Government data plan is 'sinister ploy'

The forthcoming merger of the General Register Office (GRO) and the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has been called a "sinister ploy" by privacy experts.

Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge, called the move to create another confidential database "pointless" with privacy group No2id describing it as a "blatant land-grab of personal identity".

The decision to merge the two agencies was announced in Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pre-budget report. It will mean the GRO, which oversees the registration of births, deaths and marriages, will be integrated into the Home Office-led IPS from April next year.

Because of an order made under section 38 of the Identity Cards Act in July, the organisations will also be able to share data. Parliament said this would be a good way to cross check information with ID card or passport applications.

However, Phil Booth National co-ordinator at No2ID, said the scheme was a "sinister ploy to collect information from the cradle to the grave".

He told Computeractive: "It’s worrying that a formerly independent agency should be integrated into an organisation whose main purpose is to collect the data of UK citizens.

“It is clearly a ploy to collect the data of under 18s, whose details cannot currently be collected under the passport or ID card schemes."

Anderson agreed. He told Computeractive: “We are moving towards a society where we will be monitored from birth to death."

When we contacted the GRO and IPS they said the merger had happened because the Office of National Statistics (ONS) will become independent of the Government on 1 April 2008.

A spokesman for the IPS said: “The GRO still remains as part of the Government and therefore had to be placed into the best suited department. However, it will remain a single unit within the IPS.”

But this did not appease Booth or Anderson who both described the reasoning behind the scheme as “bureaucratic".

“It’s another excuse for an addition to the fingerprinting database and the children’s database, Contactpoint,” said Booth.