ARCH RIGHTS

We Have Moved

2006-12-20T17:42:00.000Z

This is officially "The old ARCH blog"

You will now find us at
http://archrights.wordpress.com/

please update any your links accordingly.

All items will be left here as long as possible, but no new content will be added.

See you on the new version:-)

Beta Blogger stops play

2006-12-19T17:48:00.000Z

Hi all
Owing to beta blogger not allowing posts from multiple IP addresses, we are now in the process of moving home, as we can't live with this.

We'll be advising people of our new address when we're unpacked either via email, web or on this blog.

In the meantime, have a happy Christmas.

Love and peace

Action on Rights for Children

Information-Sharing gone mad

2006-12-19T09:58:00.000Z

Not strictly on topic for children, but our jaws are on the floor.

Take a look at the Digital Switchover Bill (short and easy to read) which would empower the government to disclose benefits information to the BBC (or a nominee) in order to identify anyone who needs 'help' in switching over to digital TV... Wha?

Every child matters?

2006-12-19T09:10:00.000Z

Almost missed this (thanks, Mel!):

Nurseries will be able to operate for up to 10 years without being inspected under government plans to cut red tape and reduce costs.The Department for Education is ready to waive the requirement for creches or other establishments looking after children of up to six or seven to be inspected before being put on the national Childcare Register. Checks by Ofsted are also to be cut back. Experts said that nurseries would be able to register by simply filling out a form.
...Confirmation of the changes came just months after an Ofsted report said that while most childcare facilities were meeting required standards, at least 10,000 children had been rescued from inadequate or potentially dangerous childcare by inspections last year. More than 1,000 nurseries or childminders had fallen below the minimum standard.

Those DNA figures

2006-12-18T09:40:00.000Z

I'd guess that everyone knows by now that the police take DNA samples on arrest, and these are kept on the National DNA Database regardless of whether a suspect turns out to be purer than the driven snow.

Spyblog has more on yesterday's Sunday Times report that more than a third of those on NDNAD don't have a criminal record or caution - that's 1.2 million, and a lot more than the government has previously admitted. The new figures have been gleaned from a series of written answers to parliamentary questions that have appeared over the past week or so.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting on the questions tabled by Grant Shapps a month ago on the number of children on NDNAD who have never been charged or were acquitted: so far, Grant Shapps has yet to receive an answer.

The Home Office's silence is making us increasingly suspicious that the figure of 25,000 bandied around for children who are entirely innocent will prove to be a great deal higher - if we ever get an answer, that is.

How to spend £25K

2006-12-16T21:13:00.000Z

Apparently a school in Hartlepool has just spent £25,000 on a fingerprint scanner to speed up the school dinner queue. Pippa has the full story.

The road to prostitution

2006-12-15T12:40:00.000Z

Rachel and Not Saussure have both waxed eloquent on the subject of decriminalising prostitution, and I thought I’d throw some fact and figures into the debate because it’s so much a children’s issue - and something ARCH has been very involved with in the past.

According to the Home Office consultation document, ‘Paying the Price’,

‘...as many as 70 per cent of those involved in prostitution started out as children or young teenagers’

The overwhelming majority have experienced abuse, and have run away from home or local authority care. A Barnardo's project in Teesside, for instance, found that

‘the average age for women becoming abused through prostitution in Middlesbrough was between 12 and 13 years.’

97% had run away, 86% had been physically abused – 77% of them sexually.

Home Office guidance quite rightly says that:

‘...children and young people must be treated primarily as victims of child abuse and offered support and protection.’

So far so good, but it’s that weasel word ‘primarily’ that causes the problem. Because our age of criminal responsibility is 10, the Street Offences Act (s1) makes it an offence for anyone over the age of 10 to ‘loiter or solicit for the purpose of prostitution’.

Despite huge pressure, the government has resisted every attempt to amend the Act to remove under-18s. The Children’s Society, Barnardo’s and many others have been fighting this particular battle for years, and ARCH has drafted amendments on two occasions – during the passage of both the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the Children Act 2004 – to no avail.

There’s a fuller version of events in our archives and you may notice that it was Beverley Hughes, now the Minister for Children, who resisted our amendment tabled by Hilton Dawson MP in 2003, just after David Blunkett had wrongly assured parliament that the Sexual Offences Act would remove children 'from any criminal liability whatever'.

We had charitably assumed that David Blunkett made a simple error in his reply, but it became clear that this wasn’t the case. The following year, when the Home Office produced ‘Paying the Price’ it said:

'while greater emphasis is rightly placed on protection and support, we believe there are compelling arguments for retaining this offence in respect of those under 18 to underline the message that prostitution involving children and young people is wholly unacceptable.'

I don't know whose arguments proved so 'compelling', because there was in fact a barrage of protest from those working with child prostitutes, but it had no effect. In January of this year, the Home Office's new prostitution strategy said:

'Guidance will remain firmly against the use of the criminal law in respect of children involved in prostitution save in the most exceptional circumstances – as a ‘last resort’ where services fail to engage with young people and they return repeatedly to the streets.'

In other words, any child or young person involved in prostitution will be prosecuted if services fail to help them.

If I sound rather cool in reporting all this, it’s because, here at ARCH, we’ve already burned out with fury. It’s ridiculous to imagine that retaining child prostitution as a criminal offence can possibly encourage children to look for help. Rather, it gives anyone who is pimping a 13-year-old another stick to beat them with: “if you tell anyone, you’ll be prosecuted”. As for the Home Office logic of leaving children open to prosecution in order to express disapproval of child abuse, words fail us.

Instead of decriminalising children, the government’s prostitution strategy recommends using the children’s Information Sharing Index and related Common Assessment Framework to identify those ‘at risk’ (that maligned phrase again) of entering prostitution. What’s the point? Everyone already knows that abuse, being in care and running away are risk factors. It hardly needs a ‘well, duh’ assessment!

I’ll shut up now before I start using triple exclamation marks and frothing at the mouth… time to find my tablets and have a lie-down.

Strange company

2006-12-14T18:19:00.000Z

While we're always pleased to find that people read this blog, we're astonished to find the CIA amongst our visitors. What word or phrase have we used during the past week that has triggered such august attention? Could it be 'leek' or 'plughole'? 'Human rights' perhaps...? If anyone knows something we don't, we'd be grateful for the heads-up.

Huh?

2006-12-14T09:44:00.000Z

If you employed a builder over a period of years, during which time your house deteriorated so badly that it had to be demolished, would you invite said builder to undertake the reconstruction?

According to Kable:

The organisation which will replace the Child Support Agency (CSA) will continue with the existing contract.
EDS, the current IT provider for the CSA, will stay in the role under the present contract until 2010. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) confirmed the position as it announced that the CSA will be replaced with the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC) as a non departmental public body.

The DWP went on to provide some technical detail:

"We envisage a new system will be built to incorporate enforcement. We will probably use bits of the old system and create new bits for the new system and merge them together to create the new simpler system."

How very reassuring - and good to see government so in tune with the recycling zeitgeist.

The IT system has been blamed for severe problems at the CSA and to date has cost around £539m to roll out.

Privacy going cheap

2006-12-13T16:40:00.000Z

It's good to see that some notice is being taken of the Information Commissioner's May 2006 Report 'What Price Privacy' on the brisk trade in confidential data - plenty of it obtained from government databases. Most of it is bought by journalists, but in some cases local authorities themselves are using these thoroughly dubious means of gathering information.

Blogzilla's Ian Brown mentioned this at our LSE conference on children's databases in June, and showed a horrifying slide of the 'going rate' paid by private investigators - see slide 7 of his presentation (pdf) (We wonder what price tag will be placed on information from the children's Information Sharing Index? Or any of the other children's databases?)

Incidentally, while you're looking at Ian's slides, you might also want to check out slide 6, which details the Evaluation Assurance Level - in other words the security - of government databases. There is nothing in the UK's list above Level 4+ which provides a 'moderate to high level of independently assured security'.

Small wonder the government thinks it necessary to exclude 'celebrity children' from the IS Index.

DNA again

2006-12-13T12:57:00.000Z

I see that Longrider has saved us the trouble of replying to Commander Dave Johnston's wizard wheeze of taking babies' DNA at birth. Couldn't have put it better.

It reminds me to mention that we're holding a workshop with the Information Systems department at LSE next week on police retention of children's DNA. We still have 4 places left - more information here.

DNA fob-off

2006-12-13T12:11:00.000Z

Reassuring to see that the exponential growth of profiles on the National DNA Database is being monitored so carefully:

Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people who have been arrested but not charged or cautioned for any offence have their DNA profile stored on the National DNA Database; and what proportion of these people are from each ethnic minority background. [101190]
Joan Ryan [holding answer 23 November 2006]: Data on whether persons with a profile on the National DNA Database (NDNAD) have been charged or cautioned for an offence is not held on the NDNAD, but is held on the Police National Computer (PNC). The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost by cross-searching approximately three million records retained for such persons on the PNC.

Wonder horses

2006-12-13T11:30:00.000Z

Oh good grief:

Leading figures from the Higher Education, Business and Education sectors were yesterday announced by the Department of Education & Skills as Diploma Champions for the new Diplomas and wider 14 -19 Reform Programme.

Do they get a shiny gold badge, or a Special Hat, perhaps?

