The Telegraph reports that “young women fleeing forced marriages are being betrayed by GPs and benefits staff who “collude” with families to return them against their will, a senior police officer police has revealed. Doctors and Job Centre workers are breaching confidentiality rules and passing on vital information to families, allowing them to trace and punish Asian women who are attempting to escape coerced marriages and “honour”-based domestic violence.”
On using one biometric or another for identification
Why is it OK to use fingerprints but not DNA?
Bob Spink: The Minister might not be aware that the Science and Technology Committee has looked at biometrics, including iris and facial recognition and fingerprints, and found no evidence from any large-scale project that using multiple biometrics in the way that the Government propose would work technologically. The Government are simply making an assumption that they would work, but there is no evidence of that. In the absence of a working biometrics system, would the Minister consider the use of DNA?
Andy Burnham: No, I would not. I do not believe that people would accept that. Even for someone often accused, as I am, of not having regard for such matters, it would raise substantial civil liberties implications. On that basis, I would rule it out categorically. As to the questions that the hon. Gentleman raises about the effectiveness of biometrics, I do not accept that that is the case. I do not know whether he has travelled to the United States recently, but it has a large-scale immigration system that uses biometric information extremely successfully. His assertion that there is no evidence of external biometrics providing a higher standard of identification in travel documents is therefore wrong. (Hansard 30 March 2006 column 1126)
I am not saying using DNA is practical, just wondering why Burnham claims the “civil liberties implications” of using DNA for border control are more “substantial” than using fingerprints, irises, or facial recognition.
Take Jane
NO2ID will be accused of scaremongering. But the Take Jane video is a good deal less frightening than it might be, because we wanted it to have widespread distribution.It is likely that a National Identity Register — the database at the heart of the ‘ID cards’ scheme — will kill people, by leading murderers to their victims. It is nearly certain it will be used, as many existing databases have already been, to harrass and to stalk individuals and to commit crimes against them.Because it is intended to be universal, because it will contain or connect to so much information, and because it will feed other official databases, the National Identity Register has much more potential for harm than the often patchy official records that already exist.
The ID scheme is being designed to keep track, throughout your life, of where you live and all your contacts with organisations that use the Identity and Passport Service’s ‘verification service’. They are intended to include health (e.g. registering with a GP) and social services (e.g. applying for benefits), also banks and employers. Your track may be followed by anyone interested in you who can gain access to the system or a copy of your ‘audit log’…
If you are scoffing at this, as if it can’t possibly happen, I would point you to my page on Data Abuse – two entries in particular:
September 2008
The Daily Telegraph reports that “a battered wife’s confidential address details were twice passed to her ex-husband by his girlfriend while she was working in a Government tax office. Mother-of-two Donna-Lee Camacho, 28, lived in fear while her former spouse – who cannot be named for legal reasons – tracked her down. One of the addresses Sarah Gillett, 33, passed on to him was for a women’s refuge where Miss Camacho and her sons, aged four and 11, were trying to rebuild their lives. She was able to access the information because she worked for the Child Tax Credit department. Gillett was jailed for 18 weeks at Preston Magistrates Court, Lancs, after pleading guilty to a charge of wrongful disclosure of HM Revenue and Customs informatio.”
July 2008
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