UK Home Office is creating mega database by stitching together ALL its gov records The UK Home Office is secretly creating a centralised database on the good folk of Britain without presenting the capability increases to the public or subjecting them to Parliamentary scrutiny. The Register can reveal the project, which was described as simply a “replatforming” of the department's aging IT infrastructure, has …
Good luck getting them to expire data from various sources within the regulations laid down for those datasets to be expunged.
Of course, expect summarised and recombined datasets derived FROM said time-limited datasets to be kept under different rules for far longer, too.
...moiety, it will never work.
That used to be the case with government projects on both sides of the pond until Microsoft's Azure division (and after that Google) started helping them to implement them. That changed the usual govt clusterf*ck failure equations significantly as far as data analysis is concerned.
The fact that it is not Cap F*ck*mini or Cr*p*ta in charge should give you a hint on will this succeed or not. I am afraid it will (moving her eminence the future High Chancellor(ess) Treasonous May one step closer to the coveted position of High Chancellor).
Anonymous (not because of wanting to, but to get the right icon).
This does not surprise me one bit, it's how the govt works.
Govt plans "one database to rule them all", runs it through the regular channels, it gets defeated.
What are they to do next? Give up on it, because the electorate don't want it? Nah, let's call it something else and try to push it in through the back door*!
This sort of thing seems to happen more and more. The people want privacy in the IPB? OK, we'll add the word "privacy" to the title of a section, that'll appease them without changing anything.
* Fnar fnar!
Seriously do you think May or any of her predecessor sock puppets Home Secretaries have a blind f**king clue what Haddoop even is?
This is again being driven by data fetishist senior bureaucrats for whom more data more cross referenced now is always better (for them) by definition.
Now some might be thinking "but it'll make it more efficient"
I say does the phrase necessary and proportionate mean anything to you?
Govt plans "one database to rule them all"
The magic words "Government plans" more-or-less ensure it will never happen. And that's coupled with with the fact the work will be given to one of the usual suspects.
Instead of "one database to rule them all", they'll get "half a database to rule quite a few", which will then be subject to umpteen iterations of change control, and disintegrate into the usual mess that such projects are doomed to end up as.
The real shame is the amount of taxpayer pounds that get shoveled into these sort of schemes.
I truly wish I could believe that.
I tend to side with the view that most of these people are doing the best job they can and are looking at efficiency, savings, etc. but if anyone of a totalitarian disposition every does get into power with these tools to hand then we are all well and truly f@cked on a scale never before seen in human history.
Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese and John Mangan
Will the Yanks supply their age old access to this unified data without Chinese Walls to us [ahem] whilst our lot sets up their monitoring scheme and will they charge through all orifices when something does go wrong?
I think it's a way of unifying LEGAL access to this data.
A previous employer ran an in house competition to name their new super duper AS400 data warehouse. ( we'll skip over the fact it was on the ground floor in a building on a flood plain.)
My suggestion of 'Mordor' cos it was the home of the Dark Lord did not make the shortlist.
Use writetothem.com to write to your MP and let them know how you feel about this. They might not even know about it...
So every plod in every car can trivially pull up huge amounts of data on you.
Or at least on people with the same name as you (or similar name, for such as Muslim names which can be transliterated in several ways).
Or on people who have at some time lived at the same address as you (or a similar address).
And at least some of that data will have only a few errors in it.
What could possibly go wrong?
.. mandate that every time a record referring to you gets consulted, you automatically gain a copy of the same data of the requester, and an update on the data of the Home Secretary. This means that frequent requests for your data ought to yield an almost live feed of those activities, which is (given the activities on display) absolutely essential.
Otherwise - no f*cking way.
Oh, and before I forget don't come asking for new data either.
Day 1
dev team:
"DVLA db.All stuff
UNION
NHS db.stuff"
1 day after release:
Project manager
"Oh... it broked"
next day:
Cameron
"The threat of Brexit has resulted in a complete failure of the database project which would have prevented world hunger, created jobs and reduced immigration"
a Hadoop Use Group UK (HUGUK) meeting
'Hug'? I think they mean 'suffocate'. Gently and lovingly, no doubt, and for all the right reasons.
and that the department's current approach to data would remain in place.