Rather than indulging a penchant for puerile language, it would be more to the point if the government had listened to educationalists and found the courage to implement the Tomlinson Report two years ago, rather than worrying about middle England's perceived attachment to the 'gold standard' of GCSEs and A Levels (and as one of ARCH's younger members said at the time: 'wasn't the gold standard abandoned because it was inflexible?')

Tomlinson proposed one single diploma that eliminated the divide between academic and vocational qualifications, and allowed young people to select the elements that actually interested them. Physics, french and plumbing? Why ever not?

Instead, though, we are to have a series of 16 single-subject diplomas. It seems that fears that the government might 'cherry-pick' the Tomlinson Report, expressed by Barry Sheerman, Chair of the Education and Skills Select Committee, have been realised.

Dear Tory MP...

2006-12-13T10:57:00.000Z

Carlotta has composed an excellent letter on children's databases and 'Every Child Matters':

It rather looks as if yet again, the lovely warm glow that emanates from a New Labour initiative, this time the ECM, will reveal itself to be yet another chimera. Families in dire need will continue to suffer and may indeed find that their situation worsens, since social workers will be even more hard-pressed to sort out those who are at risk from those who could get by, and will be even more out of pocket for having to spread resources about so much more.

Insider dealings

2006-12-13T10:49:00.000Z

Over on B2fxxx, comment on the conviction for child pornography offences of someone employed by the Home Office to set up VISOR (Violent and Sexual Offenders Register)

Diversionary tactics

2006-12-11T17:04:00.000Z

The government has announced plans for a name'n'shame website for parents who don't pay maintenance, a tactic that sounds perilously close to the age-old defence of blustering one's way out of awkward questions.

Don't get us wrong: we have scant sympathy for anyone who uses hindsight as a basis for deciding that they don't want children and will therefore wash their hands of responsibility, but we're equally appalled that the government uses tabloid headlines and shouts of "look over there!" to dodge what should be a volley of criticism for the great IT disaster that is the CSA.

The system was introduced in 1993, and as the DWP's permanent secretary, Leigh Lewis, told the public accounts committee a couple of months ago:

"It started with a design that was too complex, which was introduced too quickly, with IT which was never until recently effective, and with too many changes of course and direction"

Attempts were made to reform the system in 2003, and went ahead - despite an official audit that found 14 critical defects with the new IT system. Needless to say, the reforms were useless:

"The task was more complex and difficult than anyone realised - it was probably at the edge of being undoable"

And that's the real problem with government IT projects: a dangerous combination of hubris, impatience and fantasy about the capabilities of IT. Just take a look at this review from Computer Weekly to get an idea of the scale of the problem.

Undaunted, the government proposes to press ahead with its system of interlinked databases containing the details of every child in England. Not only the 'basic details' that will go on the Information-Sharing Index, but the entire record of a child's interactions with social services (the Integrated Children's System) and the results of a comprehensive personal profiling process (the eCAF database).

In an astonishing display of either ignorance or arrogance - it's hard to say which - the government also proposes to push through the regulations that will allow the creation of the Information Sharing Index before consultation on the rules that will govern the security of the database has even finished - in other words, parliament will be asked to sign yet another blank cheque, trusting that the government will get it right. Quite honestly, the omens aren't good.

Publish and be damned

2006-12-10T10:54:00.000Z

Today's Independent says that a DfES report on racism within the education system has been "quietly shelved". The as-yet-unpublished report points out that Black pupils are three times more likely to be excluded than white, and five times less likely to be on the official register of gifted and talented students:

Although couched in careful Whitehall language, it makes for uncomfortable reading. "The exclusions gap is caused by largely unwitting, but systematic, racial discrimination in the application of disciplinary and exclusions policies," concludes the report by Peter Wanless, the director of school performance and reform at the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), and two other officials.

The government is reportedly anxious not to repeat the MacPherson Report experience, when the Metropolitan Police service was branded 'insitutionally racist'. (Where has 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' disappeared to all of a sudden?)

The comments of head-teachers' associations are particularly enlightening.

Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, said he believed the findings of the report were spurious. " Pupils will be disciplined for bad behaviour if they exhibit bad behaviour," he said. "In my experience as a head teacher my colleagues have always shown absolute integrity in how all young people are treated."

In other words: don't be silly, there isn't a problem. Far worse, though, is this:

John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, which represents secondary school heads, rejected suggestions of institutional racism: "I think schools are very racially tolerant places in comparison with what can happen in society outside their gates."
On the question of schools' failure to identify as many gifted and talented black children, Dr Dunford said: "So many of these children have very few educational advantages at home." He added that, in many cases, their parents took less interest in education than parents in Indian and Chinese communities.

Just read that second paragraph again - it beggars belief!

Not playing the game

2006-12-09T13:10:00.000Z

In 2001, Labour made an election promise to ringfence £200m of New Opportunities Fund money to improve children's play facilities. Frank Dobson was duly detailed to conduct a survey and make recommendations about how the money should be spent, and his report: 'getting serious about play' appeared in January 2004.

It painted a dismal picture of 'neglected' play projects and 'run down and degraded' public spaces, and recommended that the £200m should be used to: 'open up thousands of high quality play opportunities', concentrating on the most deprived areas. It also recommended that:

NOF should use an allocation process for distributing most of the funding, rather than a bidding process. This is needed to ensure that the funding reaches the areas where the need is greatest, not just those who are best placed to make an application.

So far, so good.

A long silence followed until, in November 2004, it became apparent that the terms 'ringfence' and '£200m' were in fact rather loose. The ringfencing was removed and the figure was reduced to £124m, for which local authorities and play projects would have to bid individually.

We now learn that:

The Big Lottery Fund has not given any money out to help local authorities develop their play strategies...The news follows the announcement of the fund's £124m Children's Play Programme last spring.
The first group of local authorities applied for cash in July and were expecting to hear whether their applications had been successful within three months. However, not one of the 19 submissions by local authorities has met the fund's criteria.

We can't help wondering if a lottery-funded project to increase local authority uptake of ASBOs would have run into quite so many delays and difficulties.

The ICS debacle

2006-12-09T13:01:00.000Z

Dave Hill has more to say on the Integrated Children's System that we blogged about on Wednesday.

Justco

2006-12-08T18:13:00.000Z

Just found a topical verbal reasoning game on BBC Bitesize. Set in the future, when the world is run by a corporation called Justco, 'non-adults' are only allowed out if they buy a permit, skateboards must be licensed, young people must not go within 10 metres of any 2 other 'non-adults', and the only fast food they can buy is at 'Leek-u-like' or 'Veggie Variations'.

You've got to try it to get the full effect.

Technology seeks market

2006-12-07T00:43:00.000Z

Not sure how you write a heavy sigh:

Paranoid parents can now track their children even if the little dears give the nanny the slip or escape from the loving embrace of the Chelsea tractor. i-Kids is a new handset being launched by Mobiles2Go, along with a service specifically aimed at providing parents with the ability to track their children on demand using an in-built GPS receiver.

£89.1m down the plughole

2006-12-06T11:45:00.000Z

We seem to be in a facts and figures mood here at ARCH today. (Perhaps we should put it to good use and get on with the companies house return? eeurghh)

The disastrous Connexions Card scheme for young people (dreamed up by government, run by Capita) was finally scrapped earlier this year when it became apparent that take-up of this 'incentive' scheme for learning was a mere 3.7%.

Yesterday's PWAs included the following:

Sarah Teather: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate he has made of the total lifetime contract cost of the Connexions scheme contract with Capita. [107146]
Mr. Dhanda: It is estimated that the total lifetime contract costs of the Connexions Card scheme will be £89.1 million (of this £83.1 million relates to payments to Capita Business Services Ltd.)

Or to put it another way, it has cost about the same as the wages bill for 500 social workers or teachers over the same 5-year period.

Cracks in the children's agenda

2006-12-06T10:00:00.000Z

The Integrated Children's System (ICS) - a parallel database to the Information-Sharing Index - has problems before it has even properly begun:

Local authorities will miss en masse the Government's deadline for launching a computer record of children in contact with social services.
Jeanette Pugh, director of the Department for Education and Skills' safeguarding group, made the admission in a letter sent to children's services directors last month.
Despite confirming that the 1 January deadline for implementing the Integrated Children's System remained in place, she conceded that very few local authorities would achieve this.

It should be remembered that local authorities have to fund this system themselves, and also the third member of the trio of 'Every Child Matters' databases - the electronic Common Assessment Framework (eCAF) system.

When the government happily chirrups that they only need to spend £224m, they are referring solely to the Information-Sharing Index. The (substantial) cost of the other two databases come from local authority budgets, and is thus not included in government cost estimates. True, they are making grants available to local authorities towards the cost of ICS and eCAF, but they have already been warned that these fall far short of requirements. Local authorities are expected to perform the feat of implementing the government's policies without putting up council tax, and at a time when they are struggling to fund essential services.

In another example of government dependency on other peoples' pockets to finance their 'flagship' policies, the CE of the National Day Nurseries Association warns that:

...private and voluntary day nurseries supported the principle behind the free early years entitlement but said "they worry an extension will mean further impact upon their already fragile financial position".
Earlier this year, the association warned that private and voluntary nurseries face bankruptcy unless the Government ploughs more cash into the free entitlement or allows them to charge parents a top-up fee.

It's so easy to be grand with someone else's money.

Human Rights Awards

2006-12-05T11:09:00.000Z

Oooh! ARCH has been short-listed for a Human Rights Award!

