AIBU to think the government keeping “files” on teaching assistants is like something out of a dystopian novel?

[RadioMedia]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-government-keeping-files-on-teaching-assistants-and-librarians-internet-activity

Snooper Law 2016 legalised what U.K. Gov had been doing since 1999.

Education is the most important thing we do.

It should not have been nationalised.

It should be a million miles away from Govt control.

So

1. You think that all Government agencies and other public sector bodies have access to a file that has details of everything about anybody

And

2. You think it's ok for the DFE to threaten to pull funding from a conference because a speaker has criticised Government policy

OK............

@cakeorwine
“You think that all Government agencies and other public sector bodies have access to a file that has details of everything about anybody”

Not everything. I listed what things and yes, I don’t think, I know. Look it up.

“You think it's ok for the DFE to threaten to pull funding from a conference because a speaker has criticised Government policy”

I didn’t say what I thought, I said what I think is irrelevant because it’s already been decided.

So your response :

"That’s not so much “keeping a file” as doing a background check on a speaker invited to speak at a State School. You’d expect them to check SM posts before allowing anyone to influence young minds…right?"

showed that you didn't read the article.

Well I would imagine what the government has learnt from tracking teachers and teaching assistants posting anti government sentiment is that they have pissed most of them off quite a lot. They could sack us all but then they'd be even more fucked.

What a dog's dinner this thread has become.

Can we draw a line under the posts that mistakenly thought this had anything to do with children or safeguarding?
This is about professional adults being prevented from addressing other professional adults, based on their criticism of the government on social media.

That anyone should have marked OP as being unreasonable, is very worrying.

Sure it does. It’s run just like a DBS check. Do you think the DfE do the monitoring of criminal records? Or are they searching on a by name basis through what some other part of the U.K. Gov has on file? It’s the latter.

And that is exactly what the article is talking about in regards to internet activity- the info is centrally kept by the intelligence agencies of U.K. Gov and DfE is simply accessing and downloading it to a file.

If the government really has access to everything a person says and does online I would hope that it would need a fuck-load of permissions to access it and a better reason than ‘they’re speaking at a conference’.

It’s not only conference speakers they were monitoring.

I wonder if they also keep tabs on Mumsnetters….

the info is centrally kept by the intelligence agencies of U.K. Gov and DfE is simply accessing and downloading it to a file

Do you understand that you’re implying that dweebs at the DfE can simply ‘access and download’ anyone they fancy’s web activity for no good reason?

Are you sure that they’re not just going on twitter and reading it? Because that seems far more likely…

Probably the latter, but they can access the former too. It all gets saved.

And you think it's ok for the DFE to withhold funding from a conference because the speaker criticised Government policy?

And why mention a speaker and secondary schools?

And you also think that anyone at the DFE can simply call up the social media of any person in the country at the press of a button and the file of any teacher and their postings appear magically?

There’s a difference between “it all gets saved” and “lowly govt officials can access it whenever they like” you know?

I think that @WhiteHorseSpirit is confused by the powers under the Act

Home Office tests web-spying powers with help of UK internet firms - BBC News

Difference between websites visited and everything posted, said, bank accounts, purchasing history...

And as for who can access them

Those records can include which websites a customer visits, when, and how much data they download, as well as the relevant IP (internet protocol) addresses - but not what pages or exactly what content they read on those sites.
But that so-called "metadata" can still reveal a lot about a person's habits - from what political sites they visit to their use of pornography. There are, however, restrictions on who can access the ICRs and for what reasons

I looked at the list of who can access this and the DfE isn't on it.

they did do a recruitment drive on here a while ago

That’s the list from 2015. It has quietly expanded from there to any department that requires DBS checks on employees 😉

And what do they need to do to get the access? If you could possibly provide more information than a winky face, that would be great.

And if you could explain why they would access a database of all internet activity but then only discuss information publicly available on twitter, that would also be helpful.

Did you even read the bit about the permissions needed to access the data?
Do you even know what data is collected?

There is a minimum rank that can access the info or request it from the centralised system. I said both are probably done- query the system and download plus track through SM because the system will have information that has been deleted. E.g posts on MN or to X that have been deleted you wouldn’t see by checking SM via the public page. But you’d get all of it, including deleted posts and version history of edits via your query to the central government database.

DfE isn’t only department that can access this info…DWP can too and have hired 2,000 investigators to start looking into benefits claimants using this access as well as looking at public access SM activity.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/cost-of-living/dwp-could-monitoring-your-bank-27956034

You can read about the process if you take the time to read UK.gov policy documents and manuals. Its too long to summarise here.

The reason only publicly available information would be published to the public domain is GDPR. Do not mistake this limit on what can be publicly released for all the information that a government department would have in their possession about a person from which to make employment and other decisions.

FWIW, I haven’t voted because I think it pointless. We live in a surveillance state.

So you have no evidence that these DfE officials did anything other than read twitter.