At 15:42 29/11/2007 +0000, Martin Rathfelder wrote (in small part):
>Is the bottom of this a fundamental political issue? If you see the state
>as a malign influence you want to keep them out of your life. If you see
>the state as being on your side you will be happy to share your details.
I have no doubt that some have concerns on that basis. However, it would
seem that the main concern about 'very large official databases' which is
currently being voiced by many people relates to the large number of
individuals who have legitimate access to a very large database, with
suggestions that such individuals have far wider access than they
necessarily need (and far wider access than is conducive with public
confidence/co-operation)..
Looked at probabilistically, I suppose the argument is that if 'black sheep
with malicious intent' are very rare animals, then if one had lots of
little databases, with proportionately less people having legitimate access
to each, then the 'worst' that is going to happen is that a very small
number of those smaller databases will be 'violated'. On the otehr hand,
with a single massive database, it would theoretically only need one of
those black sheep to potentially 'violate' the entire massive database.
However, the whole point of many of these massive databases (NHS, police,
ID cards or whatever) is that they are 'single and centralised', so much of
their value would be lost if they existed as autonomous, non-communicating,
local databases. It seems to me that the answers do not lie in trying to
avoid the massive national databases but, rather, in having good quality
access control on a well-defined 'need to know' basis. Of course that's
not going to be totally foolproof, but it looks as if it could be an awful
lot more 'secure' (thereby increasing public confidence and co-operation)
than appears to be the case at present.
That's how it seems to me, anyway!
Kind Regards,
John
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