SAY NO TO CONTACTPOINT-LETS PROTECT OUR CHILDREN-SIGN PETITION plz

[StudentMadwife]

Ok, not sure if anyone has heard about contactpoint. It has been rolled out on trial in various places across the uk but now it is to be implemented in some areas as soon as the end of april.

The LA will be holding our children on database till they are 18, this is to enable more effective multi-agaency working and to identify kids who need extra services.

children will go on the database at birth and children that are now under 18 will be put straight on from info gathered from schools, doctors YOT's, CAFCAS, CBA and others to build a "picture" of that young person.

I am seriously concerned about this. There has been NO public consultation and NO consent from exsisting parents.

How are we supposed to trust the goverment with our childrens details of their lives when in the last 2 yrs there have been several HUGE security breaches and information has been "lost".

I am concerned that the goverment has kept this scheme under wraps and that everyone I ask has never heard about it. As far as im aware the only people who have some extensive knowledge about it are social services.

PLEASE PLEASE sign the petition and get this stopped, or at the very least temporarily halted.

petitions.pm.gov.uk/ChildDB/

Thanks!

I am always astonished by how much faith people have in the state. Haven't you people heard of the Birmingham Six, Angela Cannings et al? Didn't you follow the saga of the lost CD's? Don't you know that the family courts are still secret, and that social workers involved in some of the biggest fuck-ups in child protection cases in UK history got promoted rather than sacked and are now running their own departments?

You are all immensely tolerant of mistakes. Why? Because you can't imagine ever being the victim of one and you don't care if someone else is? Or because you think the state has made all the mistakes it ever will and there'll never be another one?

The most successful thing Western states have done, is to convince otherwise sensible people that a healthy mistrust of state institutions is the automatic sign of a crackpot paranoid starey-eyed conspiracy theorist. Sorry, but that's a lazy cop-out. Where's the proactive argument for this database, rather than the kneejerk conspiracy theory insults against those agin?

(If there are any I'll read them tomorrow because it's my bedtime. Good night all. )

Oh and I do have something to hide - my business. It's no-one else's as long as it's not criminal.

I also agree with the OP, who had bad press earlier in this thread.

One issue to remember is that if government employees are free to type in details of our children, it's entirely plausible that they may type in the wrong details.

Fuck 'em all. I hate big government. They manage to take our taxes with breathtaking efficiency, so I'm fairly certain they know who we are already.

The argument that much of Europe has them (ID Cards, etc) isn't good enough. We're not the rest of Europe. We're British. We do things differently here.

The most pertinent point, for me, is that the people who are invading our childrens' privacy aren't going to volunteer their own precious offspring. Oh no, MPs and celebs and anyone well-known won't be on there. No mingling with the plebs for Gordon Brown's family. Or Madonna's. Clearly only civilians need to be bossed around and checked up on.

If it's not good enough for Leo Blair, John Brown or Romeo Beckham, it's not good enough for edam junior, either.

Well I have signed it. We currently have a goverment that has repeatedly showed itself to be corrupt and dishonest, as well as incompetent and to be far too fond of cosying up to mates in big business (oh, wonder how long it will take for your ID data to be sold on to ad agencies, eh?)
THe bottom line is, it is not the Government's business what you are doing, where you are going, what you are eating and who you are sleeping with. What the Blair-led fuckwits have done is pretty much managed to persuade all the stupid people that everyone else is a potential terrorist/benefit theif/peedafil and therefore everyone's behaviour must be monitored and interfered with to Keep Us All Safe (though it's all right for the government to fuck up, lose data, get the wrong person, declare an illegal war and cook the books...).

Here, here, madamez.

This is a free country, although not a democratic one.

I am not going to have an ID Card. It's the only issue I've felt strongly enough about to march over. You know who I am, you fuckers.

I think the question is how freely do you want information shared about your child.

For example if Joe Bloggs was under a behavioural pyschologist for regularly pooing his pants at the age of seven, does he really want his A-level tutor finding out at the age of 18?

I wouldnt want lots of agencies having access to my son's medical records. I am happy share information with those who need to know.

There are already huge databases on our children. Its naive to think it doesnt happen already. For example virtually every school in the country has a SERCO or SIMS database.

I can see the arguements for a unified database. However I think that Joe Public should have the right to veto being part of the data base as much as the Blairs or Madonna.

