WRITTEN ON January 1st, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Europe has privacy standards. It’s increasingly clear that UK official attitudes fall short, and that may in turn mean that significant chunks of our UK government IT plans fall outside European law.

I’ve repeatedly seen NGO human-rights experts ridiculed and isolated for putting this to people in Whitehall. But there’s no point in dismissing this out of hand and shooting the messenger. We’re bound by the law, and we’ll need to take it on board.

Now hear the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg (in today’s Indy – cheers HJ) on Britain’s benighted IMP plans:

It is therefore worrying that new legislation proposals intend to expand the authorities’ power to allow personal data collection and sharing. Although safety measures are foreseen, the adoption of these measures would increase the risk of violation of individuals’ privacy. The retention and storing of data is delicate and must be highly protected from risk of abuse. We have already seen what a devastating and stigmatising effect losing files or publishing lists of names on the internet can have on the persons concerned. This is particularly relevant to the UK, where important private data has been lost and ended up in the public domain… Following the judgment of the Strasbourg Court [the Marper & S. DNA case] the UK will have to review whether keeping details of all these individuals breaches their right to respect for privacy.

So is this “benighted and loathsome IMP” (Blimp) consultation to be a serious engagement, or just a way of smoking out the oppo so they can get on with it anyway but know what kind of objections they’re likely to face and from whom? Really, if the people in charge can’t see why this is a bad idea I now think they’re beyond educating; we simply need new people in charge.