Responding to a freedom of information request from a member of the public [1], the National Policing Improvement Agency [2] has just revealed that a national police database currently holds records of 7,600,000,000 occasions on which the locations of motor vehicles cars have been automatically logged. The £500 million a year quango, which operates the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC), was answering questions put by blogger ‘HMP Britain’.

The information is collated from information taken from roadside cameras by police forces around the UK — 4,045 of them in the first full week of June, according to the same document — although the Association of Chief Police Officers earlier this year suggested there were over 10,000 cameras in active use [3]. Many such cameras also keep photographs of the driver and passenger of each passing car, though those are not collected centrally at the NADC.

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID said:

“There is nothing wrong, necessarily, with an automated system looking out for specific wanted vehicles in a way a human officer can’t manage. But routine recording of where you’ve been and who you were with was used to intimidate dissidents in a police-state. It is the activity of stalkers, industrialised by database.”

-ENDS-

Notes:

1. Freedom of Information request on ‘Size and Scope of the National ANPR Data Centre’s Database’: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/size_and_scope_of_the_national_a
2. See http://www.npia.police.uk
3. See ‘The ANPR secret’, Kable, 3rd February 2010:http://www.kable.co.uk/automatic-numberplate-recognition-police-anpr-gc-feb10
4. NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

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

• Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839
• Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308
• Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166

26 million “kept in the dark” as ministry prepares to seize their medical records

The author of an independent review of the NHS Summary Care Record (SCR) due to be published tomorrow, Thursday 17th June, has said that 88% of patients who had received letters about SCRs had either “thrown them away unread or could not remember receiving them” [1]. Up to 26 million people could not know that they were losing their one chance to make an important privacy choice.

In the months immediately before the general election, the Department of Health spent £7.5 million ‘incentivising’ Primary Care Trusts to send nearly 30 million propaganda letters to the public informing them of ‘Changes to your health records’ [2]. Those who do not respond to that letter by obtaining, completing, and delivering to their doctor a separate opt-out form are taken to have given irrevocable consent for their personal health details to be uploaded and shared through the centralised system. (Once viewed, one’s record would never be deleted.)

Despite the coalition’s agreement that:

“We will put patients in charge of making decisions about their care, including control of their health records”

new Health Minister Simon Burns recently announced in a buried Parliamentary answer [3] that the upload will go ahead.

In an attempt to influence a critical vote by GPs on withdrawing support for the SCR programme [4], Burns sent a letter to the BMA [5], promising yet another ‘review’ but offering no commitment to significant change.

Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID [6] said:

“Independent research indicates that 26 million people had no idea that one item of colourful junk mail was their only official warning of massive changes to
their families’ medical privacy. They have been kept in the dark, and have no real choice. They may not even find out until it is too late.

“This is not a mistake. It is deliberate abuse. Yet ministers who say they’ll put patients in control are happy to let it continue. Uploads must stop now.”

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1. In a panel debate on 15th June, Professor Trisha Greenhalgh is reported as saying: “…opt out rates were affected by the fact that, according to one piece
   of research, 88% of patients who had received letters about SCRs had either thrown them away unread or could not remember receiving them. A 0.6% opt out
   rate has to be interpreted in the light of those wider findings.” http://www.smarthealthcare.com/trisha-greenhalgh-summary-care-records-problematic-15jun10
   Highlights of a draft of tomorrow’s confidential UCL report can be read here: http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/tony_collins/2010/06/highlights-of-confidential-ucl.html
2. See, e.g. ‘Race to kill off care record’, PULSE, 18th May 2010:http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=19&storycode=4126050&c=2
   . And compare Connecting for Health statements that there have been no change to the “rate of activity” over SCRs –http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/30/scr_review_call/ – with the graph at the bottom of its own page on ‘Key statistics for Summary Care Records’, which shows that around 27 million letters were sent from late January 2010 to the end of April 2010: http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/scr/staff/aboutscr/benefits/scrkey
3. See NO2ID’s press release, 6th June 2010: /2010-06/capitulation-to-nhs-bureaucrats-threatens-medical-privacy-of-millions/
4. See ‘Government to review Summary Care Record rollout’, PULSE, 11th June 2010: http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=35&storycode=4126279&c=2
5. Copy of Simon Burns’ letter to the head of the BMA and Chair of the GP Committee, read out to GPs just before a critical vote on withdrawing support for SCR on 11th June 2010: http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/Journals/Medical/Pulse/2010_June_16/attachments/POC4_511760%20Dr%20Hamish%20Meldrum%20&%20Dr%20Laurence%20Buckman.pdf
6. NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together.
   In 2006, NO2ID helped launch the NHS Confidentiality campaign http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org, which won the right for patients to opt out of the Summary Care Record.
   For an overview of why Summary Care Records represent a threat to medical confidentiality, individuals’ and the public health, see: http://www.no2id.net/downloads/SCR_bad_idea.pdf

