The House of Commons Justice Committee has today released a report into the protection of public data. The report is a good summary of the state of play and, in particular, of developments since the Chancellor announced to Parliament in November last year that HMRC had lost confidential records affecting 25 million UK citizens.

The report recommends a data breach notification law, criminal penalties for data controllers who are responsible for reckless or repeated security breaches and greater powers and resources for the Information Commissioner’s Office. Currently, the Information Commissioner receives roughly £10 million each year to conduct all of his data protection activities.

These recommendations echo those made by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee in August 2007, recommendations that the Government rejected almost entirely. Perhaps the public outcry following the HMRC data security breach will help Government think again.

Today’s report is explicit about the real risks associated with big databases containing personal data that are open to large numbers of licensed users, and mentions the children’s database ContactPoint, as well as the planned National Identity Register. It also notes further risks associated with obligations to share data with EU member states:

“If data held by the Government is available for inspection outside the jurisdiction, then the importance of restricting the amount of data held, as well as proper policing of who had access to it, takes on even greater importance.”

On Monday next week Kieron Poynter of PricewaterhouseCoopers will publish his report into the failures that led to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) losing 25 million confidential records about UK citizens claiming child benefit. The HMRC fiasco, and privacy debacles before and since, demonstrate a public sector culture of complete disregard for the privacy and security of individuals in the UK.

There will be a Ministerial statement about the Poynter Review in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon. If you haven’t already, please write to your MP today and ask her or him to put your concerns to policy-makers during this session. This culture of disregard for personal privacy combined with the Government’s continued belief in the aggregation and sharing of vast amounts of personal data across agencies is a privacy timebomb.

If you’re unsure how to write an effective missive to your MP, then read the ORG wiki’s handy guide. What follow are some key points and requests to put to your MP for you to choose from - click on the links for further ideas and resources.

• How does Government propose to tackle what is clearly a culture of disregard for citizens’ personal and confidential data?
• Why does Government persist in telling the “fairytale of biometrics”
• Shouldn’t Government be ashamed that it has consistently brushed aside the advice of computer security experts?

You could also ask your MP to sign the Early Day Motion proposed by Annette Brooke MP which calls upon the Government to reconsider its decision to proceed with the children’s database ContactPoint.

A culture of disregard

Discgate was not an isolated incident. Seven months before the DVDs went missing, HMRC had already established a practice of recording sensitive data onto DVDs, secured only with a password and dispatched via internal mail. Emails sent back and forth about this debacle, the largest ever data breach to hit the UK, cite cost as the reason given for not filtering personal details out of the data. But how much is your privacy worth to you?

This is not just about the HMRC. The ORG wiki’s log of UK privacy debacles has been struggling to keep up with the public sector bodies who have been queuing up to admit data breaches since the HMRC announcement. The HMRC data breach may be the biggest but it was not the first and it will not be the last.

If you’re MP is wondering why a junior employee was able to download the information to CDs in the first place, then they’re in good company:

“I would question whether anybody should be allowed to download an entire database of this scale without going through the most rigorous pre-authorisation checks.”

“It was a really shocking example of loss of security.”

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas

“How you can have a system which allows you to copy a whole database onto a disk is of concern,”

“Clearly there are issues about when the data was accessed and by whom. They should have had access controls and authorisation levels to make it physically impossible to burn a disc off the database without the say-so of the chairman of HMRC. Why isn’t the technology there to do that? It isn’t rocket science.”

Assistant Information Commissioner Jonathan Bamford

The Information Commissioner described the HMRC breach as “the worst the ICO has encountered” and said it called into question the security of the entire system of data sharing in government. He called for a review of the national identity register, a call which echoes a marked shift in public opinion on ID cards, and a recommendation for more debate about ID cards from thinktank Demos, who concluded a year-long study of data-sharing last week. The Government’s data minister, Michael Wills MP, has said that plans for the national ID register need looking at again. Ask that your MP pressures the government to re-examine the flawed National Identity Register.

On 27 November, children’s Minister Kevin Brennan announced an independent assessment of the security procedures surrounding ContactPoint, to be conducted by Deloitte. An Early Day Motion asking Government to go further, and consider recommendations to scrap the idea, is currently collecting signatures: please encourage your MP to sign.

