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To: CuriousGeorge who wrote (72007)	6/19/2001 8:21:23 PM
From: gold$10k	Respond to of 116806

Answer: YES <eom>

To: CuriousGeorge who wrote (72007)	6/20/2001 12:25:13 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116806

playing right into our hands? ISSUE 2216 Tuesday 19 June 2001 Whitehall plans new checks on citizens By Rachel Sylvester WHITEHALL departments will be able to share information about people's tax records, benefit entitlements and family history under proposals by Tony Blair's personal think tank. The change could lead to a person's benefit application being cross-checked with his or her medical record, passport details being handed to the Inland Revenue, or driving licence details compared with information on the electoral roll - although the specific areas affected have not yet been agreed. A report by the performance and innovation unit, to be published next month, says that the exchange of information could reduce fraud and other crime and speed up the delivery of Government services by cutting red tape. The Government is planning to introduce catch-all legislation to enable ministers to instruct their officials to cross-check data without having to put a separate Bill through Parliament. That proposal, which has been approved by ministers, will almost certainly mean rewriting the Data Protection Act, which safeguards the privacy of information. At present, the Government has to introduce a Bill every time one department wants to exchange a new type of data with another. Under the proposed scheme, ministers would be able to push changes through much more quickly, using secondary legislation. A senior Government source said: "At the moment the presumption is that data given to one department are not compared with information given to another. We want to reverse that so that the presumption is that they can be." The report from the performance and innovation unit, based in the Cabinet Office, says the current arrangements for data matching are "haphazard" and "piecemeal" because each department has its own rules. The unit's proposals were attacked last night by one of the Government's advisers on the subject. John Wadham, the director of Liberty, said: "We are forced to give our personal details to the Government, but this information still belongs to us. Now the Government is seeking powers to take greater control of this personal information. "Decisions to violate the principles of data protection and human rights are wrong however they are made. But to allow such important decisions to be made by ministers in secondary legislation and rubber-stamped by Parliament can never be justified." There are also fears that people may find themselves being investigated because information held by one department, then passed to another, is wrong. A Government insider admitted that the amount of inaccurate data held on Whitehall files was "the next BSE waiting to happen". To try to allay public concern, the report will emphasise the importance of privacy. An officer will be appointed to every department to control the quality and use of private information. People will be reminded that they can request to see any data held about them to check that they are accurate. But a proposal to give everybody a "unique identifier" to access Government services online has been dropped because of fears that it would be seen as a prototype ID card. Although the unit was in favour of the idea in principle, it decided that problems such as the potential for "identity theft" outweighed the benefits. The Data Sharing and Privacy Bill will be introduced as early as possible. Ministers are aware of the importance of winning over public opinion. A government project in Canada, which involved compiling a database of information about individuals, was scrapped last year after a public backlash amid accusations that it had been undertaken without people's consent. telegraph.co.uk