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Safety fears over new register
of all children
Francis Elliott
London
Times
Monday Aug 27, 2007
Senior social workers have given warning of the dangers posed
by a new government register that will store the details of every
child in England from next year.
They fear that the database, containing the address, medical
and school details of all under-18s, could be used to harm the
children whom it is intended to protect.
The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ACDS)
has written to officials outlining its “significant”
concerns about the new system, called ContactPoint, The Times
has learnt. Confusion over who is responsible for vetting users
and policing the system “may allow a situation where an
abuser could be able to access ContactPoint for illegitimate purposes
with limited fear of any repercussions”, Richard Stiff,
the chairman of the ADCS Information Systems and Technology Policy
Committee, said.
The security fears are fuelled further by the admission that
information about the children of celebrities and politicians
is likely to be excluded from the system.
(Article continues below)
The database, which goes live next year, is to contain details
of every one of the 11 million children in the country, listing
their name, address and gender, as well as contact details for
their GP, school and parents and other carers. The record will
also include contacts with hospital consultants and other professionals,
and could show whether the child has been the subject of a formal
assessment on whether he or she needs extra help.
It will be available to an estimated 330,000 vetted users. Some
of those allowed to check records, such as head teachers, doctors,
youth offender and social workers, are uncontroversial, but critics
have questioned why other potential users, such as fire and rescue
staff, will have access to the database.
ContactPoint was set up after the official report into the death
of Victoria Climbié. Lord Laming concluded that the eight-year-old’s
murder could have been prevented had there been better communication
between professionals.
Regulations governing the system, which is costing £224
million to build and a further £41 million a year to run,
were rushed through parliament without publicity last month, despite
the warning of a House of Lords committee. “The enormous
size of the database and the huge number of probable users inevitably
increase the risks of accidental or inadvertent breaches of security,
and of deliberate misuse of the data (eg, disclosure of an address
with malign intent), which would be likely to bring the whole
scheme into disrepute”, the Lords’ Select Committee
on Merits of Statutory Instruments concluded.
Now local councils have given warning that changes made to the
rules after consultation could leave the system open to abuse.
The Association of Directors of Children’s Services has
written to Christine Goodfellow, the official in charge of the
new database, to register its fears over security.
In addition to its warning over vetting, the body says that ministers
are placing “unreasonable and perhaps undeliverable expectations
on local councils” by asking them to guarantee the accuracy
of data over which they have little control.
Private schools and children’s rights campaigners have
already given warning that the database is open to misuse. “Unless
the system is secure, the result will be that sensitive information
will fall into the hands of potential abusers of children and
traders of information,” a letter signed by the Independent
Schools Council, Privacy International and the Foundation on Information
Policy Research said.
Concerns have been intensified by the admission that, while every
child under 18 in England will have a record, ministers have allowed
some children to be given extra protection. The “shielding”
mechanism will mean that information on the offspring of some
politicians and celebrities could be left off the main database.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families
(DCSF) said that shielding would be available for “children
whose circumstances may mean that they, or others, are at increased
risk of harm”. She added: “These decisions will be
taken on a case-by-case basis and will be based on the level of
threat posed if their information becomes more widely available.”
Children’s rights campaigners and computer security experts
say that this amounts to an acknowledgment that the database will
not be secure. “The Government acknowledges the risks by
instituting these protocols on celebrity and vulnerable children
but all children are potentially vulnerable,” Terri Dowty,
of Action on Rights for Children, said.
Ian Brown, a computer security research fellow at the Oxford
Internet Institute, said that the scale of the database posed
huge risks. “When you have got more than 300,000 people
accessing this database, it’s just very difficult to stop
the sale of information.”
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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