Microsoft and Bankers

Microsoft makes an OS the lets software write and change whatever it wants, and hopes that nobody will abuse it. The result was viruses and trojans and millions of hacked zombie computers.

The financial regulators let Bankers take whatever bets they likes with money 38x the money they had, hoping nobody will abuse the system. The result is a broken economy and million out of work.

But THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT! Forget RIPA and no fly list, this time, it will work and will be different. Even if it wouldn't work for the single case that it was meant to fix because the man didn't work at the school. Even though the evidence says it is another incompetent POS from a failed leadership.

No, HAVE FAITH! This time it WILL WORK, or my name is not Ed Balls, Labour MP for the Labour safe seat of Normanton.

And the interview is...

here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qs991/Panorama_Are_You_a_Danger_to_Kids/

The most telling point for me was

The ISA is all about protecting the "agency" by making sure that those employed/used have been vetted according to the procedure. The database and system is about protecting the bureaucrats from rebuke. "We only followed the system that no right thinking person could have/did objected to" will be the cry.

It is not about making children or the vulnerable safe from people who will do them harm. If it protects the vulnerable then that is, and should, be a bonus. That it has the very obvious and real potential to place massive amounts of sensitive data in the public arena is no concern of the ISA. "Not my job, govna".

Many volunteers - like me - do not see it as an advance in safety of young people and will be withdrawing. I will not have the state define me in this instance.

question is

The question that was never asked, would the vettnig system have stopped any of main media grabbers of the last decade (The nursery nurse who was a mother with no record and unlikely a hint of abuse in her history or the Sohem killings.)

Nobody bothers asking that question becouse media types are little more then mouth pieces to the authoritarian and the masses don't want to hear sense anyway they just spurt "if it saves one child" or "I want to know that my child is safe."

Sod your child, talk to it every once and a while and maybe you'll know what's going on in its life. Also teach it it's a child and should shut the hell up when it's on a bus. If you can't look after it, don't have it. Also we still scurt around the real issue that most child abuse is commited by family/close friends so the person most likely to mongle kids wont be covered by the scheme either.

It's just a pile of crap to cover the backs of institions and does absolutely nothing to improve the safety of children, whilst having the added bonus of data hording and a far too high risk of ruining an innocent adults life.

I watched the panaroma show yesterday and it was shite, it didnt' ask anything probing.

Sadly...

... this is as it should be: No data to lose, nothing to compromise unwitting citizens. However, this will not remain the case, so the risk to everyone near the database, nevermind in it, will increase, in volume and scope both, as time goes by. This has carefully not been addressed in any government people database project. Carry on government.

Risks? No; certainty is the word

...former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas was cautious. He said: "With any large governmental collection of personal information, there are clear and substantial risks that the information may be inaccurate.

"There are risks the information data may be out of date. There are risks the information may be irrelevant. There are risks that it may be compromised or get into the wrong hands, and the larger the database the larger the risk."

What he should be saying: "It is certain that some of the information is inaccurate, out of date, and irrelevant; and that the DB will be compromised, and the data will get into the wrong hands."

And, no, the size of the database doesn't affect the risk. It's more like the number of people who have access, who is looking after the security side of things (if it's a NuLab PC type, insecurity is a given), and so on. Even a database of one record containing one field is at risk if three million people can access it.

This raises the question, what is the ISA going to do about inaccurate, out of date, irrelevant data? How are errors to be corrected? How is stale and irrelevant data to be purged? When the DB is compromised, as it assuredly will be, who is going to be taken to the Tower for decapitation as an irresponsible idiot?

They can't claim ignorance of the "risks" (sc. certainties) now.

For what does it profit a man...

The problem with the assembly of experts interviewed by Mr Vine was that - as in almost every interaction between concerned people and government bureaucrats - the playing field is never - can never - be level.

On the one hand, we have people and organisations airing very genuine concerns. Whether they're right or whether they're wrong, their concerns and opinions are at least their own.

On the govt side, we have people who have not the slightest conscience in doing whatever they're told to do, saying whatever they're told to say, and worst of all thinking whatever they're told to think. Such people will never allow their position to be compromised by mere facts. Facts are simply resources to be altered to suit the occasion - but you'll never change their minds, because their minds aren't their own to be changed. They don't so much counter opposite opinions as fail to understand the concept. You only had to listen to the glib assurances of the govt speakers to see that contrary opinions are simply irrelevancies to be dismissed.

This database is one of the nastiest, most shameful ideas ever to come out of a so-called democratic country. But as long as there are parents and other citizens so concerned for their children that they abjectly allow media and govt-generated suspicion to overcome their common sense, we're going to have the Salem Syndrome, which seems to be affecting so many areas of our lives these days.

Vehicle for prejudice

I do a lot of voluntary work for a group which is often on the receiving end of prejudice from officials of all descriptions. The media and public are not usually the problem. Instead it is jobs worths minding their own back. But then of course jobs worths minding own back is probably the main driver of all this. Far too many politicians use the gutter press to evaluate cost effectiveness.

The ISA is a terrifying development. It provides the perfect vehicle for the prejudiced to use smut, innuendo, suspicion, assumption and surmise to destroy the lives of the blameless. It is going to ratchet up the paranoia amongst health workers, teachers or anyone else requiring these checks, to yet higher levels. "I think X is morally corrupt". "Mr X, clear your desk and don't return until you can prove that you are not".

How many children will it actually save from harm? How many children will it harm, directly and indirectly? I will be surprised if the number of children saved from significant harm will exceed the number of children in families torn apart as a result of unjustified suspicion.

It is yet another reason why I doubt if I will ever return to teaching.