UK councils accused of intruding in individual privacy
Councils in the United Kingdom have been accused of recklessly risking the private life of hundreds of thousands of citizens by pooling a huge amount of data into their child abuse prediction systems.
The Guardian newspaper said in a report on Sunday that local councils in Britain have been constructing computer models to predict child abuse, a costly move amid mounting financial pressures on the councils which has also raised fears about privacy breaches and perpetuating discrimination against minorities.
The report said at least 377,000 people’s data has been incorporated into the different predictive systems of five local authorities. The systems are meant to allow councils to focus resources more effectively as they algorithmically identify families for attention from child services.
The data being considered for inclusion in such systems include school attendance and exclusion figures, housing association repairs and arrears data, and police records on antisocial behavior and domestic violence. The Guardian said some of those data sets have been excluded from the final models of several systems.
National authorities said they would investigate whether the vast use of personal data was compliant with the existing laws on data protection.
“All organizations have a duty to look after personal information in their care but records involving children – often sensitive personal data – require particularly robust measures,” said a spokesperson of the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Advocates of the private data protection said councils’ development of the predictive systems had a risk of perpetuating stereotyping and discrimination against individuals. They also said the systems could operate without any proper public scrutiny, further increasing the risks about the misuse of the private data.
Child abuse and modern slavery have become hot topics in Britain as authorities have discovered numerous cases of children being enslaved by gangs, especially on the internet, where they are recruited for sex services and drug trafficking.
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