overlooked" in the ID Cards debacle? "Overlooked" because the auditors are led by an ex consultant?
Just asking..
Example: Welfare recipient actually has a live-in boyfriend working for another agency that brings in tons. Can reclaim overpayment via taxes. Without linking of data between the 3 agencies, that may never be caught. Older medicaid recpient cant afford to decent housing and doesnt file since she makes so little and lives in a 'center'. She has back SS $ coming to here, but since the tax people cant see the records, they cant get the money to her to move out of government assisted housing and into her own place.. Now, can it be abused? Sure..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What they are doing in the old country is emulation.
Yeah, but their ROM sets are defective.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
What's wrong with the government having every scrap of every single individual's personal information in one central database? Surely such things would not be used to forecast social trends and track political dissidents. As a matter of fact, anyone who says so is a paranoid goon!
In fact most countries within America are nothing like each other. you use the U.S.A. and America as interchangeable regions when they are in fact not. The laws of the U.S.A. don't necessarily affect other American countries.
Not for want of trying on the part of the USA. e.g. trying to get Canadians to change their copyright laws.
Given the amount of what I call "low impact xenophobia" in the UK, the government will force this first into foreigners, who nobody cares in this country about, the sociopaths in the Labour party know foreigners are an easy target to try this and any other of their great social inventions.
Once we 2nd class humans in this country are "registered" they can iron out all the details about how they will make this "work" for the indigenous population (people with half a clue knows this is just a waste of money, but whatever).
These and many other "initiatives" remind us all people living in the UK the roots of the Labour party: a socialist party. And we know how socialist and communist countires treat their people: with suspicion. The instincts are the same, not even Tony Blair and his cronnies could become Tory (Conservative) enough to care about civil liberties and freedoms.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It isn't a question of if a data repository like this will be abused it's a question of when.
I wonder if they'll build an AI to help sort through all this data...
Which is the best protector of civil rights? USA or Europe?
Europe, hands down, one hundred percent.
Think of the UK as an extra US State. It's not Europe.
welome our giant database weilding overlords
This is fine, as long as they give all citizens access to the data. Also, all government workers would also need to be listed in this database. I could stomach living in a glass house, AS LONG AS IT'S TWO WAY, NOT ONE WAY. Make the government drink it's own coolade, and they desire for this sort of thing will be quickly chilled.
Exactly. If you look at the latest polls, only about 1/3 of the US population agrees with Bush on anything...
"But this one goes to 11!"
I don't think so. The RCMP opened peoples mail for >25 years starting in, iirc, the 50's. Completely illegally. They even had an office within Canada Post in Ottawa and simply had mail re-routed to the office to make opening it easier. All without warrants and all completely illegal. When it became public knowledge Canada's response was basically "oh! Right then, we'd better legalize right away!"...
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop