Spooked

For anyone following the media stories about increasing concern over the ‘Prevent’ programme, a new report: ‘Spooked: How not to prevent violent extremism’ is a compelling read.

‘Prevent’ is another government initiative from the at-risk stable. It is meant to target those, particularly young people, who are deemed likely to become terrorists. The government gave out £140m of funding last year to local prevention and ‘de-radicalisation’ projects and, as the report points out, the funding is in direct proportion to the number of Muslims within a local authority area, rather than being based on any specific evidence of risk. Thus we are potentially seeing the creation of a new offence to rival ‘driving whilst Black’: that of ‘being Muslim whilst young’.

In return for funding, the youth workers, YOTs and voluntary orgs are asked to sign an Information Sharing Agreement in order to supply the police with information about participants in the various schemes – hence the accusation that this is nothing more than an intelligence-gathering exercise.

The report also points out:

The atmosphere promoted by Prevent is one in which to make radical criticisms of the government is to risk losing funding and facing isolation as an ‘extremist’, while those organisations which support the government are rewarded.This in turn undermines the kind of radical discussions of political issues that would need to occur if young people are to be won over and support for illegitimate political violence diminished.The current emphasis of Prevent on depoliticising young people and restricting radical dissent is actually counter-productive because it strengthens the hands of those who say democracy is pointless.

Go and read it, and pass the URL on to everyone you know because it’s a smashing piece of research that deserves a wide audience.

Marper-dodging

As we were saying the other day, the Home Office is doing everything possible to avoid complying with the Marper judgment. Today the Guardian reports:

More than 90,000 innocent people have been added to the national DNA database since a landmark human rights ruling that keeping indefinitely the profiles of unconvicted suspects was illegal, according to new figures

While the Telegraph points out that we’ve passed the 10% mark:

Police forces in England and Wales have taken the profiles of 5.5 million people, meaning the proportion of the population on the system has passed a tenth for the first time.

‘Consultation’

I’ve just been reminded why ‘responding to government consultations’ sits at the bottom of our to-do list. The one on P2P file-sharing closed barely four weeks ago but, rather like the decision to appoint the new Children’s Commissioner regardless of anyone else’s views, the government appears determined to do exactly what it intended in the first place:

People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced.

Speaking at a government-sponsored forum to debate copyright issues he said the UK would introduce a similar policy to France. It means persistent pirates will be sent two warning letters before facing disconnection from the network.

In the chorus of objections the government ‘consultation’ received, here are some of ours. On reflection, it appears that taking the dog for a walk should have been the higher priority.

Update: We’ve just received this link to the ‘Don’t Disconnect Us‘ campaign, started by Talk Talk, which has plenty of information about the disconnection proposals.

Business as usual

This item about the National DNA Database is tantalising for what it doesn’t say:

Civil liberty campaigners claimed a victory today after the government announced it is dropping current proposals to retain the DNA profiles of innocent people on the national database.

The Home Office has announced that its plan to keep the DNA profiles of those arrested – but never convicted of a crime – for between six and 12 years depending on the seriousness of the offence has been dropped from the policing and crime bill that is going through parliament.

To be honest, ‘claiming victory’ is putting it a bit strongly. We’re all wondering what it means in practice. Yes, it’s good news that the Home Office has – for now – abandoned plans to allow the Secretary of State to set out such ridiculous retention limits; moreover, in secondary legislation.

The bad news is that for the time being there appears to be no change to the current policy of hanging on to the DNA profiles of innocent people. Promising to introduce revised plans in the next session (Dear God, not another Crime Bill) is pretty meaningless because the likelihood is slim of such a Bill getting through before the election. Indeed, if the next set of proposals are anything like as draconian as the last lot, the government may prefer to avoid courting controversy in the election run-up.

All of which means that, despite all the noise about intending to comply with the European Court judgment in Marper, by the time anything actually gets done we will quite possibly be approaching its second anniversary without the Government having done anything whatsoever about taking innocent people’s DNA off the database – and in fact having added another few hundred-thousand innocent profiles.

About images

To follow on from our blog yesterday, The Register has picked up on the unlawfulness of making indecent images of children.

It’s extraordinary that anyone can argue that these are not really ‘images’. As one of our legal advisers has just pointed out: if a Rapiscan operator beamed what he could see to Piccadilly Circus, nobody would dispute that they were seeing images. And if they displayed people’s genitals, can you imagine the police would say “oh, it’s OK – they aren’t really images”?

Update Ah, a friendly phone call from someone at Manchester Airport this afternoon to say that they have decided to obtain legal advice and in the meantime children won’t be using the scanner. Since we’re fortunate enough to have a fair number of experienced lawyers in ARCH, we’ve offered them our assistance.

Dusting off the files

It’s so long since we’ve had any Rapiscan problems that we had to dig around in our archives to respond to calls today about Manchester Airport’s decision to start using the ‘virtual strip search’ scanner in its Terminal 2.

Here is chapter and verse on the law relating to the creation of images of naked children. It boils down to this: don’t even think of it.

