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."

Comments

Good luck...

[ShaunC]

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.

Re:Good luck...

[setirw]

American intelligence agencies are now looking to Wiki solutions for sharing intelligence, and it's far superior to any previous databases. Although it hasn't existed long enough to draw final conclusions, many say it works well. Perhaps UK intelligence agencies will follow America's lead and do the same?

oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new public servant overlords.

Does this ring a bell?

[jamstar7]

OK, so they'll organise it just like in 'Brazil', then charge you for collecting your data?

Re:Does this ring a bell?

[RotateLeftByte]

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.

C'mon

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you want to be Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes in the UK? What is the problem?

Scale & Risk

[Henry 2.0]

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

Re:Scale & Risk

[alshithead]

"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"

Is "dosen't" a UK spelling I'm not familiar with? :)

Re:Scale & Risk

[mrogers]

At the moment if i move i have to update all the different agencies. Banks, Telcoms, Electricity, Tax offices, Immigration(if needed), Government support ( pensions etc ), voting enrolment. Now imagine they are all linked and i phone a single number and POOF. All changed at once.

No problem - just send me your bank account details, social security number, name, address, phone number and date of birth and I'll take care of everything. I won't even charge you for the service.

See, it's true - privatising government services saves money!

Re:Scale & Risk

[Alioth]

No. Blair's government uses a 'dutch auction' style of legislation to pass odious stuff.

What they do is propose something outrageously distateful, which gets parliament in uproar - while all the time they only planned something merely somewhat distateful. Parliament gets uppity, votes on it, and gets the legislation watered down to the 'somewhat distasteful' level, thinking they've won a victory. Basically, the government proposes the most draconian legislation possible and lets parliament scale it back to something they will accept, which is probably much more draconian than if they had just tried to pass what they wanted to pass in the first place.

Re:Scale & Risk

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Yes, they've done this repeatedly, most obviously with things like detention without trial, where the 90 days originally requested were scaled back to "only" several times the historical limit and the limit used in pretty much every other first world nation.

It's really odd how this works. It's as if everyone is so used to the government (with its unjustified absolute majority in Parliament) forcing through any legislation they want, no matter how unpopular, that the people making the decisions now consider the default to be the bad alternative proposed by the government and not status quo, and judge any revised proposals in that light. I'm not sure whether this is a more damning indictment of the calibre of people who make decisions in our country, or of the electoral system that gives an absolute majority to a group that gained the support of only just over 1/5 of the electorate.

organise!

[anadem]

This is where the UK needs a "Move On" to organise citizen opposition. Britons should stop thinking of themselves as "subjects".

Re:organise!

[l-ascorbic]

There is No2ID which organises resistance to such things, including defence funds for people who refuse to register for ID cards and the National Identity Database. They have been quite successful. The public opposition to the ID Database has increased massively over the past year, which is probably why the govt is doing this. By integrating existing databases, they needn't rely on anyone registering.

European Digital Privacy Directive?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_ 201/l_20120020731en00370047.pdf

http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/200 2dltr0014.html

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."

Re:European Digital Privacy Directive?

[BasilBrush]

What in particular in the European Digital Privacy Directive do you imagine prevents sharing data between government departments?

Re:European Digital Privacy Directive?

[mrogers]

Information can only be gathered and used for a specified purpose - you can't "reuse" information for purposes other than those for which it was gathered.

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.

Re:European Digital Privacy Directive?

[Blue Stone]

Information can only be gathered and used for a specified purpose - you can't "reuse" information for purposes other than those for which it was gathered. Maybe they have a specific purpose - they only need to cstate it - they want to have a broad overview of everyone's behaviour so they can lock them up if their assessment of that behaviour indicates that they may become a future criminal:[Empasis mine]

The government is planning "behaviour orders" for people considered to be at risk of committing a violent crime. The orders, similar in principle to Asbos, would put curfews or other restrictions on potential offenders, who might have no criminal convictions.

The Sunday Times reported that "risk factors" that could lead to a person being subject to an order would include a person's upbringing, "cognitive deficiencies", "entrenched pro-criminal or antisocial attitudes", or "a history of substance abuse or mental health issues".

