UK.gov wants public sector to rip up data protection law

Re: Not Good

Emotive argument or not, I first want to see some basic principles established like everyone actually FOLLOWING the DPA before establishing privileged access. Otherwise we'll end up with the same screaming mess as the USA and double glazing sellers calling days after this workes has beaten up with an offer to replace the windows with something more secure.

The BBC has been running an article about Google where they have handed over data on a child molester as a justification of them mining your email, which means that one (1) child porn watcher is all it takes to annul the rights of the gazillions that use their service. Sure I'm glad that they caught someone, but that's at a VERY high price (and also stupidly ineffective given the apparent number of these people judging by police reports). Well, for Europeans. For US citizens it appears there is no way to avoid this now.

That's like locking up every 10th person that walks past me on a busy shopping street. This is justified because statistics dictate that you *will* have caught at least one thief and by lowering the ratio even more (say 1 in 3) you can also make the case that you will catch a peado in the process, so it's all good and permissible. None of this pesky Human Rights stuff, nah.

Honestly...

Re: Not Good

So, if she had known there was a potentially violent partner she would have turned up with armed police in tow? I don't think so - it simply is not feasible, which is why your wife probably made a wise decision.

However I have a simple scenario that should worry you. You have children at school age. You have bought a house specifically to get into a good school. The Labour Minister for Education decides that good school are good because they have good pupils and "disadvantaged" kids go to poor schools. So he decides to even things up. He says "I have access to you income (tx Tax Department). I going to come up with a scheme where you DONT get into a good school because you are close, you go to the school I assign you to and the assignments will be based on fairness (read: Middle class kids get sent to poor schools)."

This kind of information allows social engineering on a grand scale. Be afraid, very afraid.

Re: Not Good

All very emotive - but why stop there? Why should social workers be the only protected species? Surely debt collectors should also have access to the database in case they get attacked. And taxi drivers should be able to see if the address they have been asked to go to has any criminal connections. Perhaps fast-food places and pubs should have early warning of potential troublemakers and all retailers should be able to flag an alert when a person with a child in tow uses a credit card belonging to a scumbag suspected paedo? In fact, why not publish the entire government database on the open Internet - after all (all together now) - "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."

Meanwhile, in the scenario you gave, social workers may not have online access to the PNC, but they can pick up a telephone or email a public protection officer prior to a visit who is able to query the police database - and that officer would be able to say "risk" or "no known risks" even if not able to give away the exact details.

Re: Not Good

I'm very sorry to hear about your friend's serious assault. However, why should social workers be treated specially? It could have been the milkman, or a neighbour, who was beaten up.

If a violent criminal is living there, and is likely to assault people, that is a matter for the police to deal with. Unfortunately, some people commit violent acts -- taking away everyone else's human rights is not the solution to that. Of course, we could virtually prevent that sort of thing by keeping everyone locked up under house arrest all the time, but we wouldn't have a functioning society if we did that. The same would be true if every local government official had access to everyone's criminal, health, social care and tax records!

Re: Not Good

Shouldn't happen in Scotland anymore thanks to the interim Vulnerable Persons Database. This is a concern form that's raised wherever there's an incident of this sort and it gets passed directly to social work.

Of course, whether or not social work read them and act on them is a different matter. I don't think the poor wee souls realised how many domestic incidents we deal with on a daily basis, so there's probably just a big stack of forms sitting unread at their offices.

They are by far and wide the worst government agency I've ever had to work alongside.

The fact that they change the standards of required care area by area says it all. I work in a shithole, and the houses I go into are fucking awful, but dear old social work... as long as there's dried noodles in the cupboard the kids fine, never mind the house is beyond filthy. Yet in a more affluent area the kid would be whipped out if the parents couldn't provide at least two holidays a year to Switzerland.

That's another rant for another day anyway.

The long and short of it is:

There are failings in the system due to lack of datasharing.

We need to datashare. That's inevitable and common sense.

It's how we do it that will be the killer.

Re: Not Good

One of my friends got hit by a car when I was a kid while we were messing around near a road.

I'm still trying to get cars banned, and stop all forms of physical play for children.

Re: Not Good

What happens if the violent partner was an un-prosecuted police officer, or worked in the tax office, or an NHS hospital and was trying to track someone? The more you share, the greater the exposure and risk.

Efficiency of the system is not the primary goal. You act to protect the majority and then look at edge-cases where exceptions are needed. Blanket sharing endangers the majority by opening up vast of possibilities for abuse.

Re: Not Good

And yet the Governments first instinct in relation to UK citizens personal data is "how can they profit from it".

Example being that they allow all sorts of scumbags to access data from the DVLA with few restrictions rather than address how our data can be used to improve life for citizens and civil servants.

There is of course the other grave concern and that is the Governments track record on large IT system procurement and implementation is a litany of failed projects, poor value for money and monstrous delays.

Final nail in the coffin being the many public and secret DPA breaches with laptops and USB drives containing huge datasets left on trains of dumped in skips.

Re: Not Good

And the price you are hinting at to resolve this local difficulty with common sense local awareness is to turn us all into pre-criminals, and to remove the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Just step back a minute. We already have proof that if a terrorism placebo can be misused by the government to terrorise the population then they will not hesitate to misuse it in that way. Do we really need to give them more excuses, more reach, greater grip on the population's short and curly bits?

Re: Not Good

funny how the official versions ALWAYS make out the g-men are the goodies, or occasionally the victim....

Re: biggest reason NOT to vote tory this election

"Admit it, they are all as bad as each other...as for the Greens, seriously I'd like to be able to power my house at night, you know when solar is non-existant and wind is generally lower."

1: Use the surplus electricity during the day to compress air into tanks at the power station.

2: At night, use the compressed air to power turbines.

Re: biggest reason NOT to vote tory this election

cant be any worse then the torys, Right?

Re: biggest reason NOT to vote tory this election

"Labour did say they abandon anything to do with the National ID scheme and database"

No doubt to be replaced with a National ID Database and associated Card Scheme.

They're also rather deceiving jerks by making it look they're doing something good whereas in reality they were the ones who didn't just come up with the idea, but also pushed it through despite fairly extensive arguments not to do it.