ID cards and personal data sharing
As the Defence Secretary, Des Browne, prepares to make a statement in parliament about the loss of an MoD laptop with some 600,000 sets of personal details on the disk, it's salutary to reflect on another comment in the MECAS radio documentary I mentioned in my previous post. In the Lebanese civil war of the 70s, one contributor noted, there were ethno-religious killings on the basis of people's ID cards... which included data as to the holder's religion.
Yes, you may say, but the UK ID card will not hold such data, and we're not having a civil war. True - but this is 30 years on. It's not a matter of whether the data is on the card itself, but whether the data on the card can be used to index (and therefore search for) those details in other linked or shared repositories. Then it becomes a question of how effective the controls are on the sharing and exchange of sensitive personal attributes. And civil war or not, it would be optimistic to assume that the different religious affiliations of UK residents are of interest to nobody of evil intent.
On Radio 4 this morning, the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, expressed the need for a broad and deep cultural change in the handling of personal information in the public sector 'before we even get to considerations such as whether the data is encrypted'. I think he suggests a very valid perspective: that the technological considerations are superfluous if the cultural and policy aspects are not effectively addressed.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 11:40 AM GMT+00:00
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MECAS programme still online
Just a quick post to note that the Radio 4 programme about MECAS is still online for a few more days. In my previous post I expressed some curiosity as to how Kim Philby's tangential involvement would be portrayed. Michael Binyon of the Times put it, I think, very aptly when he observed that actually, the high-profile spy stories normally associated with MECAS are all to do with people spying on Britain rather than for it...
Other than that - the programme did stir a lot of memories. Many of the contributors noted the extraordinary friendliness of the villagers towards the college and its students, and as a small child that was certainly my experience. I remember going out on my own, even at the age of (presumably) not more than four, and the two principal safety concerns were: the risk of scorpions and snakes, and the risk of being over-fed by solicitous Lebanese villagers. I remember going with a couple of villagers from further up the hill, to pick snober (pine nuts) straight off the tree.
It's also noted that Shemlan was a mixed community in terms of religion, with Muslims, Druze, Maronite Christians and so on. One thing I remember being told later was that the woman who provided the service of 'laying out' anyone who had died did so regardless of the faith of the deceased. In a small village community, that's a pretty pragmatic arrangement.
I know there's a natural tendency to view one's own childhood with rose-tinted hindsight, but I suppose my own positive memories are all the more poignant because of much of what has happened to Lebanon since then.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 11:24 AM GMT+00:00
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