1m French out of work thanks to dodgy data - UK next? As the UK prepares to put in place its shiny new vetting database later this year, analysis of a similar project in France reveals a devastating degree of inaccuracy, leading to real hardship for a very large number of people. A report (pdf) issued last week by CNIL, the French Data Protection Agency, reveals that as many as a …
If you get burgled multiple times, they can 'accidently' stick you down as the burglar and you lose your job and then your house - so eliminating the "problem".
As this is inline with police targets to reduce *visible* crime, I cannot see plods getting more than a verbal spanking if caught and a promotion if it works.
Anyone sent Whacky Jacqui this article I wonder? It's the perfect explanation of why the NIR and by association, the ID card, is a very, very bad idea. I have no doubt that the French databases are smaller and less complex, storing less items of information and operated by more securely vetted staff than anything we would end up having and they believe that 1million people have been, at the very least, inconvinienced, by failing to get a job. I wonder how many are unemployed, because of incorrect data. Transfer this to the UK, 60 million people on the database with ID checks for just about everything that NuLab can think of (at least, where they can generate revenue), how many people will be 'inconvenienced' every single day and how many of those will lose their liveliehoods or reputation, because of someone's incompetence.
Let's hope that our Gallic comrades show some of their usual spirit and demonstrate the civil disobedience we're too afraid of in the UK and get their govt. to scrap these databases forthwith.
If a private citizen maintained such a database and offered inaccurate information for cash as a business, they'd end up in *very* hot water. In particular, I *very* much doubt if any court would let them claim that it was all an accident. If your business model consists of pumping out potentially slanderous allegations against people, you need to be *very* careful that the information is correct.
It will be interesting to see if the French manage to hold their government accountable for what is essentially a taxpayer financed act of criminal negligence.
*Then* it will be interesting to see if the UK government can be prevented from doing the same thing. We now have an example of how badly it can go wrong, so if*our* scheme goes wrong the same way, courts should be even less tolerant of hand-wringing "regrets" at the mistakes.
HMG still wonder at our resistance to the database state.
<...> Objectors to EDVIGE were horrified to learn that it would have gathered information on any person having applied for or exercised a "political, union or economical mandate or playing a significant institutional, economical, social or religious part as well as information on any person, starting from the age of 13, considered by the police as a "suspect" potentially capable of disrupting the public order". <...>
To the UK version you can safely add ... and any rumours, accusations or gossip pertaining to the same
<...> CNIL identified an error rate of 83 per cent on STIC records <...>
Which will never happen here because of course all data will be covered by state secrecy laws so nobody will ever find out what is being held let alone examine it for accuracy.
Papers please Citizen
Is it me or hes Europe learned nothing from (recent) history - felt badges would be much cheaper and far more accurate.
VfV
Ooooo it's in the DATABASE, so it must be RIGHT
Is there no promising young psychologist who wishes to research this fallacy -or perhaps more aptly named- cognitive bias??
We at work have trouble enough as it is keeping the online internal phone register up to date. Not because of the database itself, but because HR doesn't achieve more than a 95% notification rate when it comes to informing IT of changes.
Does the gov honestly think it will ever reach 95% accuracy in their databases? What with all the "I forgot to file a mutation", "to busy, not gotten round to, I just work here and didn't know, I'm just a temp", and erroneous filed requests along with all the normal miscommunications, the assumptions in the category "I thought that someone else..." and all the "yeah I thought it wasn't right, but the database said..." that fills the working days of the civil servant?
If the source isn't 100% reliable, then the database isn't 100% reliable.
Skull&bones, for all the people who mistakingly where marked as dead, and the bureaucratic hell they had to endure before they could be officially alive again. We remember them dearly ;-)
> UK’s new checking system – which is to add in allegations and accusations, irrespective of the accuracy of either
Data accuracy implies that its attrbution to an entity can be true or false. That is, the database either represents or misrepresents a real individual. But in the hyperreal world the concept of representation does not exist. There is no original, no substratum that is that ground for a fact. All facts are simulacra. There is no inaccurate data. Everything is to be trusted. Or, to put the same thing a different way, everything is to be distrusted. Everything and everybody.
Mr Orwell, meet M. Baudrillard. M. Baudrillard, meet Mr Orwell. Welcome, celebrated ghosts that you both now are, to our Brave New Hyperreality.
Spot on. This is totalitarianism defined as far as the effects on individuals are concerned. One's existence completely governed by parameters that are at once arbitrary, random and if necessary, malicious.
In your hyperreal world, it is truth that there is no concept of. The "truth" will be at once arbitrary, random and if necessary malicious. Totalitarianism personified and an unavoidable consequence of freedom.
Jaqui , your comments are those of an imbecile.
What the hell do you know about any of this, your comments are wildy innacurate, childish and at best the rantings of a fool.
What do you know about 'plod' and the way they work, where is your evidence that 'they' can accidentally stick you down as the burglar and lose you your job.........ludicrous statements.
You very obviously know nothing about crime, visible or other wise, i bet you are the sort of person who (bravely) slags off the working establishment and then (not so bravely) cries for help at the first sign of anything that you cannot deal with.
Any database system will have flaws, it will take a time for adjustment, it is not infallable, but it is better than having nothing at all (which you would also moan at) but to blame it solely for the incurred problems is ludicrous and shallow.
I thank you
You posted: ***<...> CNIL identified an error rate of 83 per cent on STIC records <...>
Which will never happen here because of course all data will be covered by state secrecy laws so nobody will ever find out what is being held let alone examine it for accuracy.***
C'mon, get real. Of course it will happen. Some government idiot, or an employee of a company contracted by the government, will leave a copy of the database on a train or in a pub, or one gov department will send a copy to another department through the post on unencrypted disks.
"A report (pdf) issued last week by CNIL, the French Data Protection Agency".
I snorted my morning coffee through my nose when I read this... CNIL would be pronounced "say nihl" in French. Which is the same pronunciation as "senile", which means exactly the same in French as in English.
Truth in advertising?
"as many as a million people have lost jobs – or didn’t get them in the first place – because of inaccuracies in the police STIC database"
After reading the CNIL report, I didn't find this information anywhere. What it does say however, is that one million jobs in France (working at an airport, for example) require a background check using the STIC database. Quite a difference, especially as it makes the headline of this article...
That being said, the database maintenance and consultation problems/abuse remain whole.
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