UK Home Office is creating mega database by stitching together ALL its gov records The UK Home Office is secretly creating a centralised database on the good folk of Britain without presenting the capability increases to the public or subjecting them to Parliamentary scrutiny. The Register can reveal the project, which was described as simply a “replatforming” of the department's aging IT infrastructure, has …
Good luck getting them to expire data from various sources within the regulations laid down for those datasets to be expunged.
Of course, expect summarised and recombined datasets derived FROM said time-limited datasets to be kept under different rules for far longer, too.
...moiety, it will never work.
That used to be the case with government projects on both sides of the pond until Microsoft's Azure division (and after that Google) started helping them to implement them. That changed the usual govt clusterf*ck failure equations significantly as far as data analysis is concerned.
The fact that it is not Cap F*ck*mini or Cr*p*ta in charge should give you a hint on will this succeed or not. I am afraid it will (moving her eminence the future High Chancellor(ess) Treasonous May one step closer to the coveted position of High Chancellor).
Anonymous (not because of wanting to, but to get the right icon).
This does not surprise me one bit, it's how the govt works.
Govt plans "one database to rule them all", runs it through the regular channels, it gets defeated.
What are they to do next? Give up on it, because the electorate don't want it? Nah, let's call it something else and try to push it in through the back door*!
This sort of thing seems to happen more and more. The people want privacy in the IPB? OK, we'll add the word "privacy" to the title of a section, that'll appease them without changing anything.
* Fnar fnar!
Seriously do you think May or any of her predecessor sock puppets Home Secretaries have a blind f**king clue what Haddoop even is?
This is again being driven by data fetishist senior bureaucrats for whom more data more cross referenced now is always better (for them) by definition.
Now some might be thinking "but it'll make it more efficient"
I say does the phrase necessary and proportionate mean anything to you?
Govt plans "one database to rule them all"
The magic words "Government plans" more-or-less ensure it will never happen. And that's coupled with with the fact the work will be given to one of the usual suspects.
Instead of "one database to rule them all", they'll get "half a database to rule quite a few", which will then be subject to umpteen iterations of change control, and disintegrate into the usual mess that such projects are doomed to end up as.
The real shame is the amount of taxpayer pounds that get shoveled into these sort of schemes.
I truly wish I could believe that.
I tend to side with the view that most of these people are doing the best job they can and are looking at efficiency, savings, etc. but if anyone of a totalitarian disposition every does get into power with these tools to hand then we are all well and truly f@cked on a scale never before seen in human history.
Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese and John Mangan
Will the Yanks supply their age old access to this unified data without Chinese Walls to us [ahem] whilst our lot sets up their monitoring scheme and will they charge through all orifices when something does go wrong?
I think it's a way of unifying LEGAL access to this data.
A previous employer ran an in house competition to name their new super duper AS400 data warehouse. ( we'll skip over the fact it was on the ground floor in a building on a flood plain.)
My suggestion of 'Mordor' cos it was the home of the Dark Lord did not make the shortlist.
Use writetothem.com to write to your MP and let them know how you feel about this. They might not even know about it...
So every plod in every car can trivially pull up huge amounts of data on you.
Or at least on people with the same name as you (or similar name, for such as Muslim names which can be transliterated in several ways).
Or on people who have at some time lived at the same address as you (or a similar address).
And at least some of that data will have only a few errors in it.
What could possibly go wrong?
.. mandate that every time a record referring to you gets consulted, you automatically gain a copy of the same data of the requester, and an update on the data of the Home Secretary. This means that frequent requests for your data ought to yield an almost live feed of those activities, which is (given the activities on display) absolutely essential.
Otherwise - no f*cking way.
Oh, and before I forget don't come asking for new data either.
