Posts Tagged data protection

Thank you for sharing

23 March, 2009 at 8:58 am · Filed under Campaigns, Health ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

NHS cervical cancer screening is one of those rights I’m keen women should have, less keen to exercise myself.

But when my latest reminder arrived, I phoned within minutes and had my checkup within the week. Why? Well partly because of Jade Goody. Her openness about her terminal illness showed better than any public health campaign that cervical cancer is real and can kill if you don’t get checked regularly.

Choosing to share information about your health can help others: but sharing people’s health information without their permission can do the opposite. A new report from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has found that women are not seeking help for post-natal depression from their GPs, because they are afraid the information will be shared with social services and they will be labelled bad mothers.

Talking of labelling, I’m now apparently a terrorist suspect because as a non-meat eater, I order vegetarian meals when I fly. (Vegetarian not vegan: I had one particularly grim airline breakfast of a rice cracker and some nauseating soya milk, while Richard tucked into egg, bacon and yoghurt next to me). Doubly-suspicious if you are born abroad, which makes Joanna Lumley public enemy number 1.

If you agree with me that this is barmy, there’s a Facebook group you can join here.

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Stop Clause 152

2 March, 2009 at 12:43 pm · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , , , , , ,

I’ve received this message from Phil Booth of the NO2ID campaign:

“Please join the Stop Clause 152! facebook group and act NOW to preserve privacy, confidentiality and trust.

“I know some of you have already written to your MP on this issue – thank you! – but it’s vital we keep the pressure up, and that *every* MP is getting the same clear message from lots and lots of their constituents: WE REFUSE TO CONSENT.

“We’re still only in the early stages, and already Jack Straw is nervous. We may need to take the battle to the Lords and beyond – so keep an eye on the Stop Clause 152! group, sign up for NO2ID’s newsletter if you don’t get it already and tell everyone that you know.

“Together, we can stop this.”

For more on the notorious Clause 152, see Phil Booth’s article, and my previous blogpost.

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Tomorrow is decision day on database state

25 January, 2009 at 7:38 pm · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , ,

Thanks to Charlotte Gore for linking to my piece on Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill.

This part of the Bill is due for debate tomorrow. If you’ve not already contacted your MP, it’s not too late!

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Dangerous database state comes a step nearer

23 January, 2009 at 10:45 am · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , , , ,

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You get rid of one bad law, and they come back with worse.

This week we saw off Labour plans to hide MPs expenses. Now they want to expose our personal information to most organisations you can name and more you may never have heard of. No permission needed – you give your details to one and they give it to all. And they will be able to collect data on you from a range of private companies too.

This is all part of the Coroners and Justice Bill, which already had controversial plans to hold some inquests in secret.

The NO2ID campaign explains:

“The government is trying to remove all limits on the use of our private information by officials. This means taking your information from anywhere and passing it anywhere they like – including medical records, financial records, communications data, ID information.

“The Database State is now a direct threat, not a theory.

“Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, due for its first debate in the Commons on Monday 26th January, would convert the Data Protection Act into its exact opposite. It would allow ministers to make ‘Information Sharing Orders’, that can alter any Act of Parliament and cancel all rules of confidentiality in order to allow information obtained for one purpose to be used for another.

“This single clause is as grave a threat to privacy as the entire ID Scheme.

“Combine it with the index to your life formed by the planned National Identity Register and everything recorded about you anywhere could be accessible to any official body.

“Quite apart from the powers in the Identity Cards Act, if Information Sharing Orders come to pass, they could (for example) immediately be used to suck up material such as tax records or electoral registers to build an early version of the National Identity Register.

“But the powers would apply to any information, not just official information. They would permit data trafficking between government agencies and private companies – and even with foreign governments.”

Government gets outraged when individuals ‘leak’ government information, by sharing it without permission: but they want to be able to do exactly the same to us.

No doubt Labour will claim that the innocent have nothing to fear. But innocent people are entitled to privacy (what about women avoiding abusive ex-partners?). And even well-intentioned organisations make mistakes with data, as we’ve all learned in recent years. It will make us all less safe.

This is a really dangerous law that will let hundreds of organisations chuck about your most personal data without even asking you. It’s shameful of the Government to try and sneak this legislation through. I’m writing to my Labour MP asking her to oppose this part of the Bill. Lib Dems oppose it. Shame on any MPs who support it.

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Big brother comes in the back door

4 December, 2008 at 12:14 pm · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , , , ,

The Coroners and Justice Bill may not be the most exciting sounding bit of legislation in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech. But it could be one of the most far-reaching.

There’d been plans for a major Communications Bill that would allow the Government to track all your webuse, emails, phone calls, texts etc. That was highly controversial and has thankfullly been dropped – for now.

And the Government has had a rebuff on keeping DNA details of people who’ve never been charged nor convicted of any crime. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that keeping DNA of innocent people on file “failed to strike a fair balance between the competing public and private interests“.

But now they are at it again. Coming in under the Coroners and Justice Bill is another move towards a super-database state: remove barriers to effective data sharing to support improved public services and the fight against crime and terrorism. It may sound harmless, but it isn’t.

As the Independent reports today, that means ‘thousands of unaccountable civil servants given access to our most intimate personal information‘. Now I’ve nothing against civil servants. I used to be one. Some of my best friends still are. But as we’ve all learned over recent years, the more personal data is out there freely, the more at risk we all are of it being lost.

There’s a tradeoff between convenience and safety, in data acccess just as in a factory. We expect the Government to protect our safety, not undermine it.

