Friday, January 09, 2004
You have to wonder, is David Blunkett's desire for ID cards just the biggest act of political voyeurism ever? Anyway, as feared, Gordon Brown has decided he wants a bit of the red-hot leather fascist action and has deployed Paul Boateng (a genetic experiment to cross-fertilize a human with the slime that slugs and snails use to walk on) to carry the glad tidings to the rest of us. The Treasury's big idea is to give each of us a unique number in a huge register of people in the UK. How nice, a register, just like the one they use for sex offenders.
Len Cook, the registrar general for England and Wales and head of the ONS, said: "The most critical attribute of such a register is that it protects privacy and makes it possible to extend ways to do this as society and commerce become more intrusive. It should enable each citizen to see the contact data that government holds on him or her, and to know which public sector organisations have access to their contact data."
You see? Have a register of the information in one place and it protects your privacy! But that would only work if the information was then removed from the departments.
Len Cook, the registrar general for England and Wales and head of the ONS, said: "The most critical attribute of such a register is that it protects privacy and makes it possible to extend ways to do this as society and commerce become more intrusive. It should enable each citizen to see the contact data that government holds on him or her, and to know which public sector organisations have access to their contact data."
You see? Have a register of the information in one place and it protects your privacy! But that would only work if the information was then removed from the departments.
