The EU has announced proposals for sweeping changes to data protection law, with a common regulatory framework to apply to the whole continent [1]. Campaign group NO2ID [2] urged caution.

The plans (which may take three years to come into effect and will evolve before they do), make much of stiffer penalties for lost data. But NO2ID points out gains for individuals are limited, while the ’streamlined’ regulations could readily lead to more use of personal information – by governments as well as corporations.

Guy Herbert, NO2ID’s national coordinator, said:

There’s much that sounds good in these proposals, but we need to be careful. This is not a privacy law. Small improvements in individual rights are offset by an urge to ‘boost the digital economy’ – that is, sell your life – and to make life easier for bureaucrats.

In particular, the new huge penalties for commercial cock-ups are a distraction. They are the rarity. It is the routine, lawful, intentional, possibly even competent, trafficking in personal information that we have to worry about. More data protection won’t protect your data from the prying eyes of the database state.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors

1) Commission proposes a comprehensive reform of the data protection rules. 25 Jan 2012
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/newsroom/data-protection/news/120125_en.htm
‘The European Commission has today proposed a comprehensive reform of the EU’s 1995 data protection rules to strengthen online privacy rights and boost Europe’s digital economy. Technological progress and globalisation have profoundly changed the way our data is collected, accessed and used. In addition, the 27 EU Member States have implemented the 1995 rules differently, resulting in divergences in enforcement. A single law will do away with the current fragmentation and costly administrative burdens, leading to savings for businesses of around €2.3 billion a year. The initiative will help reinforce consumer confidence in online services, providing a much needed boost to growth, jobs and innovation in Europe.’

2) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

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For more information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308.

[Immediate]

Government publishes plans to sell everyone’s medical and school records (among other things)

A Cabinet Office paper [1] released at the same time as George Osborne’s Pre Budget Report details sweeping plans to exploit the mountains of data held by government departments. They include ideas for selling personal information from citizens’ medical, educational and benefit records in bulk to commercial interests.

Such plans do not fit well with coalition promises to protect privacy, give people control of their personal data and ’scale back Labour’s database state.’ [2]. On the contrary, they bear a very close resemblance to the Blair administration’s ideas for ‘Transformational Government: enabled by technology’ [3] and the broad data-sharing that New Labour attempted to implement but was forced to drop in 2009 [4].

Campaigners such as NO2ID have previously noted how official enthusiasm for data-collection and -sharing have carried on regardless of political change.[5]

The Cabinet Office document claims:

Online access to one’s own personal data enhances personal control and participation in public services. It also fuels innovation and growth in the supporting technology and data markets.

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID said:

The government is deliberately confusing ‘access’ and ‘control’. It wants to control your data – and give it out to others as it sees fit – but will kindly let you visit it occasionally. That is the wrong way round. We should control access to our personal information; the government should get to use it only when genuinely necessary.

Dear Whitehall, Our personal information is not yours to sell.

He added:

Ministers are muddled about ‘anonymisation’. Anonymised data is like sterilised milk – it stops being that way the moment you open it up.

– ENDS

Notes for editors:

1) Further details on Open Data measures in the Autumn Statement 2011 http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/Further_detail_on_Open_Data_measures_in_the_Autumn_Statement_2011.pdf

2) Conservative Party Manifesto 2010

3) See documents at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/transformational_government/strategy.aspx

4) e.g. ‘Government abandons data-sharing scheme – The Government has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn over plans to share vast amounts of private data about individuals.’ – Daily Telegraph 9 March 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/4954058/Government-abandons-data-sharing-scheme.html

5) 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, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together. NO2ID helped launch the NHS Confidentiality campaign http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org in 2006, which won the right for patients to opt out of the Summary Care Record.

Despite claiming skepticism of the Connecting for Health scheme, the new government carried on sucking up medical records into central control with barely a pause. See:
http://press.mu.no2id.net/2011-09/nhs-database-has-gone-but-we-want-medical-confidentiality-back/

The coalition has even promoted some of the key advocates for the database state within Whitehall. Ian Watmore, Blair’s ‘e-envoy’ and apostle of Transformational Government, is now Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office. Tim Kelsey, the UK government’s senior adviser on Transparency and Open Data, was a founder of Dr Foster Intelligence, and in March 2010 fronted the report ‘Online or In-line’ http://www.2020publicservicestrust.org/publications/item.asp?d=2128
which advocated compulsory sharing of personal data as in the public interest.

For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact:

Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) (London) on 07956 544 308
James Baker (Campaigns Manager, campaigns@no2id.net) (Leeds) on 07817 605 162

Privacy campaign NO2ID [1] warns that today’s announcement of the cancellation of the ten-year old, £12Bn, database project, the National Programme for IT, will not necessarily remove one of its worst effects on the NHS – the destruction of medical privacy.

Despite both coalition parties’ manifesto promises to give patients control over their medical records, the uploading of sensitive personal information from GPs’ surgeries to central systems has continued over the last 18 months, without most people even aware of it [2].

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID said:

We’ve heard a lot about this scheme being a financial disaster, but little about the privacy disaster. The execution may have been abysmal, but the principle was worse.

Giving the Department of Health central control of all medical records is still wrong, even if is done cost-effectively in future. Ministers need to do more than scrap the shambolic IT; they must restore the confidentiality of the doctor patient relationship.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against the database state. See http://www.no2id.net for more detail on the campaign’s aims.

2) See, for example: NO2ID release on Channel 4 story 16th August 2010: ‘Millions stay cheated of privacy as government hushes medical records scandal’
http://press.mu.no2id.net/2010-08/millions-stay-cheated-of-privacy-as-government-hushes-medical-records-scandal/

For further comment, or immediate or future interview, please call:

Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308