WRITTEN ON January 10th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

The ever-alert HJ Affleck points out the latest nitwittery episodes (from the Beeb): a confidential police document about a vulnerable toddler is found in a street in Cornwall. and hundreds of documents containing HIV and cancer test results are found on a street in south-west London.

We don’t want Schadenfreude at the expense of public servants who didn’t mean to do a bad thing. We want the evidence to achieve irresistible critical mass. Central Whitehall advocates of e-government, latterly called “transformational” government, think they can amass personal data with impunity and that to share data is a benefit almost in itself. While they refuse to engage with common sense from the outside they’ll plough on inexorably until evidence to the contrary is utterly irresistible. So it’s helpful to see it pile up, and it will continue to do so.

Wibbi the Cabinet Office advocated maximal anonymity and privacy-enhancing technologies. And adherence to the letter of the human rights act would be a good start: wibbi the Cabinet Office radiated its spirit.