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

• Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839
• Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308
• Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166

Phil Booth will be in central London tomorrow, and available for interview on the launch of the UCL report.

ID repeal Bill: “a good start, but bad in parts”

The Identity Documents Bill [1] receives its Second Reading in the House of Commons this afternoon. NO2ID [2] welcomes the intent of the Bill, which is to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006 and dismantle the National Identity Scheme, but has identified some serious problems:

• The Bill, as drafted by Home Office officials, broadens further some of the already over-broad offences created by the 2006 Act, and worse, reintroduces some of the deeply flawed official conceptions of ‘identity’ inherent in the ID scheme – such as sentences of up to 2 years for quite legitimately, or accidentally through error or misprint, holding identity documents in more than one name [3].
• The drafting seems a bit casual – some phrases appear to have been cut and pasted from the previous legislation, with little thought as to context [4], and some clauses as drafted would perhaps make anything other than a cursory visual check of a person’s ID into an offence [5].
• The broad data-sharing powers relating to passports in Clause 10 of the Bill would immediately apply to millions of people, not just a few thousand willing ID guinea-pigs. And they would facilitate the reconstruction of an ID scheme in a slightly different form, based on the passports database – as proposed by several ID proponents, most recently David Blunkett.
• The Bill does nothing to address the issue of “ID cards for foreign nationals” — actually Biometric Residence Permits, required under EC regulations to be issued in the form of a card — which were blatantly ‘gold-plated’ and xenophobically spun by the last government in an attempt to boost popularity and demonstrate some progress on the scheme.

NO2ID’s full briefing is available online here: http://www.no2id.net/id-schemes/2010-06-08-identity-documents-bill-briefing.pdf

Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID said:

“The government is moving quickly to end the ID scheme. NO2ID applauds this, but we’ll be watching like hawks to see the job’s done properly.

“It’s a shame that such a good start should be so bad in parts. Scrapping the ID scheme was always going to be complicated – not least because the Home Office has been planning its survival strategy for years.”

Notes for Editors

1. Details, including the full text of the Bill and its progress through Parliament can be found here: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/identitydocuments.html
2. NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the
   database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together.
3. “There are many reasons why people might legitimately hold documents in
   different names (quite apart from errors and misprints): they may have been adopted; a woman may use both her married and maiden names; actors and writers may use stage names, or noms de plume; people with ‘difficult’ foreign names often use an English equivalent in daily life; a person undergoing gender re-assignment may for a period have documents in both male and female names.”
4. “internal evidence suggests hurried drafting: cl.8(1)(g) refers to “every other place”, the words of the 2006 Act, where “any other place” would be more applicable”
5. “A literal reading of cl.4(1)(c) and cl.4(2)(b) – making it an offence to have in your possession or control an identity document relating to someone else with the intention of using it to establish personal information about them – perhaps make anything other than a cursory visual check an offence.”

Phil Booth and Guy Herbert are both available for interview in central London today. For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact:

• Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839
• Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308
• Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166