Bits of the Bill are good – like abolishing the partial defence of provocation, and stopping villains selling their stories. But the data sharing bit is bad. I’m glad that Lib Dem MPs have already spoken up against this aspect of the Bill. Labour will try and rush it through, but if other opposition MPs and decent Labour backbenchers vote together with the Lib Dems, we still have a chance to stop it.

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More data disasters

16 September, 2008 at 8:50 am · Filed under Campaigns, Liberal Democrats ·Tagged , ,

Yet more data disasters in the news, and these two both affect people in Islington.

The Whittington Hospital has lost details of 18,000 health workers in the post.

And a former Barclays bank worker has been jailed for stealing £500,000 from Islington residents, using stolen account details.

One cockup, one conspiracy; one public sector, one private. It all goes to show that whoever is looking after your data, it’s not 100% safe.

The Government still thinks it’s a good idea to keep all our essential data in one giant national ID database. It’s an insane and insanely expensive scheme.

Just yesterday Lib Dems here in Bournemouth voted to scrap the ID card scheme and use the billions saved to cut income tax for low earners instead. The sooner the General Election comes and we can put an end to the ID card nonsense, the better.

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Chaplin for Home Secretary

23 August, 2008 at 8:18 am · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged , , ,

Missing: 2 CDs with details of migrant workers; 1 laptop with confidential data; oh and those other CDs of child benefit claimants.

Then there was the secret file left on the train: perhaps it’ll turn up here.

And now details of the entire prison population.

Home Office Watch has an update on the latest data disaster from our gifted Government:

Another day, another large-scale data loss by the Government, this time featuring the Home Office and its contract PA Consulting. A memory stick was loaded up with the following, and then lost:
• Information on around 10,000 prolific offenders
• Information on 30,000 people from the Police National Computer
• Information on all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales
The prolific offenders information (and possibly the others) was also unencrypted.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s view? “Charlie Chaplin could do a better job running the Home Office than this Labour Government.”

Actually that’s not such a bad idea. After all Charlie Chaplin started out at Collins Music Hall on Islington Green, so he wouldn’t be scared of the place.

On the downside, he is dead. But at least he wouldn’t go round losing other people’s data.

PA Consulting, the contractors involved, have been paid a reported £2million a month by the Passport Service for work on ID cards. Laugh? I thought I’d never start.

Chaplin himself once said “I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.” Certainly a funnier clown than those currently in charge.

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Data disaster part 2

21 November, 2007 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Campaigns, Consumer ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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I am so outraged about this that I’ve written to the local Labour MP (my opponent) Emily Thornberry. She’s a big fan of ID cards and the national database needed to support them. This is the letter I’ve sent:

Dear Ms Thornberry

Today families all over the country will be wondering who has got access to their most private information; their income, their bank accounts, their addresses, even the names and ages of their children.

In losing the records of half the UK population – including at least 20,000 Islington families – the Revenue service and the Government have shown a level of incompetence that is beyond belief. The Guardian calls this “the most fundamental breach of faith between the state and citizen”.

This data disaster shows that your Government cannot be trusted to handle our personal information. It is time to abandon the wasteful and misguided ID card and National Identity Register scheme. The estimated costs for the scheme are now at £5.6bn and rising; and for what? A single national database will put us more at risk, not make us more secure.

You have voted for Identity Cards at every opportunity; despite the growing evidence against the scheme, and despite the principled opposition of other MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn.

Will you now put the interests of Islington residents ahead of your Government cronies, and join the Liberal Democrats in opposing ID cards?

It will be interesting to see if she can resist her normal partisanship and respond seriously to a serious issue.

Jeremy Corbyn, the other Islington MP, is not an ID card fan. In the Identity Cards Bill debate, he was eloquent – and liberal – in opposing them.

Another Labour politician with Islington connections went on the record against ID cards. In opposition, Tony Blair said “Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in our local communities.”

Blair changed his mind and introduced the ID card scheme. It’s not too late for his successors to change their minds too, and save us from more data disasters.

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Data disaster

21 November, 2007 at 8:41 am · Filed under Campaigns, Consumer ·Tagged , , , , ,

The data disaster that was revealed yesterday is all over the headlines. Sometimes problems seem less dramatic the day after; not this time. A strategic error – ‘let’s put all the information in one place, that will be safer’ – combined with operational incompetence – ‘I’ll bung a disk in the post, should be OK, let me know if it doesn’t turn up’ – has led to what the Guardian today calls “the most fundamental breach of faith between the state and citizen”.

The way we use & abuse data and comms is changing for each generation. In this web2.0 world, we access information and services easily, entering our personal info online on a daily basis, and sharing more of ourselves than ever before. That can be empowering, when we’re in control. But what about when we have to trust our data to the state?

At one end we have employees becoming casual with the data they use every day: familiarity breeding contempt. At the other end we have the mandarins, from a pre-PC generation, apparently ignorant of the systems they command: contempt breeding unfamiliarity.

In my day-job as an information professional, I work with hundreds of client organisations to whose systems my colleagues & I need occasional access. Quite rightly, the security we have to go through is demanding; individual fobs; standalone terminals; voice recognition; daily passwords; and the rest. Yes it’s a hassle; but it’s showing respect for people’s data, and therefore for the people themselves.

The same Government that has been telling us that a National Identity Register will make us more secure has now demonstrated the opposite, in dramatic style. They must drop plans for ID cards; then at least some good will come from this.

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