Re-posted from archive of infinite ideas machine 2004: [LINKS UNCHECKED]
The Times reported yesterday that All children [are] to go on [a] ‘big brother’ computer. One aspect of the Children’s Bill that, e.g. Spy Blog has been tracking with increasing alarm since at least March of this year, cf. Big Nanny database?
It’s nothing less than the National Identity Register by the back door – creating dossiers on each and every child in the UK and, by association, their parents and/or guardians! The worrying thing is how little publicity this all-pervasive scheme with huge long-term effects is getting, especially given its pertinence to one of the most obvious gaps in the proposed ID cards / NIR scheme.
Add into the mix The Office for National Statistics’ Citizen Information Project which proclaims it is “not about creating a comprehensive, centrally stored database on citizens”, despite the fact that they are quite up front in saying:
“The unique reference number is primarily needed for the efficient running of the register. However, it could have a wider use, for example as a ‘personal public services number’ used across different public services. The design of the population register could facilitate the matching of records held in different databases.”
They go on to say that, of course, this would *only* be possible if legislation is passed to permit such matching – but who the hell do these people think they are kidding? The government show every sign of passing several pieces of legislation of this type, doing their best to hide the construction of their ‘database state’ by burying the necessary clauses in superficially unrelated Draft Bills and initiatives.
Either they are thinking in a ‘joined up’ way, and this is clear evidence of their surveillance agenda, or the left hand really doesn’t know what the right hand is doing – in which case they should really look at why they are attempting to build (at least) three costly centralised databases of unprecedented size and fill them with our personal data, when they haven’t even been able to manage any of the existing identity databases to their own satisfaction!