UK Government Wants To Bypass Data Protection Act

rar42 writes "Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently being debated by the UK Parliament, would allow any Minister by order to take from anywhere any information gathered for one purpose, and use it for any other purpose. Personal information arbitrarily used without consent or even knowledge: the very opposite of 'Data Protection.' An 'Information Sharing Order', as defined in Clause 152, would permit personal information to be trafficked and abused, not only all across government and the public sector — it would also reach into the private sector. And it would even allow transfer of information across international borders. NO2ID has launched a Facebook group to challenge this threat to data protection."

Comments

oh noes the databases!

[timmarhy]

And the morons choose to protest on facebook, so that anyone and everyone can see who you are and it's stored in one of the very databases this kind of act is targeted at.

not to mention that if your level of protest is a few mouse clicks, no one is going to take you seriously.

Re:Raise your hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

The British public support this measure and others like it every single morning when they buy sensationalist, right wing papers whose sole objective seems to be to prevent the Government from acting in any kind of reasonable or rational way. Hence CCTV mania, databases and ID cards.

The British public do NOT support these kinds of measures. They only think they do because The Sun tells them so. Most of the people in the UK are brainless SkyTV addicted reality tv watching idiots (very much like the Nascar/reality tv watching rednecks in the states). The Sun prints something and they believe it because they want to fit in, are too lazy to think for themselves and believe that everyone else feels the same way. If they ever actually discussed these issues or even saw other real people (reality tv is not real people) they'd find that others dont approve of these measures.

Re:Slippery Slopes

[artor3]

I believe that the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy in most cases. (To implement laws that you don't want through what? Political momentum?)

The slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy only when it's used as deductive reasoning. But when you apply inductive reasoning, which is arguably much more applicable to politics, the slippery slope holds up nicely.

Every time A has happened, B has resulted.
If we let A happen again, B will probably happen.

Pretty rock-solid, if you ask me. If you replace A with "The government has reduced the people's right to privacy, in order to increase the government's power" and B with "The people have grown to accept their reduced rights, and the government has still wanted more power", you have the current situation.

If we (or rather, "they," as I'm not British) accept this invasion, then the government will likely be left wanting more, and the people will grow ever more complacent. It's happened every time thus far, why think that it'll be different this time?

Re:Slippery Slopes

[cayenne8]

It just goes to show why the populace would fight, or at least be cautious and try to restrain govt. from pretty much ANY law they want to pass, especially with regard to police needs and personal privacy.

The govt. will never stop at the originally intended intent of the law, no matter how much they promise to limit the reach of the law for the intended use that 'everyone can agree with'.

The govt. ALWAYS will later, expand upon said law to use it in new and creative ways never intended, or try to stretch it to be used to prosecute someone that might have done something, but, there currently isn't a direct law that applies (like with that lady who harrased a teen online, and said teen killed herself).

Heck...look at the new and creative ways in the past decade that they have been expanding the RICO act which was put in place only to target the mob.

We should insist that most new laws are not only VERY narrowly defined, but that they also have sunset provisions....to give the public at least a fighting chance to not only keep laws from expanding in scope, but, to also have hope that some that are downright bad...have a chance to go away.