Child surveillance
There’s a new report out from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) discussing government policies about retaining and collating data about children. Entitled Children’s Databases: Safety and Privacy, the report was commissions by the UK Government’s Information Commissioner’s Office. They are concerned that efforts to protect children by building large databases of information could backfire and actually divert resources away from front-line services that directly protect endangered children, and also sideline parents by removing responsibility from local teachers, doctors and social workers to a centralised system.
The Register writes:
The government hopes that sharing information on children will improve child welfare in the UK and reduce the incidence of serious child abuse such as in the Climbiι case. But the report’s authors argue that it means child protection will receive less attention.
They also conclude that the systems will intrude so much into privacy and family life that they will violate data protection law and human rights law…
The government hopes that sharing information from health, education, social care and youth justice systems will enable it to predict which children will become criminals. But predictions can be highly fallible, and labelling children can stigmatise them…
Dr Eileen Munro of the London School of Economics said: “When dealing with child abuse, we do need to override privacy. But the new policy extends this level of intrusion into families that are not even suspected of abusing their children, and to all concerns about children’s development…”
Professor Douwe Korff of London Metropolitan University added: “The proposed surveillance system is contrary to the basic principles of data protection and human rights law. It replaces professional discretion (in both meanings of the word) with computerised assessments of human behaviour that are inherently fallible…”
Assistant information commissioner Jonathan Bamford said: “Just because technology means that things can be done with personal information, it does not always follow that they should be done.”
pax et bonum
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