Press release just in.
NO2ID
DOVER BRANCH
Saying No to ID Cards & The Database State
Across Shepway & White Cliffs Country
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
To: All Local Newspapers covering Shepway & White Cliffs Country
This Press release contains background information as well as comment - I have tried to set out in a form that can be used either as part of an article, alternatively, parts used to convert into a Letter to Editor. The choice is yours.
I am in the process of also sending directly to the area's three MPs - who should have received before anything gets printed.
A New Threat to our Liberty & Privacy
The government is trying to remove all limits on the use of private information by officials - taking your information from anywhere and passing anywhere, including medical, financial, communications and ID records. The Database State is now a direct threat, not a theoretical possibility.
The local branch of campaign group NO2ID are calling on this area's MPs to oppose these radical data sharing powers.
The Coroners and Justice Bill has already started its passage through parliament. Clause 152 drives a coach and horses through the Data Protection Act, allowing ministers to make 'Information Sharing Orders', altering (without debate) any Act of Parliament and cancelling all rules of confidentiality to allow information obtained for one purpose to be used for another.
Dover NO2ID co-ordinator Ian Taylor commented: "This single clause is as grave a threat to privacy as the entire ID scheme. Combined with the national Identity Register and powers in the ID Cards Act, everything ever recorded about you becomes accessible to any official body. Think this won't affect you? A future Health Minister couls access, say, Tesco's Clubcard database, overriding any privacy promise, see who's buying more wine than average or cigarettes in households with children, then have the NHS nag them or worse. Far fetched? Well' I'm not suggesting it's about to happen, but it could, on ministerial whim, and if this clause goes through there's no argument."
"The government is sneaking this into boring Bill. It will affect everyone in Dover/Deal/Folkestone, creating the Database State where everything can be known about you by every branch of government and organisations of their choosing, without your consent. The so-called safeguards are meaningless - the Information Commissioner cannot stop this data sharing and MPs cannot debate or amend the Sharing Orders. You will not be able to trust any organisation to keep your details out of state hands; and we know they cannot be trusted to keep it safe or even use only appropriately."
We are contacting local MPs, and calling for further scrutiny of the Bill and rejection of the data sharing clauses.
Here are just some of the data sharing opportunities (compiled by Privacy International):
· Provision without consent of NHS files to medical research organisations
· Expansion of DNA database, not just for crime detection
· Bulk provision of medical files t insurance industry
· Personal financial data to HMRC and other government department
· Vehicle insurance data from companies to DVLA
· Sharing of client & customer lists between companies and government, including "harvesting" of biometrics by indirect means from club databases under pressure from licensing authorities
· Routine sharing from intelligence and security services to government departments, and vice versa (currently forbidden)
· Transfer of UK police data to other countries
· Disclosure of police records to social services and children's databases (and vice versa)
· Disclosure of ANPR data to the Highways Agency and others
· Access by CRB to police intelligence - and an ISO could also permit employers to share CRB check data
· Full disclosure of telecommunications data from service providers to government
· Automatic population of the National Identity Register from electoral roll and tax records - effectively near universal registration without consent
· Sharing of data between national and council databases for collecting council tax
· Bulk disclosure of hotel registration data to police and HMRC
· Sharing of STD clinic data with government (anti-prostitution policy)
· Routine transfer of background data of air travellers to destination countries*, benefits authorities, HMRC or DCSF to track people taking children to Disneyland in term time (* already disclosed to USA)
· Disclosure of information held by local authorities to central government and police (could include something as innocent as a bus pass)
· Bulk disclosure of banking and communications administrative data to TV Licensing
· Disclosure of spending habits and product transaction data to government for monitoring personal carbon usage
· Disclosure of individual school and university academic and schooling records to funding authorities, and personal financial details of families
· Data on students' course attendance and library borrowing passed to immigration and security services in bulk
· Information from party conference registrations passed from police to government departments and electoral commission
· Census data passed to government departments
Some list - and not exhaustive. Most of these scenarios are already in proposal form and some are mandated in existing legislation.
Not wishing to trivialise - but will MPs give themselves exemptions to any of these?
Notes
Contact Ian Taylor of Dover NO2ID on 01304-203351 or
dover@no2id.netPolitics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour