New Plan In UK For "Big Brother" Database

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."

Re:Civil Rights: USA or Europe?

[CastrTroy]

So, here is an interesting question: Which is the best protector of civil rights? USA or Europe?

Neither, the best place is Canada :P

Memory Hole

[Anonymous Coward]

The good thing is, the entire system will fulfill all the requirements of Orwell's "memory hole."
The bad thing is, the entire system will fulfill all the requirements of Orwell's "memory hole."

Are all these IT Projects and police cameras actually a secret plot to harness George Orwell's spinning body as the primary power source for the U.K?

I lived in the U.K as a teen and always wanted return later. Now, the thought of returning gives me the creeps.

Winston would be so proud.

Vive la George!

Re:Civil Rights: USA or Europe?

[Anonymous Coward]

They both protect them differently. The USA protects the rights of the individual (like free speech and no gun control) while Europe protects the rights of the group (like restricting hate speech against groups and having gun control). This is mainly because they have implemented their systems differently. In the US rights that aren't delegated to the government are reserved by the people, while in Europe rights that aren't delegated to the people are reserved by the government.

They both have their good points and bad points. The US system will return to equilibrium in a couple of years and beat the European system in protections (even though we have a temporary crackdown today). You just have to rough it out for a couple of years.

UK, US, doesn't matter really

[zappepcs]

FTFA: "Sharing information in this way is currently prohibited by the 'over-zealous' data protection legislation."

The use of the phrase over-zealous .. legislation is interesting. I think that many if not most of the citizens or subjects would consider any legislation that permits such information sharing to be over-zealous.

My doctor doesn't need to know what my taxes were, nor does the tax man need to know what speeding tickets I've had. The only probable useful use of this information sharing by the government is to track people of covertly wrong reasons.

I'm pretty certain that the MI5 doesn't need to know how many people reported to the doctor for STD treatments, so what they are tracking is information that they shouldn't be collecting anyway. In spite of the surprisingly vast amount of information about private citizens that is available on the Internet, collating all government owned information about citizens will provide nothing useful in the war on terror or the war against drugs.

In case nobody was paying attention, the attacks in NYC and London were perpetuated by people that either already should have set off security bells, or by people who would not set off security alerts anyway. Creating this type of spying system will not deter terrorists, criminals, or any other group they might claim to be fighting.

Like gun control, if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them, and if you outlaw privacy, only outlaws will have it.

Its time that governments, especially elected ones, start learning that you don't force peace, but encourage it, protect it and these can only be done WITH the cooperation of citizens, not in spite of their rights or through sacrificing their rights for them.

Sure, they can read and record this and it still won't help them find any subversives. In fact, they will have only wasted money tracking my statements instead of focusing on using currently implemented laws and methods of upholding those laws.

I'm not against sharing data, but when it can be tracked back to individuals it necessarily becomes a kind of evil. Knowing the eating habits of all 37 year old men who have had minor heart attacks can be a very useful set of data, But also knowing their names and addresses, voting records, tax numbers, and what type of car they drive is not necessary to the usefulness of the information.

If this has been announced, rest assured that the implementation phase is already underway.

As has been said, now is the time to make this an election issue. I'm pretty sure that those present at the signing of the Magna Carta would not approve of this. Hmmmmmm

"democracy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can only wonder if Tony Blair's decision is also the democratic decision of the People of the UK who vehemently oppose such controversial schemes. It boils down to the question: Can the UK at present still be considered a democracy when the PM repeatedly abuses his power that was initially entrusted in him by its citizens and now keep betraying his own country? I do not think so.

"towards" a big brother society?

[Junior J. Junior III]

I like how that implies that they're not yet already there. Denial is aparrently the Thames now, not a river in Egypt.

This could be a good thing

[iminplaya]

One nice, big, fat, juicy target. It'll be nice not to have to break into all these different, incompatable databases all the time. Yep, should save a lot of work for the crooks when they're stealing laptops. Now they'll need only one. Very convenient indeed.

Re:UK, US, doesn't matter really

[BasilBrush]

My doctor doesn't need to know what my taxes were, nor does the tax man need to know what speeding tickets I've had. The only probable useful use of this information sharing by the government is to track people of covertly wrong reasons.

