Why you cannot trust the government with private data

November 21, 2007 RJH

Virtually every family in Britain, rich and poor, receives a monthly “Child Benefit” payment from the government. I have 3 children and receive about $300. To administer the programme, the government keeps a database of our names (parents and children), dates of birth, national insurance numbers, and bank account details (if they pay by direct deposit).

The UK is currently reeling from an absolute shocker: one government department burned all of these details to disk, password protected them but did not encrypt them, and sent them to another department.

The disks never arrived. No-one knows where they are. Potentially, the names of 25 million Britons — and their most important details — are in the hands of criminals.

This debacle is an absolute gift to those who do not believe we can trust the government with private data. The government claims that the mistake was one of a junior civil servant failing to follow procedure rather than systemic policy malfunction. But here’s the thing: the government has put itself into a position where reams of electronic data are frighteningly easy to access. As was pointed out on Newsnight, it’s one thing that your medical records are only available at the local doctor’s surgery, but what do we make of a system where all records have been centralised and a doctor’s computer in Birmingham or Bradford can access everyone’s data nationwide?

I think the Conservatives are right: no national databases, no ID cards.