ContactPoint delayed
ContactPoint, another of NuLabour’s database panaceas, has been delayed to allow “security procedures” to be reviewed in the wake of the HMRC data loss scandal. Work started on ContactPoint after the Victoria Climbie inquiry. It will contain details of all children in the country, and access to it will be given to 330,000 people. It is, in other words, a one-stop-shop for child molesters, but never mind that. This is a database. It must be vital.
Anyway, the delay raises a number of questions in my mind. First of all, this government doesn’t seem that bothered about following its own security procedures, because it doesn’t care about data protection. It’s not procedures that need changing; by and large, they’re obvious. It’s staff attitudes that are wrong and a culture of respect for privacy that is needed, and a couple of weeks’ worth of meetings to hobnob about procedures isn’t going to handle that.
Second, if one accepts that the HMRC debacle has raised questions that need to be considered before work continues on big database projects, why has it been deemed unnecessary to suspend development on the National Identity Register or the NHS Spine, too? These projects are far larger in scope and far more dangerous that ContactPoint or the records lost by HMRC. What happens when someone loses your identity records and biometrics? What happens if they fall into the wrong hands? What happens when an identity thief gets hold of somebody else’s biometric data, whether it be by virtue of a leak or by standing around in an airport skimming passport data?
Perhaps the government would propose that we change our fingerprints. Such a suggestion would be only mildly more absurd than their recent attempts to reassure us that all is well.
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