Day 1
dev team:
"DVLA db.All stuff
UNION
NHS db.stuff"
1 day after release:
Project manager
"Oh... it broked"
next day:
Cameron
"The threat of Brexit has resulted in a complete failure of the database project which would have prevented world hunger, created jobs and reduced immigration"
a Hadoop Use Group UK (HUGUK) meeting
'Hug'? I think they mean 'suffocate'. Gently and lovingly, no doubt, and for all the right reasons.
and that the department's current approach to data would remain in place.
Yes, that's certainly true. The fact that their current approach of 'grab, amalgamate, and tell no-one' might be wrong never quite occurred to them.
Sorry to keep banging the same drum but the Home Secretary has five eighths of four fifths of f*ck all to do with this, she probably didn't even know what was happening beyond some vague hand waving "IT Improvement Scheme" with an attached budget reduction for the laid off staff that was pushed across her desk among all the warrant requests.
All the panopticon crap coming out of the Home Office is the product of Charles Farr, it doesn't matter who the Home Secretary of the day is, once they get a visit from our chief spook they all turn to the same page in the hymn book & sing for all their worth. They've probably had a small discussion about "how they don't want another 7/7 on UK soil ... on their watch ... as they would be blamed ... being in charge of the security services and all" despite Mr Farr being the one actually in charge & the new Home Sec only being in office a week. I doubt he gets as far as reminding the HS they're in charge before they wet themselves. He started having an influence in the Blair era and has continued through every change in government since, the coalition slowed him down a little but not by a lot. If Mr Farr wants to surveil everyone, fine let him stand up in the house and argue his case in the full public spotlight, but that will never happen as he'd have to reveal he's the puppet master and we'd be able to see the strings on the Marionettes of Parliament
Sorry to keep banging the same drum but the Home Secretary has five eighths of four fifths of f*ck all to do with this, she probably didn't even know what was happening beyond some vague hand waving "IT Improvement Scheme" with an attached budget reduction for the laid off staff that was pushed across her desk among all the warrant requests.
So basically you are saying she does not have a fucking clue. Good luck trying to extract an admission.
@swineheard : My wife went to sainsburies to get a job with :
Birth Certificate (not the itty bitty one)
Marriage certificate (change of name)
Council Tax bill (proof of address)
Provisional drivers license (Photo ID)
She was then informed would not be getting the job as she didn't have a valid passport !! WTF
The reason Passports are the preferred option when it comes to employment, is that they give the surest indication that the bearer has the right of abode in the UK, or otherwise. A vast majority of UK passports show the holder as a British citizen, automatically implying that they have right to take up employment here. An EU passport/ID card, and in some cases a UK - issued residents permit will do the same. All other documents are regarded as supplementary rather than definitive evidence of immigration status and most employers would prefer a Passport presented to them. In everyday practical terms, a UK Passport is seen as a national Identity document and seems to be the favored document in the banking and rental sector as well. Things may change of course, if the EU finds a way of imposing ID cards on us by some future directive, assuming of course we vote to stay in on June 23rd.
Sorry, but I see this whole aversion to national ID cards in US and UK to be completely irrational.
Government already knows well where you live (birth certificates, taxes). Universal proofs of identity don't change that one bit. On the other hand they are useful to prove your identity to other people - employers, banks, your UK citizenship when you're abroad
Actually oppressive communist governments don't use ID cards to oppress the population!
"Sorry, but I see this whole aversion to national ID cards in US and UK to be completely irrational.
Government already knows well where you live (birth certificates, taxes). Universal proofs of identity don't change that one bit. On the other hand they are useful to prove your identity to other people - employers, banks, your UK citizenship when you're abroad"
I didn't see the /s sign on this to signify sarcasm and that worries me. Sure the Government already has our details so they are fine and don't need anything else. Our passports are what we need abroard and driving licence or passport really should do at home when we *do* need to prove identity (which has gone a bit far anyway). Additional ID cards help no one but the terrorists who will use forgeries. Linking databases and running data analytics across the Government data risks handing all our remaining (and eroding) freedoms to a totalitarian regime. Those who say it will never happen here are deluding themselves. If we ignore the erosions of freedoms and liberties we walk into totalitarianism of our own free will. BTW under the circumstances what genius it was to call the Hadoop message layer Kafka.
