We don't need new powers, we need to talk

NOTE: According to the Open Rights Group the Government has now scrapped the clause in question below which is good but does take the sting out of this post a little...

Before I get into a blog post about why you should care about the potential for data sharing orders let me take a moment to criticise the Information Commissioner's Office's website*.

I was going to start this post with a sentence saying

"in the week that the Information Commissioner's Office seized a database being used to provide covert information on construction workers"

with a link to the news release on the web site. But the news releases only appear as PDF. Is that how we're doing things these days on web 2.0? It's just annoying.

Anyhow in the week where we see a clear demonstration of how data can be misused, a Bill is before Parliament seeking to amend the Data Protection Act. The amendment (if carried) would allow the Government to make data provided for one purpose available for a different purpose. It is Section 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill in case you're interested (you should be interested).

One of the key safeguards of the Data Protection Act is to ensure that data provided for one purpose can only be used for that purpose. So if I hand the government a load of personal data to, for example, enable the state to calculate how much housing benefit I should receive they can use it only for housing benefit related activities.

If they suddenly decide that there is a link between benefit payments and liver disease and want to use my data to decide if I'm at risk of jaundice: they need to ask me. This could save the NHS money and reduce liver disease. It would not hurt me and, anyway, I already handed my data over to the state.

But I am capricious. I could say no. That would be tough for public policy and the NHS budget but good for, well, liberty and freedom.

The Government seems to have had enough of this. They want to be given the right to share data in order to fulfill a public policy objective. There would be safeguards but they would fall well short of the current safeguard (which is asking me).

It's a bad idea. The government should not confuse administrative convenience with the legitimate exercise of power. Parliament should throw it out and you should write to your MP to tell them so. Why not use the www.writetothem.com website: one of the many excellent www.mysociety.org projects.

It doesn't have to be that way. There is a process called public relations which enables organisations to hold constructive dialogues with groups and individuals. Gaining consent shouldn't be seen as an administrative inconvenience, it should be embraced as an opportunity for dialogue with the people that the government serves.

Easy though it is to forget: this is a democracy, an odd democracy, but a democracy none the less. The consent of the governed is necessary for the government to govern. It is our data. If a Secretary of State has a plan for improving the lot of the citizenry then they should tell us, persuade us, convince us. If they can't do that the solution is to think again not to take the data anyway.

You can believe that people are too stupid to be consulted or you can believe that they are not. I choose to believe that people are not stupid and I would rather that my government felt the same way.

*One might expect that this quango would be called the Office of the Information Commissioner. We could then refer to its website as "The Office of the Information Commissioner's web site". Presumably the odd name is to avoid the acronym OIC. It does lead to some strange syntax "The Information Commissioner's Office's website" is a bit weird. This from a civil service which has a department of Communities and Local Government which it refuses to refer to as the Department of Communities and Local Government to stop people refering to it as DClog.