UK Fast becoming World's largest 'surveillance society'
Pastor Dale Morgan
*UK Fast becoming World's largest 'surveillance society'*
From correspondents in London
June 08, 2008 09:40am
Article from: AAP
THE British Government must guard against the drift into a "surveillance
society", only keeping data on individuals as long as is absolutely
necessary, a parliamentary committee said today.
The Home Affairs Committee today called on the Government to adopt a
principle of what it called “data minimisation”, collecting only
essential information and keeping it under a tight curb.
“What we are calling for is an overall principle of 'least data, for
least time',” committee chairman Keith Vaz said.
“We have all seen over the past year extraordinary examples of how badly
things can go wrong when data is mishandled, with potentially disastrous
consequences.”
Last year a government department lost in the post two unencrypted
computer discs containing the personal and banking details of 25 million
people claiming child benefit.
Concern was also raised after it emerged that security services had
recorded a conversation between a prison inmate and his local
parliamentarian.
The committee rejected charges that Britain was already a surveillance
state but warned against “function creep” – the use of data for purposes
other than for which it was collected.
It also warned against adding microphones to surveillance cameras that
would make an already high level of information collection even more
personally intrusive.
“What we are concerned with is the tendency to collect more and more
data just because the technology allows it and for data to be used
beyond the purposes it was initially collected for,” Mr Vaz said.
“For example, we would completely object to any attempt to use data on
children for the purposes of predictive criminal profiling rather than
child protection.”
The committee the information commissioner should produce to parliament
an annual report on the state of surveillance in Britain.