[heise] The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has released the results
of a public consultation on the growth of surveillance and personal
data gathering in the UK. In its report (PDF)
published 8 June, the committee explicitly rejects "crude
characterisations of our society as a surveillance society in which all
collections and means of collecting information about citizens are
networked and centralised in the service of the state". However the
report suggests that it might become one "unless trust in the
Government’s intentions in relation to data and data sharing is
preserved."
Nevertheless, the committee’s analysis of some 280 pages of submissions (PDF)
indicates that commercial incentives for personal data gathering loom
at least as large as government purposes. Technology promoters and
vendors, providers of personalised services, advertisers and supply
chain management all have interests in profiling of citizens. Cases in
point are the Nectar card – used by up to 50 per cent of UK shoppers,
the Phorm personalised advert serving system and Google’s user records.
The report finds many benefits to the public that come directly from
data gathering, pointing out that in the course of our day to day
activities we all leave an electronic footprint from such things as
card transactions and loyalty schemes without paying much attention to
the wider implications. However in both public and private sectors "the
trend … is a standardisation of the information requested with a
tendency to collect information which may identify an individual even
where this is not needed in order to provide or improve services." For
this reason the committee recommends "… the Government should move to
curb the drive to collect more personal information and establish
larger databases," pointing out that more information does not
necessarily result in better decisions – government should "adopt a
principle of data minimisation: it should collect only what is
essential, to be stored only for as long as is necessary." The
committee commends the Information Commissioner for his work on Privacy
Impact Assessments, but expresses concerns that they could in practice
end up as mere bureaucratic exercises.
In addition to the practical effects of mistakes or misuse of data,
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas identified concerns including
intrusion into private life, loss of personal autonomy or dignity,
arbitrary decision-making about individuals, or their stigmatisation or
exclusion, the growth of excessive organisational power. He suggested
"Whether using the National Identity Register or by other means, as you
go down this route of drawing all the threads together then
incrementally the big picture builds up … the Government talks about
public services being more citizen-centric, and that is welcome, but is
anyone seeing it from the point of view of the citizen in terms of all
this information being collected and shared about them?"
Source: http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/UK-Parliament-rejects-surveillance-society-concept–/110875
