The Guardian reports on the Treasury Select Committee’s recommendation that, after 2011, census data should come from government databases rather than manual form-filling. While on the face of it it may seem a sensible, time-saving proposal, this raises many questions - both about technical and feasibility aspects, and surrounding civil liberties and data protection. Regardless of whether it’s technically possible, many questions must be satisfactorily answered before this should ever be considered: Can the government really maintain the accuracy of the data? How should Intellectual Property (IP) issues be solved? What are the privacy issues of outsourcing all or part of the process? And where will sensitive information such as religious beliefs (and potentially sexual orientation) be drawn from and held?

Posted Thursday, June 5th, 2008 @ 12:52 am
Filed in community and social, human rights, politics, science and tech

Permalink URL | Trackback URL | Comments on this post

Share post on
del.icio.us | Facebook | Reddit | Twitter
StumbleUpon | Ma.gnolia | Digg

Further reading

These posts may be related to the one above:

1. EU search privacy
2. OS opens up a little
3. Data security lapses