Big Brother Watch

NHS "big brother" database scaled back

Big Brother Watch has been a consistent opponent of the government's attempts to introduce what a major national newspaper has termed a "big brother database" storing the medical records of every patient in the United Kingdom. Aside from being hugely costly to implement, such a system would be both intrusive and open to abuse at the hands of unscrupulous individuals.

As a BBW research paper published in April showed, private patient records are already widely accessible by more than 100,000 non-medical personnel, often without appropriate background checks. 

The announcement today that the system is going to be scaled back to include "only patients' most basic information" such as allergies and possible adverse reactions to drugs should therefore be welcomed - but only partially.

While the Department of Health have confirmed that those being added to the database in the coming months will receive an 'opt out' form exempting them from the scheme, the records of more than two million people have already been uploaded - in many cases without a full explanation having been offered to them as how to opt-out of the service.

The Department for Health and National Health Service bodies must do all they can to right this wrong. Members of the public have an absolute right to confidentiality when it comes to their personal medical records.

By Daniel Hamilton

4D facial recognition systems in Northamptonshire schools

At Big Brother Watch we were concerned to learn this week of a Northamptonshire school's decision to introduce a new facial-recognition system to track pupils' movements.

According to reports in the London Metro:

"About 200 sixth formers are having their faces scanned when they ‘clock in and out’ at Sir Christopher Hatton School, in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, along with pupils in schools in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.  The system can deliver messages to pupils when they sign in, using a four-digit pin, and notes whether they’re late"

Speaking to the Metro Kelli Foster, the school's Head of Sixth Form is right to describe the technology as "incredible"; for indeed it is incredible that schools should feel the need to turn to hold information as to the distance between the eyes and noses of their pupils in order to distinguish between them.  Furthermore, Ms Foster explains that prior to the installation of the technology "each pupil had to sign in and out of the reception by filling in a form - but now it takes under ten seconds".  Without wishing to take an antidelivian attitude to new technology, we at BBW have seen few sign-in forms which take as long as ten seconds to fill in...

With a costly £9,000 price tag (equivalent to £45 per pupil to install), such systems have limited benefits yet are wide open to abuse – from the risk of data theft to the misuse of images by unscrupulous individuals.

Rather than spend money on gimmicks like this, teachers and schools should focus on educating their pupils - and getting to know who they are.

By Daniel Hamilton

Privacy, liberty and the Emergency Budget

Tomorrow the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, will present his Emergency Budget to Parliament. Given the chastening experience of several countries on the European continent, and the size of Britain's national debt, it has been widely recognised across the political spectrum that cuts to public spending are needed.

Big Brother Watch believes that if cuts have to be made, they should fall on the relics of the previous Government that are not only expensive, but also invade our privacy and infringe our liberty. With that in mind, below we have reproduced an extract from How to Cut Public Spending: (and Still Win an Election) edited by Matthew Sinclair, which sets out three major projects that could be culled.

These are by no means the only large state databases and authoritarian organisations we would like to see the back of. But they are a start that would help tackle the deficit and free the British people from overbearing government.

Curbing over-extended government

When governments attempt to do too much, the cost of failure is rarely just financial. Lives have been ruined by ineffective and intrusive databases, political responsibilities deferred to faceless bureaucracies. Driven by the pursuit of ‘efficiency’, Government has brushed off the implications for data security and personal liberty, centralising information and power in systems that it does not understand and cannot work. Over-ambitious, unnecessary and unpopular projects should now be brought to an end. Nannying government publicity should be curtailed.

Abolish Contact Point, the children’s database
£44 million from 2010/11 onwards

Contact Point is a database meant to contain the personal details of every child in the UK up to the age of eighteen, and is designed to reduce administrative burdens for people working with children. It has, however, been plagued by controversy, with data safety experts drawing attention to serious security failings. Some 390,000 people will have access to the details of eleven million children, including those whose families have never been in need of social care services. With access extended to so many people, proper scrutiny over use and retention of the data concerned is effectively impossible.

The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has also found that Contact Point is almost certainly illegal under European human rights or data protection law, ‘because of the privacy concerns and legal issues with maintaining sensitive data with no effective opt-out', and because the security is inadequate (having been designed as an afterthought), and because it provides a mechanism for registering all children that complements the National Identity Register. Given the Government's appalling data security record, the children's database is an accident waiting to happen.

What would you do with £7 million?

If you live in Bexley, don't worry, the decision's been made for you - more CCTV is the answer!

Of course, residents weren't offered a choice between cameras, or something else... get what you're given and be grateful, Bexley!