Where is the petition to demand that the use of Hadoop and Kafka is at least discussed?
Maybe they'll print out little cards with our RowID onMaybe we could call them ID Cards
That's a dreadful idea, and the populace has spoken. We do not want ID cards.
What they'll do is to print out a little card with your Primary Key on it, and this will be known as a Government Key Card, for obvious reasons. And that's so much better...
Vic.
I think the EU have some plan or another to issue an individual taxation number to everyone throughout Europe. Obviously this will be in preparation for a continent-wide taxation system yet to be announced. It's certainly not difficult to foresee this individual tax number becoming the basis of a citizen number that could one day be used to populate a EU citizens register. This is where the idea of a EU superstate could quite easily start it's life.
Your biometrics will be a key, one picture from a government phone, one thumbprint in a scanner and your entire life history will be available with embarrassing points highlighted so they can come up with a one line put down to shut you up that only you understand. They probably got the idea from F*cebook
And you of course will not have access to a similar service to defend yourself with as researching government officials, police, MP's etc will become a sign of being a terrorist.
It's the ultimate divide & conquer.
A large faceless bureaucracy can now deal with every individual, individually.
And while they may not know what you say as that contravenes data protection, for the moment, they will know who you say it to.
I wonder how many degrees of separation there are between any of us and a known terrorist ?
I wonder what qualifies as a degree of separation, calling someone - yep, tweeting someone - probably, reading an article on line - most likely, sitting next to someone in an internet cafe - hell yes. Actually thinking about it I wonder what doesn't qualify.
I wonder how low that figure has to get before the security services decide you're a terrorist or a sympathiser and add you to the same list ?
I wonder how long it will be before the people on those lists become targets.
This article is about UK government agents acting against UK citizens, Europe doesn't actually have anything to do with it however you can bet any chance of action against this will only come via Europe.
On the European tax number issue, lets remember that everyone in the UK already has a national insurance number that is allowed to be required and retained by all sort of non-government agencies so if Europe takes the reins then what has exactly has changed for the tax paying majority? I would suggest only tax avoiders have anything to fear from a global system that treats all Europeans equally rather than preferentially if they are one of the boys.
If you want to bring this whole brexit rubbish into the debate then lets deal with facts
1. This is a UK home office agenda not European sanctioned and I suggest against European privacy requirements.
2. Being in Europe has allowed for action against privacy abusers such as when the UK Government agencies and BT colluded with known criminals like PHORM for instance.
I am not saying Europe as a state is perfect, merely that so far they have done me IMHO less damage than UK local counterparts who seem to honestly believe only they and their mates have rights.
We, in Canada, are extremely sensitive to governments of any level penetrating our lives too much.
Way back, when the UK government was likely still running on punched cards the Canadian government set up it's Data Bank Structure.
Compartmentalisation was key. The data banks contain information as varied as climate monitoring, geological surveys, securities law compliance, patent applications and grants, surveillance, national security, border control, law enforcement, public health, voter registration, vehicle registration, social security, and statistics.
We also have newer additions such as the National Homelessness Information System (NHIS) database system, Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) - whose data can be transferred to the NHIS system and the Government Electronic Directory Services (GEDS), a directory of Canadian federal public servants throughout the country.
Users are given specific rights and there are data guardians who control/limit access.
In Ontario some data banks share very limited data. For example, drivers licences, with photos, can be accessed by the Cops and the very same photos shared with the Ontario Health Insurance Plan - but users of one are denied access to the other - without judicial permission.
We also have a SIN - Social Insurance Number - that can only be used for five specific reasons and NOT as a universal identifier.
Mad MAY, of course, has a different client base and they want easy access to everything.
The neat thing is, it is extremely easy to screw up systems by messing up the input data. Did you know passport PIX are already available on a multi-user basis? And that the Passport Agency has an extreme interest on where you and your passport have travelled?
