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.

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