Link - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6261791.stm

Re:Civil Rights: USA or Europe?

[CastrTroy]

So, here is an interesting question: Which is the best protector of civil rights? USA or Europe?

Neither, the best place is Canada :P

Memory Hole

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

25 years early: Britrockers Judas Priest

[Anonymous Coward]

Up here in space, I'm looking down on you,
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.

Re:Civil Rights: USA or Europe?

[timeOday]

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).

Mega IT projects suck

[RichPowers]

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.

UK, US, doesn't matter really

[zappepcs]

FTFA: "Sharing information in this way is currently prohibited by the 'over-zealous' data protection legislation."

The use of the phrase over-zealous .. 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.

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

Re:UK, US, doesn't matter really

[BasilBrush]

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.

No, but all the government departments do need to know your address, and whether you are still alive or not. That seems like a use. Tell one government department about a move or a death, and they all know.

Just because there is a common database doesn't mean that the doctor can access you tax information or the tax man you speeding tickets. Any conceivable implementation would only give access to relevant information for each type of user.

There are plenty of negatives that could be said about such a system, but making obviously silly objections doesn't help the case.

Re:UK, US, doesn't matter really

[jimicus]

It's not an obviously silly objection.

We already have an equivalent of the US social security number - the National Insurance number. Your doctor has it, the taxman has it, the benefits office have it. Why can't they just tie that up with an address? That way everyone knows about a change of address, but the taxman still doesn't have to know about that nasty rash you had last year.

Re:UK, US, doesn't matter really

[zappepcs]

I think that you should check your facts on that. I don't own a gun, and won't have one in the house, but the right to carry concealed handguns has had an effect of reducing crime in the states.

Here are a couple of links:
http://www.texasinsider.org/election_watch/Opinion _Jerry_Patterson_1_6_2006_Guns.htm
From the next link:
Both sides cite statistics to bolster their claims.
The author of the only comprehensive study on the issue to date has reached a controversial conclusion that concealed-carry laws translate into less crime.
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/nation/guns /part2/gunside1.html
http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba324/ba324.html

Now, these stories are rather scary in that they say its safer when you don't know who has a gun. Where I live, the biggest crimes now are theft when no one is looking, so an alarm system keeps things pretty safe.

More and more, an armed populace is looking like a good idea to me and I get this view by living amongst concealed handguns rather than looking from the outside in.

"towards" a big brother society?

[Junior J. Junior III]

I like how that implies that they're not yet already there. Denial is aparrently the Thames now, not a river in Egypt.

This could be a good thing

[iminplaya]

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.

The dangers of IT-illiterate politicians

[Flying pig]

What seems constantly to be missed is that in many ways Blair is the most technologically illiterate Prime Minister we have had in a long time. From Churchill (who is said to have minuted after a visit to Bletchley Park "Give them everything they want and report that this has been done" because of his immediate grasp of the strategic implications of codebreaking) it's a sad story of decline. We now have a Prime Minister whose wife has to write emails for him, who endlessly talks about science and technbology, but shows not the slightest sign of understanding any of it. He is surrounded by unelected journalists with a similar grasp. He is so ignorant of science that he sees no problem in allowing Creationists to buy State schools. He is the despair of military strategists because of his total lack of understanding of the limitations of men and materiel and his assumption that the British Army can just be moved around like chess pieces. And his utter control freakery means that anybody with better knowledge or ideas is held back or ignored, hence the Cabinet resignations, while incompentents who share his religious view of the world - like Ruth Kelly - get promoted.

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.

Cost of Information

[herwin]

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.

Re:Tony Blair is a real scumbag

[clickclickdrone]

>No offence but your takeaway sucks
There are one or two good chains but on the whole, yes, you're right.
>what is the orange stuff on sandwiches and don't tell me it's cheese
Orange? God knows! Especially in a sandwich. Cheese is usually sort of yellow. Oh, it could have been Red Leicester but that's usually a bit more, well, reddish.
Basically, if you had something orange in your sandwich and lived, be happy ;-)

Re:Civil Rights: USA or Europe?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OK, I give up. I'm a "glass half full" person. Which one am I supposed to choose? :-/