The Muslim Community and the subject of “honour” crimes has been on the front pages over the last week. A high proportion of working Muslims are now employed in the Public Sector, particularly in the Department of Work & Pensions and Job Centres. This type of work provides easy access to our personal data.
The Centre for Social Cohesion’s recent report, Crimes of the Community, documented several instances when young women have fled honour-based violence in the family home, only to be tracked down via informal family networks, the police and civil servants often using national databases used by public sector workers. From p95 of the report:
Women have been tracked down through family members working in Job Centres accessing their National Insurance (NI) data which indicate where they are collecting their benefits. The Asha Project in Streatham recorded one case when an 18-year old Pakistani Muslim woman was almost abducted from a Job Centre as she went to sign-on after her relatives accessed confidential National Insurance information. Ila Patel, director of the Asha Project in South London, says: “she went to sign on, and the family was there, and abducted her. Luckily her boyfriend was there and immediately alerted the police.”
Our Government has literally spent billions on IT projects to develop huge central data bases in the NHS, Police, Job Centres, DWP Justice & DVLC and now we are witnessing one of the unintended consequences of this approach. With lax access controls & minimal security there is growing abuse of our personal data by both Government and Public Sector employees.
Regardless of these worrying signs the Government seeks to press on with Identity Cards and other large, public sector, data base projects. They appear immune to systemic feedback from their failing centralisation approach.
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