The fairytale of biometrics

For people in technology, one of the most worrying developments since this crisis has been ministers’ using it as an excuse to push for solutions based around biometrics, solutions that would actually increase the privacy risks we are exposed to. Six leading academics (including two Open Rights Group Advisory Council members) recently wrote to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights to express their dismay at how biometrics are seen as a magic fix for improving security:

“These assertions are based on a fairy-tale view of the capabilities of the technology and in addition, only deal with one aspect of the problems that this type of data breach causes. … Furthermore, biometric checks at the time of usage do not of themselves make any difference whatsoever to the possibility of the type of disaster that has just occurred at HMRC. This type of data leakage, which occurs regularly across Government, will continue to occur until there is a radical change in the culture both of system designer and system users. The safety, security and privacy of personal data has to become the primary requirement in the design, implementation, operation and auditing of systems of this kind.”

Professor Ross Anderson, Security Engineering, University of Cambridge
Dr Richard Clayton, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Dr Ian Brown, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
Dr Brian Gladman, Ministry of Defence and NATO (retired)
Professor Angela Sasse, Department of Computer Science, University College London
Professor Martyn Thomas, CBE FREng, Software Engineering, University of Oxford

These technologies are unproven and will not be ready for commercial deployment for another 15 years. Ask your MP to encourage the Government to listen to the facts on biometrics.

Brushing aside expert advice

Unfortunately, the skills and knowledge necessary for successfully procuring, managing and securing computer systems are not commonly possessed by Government Ministers or senior managers in the civil service. This might not be such a problem, were the Government to listen to the advice that has been readily offered by expert groups during the quest towards Transformational Government, and their warnings about giving thousands of people access to large, centralised databases. But then, why should it, when apparently it doesn’t even listen to warnings from its own internal auditors?

“Again and again and again these warnings have been made in different contexts by expert groups and the Government has not been interested.”

Professor Ross Anderson

We are living in an age where systems dealing with our identity must be designed from the bottom up not to leak information in spite of being breached. Perhaps I should say, “redesigned from the bottom up”, because today’s systems rarely meet the bar. … There is no need to store all of society’s dynamite in one place, and no need to run the risk of the collosal explosion that an error in procedure might produce.

Britain’s HMRC Identity Chernobyl - Kim Cameron (Microsoft’s Chief Architect of Identity)

Ask your MP to encourage the Government to heed the warnings of these and other experts.

Together, we can stop the Government’s privacy timebomb. If you haven’t got time to write to your MP today, please write on the weekend. The more missives MPs receive on Monday morning, the more they will recognise the public mood on this issue, and the more likely they will be to raise their objections in Parliament on Monday afternoon.

Professor Ross Anderson, UK computer security expert and Chair of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, appeared on Newsnight last night, to discuss the HMRC data loss fiasco. He labelled the fiasco “an accident waiting to happen”, and calmly, methodically, indicted the Government for brushing aside the advice of security experts who have been warning them against the centralised, top-down approach they have been taking to electronic government.

I hope Professor Anderson will not object to my transcribing his words in full, and linking to the reports he mentioned and the government responses that have brushed aside expert concerns.

“But if we return to the matter in hand, I’m afraid that there is a policy issue here not an operational issue because the government has repeatedly, over the last few years brushed aside one lot of advice after another about the growing problems of privacy and safety with aggregating more and more data.

We wrote a report for the Information Commissioner in November last year pointing out that the proposed children’s databases were both unsafe and illegal. That was brushed aside.

Lord Broers’ House of Lords Science and Technology Committee reported earlier this year saying that the government needed to get its act together on personal internet security. A large part of that was Treasury responsibility, better regulation of online banking. That was brushed aside.

The Health Committee reported in September saying that people needed a right to opt out of the large central databases of personal medical information that the NHS is collecting. That was brushed aside.

Again and again and again these warnings have been made in different contexts by expert groups and the Government has not been interested.”

The confidential details of 15 25 million child benefit claimants are reported to have been lost by HM Revenue and Customs. The BBC is reporting that HMRC’s chairman, Paul Gray, has resigned.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he understood ministers had been aware of the problem for nine to 10 days.

