One of the points not reported in connection with the horrific crimes of paedophile Venessa George is the failure of the comprehensive vetting system. The reason: there was no record of her involvement in such activities. She wasn’t even uncovered by staff at the nursery (why? – another question), but picked up when the police arrested another individual who had retained copies of electronic communications linked to her. If that person had been more careful, then most likely George would still be active.
There are two messages here. The first is that the absence of a record does not mean an individual is “in the clear” – it just means that there is no record. The most successful criminals are those with few records – that is why they are successful. As a fan of “The Wire” programs recently screened on BBC2, most drug dealers portrayed in that program used methods of communication that avoided records of phone calls. So a policy of keeping everyone’s communications would not help in providing any evidence in such cases.
Secondly, there is the matter of public trust. The spending of millions of pounds of public establishing a comprehensive “vetting of everyone” system was justified in its aim of protecting the public. Yet in this case, the vetting failed. How many other failings will take before the public loses faith in the system? And if faith is lost, so is the money spent on the system.
In my view, the George case indicates the flaw in the “mass retention of data” policy. The existence of data can reveal a problem; the absence of data does not mean there is no problem. However, it is the absence of data that leads to a careless assumption that there is no problem. So in an era of mass retention of data, all the clever miscreant will do is ensure that there is no identifying data or links when they ply their unsavoury trade.
In summary: data retention is no substitute for vigilance, and if you establish good vigilance why do you need such mass data retention?
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