WRITTEN ON July 13th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Transformational Government, What do we want?
Ross Anderson points out a classic case (Observer) of the sort of mechanised discrimination we can increasingly expect as government’s policy of spraying our sensitive data around takes effect:
Children with Aids-related HIV are being turned away and excluded from primary and secondary schools throughout the UK in contravention of anti-discrimination laws.
An investigation by the National Aids Trust has uncovered six cases of discrimination against children as young as four after their HIV status was disclosed or discovered. Head teachers have told parents of affected children that other teachers, parents and even dinner ladies would need to be told of their confidential medical status.
In one ‘shocking’ example, according to the charity, a child who did not know about her condition was made aware of it by a teacher. She was later bullied and left the school.
Phrases such a *ahem* “isloated incident” and “new guidelines” and “reviewing the situation” are no doubt being drafted at this very moment.
But which is easier: to change the culture of 5m public servants (or indeed a population of 50m) so that they suddenly respect for their fellow human beings to the extent they can resist the temptation of discriminating against them on inappropriate grounds? Or to minimise the amount of data public services holds and shares about people to the base essential necessity, so that such opportunities are reduced?
Transformational Government 2.0 – the next version – will need to be clear and categorial in setting out the problem of the role of personal data in how we deliver personalised services. And it will need a credible solution; something based on a lot more than bland assurances
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UPDATE Hm. Thought. Am I saying head teachers shouldn’t know if their pupils have Aids? Surly they should. But they shouldn’t tell the dinner lady? And is this a database problem in the first place? Hmmmmmmm
Well, it is clearly an example of damaging and probably illegal discrimation, the result of people acting inappropriately on sensitive personal data. So it does underline a practical point which TransGov 2.0 will need to address better than TransGov 1.0 did.
The whole scenario is doomed to failure.
There was once a time when “unfortunate victims” and their supporters were sensibly aware of the common social disabilities which prevented “right thinking folk” from fully integrating with “the unusual” and came up with a next-best solution which often involved partial or full segregation (excuse the loaded word there).
This is a sad but sometimes better solution as education of the proles is too slow, as there is in-bred resistance, and new ones keep being born, etc, so the new plan is to keep differences secret from masses.
The proles can’t be told that the other prole has aids because they can’t be trusted to respond appropriately.
However the teachers, the head teacher and the victim are all proles too (as are we all), and so we see plainly (as was also demonstrated), that no-one can be told anything – unless we split the country into overlords (who can be trusted to behave appropriately) and proles (who cannot).
In fact before long, the overlords behaviour will be “appropriate” by definition.
As a general problem, aids discrimination is on the continuum of general discrimination, the difference is that aids (along with diabetes and computer fetishism) is something that can be kept secret longer than freckles or a squint, and any solution that doesn’t consider the full continuum of discrimination is by definition a partial solution.