You make some very good points Francis, but I think it's not quite as cut and dried as:
"So, in my view, either data is something that you are happy with being public or not. There really isn't room for a middle way." Privacy isn't a simple "it's either fully private or it's not" option, as there are different and overlapping levels. The existing electoral register is a good example. Someone who has fled from an abusive partner can get an anonymous entry on the electoral register so that (a) they can still vote, but (b) there is an official, confidential record of where they are living. That record isn't 100% secure - an abusive partner trying to track them down might break into a council office, bribe an employee, hack into a system etc. But it is far more secure and private than if the person's address was published in the electoral register which is available at the council offices and in the local library. In this case there is a middle way between something being completely private (person doesn't tell anyone else where they live) and it being public. And, judging by the small but regular use of this option, it looks as if people in such a tragic situation do value having this option. Mark On 14 January 2011 21:37, Francis Davey <[email protected]> wrote: > On 14 January 2011 21:05, Mark Goodge <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > It works reasonably well for the land registry. The information is > available > > to anyone who needs it, but the costs of creating a full database would > be > > prohibitive even for large corporations. > > Its available, but its _expensively_ available. Sometimes you need to > search a lot of titles to be able to reconstruct information that > really ought to be available under one. In practical terms this means > a lot of downloads, and the cost adds up. Fine if its a big > conveyance, but not everyone is in that position. > > But that's just from a normal user's perspective. There's a lot of > information locked up in these databases that can't be got out in any > easy way. For example, any kind of study of the nature of land > ownership in England would want to cover a lot of the land registry, > but would be prohibited by cost. > > Also, reverse searches _are_ sometimes sensible. Finding out that X is > the director of a lot of other companies is (I think) something that X > should not be able to hide, even if X can hide their address. > > > > > I'm not suggesting that price-rationing is an ideal solution. But it is > one > > option, and may possibly be more effective than some others. > > > > Anonymising the data properly? Or removing particularly sensitive > information. > > Really, this is about deciding what should be made public and what > should not. The idea that only organisations with the money or effort > to circumvent security-by-infeasibility is not (in my view) a good > one. > > Eg, the liberal democrats once bulk mailed (as in posted via the Royal > Mail) all electors in the City of Cambridge (I think it was). They did > this without breaking any rules about getting a computer readable > database of the electoral roll or scanning it or anything, but the > _hard_ way by having lots of volunteers go through it by hand. > > So, in my view, either data is something that you are happy with being > public or not. There really isn't room for a middle way. > > The debate then becomes about what is and is not suitably public > (sorry if I'm repeating myself - I plead having been to Southampton > today). In the case of the land registry, we don't really need to know > names of owners, just whether two owners are the same or not, or are > the same as some other person somewhere else in government data (both > impossible questions to answer with the data as it is currently > recorded of course). When conveyancing you want to check that the > person you are dealing with has title, but there's no way of doing > that anyway. > > For Companies House, its reasonable that the fact that a particular > person is a director of a company should be public, but maybe their > address not. > > -- > Francis Davey > > _______________________________________________ > developers-public mailing list > [email protected] > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > Unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/mark.pack%40gmail.com >
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