Would you have given permission for your childs info to be put online?

[wolfman]

Alexandra Frean, Education Editor
Security flaws have halted work on the internet database designed to hold the details of 11 million children and teenagers.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) admitted last night that it had uncovered problems in the system for shielding details of an estimated 55,000 vulnerable children.

These include children who are victims of domestic violence, those in difficult adoptions or witness protection programmes and the children of the rich and famous, whose whereabouts may need to be kept secret.

ContactPoint is a £224 million online database that contains the names, addresses, dates of birth and details of schools, GPs, social workers and support services of all 11 million people aged under 18 in England. It is intended to improve child protection.

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The project has been dogged by controversy since its inception in 2003 and the loss of many big databases has dented public confidence. ContactPoint was supposed to go live nationally this year but a spokeswoman for the DCSF said that the department had ordered a “pause in the ongoing data update” pending an investigation into the shielding problems.

The shielding system for vulnerable children is supposed to withdraw everything but a child’s name, sex and age from the computer record that will be available to 400,000 children’s services workers with access to the database. But local authority staff who have been uploading information on to ContactPoint have discovered that the shielding does not always work.

Some adopted children whose identities should be shielded are listed on the database by both their original and their adopted surnames, with a link between the two. This could allow children who have been removed from abusive homes and put forward for adoption to be tracked down by their birth parents.

In other instances, shielding simply disappears from the records of vulnerable children every time that the database is updated automatically from central government databases, such as the school census or the child benefit database. This leaves all their details visible on a duplicate record that appears, as if from nowhere, on the database.

Anne Marie Carrie, the executive director of family and children’s services for the borough of Kensington & Chelsea in West London, said that these problems had arisen in a number of authorities, including her own. Ms Carrie’s staff entered the details of 130 adopted children in the borough on to ContactPoint. In 20 cases, or 15 per cent of the total, a duplicate entry containing the child’s birth name appeared on the database.

“If someone wanted to maliciously track down a child they had given up for adoption, this would make it easier for them to find their address and school,” she said.

She knew of other authorities, where shielding protection for vulnerable children had been overridden as soon as their records had been updated by the health service or the Department for Work and Pensions.

“Some people are seeing this as an IT issue but, in reality, it is a child protection issue,” she said.

from Times online author as stated

[wolfman]

By Ian Dunt
The vast majority of government databases are unnecessary and possibly illegal, a damning new report into 'Database Britain' has found.
The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust hired a team of leading academics, industry and privacy experts to look into government databases managing major public service functions.
The group found that over eight out of ten databases present serious dangers to privacy and should either be scrapped completely or face a major overhaul.
"This survey shows just how vast the database state has grown while your back was turned," said Phil Booth, national coordinator of NO2ID.
"It threatens the privacy, personal security and freedom of everyone in the UK.
"Government now sees collecting and collating information about the people as a primary function: snooping is the first resort."
Of the 46 databases considered by the report, the authors concluded only six are broadly acceptable in privacy terms, and more than ten should be scrapped entirely, including the ID card scheme, the centralisation and sharing of all health records by the NHS, and the 'children's databases' - ContactPoint and the electronic Care Assessment Framework (eCAF).
"This damning report exposes how the government's obsession with hoarding our personal information has turned Britain into a database state," Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said.
"In their desperation to track our every move, ministers have created a glut of databases, many of which are quite simply illegal."
The think tank suggests government is systematically failing to consider privacy issues in its data storage and sharing policies.
"This isn't merely a failure of government; it is a serious indictment of our whole political system," said Alexandra Runswick, deputy director of Unlock Democracy.
"The 'Database State' has been allowed to grow with little parliamentary oversight. The same problems of lost data and budgets spiralling out of control happen time and again and the lessons aren't being learnt."
from politics.co.uk author as stated

[wolfman]

From The Times
February 27, 2009
Parents urged to guard children's data
Alexandra Frean, Education Editor
Parents of pupils at independent schools are being encouraged to ask for their children's details to be “shielded” on the Government's child protection database, amid fears over its security.
The Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents 1,280 fee- paying schools, has written to its members describing the new database, ContactPoint, as an “unjustified interference in the privacy of the majority of children and their carers”.
David Lyscom, chief executive of the ISC, wants schools to write to all parents warning them that ContactPoint “will put some children at risk through data theft or loss”. The ISC also warns parents that the database will contain such poor-quality data that it may create a “misleading or unhelpful” impression of their child.
ContactPoint is a £224million child-protection directory that contains the names, addresses, dates of birth, GPs and schools of all 11 million people aged under 18 in England. It will also hold the names and contact details of any professional, such as a social worker or mental health specialist, working with a child.
•   
Mr Lyscom, who represents schools including Eton, Harrow and Cheltenham Ladies' College, said that although the ISC was opposed to ContactPoint it was not advocating a boycott as that would be unlawful. Instead, he wants to alert parents that they can request to have some of their child's details “shielded” from the 400,000 officials who will have access to the database. Under the shielding process, the child's name, date of birth, sex and ID number would still be visible on ContactPoint but other details would be hidden.
Shielding is intended to protect people who are at risk of significant harm, such as victims of domestic violence or those in witness protection programmes or difficult adoptions.
The Government has said that local authorities must decide who should be shielded and that celebrities and the wealthy, who believe that their children may be in danger from others, will not automatically be shielded.
Mr Lyscom said that all parents should be made aware that they had the right to apply. “It seems to have been left to us as schools to make parents aware about this,” he said.
The Government expects that only a few hundred children in each local authority will require screening. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea said, though, that it had identified 1,500 such cases.
Richard Stiff, chairman of the technology committee at the Association of Directors of Children's Services, said that it was important to raise parents' awareness of the right to request shielding. Councils had until March 13 to name all the children who would need shielding, but this may not be enough time, he said.

[Neil Smith]

So in fact the whole idea of this list is to protect kids but the ones that ARE at risk will have only there names on it and nothing more........I could work for the government as I can come up with hundreds of bone ideas every day for them

[wolfman]

I agree, the way this government handles computer information is abysmal. Lost laptops,discs etc. The point is that no one was given the choice of being put on the database or not.

[badger]

Thats all well and good, but its not children slipping through the net we need to worry about its the tapes and disc's, look how many are lost each year.

[wolfman]

Almost 400,000 people will have access to a controversial new database containing the details of every child in England, a minister has said.
ContactPoint, a £224 million directory, containing the name, address, date of birth, GP and school of all under 18s - as well as the name and contact details of any professional working with a child, is being rolled out.
Parents will not have the option of requesting that their child is removed from the list, Children's Minister Baroness Delyth Morgan said.
She said ContactPoint was a "universal" directory containing information pooled from sources already available to ensure no child "slips through the net".
In total around 390,000 people will have access to the database, Baroness Morgan said. This includes local authorities, Government agencies, the police, the NHS and some children's charities.
Children at risk of significant harm, such as victims of domestic abuse will be able to have details like their address "shielded" so they cannot be seen.
Officials said hundreds of children in each local authority could have their details shielded.
The ContactPoint database has been established in response to a key recommendation of the Laming Inquiry into the tragic death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie in 2000.
The project has been subject to several delays due to concerns over data security and technical issues.
It has attracted controversy from the outset with civil liberties groups, children's campaigners and the Office of the Information Commissioner expressing concerns about its scope and role.
from press association author unknown