Yes, that's certainly true. The fact that their current approach of 'grab, amalgamate, and tell no-one' might be wrong never quite occurred to them.
Sorry to keep banging the same drum but the Home Secretary has five eighths of four fifths of f*ck all to do with this, she probably didn't even know what was happening beyond some vague hand waving "IT Improvement Scheme" with an attached budget reduction for the laid off staff that was pushed across her desk among all the warrant requests.
All the panopticon crap coming out of the Home Office is the product of Charles Farr, it doesn't matter who the Home Secretary of the day is, once they get a visit from our chief spook they all turn to the same page in the hymn book & sing for all their worth. They've probably had a small discussion about "how they don't want another 7/7 on UK soil ... on their watch ... as they would be blamed ... being in charge of the security services and all" despite Mr Farr being the one actually in charge & the new Home Sec only being in office a week. I doubt he gets as far as reminding the HS they're in charge before they wet themselves. He started having an influence in the Blair era and has continued through every change in government since, the coalition slowed him down a little but not by a lot. If Mr Farr wants to surveil everyone, fine let him stand up in the house and argue his case in the full public spotlight, but that will never happen as he'd have to reveal he's the puppet master and we'd be able to see the strings on the Marionettes of Parliament
Sorry to keep banging the same drum but the Home Secretary has five eighths of four fifths of f*ck all to do with this, she probably didn't even know what was happening beyond some vague hand waving "IT Improvement Scheme" with an attached budget reduction for the laid off staff that was pushed across her desk among all the warrant requests.
So basically you are saying she does not have a fucking clue. Good luck trying to extract an admission.
@swineheard : My wife went to sainsburies to get a job with :
Birth Certificate (not the itty bitty one)
Marriage certificate (change of name)
Council Tax bill (proof of address)
Provisional drivers license (Photo ID)
She was then informed would not be getting the job as she didn't have a valid passport !! WTF
The reason Passports are the preferred option when it comes to employment, is that they give the surest indication that the bearer has the right of abode in the UK, or otherwise. A vast majority of UK passports show the holder as a British citizen, automatically implying that they have right to take up employment here. An EU passport/ID card, and in some cases a UK - issued residents permit will do the same. All other documents are regarded as supplementary rather than definitive evidence of immigration status and most employers would prefer a Passport presented to them. In everyday practical terms, a UK Passport is seen as a national Identity document and seems to be the favored document in the banking and rental sector as well. Things may change of course, if the EU finds a way of imposing ID cards on us by some future directive, assuming of course we vote to stay in on June 23rd.
Sorry, but I see this whole aversion to national ID cards in US and UK to be completely irrational.
Government already knows well where you live (birth certificates, taxes). Universal proofs of identity don't change that one bit. On the other hand they are useful to prove your identity to other people - employers, banks, your UK citizenship when you're abroad
Actually oppressive communist governments don't use ID cards to oppress the population!
"Sorry, but I see this whole aversion to national ID cards in US and UK to be completely irrational.
Government already knows well where you live (birth certificates, taxes). Universal proofs of identity don't change that one bit. On the other hand they are useful to prove your identity to other people - employers, banks, your UK citizenship when you're abroad"
I didn't see the /s sign on this to signify sarcasm and that worries me. Sure the Government already has our details so they are fine and don't need anything else. Our passports are what we need abroard and driving licence or passport really should do at home when we *do* need to prove identity (which has gone a bit far anyway). Additional ID cards help no one but the terrorists who will use forgeries. Linking databases and running data analytics across the Government data risks handing all our remaining (and eroding) freedoms to a totalitarian regime. Those who say it will never happen here are deluding themselves. If we ignore the erosions of freedoms and liberties we walk into totalitarianism of our own free will. BTW under the circumstances what genius it was to call the Hadoop message layer Kafka.
Where is the petition to demand that the use of Hadoop and Kafka is at least discussed?
Maybe they'll print out little cards with our RowID onMaybe we could call them ID Cards
That's a dreadful idea, and the populace has spoken. We do not want ID cards.
What they'll do is to print out a little card with your Primary Key on it, and this will be known as a Government Key Card, for obvious reasons. And that's so much better...
Vic.
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