Yes
Shami Chakrabarti
Director of Liberty
Government has been far too complacent about our personal privacy. It has
worked under a slogan “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear”. But we all have
something to fear and to protect. When discs containing child benefit
information were lost, every parent was worried about their children’s
details being in the wrong hands. Likewise, parents will worry about access
to ContactPoint.
We are not arguing against the need for databases to exist. As a membership
organisation, Liberty itself has a database. But information given
voluntarily is very different from information given under compulsion.
It is the database culture that needs to be reversed. We should scale back
these databases and make them safer and more purpose-specific, although we
cannot eliminate risk altogether. The Joseph Rowntree [Reform Trust] report
demonstrated how some are proportionate and others far less so.
After the events of 9/11 it was assumed that people didn’t care about their
privacy any more and would buy into an idea that security is more important.
I say that we should start with the idea that people have a fundamental
right to privacy that you interfere with only for a very good reason.
Government has been too lax about passing data between different departments
for different purposes. Further, it has not won people’s trust that it can
manage databases properly. When setting up a database we should ask: “Is it
necessary? For what purpose are we holding the information? Is it excessive?
Who has access?”
The National Identity Register is a case in point. Over the past decade I have
been told it was for counter-terrorism, immigration control, benefit fraud.
If you are not clear about your purposes, how can you ensure appropriate
information storage and use?
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that our national DNA database is
unlawful, sending a message that might well apply to other databases and
technologies. No one is arguing against taking DNA. This evidence can be
vital in clearing up crimes and acquitting innocents. What is unlawful is
that permanent DNA retention is triggered not by conviction, or even charge,
but by arrest. The number of young black men on the database shows it is
racially discriminatory. DNA should be permanently retained only after
conviction for serious relevant offences.
Despite the lucrative contracts offered to set up and maintain databases, they
are not always well managed. Private contractors may have free rein when
Government lacks the technological expertise to control them.
Errors and data losses will always happen. Allowing sensitive information to
fall into the wrong hands can be terribly damaging to privacy, equality and
all those other rights that are essential to democracy itself.
For a long time we have been led to believe that our privacy and personal
security are a trade-off. Often, they go hand in hand.
No
Michael Wills, MP
Justice Minister
Basic principles for protecting the use of data are that it should be
proportionate and necessary. That goes for debate about it too. Databases
are a fact of life in private and public sector alike – we don’t live in a
database state as much as a database society. They deliver real benefits for
the public and it skews debate about the challenge they pose to all of us if
anyone ignores this or pretends otherwise.
But, like all technologies, databases can do damage if misused. The issue is
not whether to have them but how they can be deployed without damaging
privacy. It’s a question of balance and the challenge is how to strike it.
Databases help to deliver public services efficiently and effectively. They
can also help to detect and prevent crime and put right miscarriages of
justice by exonerating the innocent.
Of course, these obvious benefits shouldn’t be used as an excuse for
negligence in protecting the basic right to privacy. And this Government has
brought in new protections for the individual with the Data Protection Act
and the Human Rights Act, and by setting up the Information Commissioner’s
Office, to which we are now giving further powers.
Regrettably neither private nor public sector always gets it right. Mistakes
happen in all areas of life. The important point is to recognise them,
correct them and learn lessons for the future. When the Government gets it
wrong, we hold our hands up and take immediate steps to put it right. The
loss of HM Revenue & Customs disks triggered reforms of data security in
government. When we recognised that data-sharing provisions in the Coroners
and Justice Bill had been too widely drawn, we immediately withdrew them.
But to reject all the benefits that databases offer the public simply because
a mistake might be made is to strike the balance in the wrong place. Should
we really avoid trying to do all we can to prevent another Soham tragedy? Or
stop doctors accessing vital medical records? Or fetter the provision of
welfare entitlements, such as free school meals, for the most vulnerable?
Scrutiny helps to ensure mistakes are avoided and the basic right to privacy
isn’t damaged. But, sadly, the Rowntree report this week didn’t do all it
might have done to help the Government get the balance right. It’s not clear
how they made their judgments or how they used evidence to make these
judgments.
In contrast, the independent review by Richard Thomas, the Information
Commissioner, and Mark Walport was thorough and meticulous and, as a result,
provided invaluable proposals for change, which the Government is now
delivering.
We’re never complacent about databases – the challenge in getting the balance
right is evolving as fast as the technologies themselves – and whenever
changes need to be made, we will make them.
