Recent article from the Daily Telegraph
Happy reading
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Whitehall plans new checks on citizens
>
> By Rachel Sylvester
>
> WHITEHALL departments will be able to share information about people's
> tax records, benefit entitlements and family history under proposals
> by Tony Blair's personal think tank.
>
> The change could lead to a person's benefit application being
> cross-checked with his or her medical record, passport details being
> handed to the Inland Revenue, or driving licence details compared with
> information on the electoral roll - although the specific areas
> affected have not yet been agreed.
>
> A report by the performance and innovation unit, to be published next
> month, says that the exchange of information could reduce fraud and
> other crime and speed up the delivery of Government services by
> cutting red tape. The Government is planning to introduce catch-all
> legislation to enable ministers to instruct their officials to
> cross-check data without having to put a separate Bill through
> Parliament.
>
> That proposal, which has been approved by ministers, will almost
> certainly mean rewriting the Data Protection Act, which safeguards the
> privacy of information. At present, the Government has to introduce a
> Bill every time one department wants to exchange a new type of data
> with another. Under the proposed scheme, ministers would be able to
> push changes through much more quickly, using secondary legislation.
>
> A senior Government source said: "At the moment the presumption is
> that data given to one department are not compared with information
> given to another. We want to reverse that so that the presumption is
> that they can be."
>
> The report from the performance and innovation unit, based in the
> Cabinet Office, says the current arrangements for data matching are
> "haphazard" and "piecemeal" because each department has its own rules.
> The unit's proposals were attacked last night by one of the
> Government's advisers on the subject.
>
> John Wadham, the director of Liberty, said: "We are forced to give our
> personal details to the Government, but this information still belongs
> to us. Now the Government is seeking powers to take greater control of
> this personal information.
>
> "Decisions to violate the principles of data protection and human
> rights are wrong however they are made. But to allow such important
> decisions to be made by ministers in secondary legislation and
> rubber-stamped by Parliament can never be justified."
>
> There are also fears that people may find themselves being
> investigated because information held by one department, then passed
> to another, is wrong. A Government insider admitted that the amount of
> inaccurate data held on Whitehall files was "the next BSE waiting to
> happen".
>
> To try to allay public concern, the report will emphasise the
> importance of privacy. An officer will be appointed to every
> department to control the quality and use of private information.
> People will be reminded that they can request to see any data held
> about them to check that they are accurate.
>
> But a proposal to give everybody a "unique identifier" to access
> Government services online has been dropped because of fears that it
> would be seen as a prototype ID card. Although the unit was in favour
> of the idea in principle, it decided that problems such as the
> potential for "identity theft" outweighed the benefits.
>
> The Data Sharing and Privacy Bill will be introduced as early as
> possible. Ministers are aware of the importance of winning over public
> opinion. A government project in Canada, which involved compiling a
> database of information about individuals, was scrapped last year
> after a public backlash amid accusations that it had been undertaken
> without people's consent.
URL
>
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000323637725360&rtmo=V15PlF5x&atmo=9999
9999&pg=/et/01/6/19/ndata19.html>
>
>
>
>
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