Citizens rail against government data sharing A new poll shows that Britons are becoming increasingly concerned about the type of personal information held by the government. Just under two thirds of respondents said they are against the government centralising information about citizens so it can be shared between different government departments. The 'State of the …
Now would be a good time to plug the Lib Dems' Freedom Bill: http://freedom.libdems.org.uk/
And since the Conservatives, in the form of party chairman Eric Pickles, claimed that there's nothing more than a cigarette paper between them and the Lib Dems when it comes to civil liberties, it's also something that Conservative candidates can be pressed on in the run up to the general election.
Credit reference agencies should be reined in. A mobile phone operator does NOT need to check for credit on a pay monthly contract, nor should HMRC tax affairs have anything to do with affecting credit. I think it's perfectly OK for someone to be able to pay no tax and have a huge mortgage, if they can get away with it :)
Also the DVLA should only be allowed to provide data to the police. I personally don't believe even councils should be allowed to have access driver information, but I can make a concession if the data usage has been audited by the Data Protection Ombudsman (does he actually do anything?), and especially not any commercial entity such as car rental firms or rent-a-warden parking companies.
Last but not least I never even wanted anything digitized in my passport, let alone ID card.
I agree with you that credit reference agencies need to be reined in but i see no problem with mobile operators performing a credit check on a pay monthly contract after all your signing an agreement to say you will pay each month and they need to know you can do so. Remember the mobile phone companies give you a substantial subsidy on your phone when you go on a contract with them - they need to make sure they get their money back. Now for a Pay as you go contract thats a different story!
Also i completely disagree with you on the HMRC affairs. If someone pays no tax that means either a) there illegally not declaring income and so are costing each of us extra money in the higher taxes we have to pay to cover them or b) there is no way they could pay back a mortgage or loan on there income level so why should a bank, etc get hit with that loss? Every bad loan costs those of us with good loans more in higher fees and interest rates because the banks have to cover for those who default.
I agree with you on the DVLA & the passport issues...
Only yesterday, my whole family received individual letters from our local NHS asking if we wanted to opt out of the NHS Summary Care Records. To do so, you have to call a helpline. They send you forms, which you then have to take to your GP. Hmm, can they make it any more difficult?
voted rather than voting for the Party their parents did (if at all) maybe Governments wouldn't think they could do what they like regardless of what is best for the electorate.
And that's not even starting on a Police Force is making the rules up as it suits themselves.
We live in a demoracy but you need to vote to make it work.
Vote for change!
In previous elections I have *always* voted positively (i.e. for the party whose policies I support).
This time, such is my dislike and anger at New Labour and, in particular, their Orwellian agenda, that I will vote for the candidate most likely to result in them losing the coming General Election.
If this rabble get in again it will be DNA samples at birth and compulsory ID cards for us all.
People vote for what suits them best, no one really considers wider issues. So most people vote based on what benefits they get. This means the Labour get massive support from the dole-scrounging wasters that drag this nation down.
If I ran a party, you can bet I would get no support from these parasites and thus would not be in power (mostly because I would limit all unemployment benefits to one year; anyone can get *a* job within a year).
You may note that I said "*I* voted....", not "people vote.....".
I. that is me, personally, have previously voted *positively* for the party I, personally, believed would be best suited to run the country.
This time, for the first time I, personally, will vote *against* the party that I believe will be an absolute *disaster* to leave in charge.
What other people do I leave to them.
I'm amazed a citizen of the land that produced Lewis Carrol would write such a post. Given the choice of picking between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or as we here in The States put it between Tweedledum and Tweedledummer, does voting really make a difference?
If you really want to make a difference you'll need to get your hands dirty: get involved in whichever local party you want, and make that party reflect your views. Maybe even run for office yourself, because the only way to get somebody who isn't a bum in office, is if somebody who isn't a bum runs.
As a techie, I can see the advantage of centralised records and data sharing. Putting all issues of privacy to side for one second, it should bring massive efficiencies, reduce time wasted etc.
However...
Our government (all 3 major parties) have shown themselves incapable of delivery any reasonably sized IT project, incapable of respecting the law, incapable of protecting privacy, incapable of coming clean and quickly fixing problems; basically, incapable of being trusted.
And that is also ignore the massive levels of corruption within the greater EU.
Because of this staggering ineptitude and corruption, any data sharing, retention or centralisation must be opposed because of the vast levels of abuse that will happen. So despite the potential advantages, we must forgo systems simply because we cannot trust our employees to use them correctly.
Jesus tittyfucking Christ. This means that people are either too stupid to understand the question, or too stupid to understand the consequences. Either way, 39% of the people polled should be removed from the gene pool before any further damage is done.
Yet another poll showing the same trend and concerns from the electorate - but the governemnt doesnt give a damn, it wont listen cos nobody will do anything about it. There is no opposition to the governemnt and its anti-democratic and autocratic route. The Tories and the LibDems occassionally wimper, nothing else and then meekly bend over. When is somebody actually going to represent the citizens of the UK and the taxpayer???????????
I believe that Tesco has the biggest database of personal information in the UK, but they don't share, so far as I know, it because they get competitive advantage from it. Experian and Equifax also hold large amounts of information about us, but no one seems to care, about that.
Bust share medical records across the NHS, which might actually save your life, ooh can't have that.
We expect the government to know all sorts of things about other people so that they can prevent child abuse, benefit fraud, and so on, we all want the government ot stop these things and hold data on all those nasty anti-social people, but not on us, oh no.
Be real, to catch bad guys you need information on good guys as well, a lot of the current methods of catching bad guys depends on the ability of the investigators to detect aberrant behaviour. Before computing a lot of this was detected socially, by individuals, but know a lot of our lives go on on cyberspace hidden by pseudonyms and obfuscation, that can only be detected by knowing stuff about everybody. BTW this also works for a surprisingly large set of other more benign applications in health, finance and government making life better for you.
I can think of one country where everything is centralised, and citizens get excellent service delivery, sadly, it's also a despot. At least we can argue about it, not like their citizens, but we have to put up with disparity of service delivery.
Tesco cards aren't compulsory.
Credit cards aren't compulsory.
Now let's see you do without a health service.
Your point about catching the bad guys is strange - an argument that starts with the utility of a centralised NHS database morphs into into an argument for hoovering up information on the entire population in order to "detect aberrant behaviour". If you don't like freedom, why not just bring on the Stasi?
The thing about "...other more benign applications in health, finance and government making life better for you." is just delusional. Are you David Blunkett?
Vince Cable for the Lib Dems is offering to answer questions from the public and there's one that says "How will you roll back the unnecessary attacks on personal liberties that Labour have introduced or planned under the guise of "protecting us" eg ID Cards, DNA databases, criminalisation of images of consenting adults, CCTV and ANPR etc?"
You can vote for this question here:
http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=4333&t=4333.40&q=4333.1d0e7
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