There's an interesting piece in the Guardian about the government's planned child database. This will record comprehensive personal information about every child in the UK on a single central government database.

People like me see this is normalisation of the surveillance state, acclimatising children to lack of privacy at an early age. My belief is that it will inevitably link up one day with the planned ID Card National Identity Register (NIR) to create a cradle-to-grave state surveillance system.

The government say this is rubbish. Only essential data will be held and this will be secure and carefully protected.

So why, as the Guardian reports, will celebrities be allowed to "opt out" of having their kids on the database? Why would they want to opt out of supposedly secure and innocuous database? Presumably because it might in reality be potentially dangerous breach of privacy.

And what exactly is a "celebrity"? Some people would undoubtedlly include politicians in that category.

So let's see if I understand this. There is no threat from this database when it comes to us and our children having our privacy invaded. But when it comes to the politicians who created the damn thing - they reserve the right to opt out.

How long before they also get to opt out of the NIR?

Even up here in Edinburgh I can smell the stench from Whitehall.


children NIR privacy surveillance state ukpolitics