The report's author also said that data protection rules were
already being broken in the Government's gathering of information
about children.
Ross Anderson is the chairman of the Foundation for Information
Policy Research (FIPR), which carried out a safety and privacy
analysis of the Government's proposals for more databases of
information about children. He said that the proposals will be
costly, will be damaging and will eventually fail.
"By asking social workers to look into the affairs of almost 100
times as many children, most of whom don't require any particular
special support at all, you are going to take attention away from
the child protection cases with the result that some children will
come to harm," said Anderson.
Anderson said that it is appropriate for privacy rules to be
broken in serious cases where children are at risk, but said that
the Government's building of a database for all children risked
breaking data protection rules without good reason.
"The approaches that are justified in child protection simply
aren't justified in legal terms – human rights law, privacy law,
data protection law, in dealing with [much less serious] child
welfare cases," he said. "In a child protection case it's perfectly
OK to override privacy and override parents, because the parents
are suspected of being serious criminals, but that's not the case
in child welfare."
"For things like the [education services card] Connections card,
the Government is not obeying the law of the land when it comes to
getting consent for data sharing from children and their families,"
said Anderson. "In these circumstances saying that it's OK to just
ask the kids is wrong in law and we believe that it's oppressive
and unjust."
The Department for Education and Skills spokeswoman said that it
did not disregard the privacy of children. “We have some serious
reservations about this report’s objectivity and evidence base,"
she said. "The databases discussed within the report are intended
to support those who work with children to do their jobs
better."
"In April this year we published cross-government about
information sharing for those working with children and young
people. This guidance was subject to significant public
consultation and was endorsed by the Information Commissioner," she
said.
Though he believes that the security of the databases, which
could include information such as children's medical and education
records, would inevitably be compromised because so many civil
servants would have access to it, he said that he does not believe
that the government has an ulterior motive in building them.
"I think they've just blundered into it because of the
e-Government agenda, because of Tony Blair's statement that all
Government services should be delivered electronically by 2008," he
said.
Anderson believes that Government policies are seriously
diverging with those in Europe on data protection. "Sooner or later
there will be a British prime minister who has to make a decision
between remaining in Europe or abandoning some central
administrative systems on which a lot of money has been spent, and
the systems that have to be abandoned may include the children's
system."
“The support, protection and safeguarding of children is our top
priority but in fulfilling it we are conscious of the need to
respect personal privacy," said the DfES. "We have consulted the
Information Commissioner throughout the development of our policies
and specific databases and we continue to value this important
relationship.”