Gawd bless the judiciary

2006-12-04T23:42:00.000Z

Not Saussure has quoted from a High Court judgment on the appeal of a young man charged under the Criminal Justice Act. The following passage, where the court has been grappling with the results of yet another bout of legislative diarrhoea, is wonderful - try reading it aloud in the voice of Peter Cook's 'Secret Policeman's Ball' judge summing up in the Thorpe trial:

So, yet again, the courts are faced with a sample of the deeply confusing provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and the satellite Statutory Instruments to which it is giving stuttering birth. The most inviting course for this Court to follow, would be for its members, having shaken their heads in despair to hold up their hands and say: "the Holy Grail of rational interpretation is impossible to find". But it is not for us to desert our judicial duty, however lamentably others have legislated. But, we find little comfort or assistance in the historic canons of construction for determining the will of Parliament which were fashioned in a more leisurely age and at a time when elegance and clarity of thought and language were to be found in legislation as a matter of course rather than exception. In our judgment, as sensible an approach as can be achieved to the part of this legislation presently under consideration is as follows.

Virtual Strip Search

2006-12-03T11:25:00.000Z

ARCHy types will know that we've had past dealings with the Metropolitan Police and the DfT about the use of 'virtual strip-search' scanners on children.

A couple of weeks ago, Spyblog reported that Canary Wharf was introducing a new 'see through your clothes' terahertz scanner system, and so we contacted their security to remind them of the law in relation to indecent images of children.

We've had a reply offering us:

"...complete assurance that the system we have is not capable of producing any indecent images of children or indeed adults. The scanning system does not reveal anatomical details. This particular system was, in part, deliberately procured rather than, for example, the backscatter or millimetre wave systems to which you refer because of this feature."

If anyone has more information (and/or images) about this sytem, we'd be grateful for it.

NHS 'opt-out'

2006-12-01T18:33:00.000Z

First we have Polly Toynbee disparaging:

"the fuss over Big Brother CCTV cameras or the fear of better NHS computer records..."

...on the basis that the News of the World has done far worse things, and now:

The Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has written a letter to all GPs and hospital medical directors telling them that if patients try to opt out of the central collection of their medical data, the Secretary of State must be told.

The full story is over on light blue touchpaper. Hmm, there seem to be a lot of veiled threats in the air today.

Update 2.12.06: More in the Guardian 'GPs angered by call to reveal names of NHS database rebels'

Stop the regulations or the dog gets it!

2006-12-01T18:04:00.000Z

Apparently the Bishop of Rochester and various other members of the clergy have been issuing dire threats that projects will be closed and "It will be the poor and disadvantaged who will be the losers" if churches have to comply with regulations to prevent discrimination against gay people. Bookdrunk has more on this Daily Mail spectacular.

(Whatever happened, by the way, to the CofE's guidance, 'Some Issues in Human Sexuality', which encouraged churchgoers to consider whether an "unhealthy" obsession with sex prevented them from focussing on "...commercial greed, poverty and inequalities of wealth"?)

As one of the commenters on the Daily Mail article says: "I feel angst for all the gay teenagers whose parents are committed Christians knowing that equality in relationships will be denied them. Equality IS Love."

Amen.

Children's data is safe with us

2006-12-01T09:55:00.000Z

Dizzy heard David Miliband on the radio, joining in the general scepticism about government IT competence. Shame he didn't voice his doubts earlier!

While I'm on the subject of children's databases, Ross Anderson was interviewed for Outlaw's podcast about the Information Sharing Index. Listen in here.

The toughest job?

2006-11-30T11:53:00.000Z

Just seen this over on Spiked:

Parents are continually told how difficult parenting is – ‘the toughest thing anyone faces in their personal life’, says Blair – and how likely they are to mess up if they [don't?] seek expert advice. It makes you wonder how parents have managed through the ages before New Labour and its supernannies came into existence.
The fact is, as well as throwing up all kinds of new challenges, parenting can be immensely enjoyable and fulfilling.

Quite. As for parenthood being 'the toughest thing etc', well, staying with the same partner for decades is pretty tough at times, too. So is maintaining a close friendship through thick and thin. The truth is that worthwhile relationships also involve hard work, and it would be nice to get away from the idea that bringing up children requires some level of arcane, expert knowledge rather than love, respect and conversation.

Cause for concern

2006-11-29T15:08:00.000Z

We've just been looking for the list of concerns on the RYOGENS site which are used to predict whether a child is likely to become an offender. These are derived from the Youth Justice Board's 'ONSET' process. (RYOGENS, by the way, is an acronym for Reducing Youth Offending Generic National Solution)

The link we have seems to have disappeared, but fortunately the Wayback Machine has preserved it. The full list can now be seen here

The idea is that a practitioner registers a 'concern' from this list, and an alert is triggered when the concerns reach a certain level. As we said in the children's database report to the Information Commissioner, all of the pilot authorities had configured their systems to trigger an automatic alert on one concern. Victims of bullying and those who move house frequently, beware.

Unsure start

2006-11-29T14:34:00.000Z

All is not well with government plans to expand Sure Start into children's centres in every area. Last week, Children Now reported:

Government officials have held crisis talks with a leading children's centre provider that is threatening to hand back the keys to 50 centres. Officials from the Department for Education and Skills met with senior figures at the Pre-School Learning Alliance last week in a desperate bid to salvage the situation.
The emergency meeting came after chief executive Steve Alexander told the Children Now Fund conference held last week that "most of our settings are being run at a loss".

This week we're told:

MPs have quizzed children's minister Beverley Hughes about children's centres amid mounting concern about the sustainability of the Government's programme. One member of the Commons' Education and Skills Select Committee suggested children's centres were "ludicrously cheap", while another suggested that they should be required to follow strict Government guidelines.

Children's Databases report

2006-11-29T10:51:00.000Z

Some new coverage of our ICO report on children's databases from the main 'sector' magazines, 'Children Now' and 'Young People Now': here, here and here.

Professional opinion

2006-11-28T16:31:00.000Z

Computer Weekly has just published the results of a poll of senior IT professionals that asked: 'Do you trust the government to protect personal data?'

67% said 'no'.

Credit where due

2006-11-28T16:27:00.000Z

Nice to see some good use of government technology:

The government has invested £40,000 in the National Cot Locator computer programme to show which hospitals in England have cots available at any given time. Some 40 neonatal intensive care units in England will be covered by the system. The system will enable clinicians and nurses to call a central helpline to receive up to date information about the availability of cots. Until now, staff have had to call various hospitals to hunt for a cot - which costs time and potentially lives.

Blogzilla's Parrot

2006-11-27T17:37:00.000Z

Once again repeating Blogzilla:

Children Act regulations workshop
The Department for Education and Skills is currently running a consultation on their draft Children Act regulations. These regulations will give DfES powers to start operating the Information Sharing Index, which will hold a range of data on the UK's young people.

As Assistant Information Commissioner Jonathan Bamford said on 22 November: “There has been a substantial growth in the information held about children and this is something we need to look at carefully. Just because technology means that things can be done with personal information, it does not always follow that they should be done. Public trust and confidence will be lost if there is excessive unwarranted intrusion into family life.”

We are holding a workshop on Tuesday 5 December at UCL to discuss the draft regulations. Participants will include Dr. Ian Brown from UCL's Department of Computer Science, Terri Dowty from Action on Rights for Children, Liberty, the Independent Schools Council and Liz Davies and Prof. Douwe Korff from London Metropolitan University. Brown, Dowty and Korff were co-authors with Ross Anderson, Richard Clayton and Eileen Munro of the FIPR report "Children's databases - safety and privacy" that was recently published by the Information Commissioner's Office.

Please come along if you would like to hear more about the regulations, and to contribute you and your organisation's perspective to the debate. We hope that the afternoon will be particularly invaluable in informing responses to the DfES consultation, which must be submitted by 14 December.

The meeting will be held from 2-4.30pm on Tues 5 December, in room 6.12 of the Malet Place Engineering Building at University College London. (NB this is an updated venue from our intial announcement.) You can find directions at http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/getting_here.html.

Please e-mail I.Brown at cs.ucl.ac.uk to let us know you are coming.

On confusing science with RE

2006-11-27T14:44:00.000Z

It's worth reading Bookdrunk on the subject of teaching creationism in school 'science' lessons.

First they came for the children

2006-11-27T14:02:00.000Z

In our report on children's databases to the Information Commissioner, we said:

A further sanity check is to translate child-welfare claims to an adult context and ask whether they make sense. For example, if a town had a problem on Saturday nights with drunken fighting, then the authorities might reason that fighting is associated with alcohol intake, with living in poor housing and with being in a community where hitting people is a badge of honour.
The logical conclusion would be forcible collection of data on alcohol consumption and its correlation by postcode; obtaining lists of suspects from pub landlords and police; and then a program of alcohol-awareness programs, anger-management classes and so on which all men scoring over a certain level would be required to attend regardless of whether they had ever been in a fight.
Examples like this make it clear that a distinction must be drawn between preventing crime where there is a specific, identified threat, and generally discriminating against groups of people in the name of general prevention.

And then, this morning, the Times says this:

Criminal profilers are drawing up a list of the 100 most dangerous murderers and rapists of the future even before they commit such crimes, The Times has learnt. The highly controversial database will be used by police and other agencies to target suspects before they can carry out a serious offence.

