Proposed abolition of data protection controls on public sector data

[M Taylor]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2001, Ross Anderson wrote:

Whitehall plans new checks on citizens
By Rachel Sylvester:
> [...]
> 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.
> [...]
> 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.

Canada simply rearranged the government's structure to suit their
needs. Immigration and Customs is a division of Revenue Canada (taxation),
which means RevCan can monitor all Canadians re-entering the country,
looking for people claiming (un)employment benefits while travelling, and
compare to their tax profile (i.e. a Canadian with no taxable income
declared in the previous year might get extra questioning while
re-entering the country) to their travel patterns/ frequency.

Of couse its mundane irony is that it takes me, a Canadian citizen,
longer to enter my home country answering taxation related questions in
disguise than it does to entry an EU country with a new visa, or
travelling to any other Western country. Pretty much the opposite of the
EU passport/identity card "express" lanes for EU citizens.

M Taylor