Scottish ID card? Events with @openrightsgroup this week (+job)

[James Baster]

From ORG:

Is Scotland creating a national identity scheme, along the lines of Labour's scheme that was abandoned in 2010?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

The Scottish civil service is planning to expand the NHS database of Scottish residents and allow the sharing of their data across over 100 Scottish public authorities. 

The state could then use the database to keep track of our everyday activities.

Your educational attainment, criminal record and health data could be used to decide when the state should intervene in your life, or equally, when to withdraw benefits from people who are deemed - rightly or wrongly - less needy.

The sharing of your personal data that would be enabled by the change has massive implications for the shape of future public policy. It is unlikely that the civil service has spelt this out to the SNP government - and it certainly hasn't discussed it with the Parliament or Scottish people.

The Scottish civil service has slowly been building up the nuts and bolts of this scheme for the last 9 years. But until now we've never had any serious debate. Now the Scottish civil service is running a minor consultation on the biggest step of the scheme so far.

We have a great chance to put pressure on the Scottish civil service and tell them to stop. Anyone in Scotland can respond to the consultation. They haven't made it easy though so we've built a tool so you can tell them what you think.

Take Action In Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh

Next week we’re holding a series of public meetings to give everyone a chance to hear more about the scheme, why it’s a threat to our civil liberties and how we can stop it. Come along if you can!

• Monday 16 February, 6.30pm - Aberdeen
  http://www.meetup.com/ORG-Aberdeen/events/220351969/

• Tuesday 17 February, 6.30pm – Glasgow
  http://www.meetup.com/ORG-Glasgow/events/220395960/

• Wednesday 18 February, 6.15pm – Edinburgh
  http://www.meetup.com/ORG-Edinburgh/events/220346840/

(If you don't want to use Meetup location and email address on bottom of each page)

ps. Also, ORG are hiring for a Scottish Officer: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/jobs - It's great to see ORG having more of a presence here to focus on devolved matters more.

pps. Meet Your Next MP! Find out where at http://meetyournextmp.com/ - a project I'm doing for the election. Excuse the sneaky plug .... and please excuse the cross posing in general, but I hope many tech people would be interested in this.

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Tech events around town http://opentechcalendar.co.uk/
and collaborative calendars for all http://ican.hasacalendar.co.uk/ (open data & open source)