The good news, the bad and the even worse

On Friday, we were feeling rather cheerful. It wasn’t just the latest piece of scientific vituperation about the ‘Human Provenance Project’ in Nature magazine. Better still, the UK Borders Agency announced the suspension of their plan to attempt to deduce nationality from DNA and toenail clippings – though they still intended to continue using DNA to carry out familial matching.

Had you visited their website on Friday, you would have seen this:

“The nationality swapping – Isotope analysis and DNA testing process has been has been temporarily suspended and the instruction withdrawn. Officers will be notified when the process resumes. Family relationship testing remains in operation. To access the asylum instruction, please click on the appropriate link below.”

I’ve just clicked on the link to that cheering news, only to find this has replaced it:

“Alterations have been made to the nationality swapping – Isotope analysis and DNA testing process. This process continues to operate. The present instruction has been withdrawn whilst amendments are made.”

In case you’re wondering what ‘the present instruction’ means, this was the guidance to immigration officials on carrying out the tests. It helpfully included the following wording to use when writing to someone who had refused consent to the tests (this is a ‘voluntary’ project, remember):

3. Where the applicant refused to take part.
‘When you attended the Asylum Screening Unit, you were asked to provide isotope and DNA samples to ascertain your country/area/clan of origin. It is noted that you refused to provide samples.’ [Case Owners should insert reason(s) why the applicant did not provide samples by referring to the Screening Officer’s comments on the consent form which should be attached to the HO file (if not, also check CID ‘Notes’).]
[Use where a reasonable explanation has been given]
It is considered that you gave a reasonable explanation for failing to provide samples.

[Use where no reason has been given or a reasonable explanation has not been given for refusing to provide samples (do not use this standardised wording in isolation – refer to 7.2.2 Addressing Refusal to Provide Samples, within the Refusal Letter)]
‘You did not give a reasonable explanation for failing to provide samples. It is considered that a person in genuine need of international protection would assist the authorities of a safe country in establishing the validity of his/her application for asylum. Your failure to do so undermines your claim to be a refugee.’

Coerced consent, anyone?

Horrifying, naive and flawed

Those adjectives don’t refer to UKBA, of course, but to their Human Provenance Project which is being chewed up and spat out in Science Magazine:

Scientists are greeting with surprise and dismay a project to use DNA and isotope analysis of tissue from asylum seekers to evaluate their nationality and help decide who can enter the United Kingdom. “Horrifying,” “naïve,” and “flawed” are among the adjectives geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the “Human Provenance pilot project,” launched quietly in mid-September by the U.K. Border Agency. Their consensus: The project is not scientifically valid–or even sensible.

Mobile Fingerprint Identification

Another of last week’s consultations concerned police plans to use mobile fingerprint scanners on the street. It’s worrying to see just how wrong the NPIA has got the law so far in relation to children and young people – somehow, one expects the police to do a bit better on these things.

Our response is here.

P2P Filesharing

Last week we have mainly been responding to consultations. The BIS (or whatever next week’s incarnation is called) consultation on illicit filesharing closed last Tuesday. Our reponse to their wizard wheeze to cut off Internet access can be found here.

When is anonymous not anonymous?

We seem to have a bit of a stand-off with the Information Commissioner at the moment about what constitutes anonymised data. No, don’t run away – this is really important and rather interesting, I promise.

The Youth Justice Board has built a new system, unimaginatively called the YJMIS, to collect what purports to be anonymised statistical data every quarter from each local authority Youth Offending Team in England and Wales. This is data about offences, disposals, personal profile scores and interventions.

Anonymised? Well, it isn’t taking the child’s name or full address. It takes date of birth, ethnicity and the sector postcode – that is, the first half of the postcode plus the first digit of the second half.

Sector postcodes correspond pretty closely to electoral wards, and if you go to the ONS Neighbourhood Statistics site enter your postcode and then click ‘Ward’, you can get information about the area where you live.

Click ‘2001 Census: Census Area Statistics’ and then ‘Ethnic Group (UV09)’. If you live in an urban area, the chances are that there are hundreds of people from a variety of ethnic groups. So far, so good. Now try looking at, say, Frome in Somerset, or Tonypandy in South Wales, or Saffron Walden in Essex, or Dymock and Kempley in Gloucestershire – or, indeed, at Hough ward, which contains the Information Commissioner’s office.

Do you see the problem? Sector postcodes + ethnicity data do not provide anonymity for those in BME groups who live outside densely populated and ethnically diverse areas. Add in date of birth as well, and the chances are that you could narrow information down to one or two children.

This is not anonymised data but Youth Offending Teams have, with the blessing of the Information Commissioner, uploaded the first batch without seeking consent or giving anyone an opportunity to object on the grounds that they could be identified from the data. The local authority supplying the data remains the data controller.

Does this matter? Well, yes. On principle alone, it’s discrimination. Why should certain groups of people enjoy less protection than others? If you look at the YJMIS FAQs, they say that

“information to be shared is for the stated purposes of the prevention or detection of crime. Therefore, only organisations with this intent will be authorised.”

