NO2ID

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmbills/009/09009.100-106.html


Looks familiar. Is this the abolition of Parliament Bill all over again?

I've been pondering this myself. I've already posted my initial thoughts about these proposals to the forum here: http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?t=25934
(a version of my latest Magna Carta Plus article)

At minimum, ISTM this gives a Minister the power to override any legislation that gets in the way of the sharing of personal information they wish to achieve.

But I do wonder whether this is actually an all singing, all dancing enabling act...

No. It's the general Data Sharing power as suggested by the Walport Thomas Review for the ministry of Justice, miraculously dissolving the "barriers to information sharing" as identified by the then Department of Constitutional Affairs's Information Sharing Vision Statement of 2006.
http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/ ... vision.htm

See here:
http://www.no2id.net/news/pressRelease/ ... l_to_build

Yes, that's the origin, but we are all aware of other instances where legislation was brought in for a limited purpose but then used for much wider purposes (the Terrorism Acts for instance). Is that a possibility here, or is it limited strictly enough in the legislation?

General information sharing is scarcely a limited purpose, which is why this 4-clause inclusion in a rag-bag bill is actually more dangerous than the Isentity Cards Act itself --- but the orders would have an effect on information only.

What they could do in the extreme, would be to create a kind of general interogatory power, whereby a person could be required to give up certain information to a department as "sharing", on pain of punishment as provided in the regulation for failure. (Cf. Taxes Management Act 1970.)

It could not, however, be used as in the Regulatory Reform Act (which I presume is what Geraint means by the 'Abolition of Parliament Bill') to modify other legislation in a substantive fashion for its own sake, only as consequential to information sharing. You have to read legislation in context.

(Of course the drafting sounds familiar. Parliamentary draftsmen use boilerplate clauses as much as possible, and we should be grateful that they do, or statute would be even more impenetrable.)

I've been reading the amendments with this question in mind.

I'm hoping I'm missing something here and that Guy is correct. However the precise wording of the amendments seems to me to allow ISOs to contain provisions that have nothing to do with information sharing, so long as (the Minister is satisfied that) they serve a relevant policy objective, their effect is proportionate to that objective and they strike a "fair balance" between the public interest and the interests of those affected by them.

My initial thought was that perhaps the proposed section 50A(1) restricts the scope because it allows information sharing orders to enable the sharing of personal information by any person. However section 50A(1) states positively what an ISO can do, without saying what it cannot do except that it indicates that there are limits placed by subsequent sections.

The main limitations in the subsequent sections (departmental remits aside) are that the Minister must be satisfied that the information sharing provisions of an ISO are necessary for the policy objective, that the effect of the provisions of the ISO are proportionate to the policy objective and that the provisions strike a "fair balance" (whatever that means) between the public interest (whatever that means) and the interests of anyone affected by the provisions.

Thing is one restriction refers to "information sharing provisions" being necessary (what about non-information sharing provisions?), the next one talks about the "effect" of the provisions being "proportionate" (does this rule out non information sharing provisions? Surely it does so only if the effect of them is considered disproportionate?!) and the final bits talks of achieving a fair balance between the public interest and the interests of those affected. It seems to me none of these rule out non-information sharing provisions being in an ISO. I can't see which other parts of the amendments would do so either.

I agree that the drafting is very broad, and the implied powers are much, much greater than a naive person reading the Walport Thomas Review (such as its authors?) would expect to be constructed on its recommendation. However, the language of the section does imply restrictions on the scope of orders, and it would be absurd to suppose a dictatorial regime would seek to use this for rule by decree when the Civil Contingencies Act is available for the purpose, still less that this is a conspiritorial purpose behind it.

The new s50A(4) and s50A(5) that would be inserted into the Data Protection Act very clearly limit the primary function of ISOs to information sharing - they just do not limit that information sharing as much as a casual reader with a naive understanding of "proportionality" as reasonableness would expect. The new s50B is "Information-sharing orders: supplementary provision", which is to say that the powers it confers are granted to make it possible for ISOs to achieve their purposes and to make them enforcable.

What the Ministry of Justice seeks to do here, is precisely what was adumbrated in the Information Sharing: vision statement of 2006: to remove, completely, all barriers to the sharing and use of information (not just personal information) by government. That is quite bad enough, without putting any imputing any undeclared and irrelevant plan to it.

[The parallel with the Terrorism Act (ditto the "terrorism powers" of RIPA that commentators often refer to, or the use of "anti-terrorism" police) is misconceived. Again you are reading upside down. There is nothing in the Terrorism Act that restricts its powers to use in terrorism cases as popularly understood. "Terrorism" in the act is a technical term, as are those terms that are founded on it; and the very broad powers are being used well within their scope, in my judgment - it is just that most readers mistake their scope and the institutional context, as did parliament in granting them.]

Thanks Guy - a helpful explanation.

marvellous word, thank you Sr Guy!
I always thought a dumb rating was an ill-educated sailor, now I know that to adumbrate means ...
1. To give a sketchy outline of.
2. To prefigure indistinctly; foreshadow.
3. To disclose partially or guardedly.
4. To overshadow; shadow or obscure.
This seems to sum-up the required skill-set for a New Labour front-bencher.

Oh, and I agree about the Civil Contingencies Act. It slipped through while the ravers were dancing about the Public Order Act, AFAIR. What with the various Terrorism Acts, there's no need for further repressive law, should the recession take a(nother) turn for the worse. Except ID cards of course, to keep us in order.

Thanks Guy.

If I understand you correctly, the key thing I was missing is this: The fact that S50B has been tagged "supplementary provision" restricts the "modify any enactment" bit to provisions that relate to information sharing. I didn't realise that it would have that impact and if that weren't the case then I think my interpretation would stand since I fail to see how S50A(4) imposes such a restriction by itself (though it places other restrictions), whilst S50A(5) states what an ISO must do, not what it cannot do.