Sheesh, we were only joking! We didn't realise they were already planning the very thing we were holding up as ridiculous example. Perhaps if everyone paid a little more attention to what's happening to children, they might recognise a pilot project when they see it. Local Authorities have been identifying the '50 most likely to offend' amongst children for the last few years. We can safely say that all of the initiatives that are now alarming adults have already used children as crash-test dummies.

Oh! ye'll take the high road...

2006-11-25T11:58:00.000Z

El Reg reports that:

Work has begun on a social care equivalent of the care records guarantee for medical records, paving the way for merging health and social care records. The plans were disclosed as part of a debate at the annual Care Records Development Board meeting in London, yesterday.

The plan to merge records has actually been under discussion for several years. We're particularly fond of the poetic position statement contained in a 2003 document from the Department of Health:

"The relationship between the ESCR and NHS CRS might be described as a journey both parties are setting out on, both broadly know where they are going, but expect incidents en route, do expect to meet eventually, but are not sure either who will get there first or when they will meet up."

Awww, sweet.

Matters of fact

2006-11-25T10:26:00.000Z

Yesterday's Telegraph carried a letter from Beverley Hughes attacking our report to the Information Commissioner on children's databases.

Our reply is published today.

The curmudgeonry prize

2006-11-23T12:28:00.000Z

Looks as if someone needs to get out a bit more:

Two high court judges were asked to decide "what is football?" after neighbours fell out over a kick-about in an exclusive, residents-only garden. Christopher Fleming-Brown, 46, from Kensington, west London, was taken to court by Paula Lawton, 63, after playing ball with his son, aged five. She accused him of turning the lawn garden into a recreation ground and breaching local by-laws.

Even more extraordinary is the fact that Ms Lawton has spent two years pursuing the case!

Children's DNA retention

2006-11-22T14:35:00.000Z

A flier for a workshop/briefing session on police retention of children's DNA:

Workshop: Should the police keep children’s DNA?
2-4pm 18th December 2006
London School of Economics

ARCH/LSE Information Systems are holding a workshop on a subject of increasing concern: the collection and storage of children’s DNA samples on the National DNA Database.

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 gave the police wide powers to take and store DNA samples from those arrested for most criminal offences. This data is retained on the NDNAD even if the suspect is not charged, or is later acquitted.

Children are particularly affected by DNA retention because of police focus on dealing with ‘volume’ crime. In 2004/2005, almost a quarter of all arrests were of 10-17-year-olds.

Police retention of DNA - especially of children’s DNA - has attracted a great deal of media attention during the past year, the more so because reports suggest that samples are also being used for research purposes.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has recently launched a consultation to gather opinions on DNA retention. This will run until the end of January 2007 and they are keen to have responses from as many interested people and organisations as possible. We have several expert speakers to give a thorough briefing on all of the issues. These include:

Dr Helen Wallace Deputy Director of Genewatch
Dr Mairi Levitt Deputy Director of the ESRC Centre for Economic & Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen)
A representative of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (tbc)

As places are very limited, please let us know if you want to attend by emailing: terri@arch-ed.org

Children's Databases: Safety and Privacy

2006-11-22T10:03:00.000Z

The Information Commissioner has published our report into children's databases. Ross has links to some of the press coverage.

Astonishing that the DfES claims to have: "serious reservations about this report's objectivity and evidence base" when the most cursory glance at the extensive footnotes will show that we were scrupulous about using the Government's own documents!

The New Statesman's loss...

2006-11-21T16:42:00.000Z

An excellent piece from Dave Hill on the children's Information Sharing Index. It's accurate (which is rare), considered and well-written, which makes it all the more astonishing that the New Statesman didn't publish it.

Sign here...

2006-11-20T18:17:00.000Z

Over on Pippa's blog, details of a petition from MP Tom Watson calling for the regulation of children's biometrics in schools.

Shy sister of the IS Index

2006-11-20T17:28:00.000Z

While just about everyone knows about the children's Information Sharing Index, few words have been spared on its parallel assessment system: the Common Assessment Framework (CAF for short).

CAF is an in-depth assessment that has to be completed when a child needs extra services, or when any practitioner thinks a child isn't progressing towards the government's 'five outcomes'. It's supposed to be voluntary, but we have anecdotal evidence that some local authorities are insisting a CAF be completed in full before a child can receive services. Bear in mind that the government envisages that around one third of children will need extra services.

The assessment is grouped into areas that look at a child's physical and mental health, education, development, relationships with others, environmental factors and parental competence. Under each heading is a list of factors to consider - too exhaustive to copy, but here are just a few highlights:

nature and quality of early attachments
lifestyle and self-control (including participation in reckless activity and need for excitement)
substance misuse
stable and affectionate relationships with parents or caregivers
sibling relationships
age-appropriate friendships
The ambitions of the child or young person, whether their aspirations are realistic

Then there are the: "parent or carer’s feelings about looking after this infant, child or young person" and whether they are: "modelling appropriate behaviour and control of emotions" or providing: "appropriate guidance, boundaries and discipline" - or whether they are: "chaotic", abuse drugs or alcohol and engage in criminal activity.

All this just to get a bit of speech therapy! The full list occupies a 7-page Annex in this document (pdf).

The CAF is being electronically enabled to create the 'eCAF' system. This will hold all of the assessments. An item today in Public Technology Net says:

The benefit of e-enablement of CAF is being witnessed on a daily basis by Wandsworth. A main rationale for CAF is to ensure that any child assessed and identified as requiring additional needs is dealt with in the most efficient and confidential manner possible. The eCAF system holds the assessment form securely in a central place, avoiding the need to make multiple copies for each children’s’ service provider.
...The development of the eCAF system has always run hand-in-hand with the underlying requirements set down by the DfES. Recognising this, Wandsworth Council received capital grants from the DfES in August 2006, to further develop the eCAF system with CPFRS and achieve full DfES compliance by March 2007.

And there's the rub: each local authority has to set up the eCAF from its own budget with the help of grants from DfES. One advantage of doing it this way is that the true cost of meeting those "requirements set down by the DfES" remains unknown. It seems that the government learned one thing from the ID Cards debacle: to make it as difficult as possible to work out just how many millions are being thrown at technology providers.

Children Act regulations meeting

2006-11-18T00:33:00.000Z

As Blogzilla says: The Department for Education and Skills is running a consultation on their draft Children Act regulations. These regulations will give them the powers to start operating the Information Sharing Index, which will hold a range of data on the UK's young people.

We are going to run a short workshop at UCL on the regulations so that interested organisations can discuss the details in order to help formulate their own consultation responses. I'll announce the speakers shortly once they have confirmed, but if you would like to put the details in your diary now the meeting will be 2-5pm in Drayton B19, Gordon Street, UCL on Tuesday 5 December.

Voice of reason

2006-11-16T23:39:00.000Z

Simon Davies has delivered a nice, measured and intelligent answer to Polly Toynbee's rather fatuous item in defence of surveillance last week. Well worth a read.

Questionnaire

2006-11-16T16:52:00.000Z

It's coming up to that time when the UK Government has to submit its report to the UN (by July 2007) on progress towards implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in order to receive its regular pasting for non-compliance, which will later be passed off as "raising issues of good practice or best practice with us rather than non compliance".

Fortunately the government gets to go first, the NGOs read what they've written and, having picked themselves up off the floor, pile in with their own, joint varnish-stripping report to the UN.

Still, cycnicism aside, this time around the government is actually canvassing the views of children and young people themselves before preparing its own report, and that's certainly to be encouraged. There's an online questionnaire for everyone aged under 18. Well, better late than never.

Not for the likes of you, sunshine

2006-11-16T13:44:00.000Z

On the Guardian site, a fascinating audio/slide show of what happened when four teenagers attempted to go to the Lowry Centre in Salford. Needless to say, they didn't get past first base.

I wish I could say such discrimination is unusual, but I've seen it at first hand. A couple of years ago, I saw four lively, noisy but perfectly pleasant young people turned away at the door of the William Morris Museum in Walthamstow with the words: "There's nothing for you here". I got short shrift from the staff when I asked why. On another occasion, when we visited Hackney's Geffrye Museum with a small party of children - one of whom has partial hearing and tends to shout - we were sternly rebuked by the unwelcoming person on the desk with: "We only like nice, quiet children in here". Another one off the list!

It seems that 'open to the public' is a rather conditional term.

Humanity and the Home Office

2006-11-14T18:23:00.000Z

Warning: a blood-boiler on the Community Care blog.

Can't think how that happened...

2006-11-14T15:27:00.000Z

According to Beverley Hughes, parents are feeling 'disempowered' (and therefore need a new 'parenting academy'):

In an interview with The Observer, Hughes voiced alarm that parents have much less faith than previous generations in their abilities to raise and guide their children, and wanted help to deal with their conduct.

Carlotta has plenty to say on the subject.

Disinformation

2006-11-14T15:06:00.000Z

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has delivered a necessary smack to the government today:

Government ministers are using the Human Rights Act to hide administrative failures in their departments, a scathing new report has warned.
The joint committee on human rights finds Tony Blair, home secretary John Reid and other senior ministers guilty of blaming human rights laws for government failures – and in doing so making public scepticism about the act worse.

It's the same kind of thing that went on during the Bichard Inquiry into Soham, when Humberside Police attempted to blame the Data Protection Act for their failures.

It's very hard to trust any authority that is so ready to sacrifice civil protections in order to please the red-tops and cover its own back.