That means every local authority in the country + the police, and presumably any voluntary sector organisation or researcher who can demonstrate that they need access to YJMIS.

Given that the YJB has just had its second burglary in 18 months and, on the last occasion, server discs were stolen, access may not even be restricted to those who are appropriately ‘authorised’.

Novel uses for DNA

The UK Border Agency has just announced a new initiative – you may have seen a bit about it in the Observer this week.

It’s called the ‘Human Provenance pilot project’ and the ’stakeholder letter’ sent out a couple of weeks ago by UKBA explains:

Human Provenance testing analyses the isotope configuration as stored in a person’s body. All samples will be provided voluntarily. The analysis itself involves the testing of hair and nail samples to allow us to be able to match results using internationally recognised isotope comparison methods to help identify a person’s true country of origin. We will also be testing mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA, which are collected by use of a mouth swab and matching results using similar comparative methods. These samples will not provide specific information about a person’s identity but simply an indication of their possible nationality allowing other investigations to be made.

See this statement from the British Society for Human Genetics if you want to know why the use of DNA to determine ethnic origin is a seriously daft idea.

UKBA’s letter continues:

…The pilot will also address the issue of children being brought to ASU as part of an asylum seeking family when they are in fact unrelated.

Oh, terrific. Quite apart from the sheer inhumanity of revealing possible family secrets to an already traumatised child and risking family meltdown, the whole idea gives off a whiff of the project’s designers having led blissfully sheltered lives. There are any number of reasons, beyond the obvious, why children may not be related to their fathers – or even to their ‘families’. Rape isn’t exactly unknown in war-zones and women may be too ashamed or frightened to reveal it. Children get informally adopted into other families when their parents are killed, or their family of origin scattered in conflict zones. Cultural definitions of ‘family’ can vary – consider polygamy for example – and actually, most of us have uncles and aunts with whom we share no DNA at all.

The idea that the project is ‘voluntary’ is simply laughable. Someone who is dispossessed and scared isn’t exactly in a strong position to assert preferences. As for the word ‘pilot’, I think it translates as: let’s use a few asylum-seekers as crash-test dummies for some dodgy science.

Still, I’m wondering about this mitochondrial DNA idea. Maybe mine would reveal that my roots are somewhere in the Seychelles and I could agree to be repatriated?

Not-so-safeguarding

I didn’t realise how long the latest blog-pause has been until I noticed a thread on No2id very politely inquiring after ARCH’s health. Yep, it’s been a bit manic again, but I hope to post a bit over the next few days to give everyone an idea of the things that have come between ARCH and its blog.

You’d have to have been in a coma or out of the country to miss all the recent headlines about the Independent Safeguarding Authority, and the danger of letting un-vetted adults anywhere near children. It’s certainly changed the way I look at things. For example, I nipped into our local Costcutter the other morning and found the owner chatting happily with a little girl – nobody else was in the shop. I returned home, only to see the milkman at the door of our neighbours across the road. Their 14yo daughter had answered and was talking to him. Yikes! her parents were both out at work! Hmm, maybe everyone should be vetted. Oh, hang on… then we’re back at square one again.

In today’s Observer, Catherine Bennett points out how reluctant Parmjit Dhanda (the minister responsible for the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, which brought the ISA to birth) was to let anyone slip through the net:

as Parmjit Dhanda made clear, the more vetting the merrier. Whatever its lamentable vaguenesses about scope, definitions, enforcement and so forth, no one would ever fault his bill for inclusiveness.

Funnily enough, we would. When this grisly Act was still an embryonic Bill, we tried to get an amendment to make the provision of mobile location tracking services a regulated activity. You can see the full story here.

Doesn’t it seem faintly ridiculous that someone driving a mini-bus containing the school football team needs to be vetted, while the person who knows exactly where your child (or, at least, your child’s mobile) is at any given moment doesn’t even need a CRB check?

Roll up! Buy your data here…

From the Register:

A third (34 per cent) of discarded hard disk drives still contain confidential data, according to a new study which unearthed copies of hospital records and sensitive military information on eBayed kit.

The child protection mess

The National Association of Head Teachers warns:

Vulnerable children are being left in danger because a system designed to get them help quickly is not working…Schools in England must fill in a 16-page form to report concerns about a child’s welfare or safety.

The form in question is the CAF, mentioned many times before on this blog. In particular, we’ve always been concerned that it would become a barrier to children’s fast access to child protection services.

Most of the examples that the NAHT cite are pretty clear examples of neglect that reaches the threshold for intervention under s47 Children Act 1989 – a child at risk of significant harm from abuse or neglect. They should not even be going through the CAF process, which is for children in need of services under s17 Children Act. you might want to compare and contrast these two sections.

A child in the care of a passed-out, alcoholic parent needs emergency protection right now, not ’services’ in a month’s time. Forget filling in forms. We hope that tonight’s Panorama (BBC1 at 8.30) might show something of the chaos that the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda has brought to child protection. As we have repeatedly said (banging our heads on a brick wall) it is dangerous to confuse child protection with the more general – and often unrelated – category of child welfare.