The true number of people who were wrongly linked to crimes or misrepresented is ten times greater than annual Home Office figures suggest, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The scale of errors made in background checks was only revealed through Freedom of Information requests.

Annual error statistics published by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) regularly suggested around 200 people are wrongly accused each year.

However, those figures only refer to errors made directly by CRB staff when carrying out checks and disclosing information.

Once errors made by other agencies who contribute to background checks, such as the police and education officials, are included, the figures run in to the thousands.

Since 2003, a total 19,551 disputes over inaccurate CRB checks have been upheld.

For 2010/11, the official inaccuracy figure stood at 172, but the new statistics show the true level of error for that year was 2,343.

The term big data has come to mean big headaches for IT organisations and big problems for consumers. Privacy is a growing concern as more and more data is not only collected but voluntarily shared by consumers in exchange for free access to applications and functionality.

Those wondering how much sites such as Facebook might know about them have to jump through hoops to find out and are likely to be surprised by how many personal details websites actually store.

The TV documentary Erasing David, screened on More 4 in 2010, detailed an attempt by film maker David Bond to do just that — find out how private his identity really is. After deliberately disappearing for a month, he hired detectives to track him down.

Before his disappearing act, Bond spent weeks trying to find out just how much information various websites held on him. Big data took on a whole new meaning as he sat at a desk, poring over more than 1,000 printed pages from Facebook alone.

The UK government is proposing to make part of that discovery process easier on the consumer and their wallets with its Midata initiative, whereby consumers would have access to some of their data held by private organisations.

The government is promising protocols to handle privacy or consumer protection issues — but also stresses that this is a private-sector initiative and it will not be hamstrung by rules and regulations.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, the thought-provoking film “Erasing David” is now available on DVD.

What recently happened to my friend Mario Castillo, who was arrested and fined here in Cuba for not carrying his ID, reminded me of my experiences in Great Britain.

When I went to that country for a year to study for a master’s degree in anthropology, I knew that within three days of my arrival I was required to register with the police. It turned out that I had to register not at just any police station, but at a kind of special center where they produced the documents for resident foreigners.

After going through a long line, I was interviewed by an officer who took a picture with a digital camera and, in almost the same instant, handed me my A4-formatted document. On it appeared my origin, my home address, the photo and a few other bits of data. The paper, which was in such an exotic format for personal identification, was nothing more than an “identity card” for foreign residents.

What immediately came to my mind was how complicated it was going to be for me to get around London with such a “personal card.”

Yet that same form/ID specified very clearly that if the police ever questioned me, I wasn’t obligated to show them that A4 form; rather, I only had to go to the nearest police station with it within 48 hours. In other words, not having it on me implied no problem at all.

In London, for practical purposes, we would use a student ID, a monthly bus pass or other similar documents as identification.

Needless to say, it doesn’t work that way in Cuba. Everybody has to carry their ID card here.

Bye bye bendy bus. No more identity-card threat. And now they’ve given up on that massive computer system containing everyone’s medical details, down to the last ingrowing toenail. How should we celebrate this? Memorial services for people are thanksgivings for the life, but when it comes to lousy ideas mercifully aborted we need a thanksgiving for their death, a celebration of the fact the blasted things are now off the agenda.

I don’t know whose giant brain looked at London’s narrow streets and dreamed up the wonderful idea of a bus that took up twice as much room. Nor who, failing to understand that the larger the programme, the greater the chance of error, thought up a nationwide medical register. Or why, after years of protests against the pass laws in South Africa, compulsory identity passes were suddenly supposed to be a good idea.

Under the FootPath scheme a series of monitoring devices are installed throughout a shopping centre. The units pick up signals from a customer’s mobile phone and can pinpoint the person’s position to within 2m. The data gleaned is fed to a processing centre where it is collected, analysed and fed back.

According to Path Intelligence, the Hampshire-based company behind FootPath, the information can help centres understand what mix of shops works best, how promotions affect the number of customers and can optimise rents by finding out which spots are the most profitable. It can also give an insight into where facilities such as food-courts or toilets are best sited and can help plan for emergencies.

It says its detector units do not allow it to obtain telephone numbers, listen to calls, read messages or identify the user. Path Intelligence says it has consulted with the information commissioner to make sure that privacy is not infringed.

However the company refused to say how many shopping centres in the UK used the technology or identify any of those that had installed it. The company only said that it was used in seven countries.

Graham Ruddick, writing in the Daily Telegraph, reports that use of the equipment is widespread:

The equipment is being used in more than 30 major shopping centres including Lakeside in Essex, Manchester’s Trafford Centre, and Cabot Circus in Bristol.

Paul Nikkel, writing in the Bitter Wallet web site, has a thoughtful comment piece on the subject. He concludes:

Path Intelligence exonerates themselves by stating malls are obligated to display a plaque in the entrance notifying users that in the “interests of customer service” mobile movements are monitored. The implicit suggestion is that mall visitors are duly informed about the consequences of entering the mall and their entrance indicates consent for being tracked.

In the end, this is the concerning part of the story. Whether Path is using the data responsibly or not, many individuals don’t like having their behaviour tracked, particularly if it is persistent even just for a single location. Assuming that persons give consent through passive means is a dangerous precedent in the offline space as technology enables advertisers to reach deeper into our personal behaviours. Those who wish to avoid giving away this information, no matter how innocuous it may be, should have the knowledge of when this activity is occurring and a simple way to opt out from it. The recent changes to EU data privacy in regards to tracking cookies and “right to be forgotten” shows that legislators are increasingly aware and interested in preserving our control of personal privacy in an age of increasingly pervasive technology. This same control which is being demanded online should extend to offline occurrences of consumer tracking and identification.

People selling scrap metal will have to show proof of identity under a pilot scheme which comes into force next week.

An estimated 240 dealers in north east England have signed up to the project which could be rolled out to the rest of the country as the Government looks to stem the wave of thefts which are costing the economy an estimated £1 billion a year.

The six-month trial, known as Operation Tornado, is seen as a dry run for legislation which could be introduced next year.

“It is one of a number of measures that is currently being explored to restrict the sale and movement of stolen metal,” said Chief Insp Robin Edwards, a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers.

“It has been designed not to inhibit those dealers that operate legitimate businesses, but to remove unscrupulous dealers who operate outside the law.”

Under the new scheme, sellers of scrap metal will have to produce either a photocard driving licence, or a passport or national ID card, as well as a utility bill less than three months old.