Child data register 'won't work'

Contactpoint viewed with horror by privacy experts and MPs

Dinah Greek, Computeract!ve 04 Sep 2007

A new computer database will put children at risk, is a waste of money and will further erode parental rights, according to some MPs and privacy experts.

The concerns surround Contactpoint, a new computer register designed to help youngsters with problems, which goes live next year.

A report, Children’s Databases – Safety and Privacy, by the Foundation for Information Policy Research for the Information Commissioner, warned that the register, which will contain the details of all the children in the UK, is another step towards creating a surveillance society. A House of Lords Select Committee has also voiced its reservations in is report on Contactpoint.

Richard Clayton, one of the report's authors and a security expert at Cambridge University, was scathing about the new register. He said: "We looked at children's databases in general and are very concerned about this particular system. The Government is wasting money which could be better used for front line services and the way it bypasses parental consent is outrageous and illegal."

Clayton also warned that rather than help children it could do the complete opposite. "The idea that you can predict which children could turn out to be criminals is nonsense. Predictions can be highly fallible, and labelling children can stigmatise them," he said.

The report warned children picked out by the computer as 'bad' may find that their teachers have lower expectations, while the police may be more likely to treat them as suspects rather than witnesses.

Terri Dowerty, a representative for Action on Rights for Children, pointed out the database could become oversaturated with names and details of children. Mistakes could easily be made; children at risk could fall through the net but overzealousness could label those with no problems as victims of child abuse.

Dowerty also raised the issue of IT security and the fact data could be accessed by people without authorisation. She said: “Anyone with a basic knowledge of IT will know that it is impossible to keep a database safe and away from abuse, especially when there are a proposed 300,000 staff being given access to it."

Contactpoint will contain details about every one of the 11 million children in the country. It will list names, addresses and gender and give links and contact details to for schools, GPs, parents and other carers, such as hospital consultants and other professionals. Because it is designed to flag up children at risk, it will also show if the child has been the subject of a formal assessment on whether they need extra help.

The databse will be available to an estimated 330,000 vetted users. Some of those allowed to check records, such as headteachers, 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.

In a memorandum to the House of Lords Select Committee on Merits of Statutory Instruments, Dowerty argued that two-factor authentication does not protect the system from all outside attack, particularly as Contactpoint will be accessed via internet protocols. She pointed out that neither does it prevent careless disclosure or the unauthorised sharing of login information.

"Last year The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust reported a 'wholesale sharing and passing on of system log-in identifications and passwords', recording 70,000 cases of inappropriate access to systems, including medical records, in one month," Dowerty said.

She told Computeractive the Government had been forced to acknowledge that it would not be 100 per cent safe.

The Lords Select Committee, in its report on Contactpoint, also has reservations. It said the Government had not conclusively demonstrated that a universal database was a "proportionate response to the problem being addressed " and was at risk of inadvertent or deliberate misuse.

There are also concern about how the data may be used in future and if it will be linked to or form part of other databases such as the NHS spine or a national database.

"Who is to say what some bright young civil servant has in mind for this data for 20 years down the line," said Clayton.

Conservative Shadow Children’s Minister Maria Miller said: “The Government’s nanny-state approach will do nothing to safeguard the children most at risk. The state should be concentrating on the most vulnerable children who are on child protection registers, in care or in homes with a record of domestic violence."

However, John Coughlan, joint president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ACDS) said reports that it was concerned about the project were misleading.

"We are fully supportive of the aims Contactpoint is designed to deliver, although there are technical and governance issues still to be addressed," he told us.

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