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UK Switches Off £235M Child Database
wdef writes "The UK's controversial ContactPoint database has actually been switched off! It's rare that we hear anything this sensible from government about an expensive, privacy-destroying, 'think of the children' solution: 'The government argued the system was disproportionate to the problem, so is looking at developing other solutions.' Perhaps the UK coalition government really is winding back Big Brother, as they had promised to do? Does seem unlikely."
to save £41m/year
...that layers of forms and reams of data won't solve their problem.
The coalition is unpopular with a lot of Liberal Democrat voters (not sure what they'd prefer - probably for the LibDems to continue to be completely ineffectual, rather than to get at least some of their policies passed) and is in danger of a back-bench rebellion by the LibDem MPs who'd rather pander to popular opinion than get on with running the country. They need to do some things about civil liberties to keep these people on side, and cancelling existing programs is one of the few things that won't alienate Conservative back benchers, who are typically against government spending of any kind.
So far, the coalition seems to be the best government the UK has had while I've been alive (although, to be fair, that's not exactly hard). Unfortunately, it's not clear how long it will manage to stay together.
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of tomorrow.
Don't let them grow up in police states. ( The difference between a nanny state and a police state is very small )
If you opionion about the current state of surveillance is that it's no big problem, then consider, how much ressources former police states have spent on monitoring it's citizens.
Then spend some time realizing, that they didn't actually do as much surveillance, as western democracies are now doing.
The incident that spawned this database of children:
- Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactpoint
I can guarantee you that if this child was not physically abused, but instead had a picture taken of her with her clothes off (like in a bathtub) then those guardians would have ended up being arrested immediately and the child taken into protective services.
Because in this day and age violence is acceptable (to a degree) and excusable (for "punishment"), but nudity and sexuality are considered threatening and abusive. It is a perverted society that we live in.
I bet that a large part of the cost was due to Oracle fees.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
" Perhaps the UK coalition government really is winding back Big Brother, as they had promised to do?"
Don't be silly, it's a cost cutting exercise, 40% of spending must go. I wouldn't be surprised if there would be another iteration, but probably in the next generation now...
A big brother society is expensive, so the Conservatives don't like it. It's an infringement on civil liberties so the Lib Dems don't like it (nor to a lot of the more socially liberal conservatives), and it was introduced by Nu-Labour so neither party likes it.
Bizarre though it may seem, some people get into politics to improve society.
This isn't about preventing the Big Brother state, it's just trying to stop looking silly for having a duplicate website.
Don't assume that the database has been switched off based on some valid arguments. The new government is one of the most ideologically driven ones the UK has had in many decades. Lots of its initiatives seem to be driven by an urge just to slash and burn anything that runs counter to their neo-con dogmas. In this they are continuing the work of both Thatcher and Blair.
As for the Lib Dems, they are irrelevant. I suspect that they will be wiped out in both local elections and the next general election.
Perhaps the UK coalition government really is winding back Big Brother, as they had promised to do? Does seem unlikely
Yeah, right. Not that Cameron and Clegg are particularly bad for the country; but the situation right now is what dictates what the government does - Labour would have done exactly the same, give or take a few details. It makes no real difference.
But in my experience, when they talk about cutting back "big government" or "curbing the nanny state", what they mean is that they want to take power away from elected bodies who are in principle directly responsible to the people, and transfer it to some that are neither elected nor accountable. So we have less "nanny state" (ie. governmental bodies open to scrutiny under the FOIA) and more "private initiative" (ie. companies, which are not covered by the FOIA, and are governed by an impenetrable network of financial interests - who knows, perhaps they are people like Rupert Murdoch and Mohamed al Fayed, both of whom enjoy a certain notoriety in UK)
Being a democratically minded person myself, I don't really understand those that keep repeating the mantra about "Nanny State" and "Big Government". I suspect they are either the ones that would benefit directly from no being subjected to too much scrutiny, or just very, very naive.
Big brother toys are expensive. That is our only saving grace. At some point the stuff breaks down and needs repair and consequently gets scrapped. Even if cameras are dirt cheap, the salaries of the people required to look at them are not cheap. So at some point a budget gets slashed, the toys gather dust and rust out.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
one way to save £41m/year
How can it cost GBP 41 million per annum to operate a database? ...never mind spending GBP 235 million just to to set it up. Judging from the Wikipedia article this thing is a pretty normal database. I'm sure there's an awfully good reason for the price tag, training personnel etc. but even then I'm having a hard time seeing how that GBP 235 million price tag came into being, so what am I missing here?