The darkest closet

2006-11-13T11:24:00.000Z

In all the furore about teenage sexuality, spare a thought for those who are asexual. As today's Telegraph points out, it's not as rare as you might think:

A 1994 survey of sexual practices in Britain questioned 18,000 people about their sexuality; one per cent of respondents chose the option, "I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all". This indicator of the prevalence of asexuality slipped under the radar because the survey was geared towards understanding the spread of Aids.

Young people are under huge pressure to have sexual relationships (even the 'forbidding' lobby implies that everyone's at it like rabbits) and asexual teenagers can find themselves feeling isolated, freakish and ashamed - or pressured into sex that they don't want.

All of the old arguments against homosexuality are used against asexuality: "It's not natural" "It's a psychological problem" "He'll grow out of it" "She just hasn't met the right person yet". While it's hard enough for a young person to come out as gay, an admission of asexuality is well-nigh impossible.

Update 14.11.06 Bookdrunk has some more about this

Contemptuous government (again)

2006-11-12T15:32:00.000Z

It's worrying that the 'patient tsar' deals so dismissively with concerns about the confidentiality of the Summary Care Record on the NHS data spine:

Harry Cayton, patient tsar and chair of the Care Record Development Board, tells the newspaper that "Dr Finlay’s days are over" and that the SCR will not damage trust between GP and patient.
“The NHS is not a set of personal private contacts,” he says.

How very modern, but research has repeatedly shown the importance of old-fashioned confidentiality to young people, and it's pretty clear that if it isn't guaranteed, many will simply vote with their feet. The implications for both personal and public health are enormous.

The uncomprehending in search of the intangible

2006-11-12T10:53:00.000Z

I've just been reading an interesting report, Nurturing Creativity in Young People, which gets it absolutely right in its admonitions that the creative process is not top-down, that process and risk-taking are as important as product, and that creativity can't always be measured or produced to order.

So far, so good. But then I get uneasy:

The Government published its response to Paul Roberts' report - Nurturing Creativity in Young People. One of the immediate actions the Government is taking is to setting up a new Creative and Cultural Education Advisory Board. This board, jointly sponsored by DCMS and DfES, will have representatives from all the major stakeholders working in this area. It will have the responsibility for implementing the actions agreed as part of the Government's response to the Roberts report and building a more coherent creative and cultural offer for all young people.

And when I read the DfES' press release, a nervous tic develops:

The Creative Economy Programme, launched in November 2005 has identified education and skills as one of the main drivers to the productivity and growth of the creative economy.

Please, no! Not a 'creativity hour'...

Kudos to Hong Kong

2006-11-10T14:12:00.000Z

News on Pippa's blog is that Hong Kong's privacy commissioner has banned school fingerprinting.

School Census having a growth spurt

2006-11-10T13:54:00.000Z

Looks as if the School Census is on the march again: it will be carried out 3 times a year in all schools, nurseries and early years provision from 2007, with several new personal data items to be collected - amongst them a requirement to fill in a pupil's 'mode of transport' to school.

Exclusive education

2006-11-10T09:46:00.000Z

The Education and Inspections Bill, which we've written about before, has just received Royal Assent. Despite ferocious opposition from education, disability and children's NGOs, a new offence has been created for parents of allowing a child excluded from school to be in a public place during school hours - and parents are entirely reponsible for their child for the first 5 days of any exclusion. An extension to police truancy powers means that the police also have a new mandate to detain in a 'designated place' any excluded pupil encountered during school hours.

We're having one of those "have they gone mad?" moments. Most exclusions are of children with special needs, eg 21% of those on the autistic spectrum will be excluded at some point. The National Autistic Society points out:

It is our experience that for the vast majority of children with ASD, exclusion represents a failure on the part of their educational setting to provide appropriate support and training to effectively manage their behaviour. In many cases, exclusions result from a lack of understanding on the part of teachers, learning support staff and supervisory staff of the social and communication impairments experienced by children with autism.

In other words, we have an 'inclusive' education system that can't actually deliver for disabled children, and now the responsibility is thrown back on parents, who have been handed a criminal liability for good measure.

And how is it acceptable for the police to detain anyone, child or adult, who has not committed a criminal offence, and can't even be suspected of having done so because no offence exists? Whenever we have challenged the DfES on police truancy powers, the fall back position has been that good old standby: 'child protection' but that is utter nonsense. How can a child only need 'protection' between 9am and 3.30pm on weekdays? Is this an especially dangerous time for children? In any case, the police already have child protection powers at any time of day where a child is genuinely in need of help.

Pity the autistic or severely hyperactive child banged up at home in a flat on a hot summer day, unable even to visit the park. And pity the parent who not only has to cope, on pain of a fine, but also risks losing his/her job because of the need to take 5 days off work. Welcome to compassionate, modern England.

Pervasive computing

2006-11-10T00:40:00.000Z

Blogzilla is talking about pervasive computing technologies - something particularly relevant to children, given the burgeoning market in gizmos to track and monitor their every sneeze (or mobile phone call).

Cooking the evidence

2006-11-09T12:57:00.000Z

A new report from Parliament's Science and Technology Committee has punched a few holes in the Government's tendency towards selective use of 'evidence' in policy-making:

Ministers should not disguise policies based on their beliefs as being based on scientific evidence, the science and technology committee has said. The committee's report, Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence Based Policy Making, raises serious questions over the validity of the evidence behind several flagship programmes including Asbos, ID cards, Sure Start, and the decision to ban junk food in schools...
"Of course, not all policies need to be evidence-based and the committee recognises that political judgement is often exercised – but ministers should not disguise conviction-based policies as evidence-based," Mr Willis (Committee Chair) said.
..More worrying were accusations of "policy-based evidence making", which the committee's report claims could be seen as amounting to "scientific malpractice".

Working Together to safeguard data

2006-11-09T12:09:00.000Z

One very positive outcome of the international conference of data protection and privacy commissioners held last week:

At the annual Conference of Data Protection and Information Commissioners, held last week in London, a joint set of objectives was adopted by the international commissioners aimed at tackling what they see as a growing international issue of constant citizen surveillance.
"The protection of citizens’ personal data is vital for any society, on the same level as freedom of the press or freedom of movement," said the communiqué adopted by Commissioners. "As our societies are increasingly dependent on the use of information technologies, and personal data are collected or generated at a growing scale, it has become more essential than ever that individual liberties and other legitimate interests of citizens are adequately respected."

The full communique (pdf) identifies the current threats to data protection, including the fact that regulation often lags far behind rapid technological developments. One paragraph that caught our eye as especially relevant to ARCH's child database concerns:

DPAs must constantly remind the public and governments that creating databases with ever-more personal information does not solve all problems. The sacred aura of the supposedly infallible computer file must often be portrayed as a delusion. In addition, as more and more personal information is processed, the risks increase of false matches, out of date information and other mistakes. These can cause real harm to the life chances, the health, the prosperity, and even the liberty, of individuals.

Nothing new

2006-11-08T17:18:00.000Z

Some comment pieces lift the spirits:

"Relaxation of parental control, decay of religious influence, and the transplantation of masses of young persons to housing estates where there is little scope for recreation and plenty for mischief ... The problem is a serious challenge, the difficulty of which is intensified by the extension of freedom which, for better or worse, has been given to youth in the last generation."

No, not from the IPPR report, but 'The Needs of Youth' published in 1939.

On the other hand, some comment pieces... Is this a Guardian special PLU week?

About that IPPR report

2006-11-08T16:58:00.000Z

It's worth reading Howard Williamson, (of the Youth Justice Board) laying into the much-trumpeted IPPR report on young people:

I have nothing against extending provision of and opportunity to take part in more structured youth activities. I encourage young people to get involved in them. It is unlikely there are going to be negative outcomes from learning a musical instrument or joining a sports club.
IPPR's press release towards the end of October talked of "badges and belts" -hinting at mechanisms for recognising achievement through structured provision. It also suggested parents should be fined if they did not enrol children in provision and make sure they attended.
All this, no doubt, will appeal to the worst nature of an increasingly authoritarian and interventionist state.

EDM on Data Intrusion

2006-11-07T16:00:00.000Z

The following Early Day Motion has been tabled: EDM 2911

That this House notes with concern the increasing incidence of data intrusion or `data rape' as it is increasingly becoming known, the process whereby personal and hitherto confidential data is transferred to central databases established by the Government which can then be made available to third parties, such as police and security services, without consent being required; notes that the operation of the new national medical database will require medical records, which until now have remained in the confidential custody of general practitioner practices, to be uploaded to the Spine, a computer which will collect details from doctors and hospitals; supports the British Medical Association in its demand that patients should be asked for their explicit permission before their files are transferred; further notes with concern the reports of plans to establish and expand national databases in relation to the identity card scheme, DNA and the national census; and calls on the Government to establish a legislative framework that will safeguard access to personal data which has as its foundation not only the requirement for explicit consent but the right to know which agencies have a right to, and have requested access to, personal nformation.

If you agree with it, you might want to ask your MP to sign up to it.

Tell us something we don't know

2006-11-07T10:16:00.000Z

An extraordinary piece from Polly Toynbee today, berating everyone for being silly and middle-class about surveillance, but showing a poor grasp of the real arguments. A shame she can't recognise her own screamingly middle-class bias in comments such as this:

Surveillance conspiracy mania is a symptom of something else - the wish for the middle classes to be victims too. This is a middle-class obsession by those who are least likely to be surveyed.

