Government now can’t be trusted with personal details, says NO2ID
14 January 2007
In response to the news [1] that Tony Blair will be announcing a massive
database of people’s personal details, NO2ID accused the government of
outright deception. When it was announced before Christmas that the Home
Office would not to create a “new, clean” database behind ID cards but
cut-and-shut three existing ones, ministers insisted that the information
would nevertheless be protected by security measures and the normal
confidentiality rules. This new scheme appears to overthrow that promise.
Phil Booth, NO2ID's [2] National Coordinator said:
"NO2ID’s warnings about the database state are coming true. Mr Blair doesn’t
trust us, but he expects us to put absolute trust in all government
departments. By tearing down the fundamental safeguard of confidentiality,
he intends to give them all the right to talk about us behind our backs,
which means more power to intervene in our lives when it suits them.
“This will expose us all to a lifelong tyranny of petty bullying, jobs-worth
officials and “the computer says NO”—the bureaucratic nightmare of Terry
Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’.
“For a government that can’t look after its own employees’ personal
information [3], and that is so plainly incompetent at linking computer
systems [4] to imagine this will increase efficiency is ludicrous. That it
expects people to give up all privacy and just trust it is frightening. The
vast majority of people already don’t [5].”
-ENDS-
Notes for editors:
1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6260153.stm
2) NO2ID is the non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the
database state. NO2ID is affiliated to by the National Union of Journalists:
http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=1595 See NO2ID’s front page
http://www.no2id.net for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that the
campaign is working to actively oppose.
3) ‘Tax credit fraud sparks 40 probes’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5057956.stm: “HM Revenue & Customs
closed the tax credits online portal in December after Department of Work &
Pensions (DWP) staff had their identities hijacked… Of the 8,800 DWP staff
whose identities were stolen, some 6,800 were used to make fraudulent
claims”.
4) Not only, e.g. the Child Support Agency - scrapped due to its appalling
record of IT and systems failures - but the Libra Court system (intended to
link together a mere 385 courts) whose costs overran from £146 million in
1998 to £487million in 2006 -
http://www.computerwire.com/industries/research/?pid=9980EA5E-043F-4F3E-B712
-B52FB0616ECA, and which after 8 years and £390 million and was live in just
12 courts -
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm061219/text/612
19w0009.htm#06122012000096
5) 71% of people already believe that “It is inevitable that the data
[stored on people’s cards] will sometimes be leaked, sold, hacked into or
used improperly in other ways”; 61% think it inevitable that “data will
sometimes be passed on without proper authorisation, to foreign governments
and agencies”. Telegraph poll, just before the Identity Cards Act 2006 was
passed:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/02/27/nid27big.gif;jsessionid=
MYWQFHC2KGLLDQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0
***NO2ID will be releasing further on this issue after the official
announcement.***
For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please
contact Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net)
on 07974 230 839, Guy Herbert (General Secretary,
general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308, or Michael Parker (Press
Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166.
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