As I recall, this database was supposedly super secure, comprehensive, etc. and a great way to aggregate all sorts of very sensitive information in one spot so all sorts of unrelated government agencies could access it. Yup, so secure that the politicians put in a specific provision allowing the families of politicians, celebrities, etc. to opt out of it, while the rest of the public were required to participate. Allegedly an audit trail would be kept re: accesses records, records but considering the somewhat less-than-stellar performance of most governments re: privacy protection, internal auditing, etc. it's probably for the best for this system to be scrapped and for CapGemini to go home.
Reduce the spawnrate of children, it's plain to see it's imbalanced.
Those Brits are odd little motherfuckers. Pip Pip Cheerio!
No, that's not quite how the government works in the UK. It's more like this: Labour party gets power, tries to undo what it sees as excessive cuts made by the Conservatives in previous government, and spends more than it should. Or like now, the Conservatives get into power and cut the country to oblivion, because the previous Labour government spent beyond its means.
If you actually look at voting records, I'm quite sure you'll see that both parties are in favour of Big Brother, so don't be fooled. The treasury are just looking to make as many cuts as possible it seems, regardless of whether they're important (front-line services like the police, or cutting protection for sufferers of domestic violence) or not, as is the case with ContactPoint.
cat:
or the EU isn't as bad as we think or both or neither. Who knows? It's positive news and that's what matters.
Project management exists ONLY to turn problems that are easy, into hard multi-million (or in this case nearly a billion) dollar problems.
e.g. California's IT systems, which for decades had been existing and solved via simple easily indexed key-value databases, got supposedly "converted" to Oracle in the late 90's and early 2000's. And in the process, the state of California bought MORE ORACLE LICENSES THAN IT HAD EMPLOYEES.
Don't think this fiasco is over yet. The UK government has a rather poor record of securing data. It won't be long until the entire database is up on WikiLeaks.
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you got a quite different character as pm, luckily. just tally up the acts he and his govt. did up till this point and notice the trend.
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It was Thatcher who began the process of disenfranching not only voters but MPs by governing by Statutory Instrument, but New Labour were enthusiastic adopters of it (along with PFI, which transferred public projests to private management and made them more profitable for construction and services companies.) The new Government will, I think, actually find it quite hard to be worse.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
From http://www.bash.org/?920525:
<jaffa> think of the children!
<bobf> oh gimme a break, I've spent *hours* today thinking of the children, my wrist is too sore to do it any longer
ContactPoint was one of the few SENSIBLE things the UK government ever did for children, if anything I think it didn't have enough information. Keeping central records on CHILDREN is the right way to protect children, instead of the usual paranoid crap like over-vetting everyone who could have contact with children to the point where mere suspicion or rumor will destroy any public service career.
They are actually proposing mutualisation/co-operatives, which is rather different. The John Lewis group has been amply demonstrating over the declining years of the banking bubble just how resilient and effective mutuals can be (strictly it's a partnership), and the organisation of PCTs should be a prime case for mutualisation. On the other hand, the PCTs have become stuffed with Labour apparatchiks and have been busily empire building. People I know in the area, both on the left and the right, are appalled at how top-heavy they have become, with nurses reclassified as "managers" and ceasing to do useful jobs, while some PCTs are claimed to have been employing statisticians and IT staff specifically to game the McKinseyite target system. It needs sorting out. Mutualisation, giving the actual nursing and medical staff the power to vote on the running of the business, would seem to be a considerable step forward.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Oh, and by the way, the early 70s mining strikes could have been resolved if Harold Wilson hadn't deliberately sabotaged negotiations because it was more important to him to defeat the Conservatives than to protect the economy. When Wilson resigned, a colleague watching the news on television, a Welsh miner's son of impeccable left-wing credentials, actually shouted at the set that the "evil little bastard shouldn't be allowed to just walk away like that". With inside knowledge, he blamed Wilson, not Heath, for the miners' strike and their consequent impoverishment.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
A change of ruling party is always great, but immediately starts going downhill at an ever accelerating pace. I'd say all the promise is in the first year, when they're scrapping the crap from the previous government, installing projects they were thinking about for years while out of office and breathing new life into the stagnant, mismanaged shit hole that is the public sector.
After this however they are out of good ideas and just making any shit up, the whole thing has become just a job, unions/middle management aren't afraid of them any more and the focus is on keeping bad news out of the papers.
Labour made very clear that they would continue the Big Brother policies, some of its senior members (like the pernicious David Blunket) basked in the glory of introducing those invasive measures.
I would like to know where are you getting your information about what Labour would have done, because it is the first time I hear thwy would have undone their labour of love of 13 years of lost oportunities.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.