Here in the ORG offices we are watching the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, make a statement on the matter to the House of Commons.

Update: The Chancellor has now made his statement to the House of Commons. It appears that the BBC under-reported the amount of people affected by this loss. Darling announced that a “password-protected” CD sent by unrecorded delivery contained details of 25 million individuals. That’s just under half the population of the UK.

Details contained on the CD include:

• Name;
• Children’s names;
• Address;
• Date of Birth;
• National Insurance Number;
• and, where relevant, bank details.

Darling used his statement to reassure citizens that banks had been informed and were taking measures to protect their accounts. The accounts of those whose details were lost had been flagged, said Darling, and were being monitored for irregular activity. He assured UK citizens that any innocent victim of fraud would be protected under the banking code.

According to Darling, the Information Commissioner will be investigating the data protection breaches that were presumably key in leading to this blunder.

Today, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics launched their report on the regulation of the National DNA Database. The authors emphasised balancing ethical values, such as liberty, autonomy and privacy, against the database’s benefits to law-enforcement. The headlines echo our own submission to the review:

• Only people convicted of a crime should be permanently recorded, except those charged with serious violent or sexual offences.

• Police should not be given powers to sample and store DNA, without consent, from people arrested for ‘non-recordable’ offences.

• Those who volunteer their DNA (e.g. witnesses) should be able to request - without providing a reason - the removal of their DNA.

• Unless there is a good reason to preserve it, children’s DNA should be removed from the NDNAD on request.

• Lawyers and juries should be given more help to understand the meaning of DNA evidence.

• Familial searching should not be practiced unless it is necessary and proportionate.

• Ethnic inferences should not be part of routine procedure.

• The NDNAD should have an independent ethics and governance framework.

• The regulation of all forensic databases, including oversight of research and other access requests, should be given statutory basis.

Concerns were expressed at this morning’s launch event that Nuffield’s recommendations do not go far enough. Terri Dowty (ARCH) argued that children must be given the right to exclude their own DNA from the register, rather than depending on their - not always reliable - guardians and the courts to aid in the removal of their genetic make-up. Helen Wallace (Genewatch) argued, in line with the Human Genetics Commission, against costly preservation of samples once the necessary profiles are extracted.

Despite these concerns, implementing these recommendations would significantly improve the current position. The Home Office is currently evaluating the aged statutory foundation of this database (the PACE Review) and is due to pronounce on the issue in December 2007.

This morning, the news media are reporting a startling recommendation by one of the UK’s most senior judges: that the Police National DNA Database (NDNAD) should cover every citizen in the UK, and every person who visits the UK. You can listen to Lord Justice Sedley talking with the Information Commissioner on the BBC’s Today programme here.

Bioinformation can reveal extremely private information about an individual’s family relationships and physical health. As we wrote in our submission to the Nuffield Council of Bioethics consultation on the forensic use of bioinformation, the Open Rights Group opposes the DNA sampling of the entire population, and can see no circumstances under which it should be considered.

However, Lord Justice Sedley’s recommendation does highlight the urgent need to address the regulations governing the NDNAD. Currently, DNA records of innocent people, including thousands of children, are kept indefinitely. There is no clear process for getting your DNA records off the database once you have given them to police, even if you only did so as a witness to a crime. Ethnic minorities and young males are disproportionately represented on the database, which is already the largest of its kind in the world. Lord Justice Sedley is right to call the current state of the NDNAD “indefensible”.

If you want to find out more about the NDNAD, visit Genewatch UK’s excellent information and action page, which has lots of suggestions about how to get your voice heard on this issue, as well as information about how to get your records off the database.

The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee have published their fifth report today, which makes a variety of recommendations to legislators, the police, businesses and citizens to improve personal security on the internet. The full report is now available to download.

Much of this morning’s media coverage is focussing on recommendations to create a dedicated e-crime unit, or to develop BSI kitemarks for security in internet services. But the report makes other recommendations too. For example, the Committee recommends introducing some kind of liability regime for software vendors, although it recognises the potential side effects this might have on innovation, or on open source software. The report sets up an interesting debate on this issue between some of the Committee’s expert witnesses - including Bruce Schneier, Jonathan Zittrain and Alan Cox - which is well worth reading (go to para 4.25).

