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24 Jun 2008

Privacy? Consent? that’s not my BAG, baby

One criticism we’ve long made of the creepy business of turning Britain into a Kafkaesque surveillance society is the extent to which it takes place in a state of groupthink and scientific denial. Another straw in the wind that this might be changing is the report of the Biometrics Advisory Group on its work with IPS and others.

BAG seems to have got off to an OK start despite the change in chief scientific adviser (who chairs it ex officio) and loss of three members owing to perceived conflicts of interest. The BAG rump seems capable of making quite robust and eminently sensible recommendations to those who seek to confiscate and own our identities, fingerprints and facial images, to charge us for using them and as far as possible to deny us travel, basic fredoms, state services and entitlements if we decline to play along with their miserable controllist game (IPS for short).

For example:

BAG recommended that proper attention be paid to the privacy/consent issue across the National Identity Scheme. BAG considered that the issue was not fully addressed by the publication of the Strategic Action Plan and that the public needed to be better informed over this, and that a consent diagram should be built into the architecture...BAG recommended that care should be taken to ensure data is handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act...BAG recommended that the current rules on data sharing and the Identity Cards Act should be referenced in the requirements

Perhaps we should remind all parts of government to obey the la and treat people with dignity and respect.

Good science will help us out of making bad mistakes, I have no doubt. Especially coupled with empathy and good design. For now it seems to be BAG’s bag to riff on Sir Humphrey’s theme “If you must do this damn silly thing, don’t do it in this damn silly way.”

But what will the world look like when the Tories get in, the Noxious Scheme contracts are cancelled despite whingeing protests from Intellect, and they’ve given us our fingerprints back? How will we prove we’re entitled to a fishing licence then?

Wibbi life were less complicated?

• Posted by William Heath on 24/06/08 at 7:52am
• Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Identity
• Comments (0)  Permalink

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