3 January 2008
Civil liberties and privacy campaign NO2ID [1] this morning branded the Justice Committee’s call for reckless or repeated breaches of information security to become criminal offences [2] as “missing the point”. It maintains that “more of the same” will not solve the ever growing threat to privacy and individual security from ever-growing government information sharing.
The committee appears to have disregarded the significant point that the Ministry of Justice is, in fact, charged with facilitating a massive expansion of data-sharing across government and the public sector [3]. A review under the previous Lord Chancellor identified four “technical barriers” to government information sharing that government is be actively seeking to weaken: the rule of law (“vires”), Human Rights Act protection for privacy, common law confidentiality, and data-protection law.
Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator, said:
“The Justice Committee is mistaken. More of the same, failing, approach cannot work. Information commissioners cannot be everywhere unless they are comparable in numbers to those they oversee. It isn’t going to happen. Punishments for data leaks, however harsh, will make no difference to either
idiots or criminals. A fraudster or a stalker set on abusing a person is hardly likely to worry about penalties for abusing records. Once information is out, the damage is done.
“The real problem is mass data collection and ‘sharing’ by bureaucracies that operate on a century-old model of centralised social control. That goes most of all for the ultimate centralisation of the ID cards database, which is designed to provide an index to ALL government information. The cult of ‘information sharing’ has to be stopped [4] or nothing is private any more.”
-ENDS-
Notes for editors
1) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of ‘database
state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.
2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7168588.stm – ‘Tougher data laws needed, say MPs’, BBC News, 03/01/08. See also the Justice Committee's
report: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmjust/154/154.pdf
3) The ‘Transformational Government’ agenda, most recently articulated in the ‘Service Transformation Agreement’ – http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/B/9/pbr_csr07_service.pdf – published in October 2007 clearly states (paragraph A.5, p 19) that the new Ministry of Justice is to “deliver a package of measures over the next 3-5 years to *overcome current barriers* to information sharing within the public sector.”
4) If enough people say, now, "No, I will not cooperate," then the system cannot be implemented. The Home Office hopes to make you volunteer, by creating inconveniences in life for those who won't. NO2ID suggests that people who want to resist make the following commitment for the New Year:
"I solemnly and publicly promise that:
• I shall not register for a national identity card
• I shall not supply personal details or fingerprints to a National Identity Register
• I shall not apply for any document or service if joining the National Identity Register is a condition of obtaining it
• I shall not co-operate with any Identity and Passport Service interview concerning my identity
I also promise by my example to encourage others to do the same.”
(You can download and print out a NO2ID Pledge certificate from www.no2id.net/pledge)
The NO2ID Pledge is perfectly legal, but it is as revolutionary in implication as the ID scheme itself. It says there are limits to what we will take from officialdom. It could be the most important New Year's resolution that readers ever make.
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For more information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact Phil Booth (National Coordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839, Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308, or Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166.
The NO2ID Campaign
Box 412
19-21 Crawford Street
London W1H 1PJ
enquiries@no2id.net
Tel: 07005 800 651
Press: click here