Well of course the middle classes are the least likely to be monitored. I have it on unimpeachable authority that a senior civil servant described the 'Every Child Matters' agenda as aimed not at the 'worried well' of the middle classes, but at the child of the mother 'who works in Tesco', who will inevitably be under-stimulated. And take a look at the myriad schemes to identify children who may become offenders: they target those living in areas of poverty and deprivation. When Blair talks about future 'menaces to society', he doesn't have in mind the babies of Altrincham or Hampstead

It's a breathtaking piece of spin to represent the age-old middle class preoccupation with turning the lower orders into 'People Like Us' as some kind of enlightened social reform, whilst dismissing those who object to the unwarranted interference in other people's lives as meddling, elitist know-nothings.

Double Mornington Crescent

2006-11-06T09:20:00.000Z

A historical moment: this may well be the first instance of joined-up shroud-waving. Until now the Government has used terrorism to justify the National Identitiy Register and child protection to justify the children's IS Index, but just look at this:

"The National Identity Register will help improve protection for the vulnerable, enabling more effective and quicker checks on those seeking to work, for example, with children."

Advanced hide and seek

2006-11-04T11:18:00.000Z

While Bridlington is congratulating itself on being the first town to set up a 'pillar of shame' containing the photographs of children issued with ASBOs, Marina Hyde has an interesting take on the situation:

John Reid is a glass-half-full sort of chap - water, of course - but even a pessimistic home secretary could not fail to be encouraged by one element of this week's Youth Justice Board study, which suggests that Asbos are widely perceived by teenagers as a badge of honour. "You are inviting little Johnny Smith to... run over the imaginary line, then run away from police," one police officer said of geographical exclusion zones. "You've actually invented a game for the kids to play."
This seems a genuine achievement - Mr Reid's department has sent out self-congratulatory press releases for less - given that one timeworn cry is that these youngsters are disaffected because they have nothing to do. Conventional wisdom requires us to see them as loitering in some kind of civic no man's land - too old to be diverted by rusting playgrounds, and too young to drink in pubs (you do have to admire the far-flung horizons of our social ambition).
Happily, such ennui appears to have been addressed by this exciting variant on British bulldog.

Meanwhile Jonathan Calder give short shrift to Polly Toynbee's idea that the answer to 'antisocial' behaviour is to keep poor children at school for ten hours a day.

Farewell to a champion

2006-11-04T10:56:00.000Z

An online memorial has been set up to Katarina Tomasevski, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, who died last month.

Katarina was a remarkable woman who was passionately committed to free education for all children. Ultimately she took the UN on directly over their lack of commitment to mainstreaming the right to education, delivering a blistering resignation speech. That speech can be seen along with her other writing and reports on the Right to Education website that she established.

Not just a load of net curtains

2006-11-03T00:58:00.000Z

It’s been an extraordinarily busy couple of days as surveillance and DNA retention both hit the headlines. I’ve been reading Dave Hill and also reflecting on a workshop about information-sharing at UCL yesterday (See Spyblog for a good summary) where I watched the jaws of several overseas information and privacy commissioners dropping at the extent of this government’s statutory powers to share information.

An interesting discussion started up on whether the real struggle over information-sharing was in fact a straight conflict between utilitarianism and privacy. We have a problem in the UK with that word ‘privacy’. As Dave points out, it has connotations of net curtains. We believe that privacy is equated with furtive behaviour, secretiveness and a guilty conscience (nothing to hide etc) but privacy is actually about far, far more than that.

Privacy is the mechanism by which we regulate our relationships with others. By deciding what we will or won’t tell someone about ourselves, we control intimacy and draw lines. Privacy is bound up with our sense of self. Alan Westin is far more articulate in his ‘Social and Political Dimensions of Privacy’:

“Changing personal needs and choices about self-revelation are what make privacy such a complex condition, and a matter of personal choice. The importance of that right to choose, both to the individual’s self-development and to the exercise of responsible citizenship, makes the claim to privacy a fundamental part of civil liberty in democratic society. If we are ‘switched on’ without our knowledge or consent, we have lost our rights to decide when and with whom we speak, publish, worship and associate.”

Viewed like that, privacy becomes one of the most fundamental human rights – it’s about whether we have the right to define ourselves.

We appear to give away our human rights and civil liberties far too easily in this country. Maybe the English Channel gives us a sense of untouchability; certainly it has protected us from close experience of what real oppression looks like. Maybe the 50 years since human rights instruments were framed is too long ago for anyone to remember just why they were thought necessary.

The last few years have seen a growing trend towards ‘blank cheque’ legislation, the details to be filled in later with whatever regulations a Secretary of State decides upon. A particular victim of this type of law-making, which sweeps away privacy by allowing practitioners to share information “notwithstanding any common law duty of confidentiality”, has been our right to choose who can access our private lives.

Apparently David Aaronovitch believes that we can prevent a totalitarian government from misusing these sweeping powers simply by not electing it. But how do you spot such a government? Those who are convinced that they are so right that citizens must be dragged into line, kicking and screaming if that’s the only way to do it, don’t necessarily advertise in advance. Rather, they erode liberties incrementally, or with appeals that draw on instant emotional reaction, or they exploit those loopholes left for them by predecessors who believed they were acting with the best of intentions.

Returning to the utilitarianism v privacy debate, as far as children are concerned, ARCH’s objections to the network of databases, with the Information Sharing Index at its hub, are on both utilitarian and privacy grounds.

What greater good can come of it? It’s not even as if it were intended for children ‘at risk of harm’ (although that particular piece of spin has been remarkably pervasive). The definition of ‘at risk’ has been expanded so dramatically that, by the DfES’ own admission, it covers 1 in 3 children. ‘At risk’ now means any child in need of services in order to prevent her failing educationally, becoming an offender or joining the teenage pregnancy statistics.

On the other hand, a great deal of harm can come from labelling babies as the future ‘menaces to society’ or identifying a child as an educational disaster zone. Meanwhile, this welter of information about so many children will inevitably hide the child who really is ‘at risk’ in the generally understood meaning: a child in danger of abuse and neglect.

Yesterday, Ross Anderson outlined a fundamental principle of good security engineering: you can have scale, security or functionality in a database. If you are really good at your job, you can build a system that incorporates two of these factors. Three is not possible. The Information Sharing Index is certainly on a large scale, so which of the other two factors can be dispensed with? Lose functionality and the most vulnerable will not get their services or protection. Lose security and you potentially put all children at risk of harm.

As for privacy, how do we help children to develop personal boundaries if we are sharing data on everything from their choice of school dinner to their aspirations for the future? You can’t tell children that they belong to themselves, and that they can say “no” to unwanted intrusions, if you are also probing their secrets and making them the objects of other peoples’ judgments. Respect for children’s privacy is essential to empowering them to protect themselves, and to enabling them to form healthy relationships.

So, utilitarianism v privacy? The Information Sharing Index fails on both counts, and nothing that’s been said in the three years since the grand plan was unveiled has persuaded me - or any of us at ARCH - otherwise. At best it will be an expensive waste of money that should be spent on genuine child protection and frontline services. The at worst doesn't bear thinking about.

Children on NDNAD

2006-11-01T09:21:00.000Z

The other story this morning is on DNA retention: the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has launched a consultation to gather views on the National DNA Database which you can access here.

Our particular worry is the number of unconvicted children on the database. As we mentioned on Monday, figures from the Home Office and Youth Justice Board indicate that last year around 50,000 children were arrested but no further action was taken. Another 100,000 were given reprimands and warnings - which are not a finding of guilt in law.

Privacy and flying pigs

2006-11-01T00:53:00.000Z

As we mentioned the other day, the 'opt-out' from the NHS records database isn't what it seems. See the Guardian headlines today for more on the demise of the oh-so-unmodern idea that patient data is confidential.

'Modern' education

2006-10-31T17:57:00.000Z

Does anyone use the word 'modern' any more? It always makes me think of my parents excitedly buying one of the new, state-of-the-art melamine teasets at the end of the 50s. Just spotted Blair on his 'modernising' horse at the Euston Manifesto website:

"Technological change means that we can design lessons for children more personally than ever before."

It's such a stunted vision. Actually, technological development means that we could rip up our education system completely and turn it into one that helps children to ask good questions and to develop top-notch research skills. It means that children could be in charge of their own learning and follow their fascinations. New technology has brought the most astonishing set of resources to a screen near you. Oh, and it can also be used to 'design lessons'.

What's that you're reading?

2006-10-31T17:50:00.000Z

Pippa King is talking about the difficulty in getting a response about children's fingerprints from the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Something we hadn't noticed before was this excerpt from the MicroLibrarian site:

"...we are able to provide detailed statistics and monitor use of the library by gender, year group, ethnicity and individual progress in numbers of books borrowed"

It seems that the only place a child isn't monitored at school is in the loo. On second thoughts, we'd better shut up quickly.

Soft targets

2006-10-30T00:06:00.000Z

From the Times:

Police are massaging their crime clear-up rates by concentrating on solving minor offences such as cakes being thrown on buses and hair pulling in the school playground.
In some forces such offences, which involve suspects being questioned and warned but not charged, account for up to a third of all crimes solved.
Police chiefs are considering abolishing the practice because it is diverting officers from pursuing more serious crime.

Just to give some idea of the extent to which young people are being targeted for trivial offences: last year a quarter of all arrests were of 10-17s. Getting on for 50,000 of those arrests didn't lead to any disposal, and half of all disposals were by way of reprimand or final warning.

Considering how much petty 'crime' involves children, and given the apparently provocative effect of police action on their lives, a switch of emphasis would be welcome - before we drag even more children into the criminal justice system.