By Alex Deane

That doggie in the window is about to become considerably more expensive

Over at the Daily Express, the very latest in "you couldn't make it up" nanny statism: plans are afoot to make every dog owner in Britain pay up to £600 a year for puppy insurance, as the government tries to clamp down on dangerous dogs. Doesn't matter if you've got a miniature schnauzer, doesn't matter if you've had harmless Rufus for a dozen years and all he does is snooze by the fire - according to this hare-brained scheme, you'd have to cough up to cover the costs of the nutter who breeds bazooka-bearing bulldogs.

We have managed to own dogs in this country for hundreds of years without any tax or insurance requirement.

There’s a reason why the saying is ‘One man and his dog’ and not ‘One man, his dog and his third-party liability’. This policy is absurd and completely disproportionate.

But I don't think it will actually happen. You can tax us to high heaven, you can authorise bullying policemen to push us from pillar to post - people in this country just take it. But any man who messes with the great British pet is a fool - they simply won't manage to enforce this one.

This essential part of many families will be happily uninsured long after this government is history.

By Alex Deane

Lifting the Lid: Number of councils installing chips in bins rises by 62 per cent

Research conducted by Big Brother Watch reveals that there are now 68 local authorities secreting microchips in the bins of residents, up from 42 a year earlier

Top lines from the research (the full report with a complete breakdown of local authorities with bin microchips is available here) include:

• 68 local authorities in Britain and Northern Ireland have installed microchips in the rubbish bins of at least 2.6 million households.

• A previous FOI survey from March 2009 found that 42 local authorities had installed microchips in their residents’ bins, which equates to a 62 per cent rise in just 12 months.

• Bristol in the only local council in Britain to agree to pilot one of the Government’s "pay-as-you-throw" schemes in the twelve months that they have been on offer, but several local councils are quietly installing the infrastructure with which to monitor our waste habits, ready for a political and public climate that is more amenable to bin microchips.

Research conducted by Big Brother Watch has revealed that 68 local councils in Britain have placed microchips in the bins of at least 2.6 million households. When a similar study was conducted 12 months ago, only 42 councils admitted to having placed microchips in their residents’ rubbish bins. Only one local authority has yet come forward to pilot one the Government’s “pay-as-you-throw” schemes in the year that they have been on offer, which strongly suggests that councils are preparing the technology at significant cost, ready for when the government announces a nationwide roll-out of charging for what the British public throw away.   

Lifting the Lid analyses the privacy implications and cost to householders of installing a network of bin microchips, before providing a definitive list of those local authorities that have installed the intrusive technology.

Alex Deane, Director of Big Brother Watch, said:

“The number of local councils placing microchips in bins is increasing, despite the fact that only one of them has volunteered to trial the Government’s ‘pay-as-you-throw’ scheme.

Councils are waiting until the public aren’t watching to begin surveillance on our waste habits, intruding into people’s private lives and introducing punitive taxes on what we throw away.

The British public doesn’t want this technology, these fines or this intrusion. If local authorities have no intention to monitor our waste then they should end the surreptitious installation of these bin microchips.”

To read the full report, which includes detailed information on every local authority, please click here.

EU recommends installing black box recorders in cars

The EU has reportedly spent £2.4 million on a three-year study into the feasibility of installing black box recorders or 'Event Data Recorders' (EDR) in all new European cars.

'Project Veronica', as the study is known, has recommended the mandatory installation of the boxes and said they will record 20 types of data, including speed, the car’s most recent movements and the actions of the driver - when and how often the brakes, indicators and horn were applied.

According to the Daily Telegraph,

Supporters say they could be used to reconstruct what happened in the event of a collision which would make it easier for insurance companies to decide who was at fault and, where necessary, enable police to take action against the driver.

Equally, the director of the study, Ralf Schmidt-Cotta, has described the boxes as "an independent, neutral witness". 

However, in truth they are yet another new tool of surveillance which would give anyone with the means to decode the data the ability to track your daily movements.

It starts with the police and insurance companies and ends up being used by suspicious employers and vengeful partners.

Then there's the cost of placing one of these recorders in every new car and the implications for challenging their data in court.

Early signs are that the DfT and car-makers are wary about the idea, but it will require consistent opposition to make sure these tracking devices don't see the light of day.

By Dylan Sharpe  

What could Cannock Chase Council scrap to save £44,000..?

...well, it's their 13 pole-mounted CCTV cameras of course (the picture probably gave it away).

But wait.

Those resourceful councillors in Cannock have said that as an alternative they could stick a whopping £3.17 service charge on the Council Tax of local residents to make them pay for the maintenance of the surveillance cameras.

Brilliant.

