Another day, another report criticising the UK Big Brother society.
This time it is the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust who have published an "independent" report from anti-database campaigners and others. I have become more pro-shared databases the more I hear from the liberal pro-privacy brigade.
I don't want my privacy protected.
I enjoy looking at my street on google-maps and my garden on google-earth. I want my tax to be correct and crimes to be solved. I want my family my friends and people I've never met to be secure.
And that's why data needs to be stored and shared.
NATIONAL IDENTITY DATABASE
The biggie. And the baddie in the eyes of many.
A national biometric database of us all for which I have never seen a convincing reason to oppose.
Rather the reverse.
From personal convenience, to prevention of serious crime, to child protection, to national security I am in favour of ID cards and think we actually need to go further. Taking the critical biometric data at birth would increase the overall integrity of the database.
To give one simple example of why I support this database, it would be very straightforward to require people logging ok to Internet chat rooms to supply information known only to the card-holder and could then confirm that the displayed age of the user was, in fact, correct.
NATIONAL DNA DATABASE
The DNA details of four million people are held. The argument goes that the DNA information relating to people who haven't been charged, cautioned of convicted - innocent people - should be removed from the database.
But surely, since the database is used for solving unsolved crimes, everyone is innocent and the database should be scrapped altogether. Obvious bollocks.
I'm afraid the challenge to the DNA database comes down to the usual soft liberal position (small and large L). "My privacy is more important than the protection of people I've never met and are probably working class."
NHS DETAILED CARE RECORDS
Apparently in order for data to be shared across the whole country efficiently and effectively, lots of doctors and nurses will have access to my medical records. Good. Good.
If I or anyone needs treatment hundreds of miles from our usual GP surgery, then I want as many people as necessary to have immediate access to those records.
WORK AND PENSIONS DATA SHARING
More records than you can shake a stick at. Makes the tax and benefit system work - most of the time. I have no idea what people would see as an alternative bit then who said any of this was sensible.
COMMON ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK
Shares sensitive informative about children with welfare needs among multi-agencies. Accused of being too intrusive. The electronic curtain twitcher.
Presumably it would be much better to have less intrusion and more headlines about incompetent care agencies who never talk to each other.
ONSET
Now this is one database that I am pretty ambivalent towards. Apparently it monitors referrals to youth offending teams and is on the lookout for junior Kray twins. A better database may be of parents incapable of giving their miscreant kids a clip round the ear.
Databases need to be accurate and secure. But the one thing they shouldn't be is empty.