Contemptuous government

2006-10-29T16:00:00.000Z

Henry Porter in the Observer today:

"In his frantic terminality, Blair plans the sinister information-sharing index, otherwise known as the universal child register, and last week was musing that we should all have our DNA stored on the national base. Link this to his earlier remarks about identifying problem children who might grow up to be a menace to society by intervening before they were born and you begin to feel the chill of the technology-driven authoritarianism."

Curmudgeonly comment

2006-10-28T23:27:00.000Z

Only just noticed this one from the Curmudgeon on child imprisonment - couldn't have put it better.

When we say "opt out"...

2006-10-27T22:48:00.000Z

You really need to read this if you want to understand what the controversy over the NHS Care Records Service is about. The aforementioned Professor of Security Engineering at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Ross Anderson, has given us permission to reproduce his email explaining why the government's offer of an opt-out is misleading:

"Unfortunately, the 'opt-out' offered by Lord Warner isn't what it seems. He is referring simply to an opt-out from some data sharing. If this is the only option you exercise, then your medical data will still be stored on the national database and your dissent from information sharing can and will be overridden for a whole host of purposes.

"It also may not work, as the access control software still has to be written and tested; some systems folks say privately that it can't be done given the architecture they're committed to and/or the fact that the project is years late and struggling. Your data will be centrally available for some years before the privacy controls arrive, if they ever do.

"There is also no plan for the software (even if it's written, works and is installed) to control access to everything; scanned images, for example, will not be protected. And lots of people will be able to override the access controls - the police and others using judicial powers, any physician who says it's an 'emergency', and officials for secondary uses such as audit, cost control and health service management.

"Data may also be released if it's declared to be 'anonmyised' (even though removing names and addresses from records is rarely enough to stop a patient being identified). Patients may also be bullied to access their records by PC from home (battered wives, teenagers etc) and lose privacy that way.

"So the "opt out" the minister is offering is not really an "opt out"at all. That is why there's a conflict with the genuine "opt in" which the BMA is demanding.

"The issue is further confused by the existence of other "opt out" options. For example, you can ask to be "stop-noted" on PDS (the NHS central address book) if you do not want your real home address and phone number to be available to the NHS's hundreds of thousands of employees. This is prudent for celebrities, battered wives, people in witness protection and so on. However, the systems are being designed so that if you get stop-noted, you will not be able to get electronic repeat prescriptions or use NHS Direct.
"Another example is the NHS Secondary Uses Service (SUS) which contains summaries of all hospital treatment going back several years. You can apply to opt-out from this under section 10 of the Data Protection Act, if the prospect of large numbers of people having access to, e.g. a sensitive record of a pregnancy termination, causes you distress.

"Behind this fog of confusion and complexity, the government is building a system that will centralise the nation's medical records and make them available to administrators, researchers and others. Perhaps fortunately, the project is getting bogged down. For more on the project's problems see http://www.nhs-it.info "

Ross Anderson

Community Care blog

2006-10-27T18:49:00.000Z

Just noticed that Community Care has a blog - The Child Minder. Nice to see a new voice on children's issues.

Opting out of rational thought

2006-10-27T11:48:00.000Z

Health Minister, Lord Warner, has just been giving details of the NHS Care Records Service. It will be an opt-out system:

"Patients will be informed in advance about new ways in which their information will be held and shared and they will be told they have the right to dissent - or "opt out" - of having information shared.
"If patients do not "opt out" they will be deemed to have given implied consent to the sharing of their information, under strict controls between those legitimately treating them."

It remains to be seen whether children can opt out of having their medical information shared.

In a familiar display of government hubris, Lord Warner said:

"...I do not support the call by 23 academics to the House of Commons Health Select Committee to commission a review of NPfITs technical architecture. I want the programme's management and suppliers to concentrate on implementation, and not be diverted by attending to another review."

Take a look at the academics and ask yourself: "If I wanted to buy a secure information system, whose advice would I take? (a) the Chair of Security Engineering at Cambridge or (b) the guy flogging it to me?"

Hmm... tricky.

'Forget the shoes' revisited

2006-10-26T17:54:00.000Z

Community Care reports:

Eight out of ten parents of disabled children consider social services to be poor, according to a parliamentary inquiry published today. The cross-party study into services for disabled children found evidence of rising eligibility criteria and parents being turned away for short-term breaks by councils. Lack of funding was deemed the biggest barrier to improving services by 61 per cent of the 148 parents and 74 per cent of the 108 professionals who gave evidence to the MPs.

We've blogged on this subject before, and our views haven't altered one jot.

No punishment without law

2006-10-26T17:17:00.000Z

Ruth Kelly has been outlining plans to give local councils more power, including expounding on the 'local laws for local people' theme on the Today programme:

Ms Kelly earlier told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Rather than the government having to approve every single local bylaw, it should be local people that decide whether they want a particular law tackling anti-social behaviour." People should be "able to go out and impose an instant fine if someone breaks that", she said.

We've been here before, when the draconian Antisocial Behaviour Act was making its way through Parliament, and as we pointed out then, a little knowledge of common law and of case law from the European Court of Human Rights might come in handy.

In one of those landmark cases, Kokkinakis v Greece, the Court found that:

...the Convention ...also embodies, more generally, the principle that only the law can define a crime and prescribe a penalty ...and the principle that the criminal law must not be extensively construed to an accused's detriment, for instance by analogy; it follows from this that an offence must be clearly defined in law. This condition is satisfied where the individual can know from the wording of the relevant provision and, if need be, with the assistance of the courts' interpretation of it, what acts and omissions will make him liable.

How does that work when each area is making up its own laws? Is antisocial behaviour in Lower Puddlescombe the same as antisocial behaviour in Tottenham? I guess, to be on the safe side, we would all have to read a copy of the local bylaws every time we crossed a parish boundary - perhaps they could be included in map books. Or the Foreign Office could expand its travel advice section to offer such useful information as: "in St. Bigotwold, being on the public highway between the hours of 9pm and 7am whilst under 18 is a capital offence."

Astrology

2006-10-25T17:25:00.000Z

Again child unrelated, but my sense of humour has just been restored by this. Someone's had a Very Bad Day...

We got you into it, get yourselves out

2006-10-25T15:58:00.000Z

This beggars belief.

Third sector minister Ed Miliband is calling for youth organisations across the country to form a political movement to raise the status of young people...He cited four areas in which young people need a better deal: opportunities for their voices to be heard, a wider local youth offer to broaden their horizons, increased respect from society and fairer portrayal in the media.

We have a Government that has repeatedly called young people 'yobs', dignified centuries-old prejudice with legislation, made hanging out in public little short of a criminal offence, introduced child curfews and imprisoned a record number of children. And now it's up to young people themselves, and those of us who have done our level best to defend them, to raise their status.

This is probably the closest we've ever come to qualifying for the swearblog round-up.

Frustration

2006-10-25T11:33:00.000Z

We've been putting in the hours on the growing range of devices that track children's whereabouts. In particular, there is a burgeoning market in mobile phone tracking that allegedly gives parents 'peace of mind'. The idea is that a parent can log on to a website and find the exact location of their child at any given moment. They can even feed in predetermined routes that their child must follow, and the system will alert them to any deviation from it.

As I'm sure we've muttered before now, one only needs a moment's thought to spot the fallacy: the system merely tells a parent where the child's mobile phone is. But it also gives other people that information, too.

A particularly worrying aspect of this system is that the servcie providers are currently unlicensed and unregulated, save by a voluntary code of practice, so we thought that an amendment to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill to provide some level of regulation wouldn't come amiss.

The amendment didn't make it. DfES under-secretary, Parmjit Dhanda, offered the view that:

"The mobile phone network operators and location service providers have acted to put in place a code of practice, covering passive location services, using mobile phone technology. As I pointed out in Committee, it is a new sector and we would need to consult on and assess the risk presented by individuals working in those services before looking to amend the definition of regulated activity."

'New sector?' We were asked for our first media comment on mobile phone tracking around 3 years ago. How old does a sector need to be before the government begins to regulate it? Given the vast range of people and activities drawn into regulation by the Bill, child location trackers seem to be a rather glaring omission.

Killer wasps

2006-10-24T17:03:00.000Z

It's not on topic for this blog, but you've just got to read this

Talking of demonisation...

2006-10-23T13:42:00.000Z

Just spotted this in the Times:

A SCOTTISH executive-backed film about antisocial behaviour has been withdrawn after a threat of legal action by the distributor of Buckfast, which claimed that it demonised its product, writes Marc Horne. All references to the tonic wine are to be removed from the DVD, entitled Asbo — Let’s Beat It, which was being shown at schools in Ayrshire.
The film, endorsed by Cathy Jamieson, the justice minister, singled out Buckfast as a drink that contributes to antisocial behaviour. It depicts teenagers dealing drugs in playgrounds, threatening homeowners, vandalising cars, brawling and engaging in drunken under-age sex.

Can't have a tonic wine being demonised, can we?

Zero tolerance

2006-10-23T13:31:00.000Z

Via Magistrate's blog via Britblog round-up, we've just discovered this article on youth offending

Crime rates have fallen drastically in Britain over the past ten years, but the number of children going through the criminal justice system just keeps on growing: it stands at 210,000 annually, up from 185,000 in the mid-1990s. In the past, most of those who come into contact with the system were given cautions. Now, half are prosecuted. With more than 3,000 under-18s in prison and juvenile detention centres bursting at the seams, Britain has one of the most punitive youth criminal justice systems of any democratic country.

