Watchdog wants more power

Thomas: substantial dangers if information sharing becomes a free-for-all

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has submitted formal proposals to the Ministry of Justice to make data protection violations a criminal offence.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is also calling for more power to inspect government organisations without their consent.

The ever-growing extent of personal information flowing around the public and private sector needs to be more carefully regulated, according to Thomas.

“The amount of data about each of us that is being shared is staggering. There are substantial dangers if it becomes a free-for-all,” he said.

The ICO has campaigned to extend its remit since Thomas took over in 2002.

But the database explosion of recent years is only part of the reason. Technological developments have also complicated the debate. The national DNA database is a case in point.

When the enabling legislation was last reviewed in 2003, obtaining and retaining genetic profiles was expensive. But technical advances have pushed down the cost and the database now holds DNA samples from more than five per cent of the population.

Future implications were missed when the initial law was passed, said Thomas.

“There has not been as much scrutiny of legislation as I would like to see,” he said. “We now have a situation where there are more DNA profiles on the database than anyone contemplated when the law was going through.”

Plans for joined-up government, with departments and agencies sharing data to make public services more efficient, also need attention. But because the ICO is an independent office, it is sometimes out of the Whitehall loop, said Thomas.

“Information sharing in the public sector is not a panacea and data should not be shared by default. We need to be involved from the start,” he said.

In the private sector, advances in data mining technology are also having a big impact.

A cultural shift is needed to ensure data is not mined unnecessarily, said surveillance expert David Murikami-Wood from Newcastle University. “It is about engendering a change of mindset, similar to the one we underwent five years ago with regard to environmental damage,” he said.

“Unwarranted mining and analysis of data without check is not acceptable. Small things such as privacy impact assessments can build up and would lead to better scrutiny.”

Murikami-Wood said the Information Commissioner needs more power because parliament and Whitehall are not sufficiently technically-minded to judge the issues properly.

“The ICO could help provide ethical foresight, as happens in the medical profession, so issues are debated before changes happen,” he said.