New Plan In UK For "Big Brother" Database 178
POPE Mad Mitch writes "The BBC is reporting that Tony Blair is going to unveil plans on Monday to build a single database to pull together and share every piece of personal data from all government departments. The claimed justification is to improve public services. The opposition party and the Information Commission have both condemned the plan as another step towards a 'Big Brother' society. Sharing information in this way is currently prohibited by the 'over-zealous' data protection legislation. An attempt to build a similar database was a key part of the, now severely delayed, ID card scheme."
Good luck... (Score:5, Informative)
organise! (Score:3, Informative)
European Digital Privacy Directive? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/20
Does GB intend to withdraw from the EU?
If so, the "Big Brother" talk is more than idle literary reference. We can move forward with renaming Britannia to "Airstrip One."
Re:Civil Rights: USA or Europe? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does this ring a bell? (Score:5, Informative)
Try going to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ [imdb.com]
Note that the working title for the film was 1984 and a Half. This puts where it is coming from perfectly.
Re:organise! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:UK, US, doesn't matter really (Score:4, Informative)
We already have an equivalent of the US social security number - the National Insurance number. Your doctor has it, the taxman has it, the benefits office have it. Why can't they just tie that up with an address? That way everyone knows about a change of address, but the taxman still doesn't have to know about that nasty rash you had last year.
Re:European Digital Privacy Directive? (Score:5, Informative)
With a new database the government could get round this by specifying a very broad range of purposes for the data (as Transport For London did with the Oyster card [spy.org.uk]), but that tactic can't be applied to an existing database.
Re:European Digital Privacy Directive? (Score:3, Informative)
The Sunday Times reported that "risk factors" that could lead to a person being subject to an order would include a person's upbringing, "cognitive deficiencies", "entrenched pro-criminal or antisocial attitudes", or "a history of substance abuse or mental health issues".