It's so hard to keep a handle on data these days. Once it gets into the
public domain, the scale on which information can be copied,
disseminated, syndicated, blogged about and re-published still
surprises me. And we tend to ignore the fact that this increasingly
creates a permanent record - out of things which previously would
either have been ephemeral or, after a certain period, could only be
retrieved with effort and persistence.
As soemthing like a news story spreads through multiple channels, it
comes under the 'control' of hugely diverse data custodians, very few
of whom will share any consistent policy regarding its confidentiality
or the privacy of those mentioned. We just take it for granted that
'public domain is public domain'.
That inconsistency of data custody policy can have significant
consequences, particularly where there is a Freedom of Information
requirement which argues for publication to some degree. For instance,
a local authority's social services department might hold a copy of a
report of one child bullying another at school. They might be obliged
to release the report to the parents of the bullied child, but at the
same time withhold the name and address of the bully, for fear of
direct reprisal. But if somehow the whole report gets into the public
domain, it'sall but impossible to get the toothpaste back into the tube.
Something akin to this seems to have happened up in Aberdeen, where a
primary school head teacher has been found guilty of assaulting two
pupils (and not guilty on 8 other charges). Sentence has been deferred, and according to the BBC site, the name of the school is being withheld for legal reasons. Which is interesting, because the Scotsman newspaper's site seems to be under no such inhibition.
At the risk of shedding crocodile tears over spilt milk... it's no good
bolting the stable door once the red herring's out of the bag. That
would just be so much water under the bridge. If they hadn't burned
their bridges.
Or something.
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POSIWID
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