Six months ago no-one in the mainstream media seemed too worried about this Government's ability to track our lives through its relentless collection of data. How times change. I've lost count of the 'Stasi' headlines over the last few days, Timothy Garton Ash in today's Guardian being the latest to call for a fightback. Garton Ash points out that the advance of information and communications technology goives the state 'possibilities of which the Stasi could only dream.' Which is perfectly true. And it's not just phone tapping and CCTV that gives the state too much information, but the much more innocuous-sounding 'personalisation' of public services which, as I point out in a new report for the Centre for Policy Studies , is designed to enable Government departments and Government agencies to share our personal data with a view to creating a 'package' of public services for each of us.
Described by Government advisers as the 'Tesco clubcard' model for public service reform, this agenda aims to provide Government with 'customer insight' based on our 'behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs or desires' - so that services can be planned and allocated from the centre. Perhaps the most disturbing claim made for the agenda is that it is to be designed so that the public 'do not see this process.' Let us hope that the public, thanks to recent data loss scandals, do begin to see the process which Gordon Brown and his colleagues have embarked upon. The more light is shed on it, the better.
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