Whilst everyone is still talking about Northern Rock there was something else announced today it seems. The Home Secretary made some statements about crime. Specifically she said she wanted to reduce violent crime because it was quite bad.You must of course ignore the fact that only a few weeks ago she was telling us how safe we all were so long as we didn't walk the streets after midnight. What struck me as one of those things that has been quite usefully buried by the Northern Rock disaster was this little announcement though.
[the Government will be] investing over £20 million over the next three years to support the rollout of multi-agency interventions and information sharing, involving local police, local councils, voluntary groups and health workers, across the country to manage and identify people at risk of committing serious violence as well as providing support for victimsGot that? £20 million to be spent on what is essentially a "pre-crime unit" (see this). Scary stuff really, they're going to start identifying and targeting people that they think 'might' commit a crime before the crime they might commit has happened yet.
How will they do this? Well, like it says, they're going to share data between all and sundry right down to volunteers at a local level. That's the plan of the Government that lost 25 million personal data records; hard drives and laptops.
That's the same Government led by a Prime Minister who is currently carrying out a "review" on data security, saying that its going to start sharing data with God knows who, in order to figure out if you 'might' commit a crime, and then go after them to stop them doing what they have not done yet but that their sociological algorithm predicts they will.
What a marvelous day to announce that you plan to target people who have not committed a crime but that you think might do on the basic assumption that you can share lots of personal data about them with every Tom, Dick and Harry. Pass the spade, I have a Minority Report I need to bury.
6 comments:
Sometimes you have to wonder what this government is on!
Good catch, Jacqui Smith...I'd say she's slowly turning us in to a true police state, but there's no "slow" about it.
wasn`t there a film starring Tom Cruise about the same thing? In this case Gordo could be played by loveable clown Norman Wisdom!!
Mr Grimsdale, Mr Grimsdale! I've lost that stock of northern rock you gave me. My darling tripped me up and it went down the drain.
20 Million over 3 years. That will all be swallowed up through administration, there won't be any actual end result.
Man that old skunk must be getting stronger by the day!
Zorro
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