Via the NO2ID Newsblog, I’m reminded of this story…
A vast database containing a file on every man, woman and child is being planned by the Government in a ‘sinister’ expansion of the ‘Big Brother’ state.
Personal information containing details of every aspect of an individual’s life will be available to 400,000 Whitehall civil servants and council workers.
Lord Falconer has ordered privacy laws to be watered down to allow the plans to be forced through.
The plans would allow anyone working for a public body to monitor everything from an individual’s driving licence record to whether they had paid their council tax on time.
Ah, yes, good old unelected Charlie Falconer wants to ride roughshod all over our privacy, and why?
Data-sharing powers would also allow the electoral roll to be used to police the ID card database – allowing residents to be fined up to £2,500 for not registering their name or address.
Well, what did you expect? You didn’t think it would be for our benefit, would you?
The document says civil servants and council workers must ‘fully understand that the Data Protection Act is not a barrier to appropriate information sharing’.
Now, doesn’t that little bit of newspeak send a chill down the spine? Rephrased appropriately; the law is inconvenient to our authoritarian agenda, so we will change or ignore it as appropriate. People’s privacy is irrelevant to us. The state is master, all will submit to the will of the state.
The Government insisted the database would help people moving house avoid contacting local authority, driving licence and the Inland Revenue separately because records would be updated automatically.
Well, there’s nice, isn’t it? It is for our benefit after all… Hold it just a minute. Freeze frame, scroll back… I think I’ve just spotted a bijou flaw in the argument… When I change address, I have to notify the DVLA because I have to update my driving licence. I have to contact the Inland Revenue twice a year anyway to pay my protection money tax. I get a notification from the council requiring me to update the electoral roll, so this is of no use to me whatsoever.
Information should be routinely shared ‘to expand opportunities for the most disadvantaged, fight crime and provide better services’ and in other instances ‘where it is in the public interest’.
Bollocks! I’m losing interest, now, you can tell. The arguments are becoming so inane, so deranged, that a rational response is wasted, so “bollocks” will have to do. I’m mildly surprised that the disingenuous fuckwits didn’t try to squeeze terrorism in there somewhere.
Constitutional Affairs Minister Baroness Ashton said the Government was ‘committed to more information sharing between public sector organisations and service providers’.
Meaning that they will sell your information to whichever rogue is prepared to pay them. So we will get more hassle form arseholes like this (not to mention this) than we already do…
This, from Phil Booth:
‘From now on, you can assume that anything you tell to an official or public servant will not only go on your record, but be passed on to anyone at all in “the public interest” – which has already been neatly redefined to mean ‘official convenience’.
‘How many thousands of officials will now have free rein to snoop on your personal, business and children’s lives?’
Quite. :dry: