UK - Safety fears over new register of all children
- From: me@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 09:11:13 -0700
Safety fears over new register of all children
Francis Elliott, Chief Political Correspondent
Senior social workers have given warning of the dangers posed by a new
government register that will store the details of every child in England
from next year.
They fear that the database, containing the address, medical and school
details of all under-18s, could be used to harm the children whom it is
intended to protect.
The Association of Directors of Children's Services (ACDS) has written to
officials outlining its "significant" concerns about the new system, called
ContactPoint, The Times has learnt. Confusion over who is responsible for
vetting users and policing the system "may allow a situation where an
abuser could be able to access ContactPoint for illegitimate purposes with
limited fear of any repercussions", Richard Stiff, the chairman of the ADCS
Information Systems and Technology Policy Committee, said.
The security fears are fuelled further by the admission that information
about the children of celebrities and politicians is likely to be excluded
from the system.
The database, which goes live next year, is to contain details of every one
of the 11 million children in the country, listing their name, address and
gender, as well as contact details for their GP, school and parents and
other careers. The record will also include contacts with hospital
consultants and other professionals, and could show whether the child has
been the subject of a formal assessment on whether he or she needs extra
help.
It will be available to an estimated 330,000 vetted users. Some of those
allowed to check records, such as head teachers, doctors, youth offender
and social workers, are uncontroversial, but critics have questioned why
other potential users, such as fire and rescue staff, will have access to
the database.
ContactPoint was set up after the official report into the death of
Victoria Climbi?. Lord Laming concluded that the eight-year-old's murder
could have been prevented had there been better communication between
professionals.
Regulations governing the system, which is costing £224 million to build
and a further £41 million a year to run, were rushed through parliament
without publicity last month, despite the warning of a House of Lords
committee. "The enormous size of the database and the huge number of
probable users inevitably increase the risks of accidental or inadvertent
breaches of security, and of deliberate misuse of the data (eg, disclosure
of an address with malign intent), which would be likely to bring the whole
scheme into disrepute", the Lords' Select Committee on Merits of Statutory
Instruments concluded.
Now local councils have given warning that changes made to the rules after
consultation could leave the system open to abuse. The Association of
Directors of Children's Services has written to Christine Goodfellow, the
official in charge of the new database, to register its fears over
security.
In addition to its warning over vetting, the body says that ministers are
placing "unreasonable and perhaps undeliverable expectations on local
councils" by asking them to guarantee the accuracy of data over which they
have little control.
Private schools and children's rights campaigners have already given
warning that the database is open to misuse. "Unless the system is secure,
the result will be that sensitive information will fall into the hands of
potential abusers of children and traders of information," a letter signed
by the Independent Schools Council, Privacy International and the
Foundation on Information Policy Research said.
Concerns have been intensified by the admission that, while every child
under 18 in England will have a record, ministers have allowed some
children to be given extra protection. The "shielding" mechanism will mean
that information on the offspring of some politicians and celebrities could
be left off the main database.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)
said that shielding would be available for "children whose circumstances
may mean that they, or others, are at increased risk of harm". She added:
"These decisions will be taken on a case-by-case basis and will be based on
the level of threat posed if their information becomes more widely
available."
Children's rights campaigners and computer security experts say that this
amounts to an acknowledgment that the database will not be secure. "The
Government acknowledges the risks by instituting these protocols on
celebrity and vulnerable children but all children are potentially
vulnerable," Terri Dowty, of Action on Rights for Children, said.
Ian Brown, a computer security research fellow at the Oxford Internet
Institute, said that the scale of the database posed huge risks. "When you
have got more than 300,000 people accessing this database, it's just very
difficult to stop the sale of information."
.
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