Really is worth reading, though this end, we're not sure whether to rage or cry about it. Meanwhile the IPPR says that we're becoming a nation afraid of its younger generation. See the excellent Pam Hibbert of Barnardo's on the subject. (Thanks Dave)

The price of spin

2006-10-22T15:24:00.000Z

We'd always thought of the Guardian as a newspaper that could be trusted to give thoughtful comment about social issues. No doubt the government thinks so too. Presumably that is why they chose to pay Guardian journalists to write a puff on 'Every Child Matters'.

A couple of weeks ago, the Guardian ran two supplements 'in association with' the DfES, drooling over the DfES’ ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda. This is, amongst other things, the rationale for building databases and keeping children and their families under scrutiny.

The articles trotted out several of the old chestnuts, including the one about ECM being a response to the death of Victoria Climbie. In fact, as we’ve said before , it was no such thing. It was a response to the Government strategy unit’s paper ‘Privacy and Data-sharing: the way forward for public services’, published nearly a year before Lord Laming’s report into Victoria’s death. It is not about children at risk of harm.

They also made much of the fact that ‘children themselves’ had chosen the Government’s ‘five outcomes’, the performance indicators at the heart of ECM. The DfES’ research report shows that children were in fact given eight pre-defined choices from which they had to select the final five.

(It’s worth mentioning that subsequent research on information-sharing has demonstrated that children don’t want their teachers to have access to the planned Information Sharing index, but DfES doesn’t seem to be listening to that.)

The Guardian says that it offers 'Bespoke, branded editorial communications’

All …sections have a very successful history of developing bespoke editorial communications for readers and website users. Such communications allow clients to work with our expert journalists to establish their "thought leadership" around a particular issue, and to set the editorial agenda within their area of business/expertise.

OK, so they sell advertising supplements. We're just rather astonished that the Guardian is prepared to take our money to allow the DfES to establish its 'thought leadership' over us.

Rain causes autism

2006-10-22T11:36:00.000Z

According to a new report, Does Television Cause Autism?

the researchers claim to have found a significant link between rates of rainfall, which is presumed to have kept children indoors, the spread of cable television networks with round-the-clock children’s programming and the level of autism diagnoses.
The researchers say their figures are so closely correlated that they “indicate that just under 40% of autism diagnoses in the three states studied (California, Oregon and Washington) is the result of television watching due to precipitation”.
They also found that 17% of the growth in autism cases in two of the states in the 1970s and 1980s might be due to television watching.

Note the scientifically-rigorous use of the word 'might'. Apparently the study is 'controversial'. Hmm, that's not the immediate description that springs to mind.

MMGM

2006-10-21T14:04:00.000Z

Time to start a new 'gone mad' category: micro-management. The latest candidate for MMGM is this latest wheeze from the DfES:

Schools in England are now having to log pupils' absences against a set of more than two dozen codes. These include different letters for family holidays - agreed, not agreed or extended - two types of lateness, and T for "traveller absence"...
The general secretary of the Association of School and College leaders, John Dunford, said: "This demonstrates how closely schools - and indeed pupils and parents - are now monitored by the government.

Indeed. The data goes on to the National Pupil Database, forming a detailed (and permanent) record of every child's dental appointments, religious observance and sporting tendencies. We can understand that a local authority might need to keep track of school attendance, but why does central government need to know that a child had a medical appointment?

The full list of codes is on the DfES website.

Where does 'home' begin?

2006-10-20T17:50:00.000Z

Three boys have been excluded from school for smoking cannabis - not on school premises and during the summer holidays. The police had already decided that there was insufficient evidence to pursue the matter, but it seems the school's head teacher took a different view.

Spiked has some thoughts on the encroachment of the school into private territory.

Texting can be bad for your life

2006-10-20T00:16:00.000Z

Another thought-provoking article from Bruce Schneier on the risks of electronic conversation:

Everyday conversation used to be ephemeral. Whether face-to-face or by phone, we could be reasonably sure that what we said disappeared as soon as we said it. Of course, organized crime bosses worried about phone taps and room bugs, but that was the exception. Privacy was the default assumption.
This has changed. We now type our casual conversations. We chat in e-mail, with instant messages on our computer and SMS messages on our cellphones, and in comments on social networking Web sites like Friendster, LiveJournal, and MySpace. These conversations - with friends, lovers, colleagues, fellow employees -are not ephemeral; they leave their own electronic trails.
We know this intellectually, but we haven’t truly internalized it. We type on, engrossed in conversation, forgetting that we’re being recorded.

It's particularly frightening to think that the kind of messages people send in their youth could come back to haunt them years later.

Finger food

2006-10-19T23:09:00.000Z

With our attention on the use of children's fingerprints in school at the moment, we couldn't help noticing this gruesome item in the Register:

The public fears losing their fingers to ruthless biometric ID thieves in the fingerprint-controlled future, apparently. Or at least, so says Frost &Sullivan analyst Sapna Capoor, who argued unconvincingly that "A dead finger is no good to a thief."
If you have a fingerprint scanner protecting your family jewels, your data might be safe, but what about your fingers?
So, it's all getting out of hand? Then on the other... there are recorded instances of people having their fingers chopped off, and the biometric industry takes the issue seriously.

Just imagine having your finger lopped off because someone else wants your school dinner...

Kangaroo youth justice

2006-10-19T11:58:00.000Z

Some more extraordinary ideas from the Home Office:

Home Office ministers are considering giving the police the power to impose restrictions on young people's behaviour if they admit to a crime, rather than sending them to court.
At present the police can give offenders who have committed certain offences a final warning, or a fine, rather than sending them to court. But the Government is considering introducing a conditional warning, which would allow a young person to avoid court if they agree to change their behaviour.
The Youth Courts Committee of the Magistrates' Association is concerned about the proposals, which it argues could pressure innocent young people to admit guilt to avoid a court appearance, and place too much power in the hands of the police.

The overt rationale is that contact with the criminal justice system has been shown to have a strongly negative effect on youth offending. For example, the Edinburgh University study: 'Youth Transitions and Crime' found that one of the most powerful predictors of whether a young person continued to commit offences beyond the age of 17 (rather than ceasing spontaneously) was whether they had entered the system.

Current thinking seems to be that young people should be kept out of court for as long as possible, and therefore giving the police more and more powers to dispense justice will do the trick. But that doesn't really stack up: a criminal justice system is the same thing even if you rename it 'sausage'.

Simply giving to the police (or anyone else, for that matter) the powers that should be reserved to courts, and discouraging children from exercising their right to a fair and impartial hearing (Art 6 ECHR) doesn't make any difference: they are still being dealt with in a criminal justice system. In fact, as the Magistrates' Association points out, it makes it (a) more likely that children will admit to things they haven't done, or to which they have perfectly reasonable defence, just to get it over with, and (b) less likely that those who really do need some support will get help from the Youth Offending Team.

If the Home Office is really concerned about limiting youth offending, a good start would be to accept the mounting evidence that children and young teenagers tend to do things that are forbidden (nowadays by an increasing range of restrictive and badly-drafted statutes) and that, if left alone, they tend to grow out of it within a few years. Perhaps we could have a realistic age of criminal responsibility back - having the lowest age in Western Europe isn't anything to be proud of, and it's certainly proving to be pretty counter-productive.

The watchers

2006-10-19T10:59:00.000Z

Good comment piece in today's Times on surveillance:

The watchers, as watchers will, are extending their remit from the streets to the schools, to our individual lives. Database surveillance, where records are collated and cross-referenced to build up a picture of an individual, is still invisible to most. ANPR tracks your car. The Connexions card maps your teenager’s life. The Children Act “index” is designed to tie together all records anyone has anywhere about your children before they reach 16. The Home Office hopes that the ID card database will link the lot and tidy up all those temporary lodgers, mobile phones, cash purchases and hotel stays that are so difficult to keep track of otherwise . . .

Sorted the traffic, now for the neighbours

2006-10-18T13:27:00.000Z

Now here's a good idea:

A scheme that will create low-cost safe places for children to play in their local streets is set to be launched by Sustrans.
DIY Streets follows on from the sustainable transport charity's Home Zone scheme that opened up streets across the UK for social use by redesigning them to allow people and vehicles to share space safely.

Great. So long as the children don't throw snowballs, draw hopscotch grids, climb trees, wear hoodies, play ball games, make a noise....

More to the point

2006-10-18T13:18:00.000Z

Given that Victoria Climbie's social worker had only been qualified for 18 months, this idea would have been rather more appropriate than indulging the current mindless passion for databases:

New social workers in England could get a lighter workload and extra support as part of a government review of the children's workforce published this week.
The Options for Excellence review, which was due to be published by the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills on Thursday, is expected to propose the creation of a "newly qualified social worker" status, similar to that given to new teachers.
The new social workers would get less work and more training in their first years in the job under the proposals.

ERM

2006-10-18T13:10:00.000Z

Just found a rather wonderful new blog: Adventures in Record Management. OK, it doesn't sound promising, but if you saw the state of the filing on this computer you would understand my enthusiasm.

School fingerprints

2006-10-17T22:36:00.000Z

More on school fingerprinting over at the Register. Yet another parent has been in touch with us today to say that her child's school has written to announce that pupils' fingerprints 'will be taken' tomorrow - so much for 'consent'!