Except, in six months those very same cameras have picked up just 59 alleged anti-social behaviour incidents, of which fewer than half required the police to attend.

So it's a bit of a waste of money, really.

Still, good on the Council for floating the scrapping idea. I imagine it might be quite popular given the alternative.

By Dylan Sharpe

£500k CCTV network springs up in Staffordshire

As Alex warned in the post below, we now see the painful effect of CCTV domino theory in action.

The Sentinel is gleefully reporting today that a new network of CCTV cameras will go live in Biddulph, Cheadle and Leek and surrounding villages in Staffordshire within the next few days.

As we have said before, the efficacy of CCTV cameras needs to be placed under serious consideration before local authorities so willingly turn to them; and we continue to be concerned by the capture and retention of images of innocent people going about the daily business.

But what really struck me about this story was the way the following line was reported without any question:

"...The system has cost £500,000 to install plus about £20,000 a year in running costs..."

And on top of this, Councillor Gill Burton is then quoted as saying:

"...The monitoring is excellent: it will be 24 hours a day, seven days a week...We have got it at a very affordable price..." 

In response Big Brother Watch would like to say that the monitoring is excessive and, if half a million pounds is affordable, perhaps the people of Staffordshire ought to be in for a Council Tax reduction soon?

By Dylan Sharpe

As goes Aberdeenshire...so go the rest of us.

The good people of Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire are supposedly celebrating the construction of their elaborate, all-encompassing and expensive new CCTV Network.

There is an important privacy issue here. Individuals and families are increasingly concerned by the capture and retention of the images of innocent people without their consent.

But furthermore, for CCTV cameras to be worth paying for, they either have to help to prevent or help to detect crime. If they don't do either, then they are worse than useless - people feel a false sense of security and the police become reliant on them.

As I pointed out previously, the Metropolitan Police admit that very few crimes are solved by CCTV. So perhaps money might better be spent on bobbies on the beat, rather than increasing the reach of the big brother state.

After all, we ought to learn from the fact that we’re the only country that’s gone so far down this Big Brother path. The Shetland Islands have more CCTV cameras than San Francisco...
 
By Alex Deane

A return to Victorian houses for 'fallen women'?

As noted by Alex in his last post below, among the most intriguing parts of the Prime Minister's speech to Labour conference was his policy to place young mothers in a new care-home system.

The exact text from the speech is as follows:

"..From now on all 16 and 17 year old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes.."

Given our natural inclination to oppose the idea of forcing someone into a state-run home, we wanted to know the details, but it seems this is not actually a new plan.

As this article from the Independent from 1999 demonstrates, Tony Blair's "social exclusion unit" dabbled with this idea around the turn of the century.

Back then financial incentives - such as benefit perks - were mooted. But it sounds to us like Gordon has just announced a system of compulsory placement.

Again, we await the exact details, but is this yet another black mark on this government's record on personal freedom?

By Dylan Sharpe 

Personal data of UK taxpayers could be shared around EU

As highlighted by the European Foundation today, proposals by EU taxation commissioner Laszlo Kovacs which provide for the sharing of VAT data between member states, pose a significant threat to individual privacy in the UK and across Europe.

According to the European Foundation, HM Revenue and Customs would be required to grant "direct access" to personal information contained on national taxpayer databases, without the knowledge or consent of the UK taxpayer.

The move, which is designed to combat tax fraud, would not only increase the burden on the HMRC, at a significant cost to the taxpayer, it would also change the current culture of tax data sharing in the EU, making it compulsory rather than being dealt with on a case by case basis.

The reality is that European bureaucrats have no right to know any of this information about us.

Furthermore, we know from long experience that our own revenue can’t keep confidential information safe. Yet believe it or not, in the European context HMRC are amongst the BETTER taxmen.

Britons can say goodbye to their privacy if and when the government gives away our data like this.  

By Alex Deane

Pace of ID card roll-out increases

Although ignored by the national press this morning, featured here and here, is the news that skilled foreign workers are to get ID cards three months early after Home Secretary Alan Johnson struck a deal with the post office.

Immigrants will be provided their ID cards for free from UK Border Agency offices, while existing foreign nationals will have to pay £8 if they apply through the post office.

Johnson was also keen to celebrate the fact that ID cards had been issued to 90,000 foreign nationals, beating the government's target of issuing 75,000 by November 2009.

This is plainly the latest stage of the Government’s attempt to introduce ID cards by the back-door.

Furthermore, it is a disgrace that taxpayers’ are paying for immigrants to have their cards processed for free at the Border, whilst anyone getting one at the Post Office has to pay. 

By Dylan Sharpe