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

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

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.

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

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.