Well the political conference season is nearly over, a General Election is round the corner, and no major political party (apart from the Scottish Nationalist Party) has a policy to establish a framework of privacy protection. The result, I fear, is that we will continue onwards as before. All the English opposition political parties seem to think that if they do something like scrap the ID Card scheme, drop the NHS central spine database etc then everything in the privacy garden will be lovely. No it won’t – there is a dangerous policy vacuum developing.
Uncle Gordon, God bless him, made three privacy statements at Labour’s conference.
1. “But in the last two years we have looked again at how we can give the best security to our British citizens whilst never undermining their liberties”. Isn’t it reassuring to know that proposals such as six years’ DNA retention if you are innocent do not undermine liberties.
2. “We will reduce the information British citizens have to give for the new biometric passport to no more than that required for today’s passport”. I had always been taught at school that if you “reduce the information” you need to what you already collect, then that is not a reduction. In any event, the intention is to begin to collect all ten fingerprints – something which does not happen with “today’s passport”. So if this is what is meant by “reduction”, watch out as soon as this Government talks about “addition”.
3. “And so conference, I can say to you today, in the next Parliament there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens”. Obviously compulsory additions to the National Identity Register if you are vetted or when you renew or obtain your new passport obscure this particular message.
The Conservatives have gone further than anybody else and have at least published a policy document which contains proposals to limit the advance of the surveillance state. However, as soon as the pressure of being in Government comes, then I think the risk of resumption in the advance of the surveillance state cannot be ruled out (my favourite is a proposal to save money by linking Passport and Driving Licence). In addition, the Party wants to substitute a Bill of Rights for the Human Rights Act, which means that Article 8 might be under “attack” so to speak.
The Lib Dems follow a similar path. They want to limit “Labour’s surveillance state” (e.g. scrap ID cards, limit CCTV etc) and want a Constitutional Convention to define what should be in a Bill of Rights.
The only political party that has made inroads into privacy policy are the Scots Nats. In late August they published “Privacy principles to improve public confidence” which involved the following draft principles for discussion.
1. “People should only be asked for identity when necessary and they should be asked for as little information as possible” – arguably this is a requirement of the Third and Fifth Principles
2. “Private and voluntary sectors which deliver public services should be contractually bound to adhere to the principles” – limited to public sector and if they are data processors, they should be doing this already
3. “Privacy Impact Assessments should be carried out to ensure new initiatives identify and address privacy issues” – hopefully these will be published
4. “Organisations should avoid creating large centralised databases of personal information and store personal and transactional data separately” - see this as a Scots Nat statement of “we are not like Labour”
5. “Public bodies must explain why information is needed and where and why it is shared” – arguably the obligation under the First Principle.
So it can be seen that the policy is not perfect, but at least a political party in Government has bitten the bullet and are open to suggestions and improvements – even from low-life Sassenachs.
I wonder whether they have someone standing in Chingford.
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