Prior to renewing my passports, I legally have three (and three citizenships), I take out the acetone (nail varnish remover) and carefully remove all my visa stickers. I also use another chemical which 'smudges' ink used by governments.
These days, when I get a new passport, I carefully coat the pages with a chemical that males visa removal a breeze and with a wipe of a complimentary chemical removes all those stamps - which means the passport will never get filled and upi get to use it until it's expiry date.
No, I don't mean the EU. I mean just fucking leave the country. Britain's a cesspool, the majority of the voting public either don't care about or agree with all the authoritarian bullshit, everything's the fault of foreigners, etc, etc.
Fuck it. Fuck the fucking place.
Fuck the government who'll clearly do whatever they like and legalise it later. Fuck the spymasters. Fuck the gigantic bloated top-heavy administration and the insane taxation rates needed to support it. Fuck the xenophobes who encourage you to blame all your problems on countries who have better things to do than get involved in such a shithole. Fuck the racists, and the bigots, and the arsehole bishops who get to stand up in government houses and try to make things worse for people who've done nothing wrong, whilst plastering over all the people they've hurt. Fuck the traditionalists, the NIMBYs and every backwards dickhead who'll fight tooth and nail to make sure the country progresses as slowly as possible. Fuck everyone who's ever used the phrase "in the good old days". Fuck a people who've gotten so expert at hating everyone who doesn't look like them, every other county in the country seems to have a devolution movement going strong right now, because the world is getting smaller and it scares them to death. Fuck 'em all. Get out while you're young. Let them all sit and shit together in the paddling pool until they drown in it.
While I sympathise with the point of view, and confess admiration for the number of fucks you dropped there, please allow me to point out a bit of a flaw in your cunning plan:
Most of the symptoms/flaws you describe are not peculiar to the UK - they are species-wide. So relocating, I would suggest, will not only not alleviate your list of problems, but will add a couple of bonus ones because you are now an immigrant.
This post has been deleted by its author
I gotta be honest, I wasn't expecting upvotes. ;-)
I might point out a flaw in your own reasoning there - I did leave, and I'm much happier for it. Sometimes the grass really is greener. Yeah, the country I'm in now isn't perfect, but it is better, and that's all it had to be. Lower taxes, higher quality of living, modern cities where shit gets BUILT, beautiful countryside, pro-immigration (yes, seriously), only the occasional bits of racism to deal with (you have no idea what it's like not hearing "I'm not racist but..." any more).
If the only thing protecting you from government overreach is the fact that government is too incompetent to be nasty -- that's your problem.
Fix that problem and then a government that effectively and efficiently uses the data that you paid it to collect will cease to be a worry and might actually become a source of pride.
How are most of the fraudsters being identified these days ... by finally getting around to cross checking names between all the isolated public computers we pay for. Someone has finally realied that a single cross referenced system will stop the hundreds of millions being wasted on catching fraudsters!
Am I the only one who's reading this as 'we want to take a bunch of data we already have and reorganize it?' Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that sounds like there's no privacy issue because they already have the data.
My GF is employed as an administrator for the NHS, so she's well aware (which means I am also painfully aware) of what happens when you try to maintain the same data in different places.
The issue is the misreading of an architecture diagram!
It is common to many I've produced and seen. As you note a single department has access to (potentially) physically separate databases and hence in defining a department/organisation wide architecture vision it would be normal to include all databases in a single view.
As for integration, well whilst the rules may inhibit all data being held in a single physical DB, they don't prevent the creation of a framework that involves human-mediated interfaces, something that was relatively common in workflow and EAI solutions. And yes maintaining consistency is an issue, particularly if each DB is a 'master' as it uses different sources for its data - an issue the banks had in integrating their records of banking customers, investment customers, insurance customers etc. because the DPA prevented them simply assuming that having the same name and address was sufficient to link records across databases from these differing businesses.
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