I've converted the Bill to .doc so you can open it in Word (I hate .pdf files!) and uploaded it here incase anyone is interesting in reading it for themselves.

http://uploading.com/files/I56H2EA2/2009009.doc.html

Just use Find (CTRL+F) to get to the relevant part.

But Word is evil!

Ewan, you might be interested in the Free our Bills campaign that MySociety is running.

Thanks, I've signed up!



This is just what we need, to involve more and more people in the democratic process. Currently we have politicians, quite a large number of politically active+aware people and then everyone else just doesn't understand or care, or think they can make any difference

Ewan, are you in a NO2ID local section in Hull?

Nah, there isn't one. I've done some leafletting in Hull though

Two people is all you need to run a local campaign!

recently I was talking to a friend about the dangers contained in the coroners and justice bill to citizens if the government departments started sharing all the information it has on individuals with all the other departments. But try as I might I couldn't really convince them that it was a dangerous thing for the government to do. Which was most fustrating as they're against ID cards so you would think they would also be against the database state.

I think the weakness of my argument was that I had no practical example of what this could mean for an ordinary citizen which would harm them, or thier family.

I thought of personal health records and whether they could be moved to the home office and then onto the police. But I can't see any pactical reason why that would worry people. Except for the usual security issues about the data going missing or profiling people.

I think to sell this to the public we really need a good practical example of how this could go wrong for members of the public. Or are the two example I've given, data security and profiling our main objections.

I suppose a tool for an authoritarian state would be another argument, but I feel that requires too much of a leap for most people to grasp.

If anyone has a better grasp of what practical horrors could directly come out of the coroners and justice bill section 152. Could you let me know as
it would help me and I suspect others in our arguments against it in letters to papers and to politicians

I suspect that one of the first Information Sharing Orders will be used to provide researchers from outwith the NHS with access to patients' medical records for identifying potential subjects for study.

That was one of the recommendations (#17) of the Thomas/Walport review of data sharing - Walport of course being head of the Wellcome trust, a medical research charity. The Medical Research Council has also endorsed such calls.

So, sharing of medical records without consent.

And why stop at medical research? Surely financial institutions could make a case for needing access to the DNA database or medical records to prevent people from taking out fraudulent insurance policies?

"Sorry, you can't have a mortgage. You've got some nasty genes in your DNA, according to our records."

The Home Office doesn't have a good record on preventing the unscrupulous from accessing such data. We know that they have already provided access to researchers investigating ethnic profiling.

Financial institutions are, of course, interested in money, not just medical records. Wouldn't it be so much easier to detect tax evasion if the government provided our tax records to banks and required them to report any potential inconsistencies with our accounts? Who could possibly object?

As CapnBob says, a couple of you is all it takes to get a group off the ground!

Why not contact Conatct Yorkshire coordinator James Elsdon-Baker (07817 605162, yorkshire@no2id.net) to discuss?

Thanks Geraint, The Medical to banks a good example. Not to sure about the financial one. But I only ned one so thats cool. Thought of one my self as well (yours is better as its more general)

I thought that maybe the government could see that passing criminal records to the Helth department would be good. To support rehabilitation amongst ex-prisoners who may have mental health problems. This could be seen as reasonable.

However what about the other way around. If Health records were sent to The Home Office to be looked over for signs of Mental Health problems that may lead to criminality.

I'm begining to get my head round this subject now

It ain't pretty

Some other potential uses of the data sharing powers:

* providing records of who people communicate with, library records, records of books and magazines purchased via the net or credit card and records of articles downloaded via the net to the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (www.netcu.org.uk), for the purpose of monitoring such data for patterns that might indicate someone is involved in "extremism". NETCU would then pass its findings on to the police, local authorities and security services to help them combat extremism. (Do NETCU already get access to comms data?)

* providing loyalty card data on food and alcohol purchases to the NHS ostensibly to help in its efforts to combat obesity and other diet related problems.

* providing the legal records and any recorded communications between lawyers and their clients to the police and the CPS in order increase the conviction rates for crimes, e.g. to find out what suspects say to their lawyers in writing, and what legal advice they get from the lawyers in writing and use it as evidence or intelligence to inform prosecutions or decisions to charge or arrest. All in the name of improving the efficiency with which the police and the CPS do their jobs.

That illustrates the fallacy at the core of the whole dispute. You assume that overriding privacy in order to do things to people "for their own good", is legitimate and reasonable provided the conception of "good" involved is reasonable (and like everyone you naturally assume a view is reasonable because you hold it). That is precisely the government's position.

Actually the flow of information would certainly be the other way. (For precisely the same reasons that it is annoying and ludicrous when people suggest the aim of data collection is to "make money" for government by selling it.) Bureaucracy is interested in getting information from commercial sources, and not - because information is power - giving it out except as instruction and control.

The Taxes Management Act 1970 already provides massive powers for the Revenue to demand information from banks and other intermediaries and commercial organisations. Which they use.

I was recently recoded incorrectly because I became a signatory on my elderly mother's bank account and the database-sharing then retrospectively attributed her interest income to me.

If you work for the BBC or some newspapers as a freelance, they may send you an automatic notice at the end of the year stating the total of your fee-payments that have been notified to HMRC.

In the last 15 years financial institutions have acquired a lot of obligations to collect information about their customers, and are already under enormous obligations to inform on you. However, ISOs would mean further surveillance - say in the current crisis 'for the supervision and encouragement of lending' - could readily be installed, because one of the grounds that banks have for resisting FSA and Treasury demands for further compliance is confidentiality.