Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk

When will the Labour politicians and civil service mandarins who draught and approve very complicated Acts of Parliament and Secondary Legislation red tape Regulations, get some basic training in the well known Principles of Data Protection under Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 1998 ?

For example:

The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (Barred List Prescribed Information) Regulations 2008

Other information that the IBB must keep in respect of an individual included in a barred list
[...]

4) (d) relevant police information provided to the IBB but which the IBB must not take account of for the purpose of deciding whether or not the individual should be barred, in accordance with paragraph 19(5) and (6) to Schedule 3 of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (information which the chief officer of a relevant police force thinks that it would not be in the interests of the prevention or detection of crime to disclose to the individual);

Will, for example, sensitive,possibly life threatening data on Police or Intelligence agency Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Confidential Informants), or people in witness protection schemes, some of whom may very well have criminal records for violent or serious crimes be unnecessarily put at risk by being copied and retained to the Independent Barring Board data systems, even though the IBB is not allowed by law to actually make use of such data ?

Surely such information should remain solely on the secure(?) Police intelligence systems and should never be copied to the less secure Independent Barring Boards national database systems in the first place ?

The Independent Barring Boards and the Independent Safeguarding Authority quango, seem set to hold data on around 8 million mostly innocent people, not just those who might work with children, but also vulnerable adults and people in positions of trust.

Given their plans for "continuous monitoring" and for web based access to such barring list data, there seems to be plenty of scope for future data privacy and security disasters.