Parliamentary Privilege allows OGC to win Appeal against having to disclose Gateway Reviews on ID Cards scheme
Today's High Court Judgment regarding our FOIA request, made over 3 years and 4 months ago is totally unacceptable:
Bad news for Transparency, Open Government,and Freedom of Information - the OGC has won their appeal in the High Court against the Information Tribunal, over the disclosure of the early Gateway Reviews of the Home Office's Identity Cards Programme.Having decided that Parliamentary Privilege was engaged, because the Information Tribunal had made a reference to a House of Commons Select Committee Report, referring to the desirability of publishing OGC Gateway Reviews, Mr. Justice Stanley Burnton then actually rejected all the other OGC grounds for appeal.
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It is utterly despicable that Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689, which is supposed to protect freedom of speech in Parliament, has, instead, been abused to suppress the disclosure of the early Office of Government Commerce Gateway Reviews of Home Office Identity Cards Programme, requested under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
What use is the whole system of Parliamentary Select Committees, if their publicly published Reports cannot be made use of in this way ? They might as well all be scrapped.
The politicians and civil servants are making fools of themselves over this whole national centralised biometric database scheme, and in their wasteful attempts to keep their failings secret, by delaying and denying Freedom of Information rights.
Comments
Do you have leave to take it to the House of Lords? How much do we have to raise?
Posted by: Yokel | April 12, 2008 1:32 PM
@ Yokel - The High Court has basically told the Information Tribunal to hear the case again, ideally, but not necessarily, with a different panel of people sitting on the Tribunal.
The Information Commissioner's Office and the Information Tribunal and the Office of Government Commerce and the Treasury Solicitor and the Attorney General and the Speaker of the House of Commons and the High Court are all being paid from the public purse - it may be worth another FOIA request asking the OGC to to reveal how much this case has cost them in legal advice and fees so far.
If the Information Tribunal is not being manipulated politically behind the scenes, then they could, in theory hold a new hearing within a few weeks, after all, the actual Freedom of Information Act aspects of the case have been gone into in exhaustive detail.
They could choose to save public money and not bother with another full 4 day hearing, and decide the case "on paper".
If the new Information Tribunal does not mention the Parliamentary Select Committee report again, then there is nothing in the High Court judgment which would support the OGC's desperate pleadings - the Judge rejected most of them, or decided that these were a matter for the Information Tribunal, even if he did not agree with their ruling.
The danger is that this case will be deliberately delayed for as long as possible i.e. until after the next General Election.
Posted by: wtwu | April 12, 2008 1:59 PM
Current biometric authentication requires a comparison between a registered or enrolled biometric sample (Invasive information) against a newly captured biometric sample
- Current systems required databases keeping biometric samples – Single source is not applicable (and vice versa)
- Stored biometrics leads to erosion of personal privacy and regulations
YES we need to protect ourselves and our families against:
- Identity fraud - YES
- Crime - YES
- Illegal immigration - YES
- Terrorism - YES
However we must not allow:
- Prove our identity from intrinsic databases - Under no circumstances
- Collect our Biometrics - Under no circumstances
- Spread or risk our intrinsic information - Under no circumstances
- Trust the authorities to keep any unchangeable data - Under no circumstances
The governments need to adopt a secure and efficient authentication solution that:
- Does not require infrastructure (work offline) like an image on a mirror (reflect a subject only when he stands in front of it). No log, No records, No traces.
- No need for proprietary scanners/readers – No Smart Chip, No RFID, No Biometrics on cards
- No need for central databases, No storage, No templates
- 100% Privacy friendly – Non unique and must be Traceless
- Letting the subject to cancel/change his own biometrics information by himself at any time in any circumstances and anywhere on the globe
- Can be spread anywhere (no unique Information)
- Reliable, anonymously, non-unique, irreversible, accurate, high entropy
- Able to authenticated anywhere across the globe! even in the middle of the desert or high seas - without communication and without hand-over any intrinsic information
Posted by: Michael (Micha) Shafir | April 13, 2008 8:50 AM