WRITTEN ON June 22nd, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?, Wibbipedia/MindtheGap
My favourite NGOs write along with the Independent Schools Council to one of the country’s few acceptable newspapers
ContactPoint is open to potential abuse
Friday June 22, 2007
The GuardianIn the coming weeks, parliament will be asked to pass regulations which will allow at least 330,000 users access to detailed and sensitive information on 11 million children, with no evidence that the system proposed can be secured.
Unless the system – called ContactPoint – is secure, the result will be that sensitive information will fall into the hands of potential abusers of children and traders of information. As the proposals stand, the dangers of user-abuse and hacking have not been quantified. The problems of a potentially leaky system must be solved before the plan gets any further. Once contracts are placed with IT firms, commercial confidentiality will come into play and the public won’t know how adequate the system is until the stories of misuse and abuse appear.
The government acknowledges the risks by instituting protocols to “shield” details of celebrity and vulnerable children. But all children are potentially vulnerable to misuse of information, and the potential for this is enormous. Evidence presented last year to the management board of the Leeds NHS Trust showed that in one month the 14,000 staff logged 70,000 incidents of inappropriate access. On the basis of these figures, misuse of ContactPoint could run to 1,650,000 incidents a month. Is this going to protect children?
Before it’s too late, we ask the government to reconsider this hugely expensive and intrusive scheme. It would not have helped Victoria Climbié, and it will put far more children at risk.
Jonathan Shephard Independent Schools Council
Ross Anderson Foundation Information Policy Research
Simon Davies Privacy International
Becky Hogge Open Rights Group
Terri Dowty Action on Rights for Children
Now , there is another side to this story. Those behind ChoicePoint are not wholl insensitive to these concerns. Some things have changed. But will we move beoynd this cry in the dark and have a conversation?
By happy coincidence, an EDS ad appears in the middle of the online letter. I’m working via a VPN on a slowish link so I couldn’t be bothered to watch the Flash movie. But I think suppliers are crucial in this.
Do the Intellect members who sell IT to government see a problem? Are they content to be part of it? Do they want to work with the government in “explaining away” people’s concerns (as suggested in a ghastly single-supplier lecture I went to in #10 the other day)? Or do they want to reach out to those who understand these concerns, notably these NGOs?
Whether it’s the splenetic FIPC, the raw and youthful ORG, or the overworked and underresourced ARCH – each of these tiny NGOs has a point. They make their case with far more passion for the issues and understanding of the true nature of the technology than the government leviathan can muster.
I’ve seen them make small mistakes, but I’ve yet to see them make a wrong call on the big issues. Talk to them. Listen. Engage. Dare I say it, support them! It’s a far better investment than spending money on Bell-Biss-Burston-Butler-Pottinger-Marsteller-stuffed-shirt Public Affairs ltd (motto: “as I was telling Gordon in the back of the Jag the other day”; Business model: we charge professional fees for more or less basic secretarial skills sets. Corporate values: all major currencies accepted).
12 Responses to “ContactPoint and the NGOs”
EDS’s downloadable PDFs are also interesting:
– In their graphic of firemen running to a kitchen fire, the firemen have *no* equipment – was the whole equipment budget spent on fancy IT?
– Similarly, their “hospital” has no walls!
However, the EDS text PDF documents are more disturbing:
– Their article on (USA) Real ID, based on “secure” drivers’ licences looks like the source for the “vision” described by UK government ministers – a world where everything requires us to repeated “prove” our entitlements to services etc.; a world where everyone depends upon government largesse.
– Their article on (USA) Federal ID cards portrays a world where all workers are just tiny cogs in a vast infallible government machine; a world where all efficiency and individual initiative has been sacrificed to defend this vital machine against ever present “terrorists & fraudsters.”
Thankfully, none of the private companies I’ve worked with, and only the worst public bodies, have been built from this model – those that were, soon failed (unless propped-up by politicians).
I hate to say I told you so, but I’ve been pointing out for a long, long time that the Children’s Index was being designed to be a catastrophe.
“Those behind ChoicePoint are not wholl insensitive to these concerns.”
What evidence do you have to support this? I’m genuinely curious.
“Some things have changed.”
Could you name one, just as an example? (And changing the name from the Children’s Index to ChoicePoint doesn’t count).
William
Do we get this in Scotland as well or are we spared ?
Alex
Dave, Alex:
I’ll make sure we get some authoritative answers to these questions.
Ruth: Help! 🙂
Oh whoops. Did I say ChoicePoint? That’s an error on my part. ChoicePoint is a personal data aggregator – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChoicePoint
It’s horrible history of data leakage and alleged illegality makes it, in popular culture, the mother of all violators of personal data leakers.
ContactPoint is different – more the child of violators of personal data. It’ll be fine, we’re assured. well if it is, they might have chosen a name that sounds less like ChoicePoint. It would have been less confusing.
>> “…might have chosen a name that sounds less like…”<< Well, it's from the same people that chose "ukonline.gov.uk" for its flagship site - not to be confused with the long established ISP "ukonline.co.uk" aka "ukonline. net" (Recently, the government seems to have "disconnected" (PM John Major's) open.gov.uk and (PM Tony Blair's) ukonline.gov.uk). ps ukonline net triggers the forum's Blacklist.
Well, my best-placed contacts who know what’s what tell me that there IS evidence of govt listening to stakeholders and shifting their position. They cite egs such as:
– exclusion of all sensitive services including A&E, mental health and substance misuse services
– the disappearance of the early ‘flag of concerns’ ideal
– access to the Index and security generally which is going to be pretty tight
– vetting and barring of all those who manage the Index
– the whole communications and engagement strategy especially with children and young people and parents
In addition they tell me that there is recognition that the Integrated Children’s System is not yet fit for purpose in the vast majority of LAs, although that is not really as a direct result of ContactPoint (but the two need to dovetail).
None of this means that they don’t still have important remaining concerns. But I do reckon that the chances of continuing fruitful dialogue improve when recognition is given of shifts in position that HAVE happened. Now is clearly an important time for Contact Point given that the regs and guidance are around for debate.
Over on the blog of DOoooooooooooooom see Ian’s link
http://dooooooom.blogspot.com/2007/06/contactpoint-extends-surveillance.html
I noticed somewhere else, by the way, that this catastrophic waste of public money is costing a QUARTER OF A BILLION POUNDS.
Yes some time ago, this database was reported as costing over 225M Pounds.
As an interesting comparison, the Libyan government was thought “crazy and wasteful” for spending about $250M on improving the educational opportunities of its children by investing in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.
You should watch those flash movies: They’re great comedy! However, why did the “executive” actually need to press the button in the lift?