Are people aware that contact point
The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold psp
The Accidental Spy trailer is being rolled out nationally over the next few years. Contact point will have every young person in Englands basic details, such and name dob, address, parents, school, doctor, lead worker ect. It is in response to the report following Victoria Climbie’s death and will automatically update as soon as a parent of yp access a service eg doctor, school, dfes. At one level it will be a great tool for suitable trainned and authorised staff such a youth workers to find out who else is supporting the young person. On the other hand there is no right to privacy for the young person or parents to opt out. There is a sheilding process to protect vulnerable yp from their info being made available, but every yp will be on the system.
Contact Point’s security statement doesn’t inspire confidence.
I can imagine that a database like that could prove to be a danger to young people who could become targeted through it. Once a malicious person has access to that data they could easily find which children are more vulnerable and using the data impersonate someone who they are not. It will be easy for the wrong people to gain access to the system via various methods including social engineering (such as blackmail at the one extreme). I imagine that abusers would gains status by sharing stolen login credentials on the internet!
Bearing in mind the government’s track record of mislaying data the consequences of a loss could be massive – we might find that information about the UK’s whole population of under 18s can be searched by someone who bought the data online. This could result in hundreds or thousands of extra cases of abuse for a period of perhaps ten years after a data loss.
Ridiculous!
I need to find out how to stop my children being added to the system.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7586359.stm