The report also makes some radical recommendations for network level security, suggesting that Internet Service Providers’ traditional defence against liability for bad traffic on their networks - that they are “mere conduits” - should be looked at again. But any re-examination of ISP liability needs to be handled very carefully. As notice and takedown practices tied to suspected copyright infringement have shown, ISPs are not best placed to police the network, and can be expected to react to this kind of pressure by knocking users off the network without appropriate levels of investigation into those users’ actions.

Other recommendations include more research funding for computer security groups and a re-examination of the Computer Misuse Act. The Committee also adds its voice to the chorus of people calling for greater powers for the Information Commissioner’s Office. While such a detailed, considered and well-informed report should be welcomed, the digital rights community needs to pay close attention to how policy makers choose to interpret its recommendations.

More analysis of the report here and here.

Yesterday, Home Office minister Jacqui Smith announced that she had signed a certificate to exempt Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police from certain provisions of the Data Protection Act. The move will facilitate the transfer of bulk data from the TfL’s congestion charging cameras, which the Met will be permitted to use when investigating threats to national security. The data - collected using automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras which encircle the capital - can reveal the movements of all motor vehicles in and out of the city centre.

Oversight of the new arrangement comes in the form of an annual report to the Information Commissioner’s Office. But until the ICO are given sufficient clout to effectively enforce the current Data Protection regime, should we really be convinced that this represents enough of a check on new data sharing powers?

Today, news sources are reporting that leaked Home Office documents reveal plans to extend these powers “for all crime-fighting purposes”. According to this report from the Guardian, the DTI had expressed reservations over such a move, since it is likely that associated privacy concerns would slow down proposed road-pricing schemes that have already attracted public pushback. Earlier this year, a petition against road-pricing attracted 1.7 million signatures. In his response, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair assured petitioners that “any technology used would have to give definite guarantees about privacy being protected - as it should be.”

Spyblog has a thorough analysis of the legality or otherwise of function creep in ANPR systems, drawing on the Annual Report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner (pdf), which, coincidentally, went online yesterday. For more information on ANPR technology, and Association of Chief Police Officer’s proposals to “deny criminals the roads”, see ORG’s wiki resources page. And don’t forget that if you’re concerned about the effective scrutiny of our data protection laws, you can help contribute to the ORG response to an ICO consultation on Data Protection Strategy.

The Information Commissioner’s Annual Report is launched today. Speaking at the launch Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, will say:

“Over the last year we have seen far too many careless and inexcusable breaches of people’s personal information. The roll call of banks, retailers, government departments, public bodies and other organisations which have admitted serious security lapses is frankly horrifying.”

“How can laptops holding details of customer accounts be used away from the office without strong encryption? How can millions of store cards fall into the wrong hands? How can online recruitment allow applicants to see each others’ forms? How can any bank chief executive face customers and shareholders and admit that loan rejections, health insurance applications, credit cards and bank statements can be found, unsecured in non-confidential waste bags?”

According to the report, the public’s awareness of data protection rights has risen to an all-time high of 82% and more and more people understand that personal information must be handled appropriately. To ensure personal information stays private, the Information Commissioner has called for stronger audit and inspection powers for his Office. Currently the ICO can only audit organisations’ information handling practices with their consent. The Commissioner wants the right to inspect and audit practices anywhere where poor practice is suspected.

Great piece in The Guardian about how Adam Laurie and No2ID’s Phil Booth cracked the new hi-tech passport RIFD chips. If you weren’t worried about these new passports before, you should be:

Within minutes of applying the three passports to the reader, the information from all of them has been copied and the holders’ images appear on the screen of Laurie’s laptop. The passports belong to Booth, and to Laurie’s son, Max, and my partner, who have all given their permission.

Booth is staggered. He has undercut Laurie by finding an RFID reader for £174, which also works. “This is simply not supposed to happen,” Booth says. “This could provide a bonanza for counterfeiters because drawing the information from the chip, complete with the digital signature it contains, could result in a passport being passed off as the real article. You could make a perfect clone of the passport.”