No, but all the government departments do need to know your address, and whether you are still alive or not. That seems like a use. Tell one government department about a move or a death, and they all know.

Just because there is a common database doesn't mean that the doctor can access you tax information or the tax man you speeding tickets. Any conceivable implementation would only give access to relevant information for each type of user.

There are plenty of negatives that could be said about such a system, but making obviously silly objections doesn't help the case.

Re:Civil Rights: USA or Europe?

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S.A. is nothing like the rest of America. In fact most countries within America are nothing like each other. you use the U.S.A. and America as interchangeable regions when they are in fact not. The laws of the U.S.A. don't necessarily affect other American countries. This fact obviously escapes you since you are European and your grip of the world past your own city block is about as strong as the one you have on spelling and grammar.

The dangers of IT-illiterate politicians

[Flying pig]

What seems constantly to be missed is that in many ways Blair is the most technologically illiterate Prime Minister we have had in a long time. From Churchill (who is said to have minuted after a visit to Bletchley Park "Give them everything they want and report that this has been done" because of his immediate grasp of the strategic implications of codebreaking) it's a sad story of decline. We now have a Prime Minister whose wife has to write emails for him, who endlessly talks about science and technbology, but shows not the slightest sign of understanding any of it. He is surrounded by unelected journalists with a similar grasp. He is so ignorant of science that he sees no problem in allowing Creationists to buy State schools. He is the despair of military strategists because of his total lack of understanding of the limitations of men and materiel and his assumption that the British Army can just be moved around like chess pieces. And his utter control freakery means that anybody with better knowledge or ideas is held back or ignored, hence the Cabinet resignations, while incompentents who share his religious view of the world - like Ruth Kelly - get promoted.

In all the arguments about Bush, there have been repreated suggestions that Blair is more intelligent than Bush. I do not think this is so at all. He has superior verbal fluency (he is a barrister, i.e. a talking lawyer.) But all the signs are that in understanding of the modern world, strategic grasp and understanding of the structure of, and problems of, society, he is every bit as blinkered and limited as Bush.

I'm sorry about this rant, but thank you for reading it. Meanwhile, if you _do_ share the misfortune of being English, please do something. Write to your MP. He will probably be a technical illiterate too, so try and spell it out very plainly without using jargon. Gathering all information about citizens into a big central repository accessed by many different groups - police, NHS, Civil Servants - is a recipe for disaster in a country where newspapers buy and sell informants every day. A country that cannot prevent newspapers from illegally tapping telephones, cannot prevent criminals, Ruper Murdoch and Lord Rothermere from gaining illegal access to such a huge centralised database. Until the Government can somehow fix the abuses of the Press and the opportunities for blackmail, they should never consider such a database.

Gouging bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Already planned in the National Identity Register (the old scheme, already halfway to being abandoned couse they can't make it work...this news suggest it's now three quarters of the way to being abandoned) The plan was when you go for your compulsory interrogation and fingerprinting, they'll charge you for the privilege. Remember, this is the government that when it falsely imprisons people for decades, and is forced by the courts to pay 6-figure sums in compensation, subtracts board and lodgings for those years of imprisonment from the sum. The overwhelming all-seeing incompetent police state of Brazil, that charges suspects for the costs of their torture and interrogation, looks more and more predictive.

Re:UK, US, doesn't matter really

[zappepcs]

I think that you should check your facts on that. I don't own a gun, and won't have one in the house, but the right to carry concealed handguns has had an effect of reducing crime in the states.

Here are a couple of links:
http://www.texasinsider.org/election_watch/Opinion _Jerry_Patterson_1_6_2006_Guns.htm [texasinsider.org]
From the next link:
Both sides cite statistics to bolster their claims.
The author of the only comprehensive study on the issue to date has reached a controversial conclusion that concealed-carry laws translate into less crime.
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/nation/guns /part2/gunside1.html [chron.com]
http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba324/ba324.html [ncpa.org]

Now, these stories are rather scary in that they say its safer when you don't know who has a gun. Where I live, the biggest crimes now are theft when no one is looking, so an alarm system keeps things pretty safe.

More and more, an armed populace is looking like a good idea to me and I get this view by living amongst concealed handguns rather than looking from the outside in.