Slashdot Mirror
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!
Brazil was a film made by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python Fame. I'm not sure if there was/is a book.
Try going to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
Note that the working title for the film was 1984 and a Half. This puts where it is coming from perfectly.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
With a new database the government could get round this by specifying a very broad range of purposes for the data (as Transport For London did with the Oyster card), but that tactic can't be applied to an existing database.