Christina Zaba (London, NO2ID): So now we know that Gordon Brown doesn't much care about the safety of "every single item of information" we hand over to the government, as he told ITN last Sunday in the wake of yet another data breach.
It's the scale of the information gathered that interests him. Who cares if it's your particular NHS records, bank details, fingerprints, iris scan, benefit entitlements or shopping habits that fall into the wrong hands? Forget data protection: this is the era of data-sharing.
The policy was devised some time ago. Tony Blair published the idea in 2005, in Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology, when he promised a "balance" between government "maintaining the privacy of the individual" and "delivering services". But it's government, not you and I, who will be deciding that balance.
Picking up in Comment Is Free on the Prime Minister's staggering admission which was otherwise ignored across the media (why is this?) David Davis compellingly and eloquently argues that the proposed National Identity Register is obviously, stupidly insecure. It's designed that way. You don't need to be a hacker to get into a system which gathers everything on giant linked databases, open to hundreds of thousands of officials. You just need a password.
And what could be simpler, once we're all on the Register and our detailed information and biometrics are in the hands of the state, than to render someone functionally non-existent at the flick of a switch?
Let's not go there. Our information is ours and, as David Davis says, naïve ministers are disastrously missing the point. No system exists anywhere on the planet which could secure every single, precious, personal item of information on the National Identity Register, therefore it must not be built. As we say in NO2ID: You can't protect it, so don't collect it. End of story.
Christina Zaba is Union Liaison Officer for NO2ID
