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03 Nov 2008

Database magic favours the dark side

David Davies in The Guardian Commentisfree

Faced with intractable problems with political pressure for a solution, the government reaches for a headline grabbing high-tech “solution”. Rather than spend the resources, time and thought necessary to get a real answer, they naively grasp solutions that to the technologically illiterate ministers look like magic. And most ministers are very illiterate about any serious technology.

So what we get is a form of magic, but one that is of most use to the dark side of our society. Many of us have worried about the state deliberately misusing the vast quantities of data that they hold on us. That problem is still there. But perhaps it will turn out that the biggest threat to our society in these enormous databases is that the government will be the unwitting, indeed witless, accomplice, to every hacker, fraudster, sexual predator, criminal or terrorist that would like easy access to all our details. That, far from protecting us all against identity theft, the state, with its grandiose projects, will be its biggest facilitator.

Man, if a a lowly backbencher from HM’s Loyal Oppo can see it as clearly as that, surely the superbrained front bench and indeed the massively resourced Government itself will “get it” soon too?

• Posted by William Heath on 03/11/08 at 11:16pm
• Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust
• Comments (1)  Permalink

Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

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