I recall a quote from, I think, the Information Commissioner (or somesuch knowledgeable person) who said that the UK was "sleepwalking into a surveillance society". I never cease to be amazed at the gullibility and credulity of the sleepwalkers.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

bump

I might get an ID card, although at £270 per person (I make that £540 for myself and Mrs Kevlarhead) that's a lot of money for not a lot of benefit. Only if there's an element of coercion, i think.

And I'll probably just drop it in my coffee and microwave it every morning until it dies...

Ooopsie!

australia does not have an id card - in fact we voted overwhelmingly against it.

I have been the victim of govt stuff up - along with another woman who probably never knew - due to NI and child benefit - so it makes me wonder what they could do with a data base - how many mistakes could occur.

Basically when I started a permanent job in the UK my employer did a search for a National Insurance number and they were given a number and told to use it for me.( have dual citizenship and so they assumed I had a NI number)

It turns out - after applying for child benefit ( sept 2002) and hearing nothing until I called to find out what was taking so long ( jan 2003) that I had been given someone else's NI number and they had merged someone else's details and mine. Quite a mess.

I had a lot of phone calls back and forward to try and sort this mess out.

Finally I spoke to a woman at Inland Revenue who told me she would sort it out and that I had been given a dispensation ( don't have to wait 2 - 4 months ) to get the new NI number quickly. Social Security would not even give me an interview until I packed my daughter into the car and toddled off to the office and asked to speak to someone. The amount of paperwork etc that I had to fill out and sort out to prove that I was me and they had stuffed up - they were viewing me as someone trying to defraud child benefit. They actually had forms relating to this error.

They wanted to keep investigating the matter. Some other poor woman has had her NI file mucked up through an Inland Revenue mistake and has no idea.

here is the interesting* part: They basically superimposed my details - married name, new address etc on her file. We shared the same name except for middle name and the same date of birth. The surname was her married name but my maiden name.

The scary thing is - a man at Inland Revenue tells me this is quite common but some people do not find out for 20 years or more that they may have been sharing a NI number or using the wrong number - usually about the time they want to sort out their pensions!!

Again - people are not perfect and errors in information occurs - just makes you wonder how else they could stuff things up.

Spain - foe an example - has ID cards - and it did nothing to prevent the Madrid bombings.

Yes, many of us carry a driving license-but that it because we want to do something specific, ie drive a car. It is not so we can prove who we are. And we can choose not to.

And as I said - I have nothing to hide, but my privacy to lose. And that is an important loss.

Spain - foe an example - has ID cards - and it did nothing to prevent the Madrid bombings.

Yes, many of us carry a driving license-but that it because we want to do something specific, ie drive a car. It is not so we can prove who we are. And we can choose not to.

And as I said - I have nothing to hide, but my privacy to lose. And that is an important loss.

what frightens me is every database is available to be corrupted since the chip and pin I have had more unorthorised transactions from my account then before from well known supermarkets as well and you have to fight to get your own money back

people can take your number plate and if they know the right people can easily find your name and address if all off this is held on one computer along with DNA fingerprints, late attendances at school, that you stole a packet of chewing gum from a store and your mom made you take it back!! etc or that ss once came to your house because someone wrongly reported you - happened to a good friend- where does it end what else will they hold who will use it or more importantly it will fall into the wrong hands

imagine if the disk goes missing that has all of this information on it, it doesn't bear thinking about

Someone somewhere could already have our bank account records and child's date of birth for all of england it wouldn't be used straight away they would wait, I expect 95% of mothers havnt' changed there bank accounts me included

I know I sound over the top but I dont want my DNA or fingerprints held anywhere that to me is the direct punishment for commiting a crime not for leading a law abiding life

the UK has the highest number of data relating to DNA stored to any other country (I think the BBC were discussing it earlier this week).

I have nothing to hide - I'm not planning on robbing any banks, mugging anybody or anything awful. My husband has nothing to hide either, and my daughter is two, she has nothing to hide. So if our DNA was stored, or we had to have ID cards, then there should not be an issue.

However this is a government who has shown they cannot be trusted to keep our data safe, there have been data lost, and I have had issues with Inland Revenue before where they fucked up and sent MY data re child benefit across the country because they somehow had a different address for me. I have heard of things like what happened to eidsvold happening to others, and trust me, the government bodies are not too quick to sort it out. I'm not comfortable with the idea of them holding a data base with our childrens information when they cannot be trusted to hold the information they already keep.

Also, I'm not too keen on the cost. Its expensive to roll this out, and I dont think it will make any difference to national security - as pointed out, ID cards did nothing to stop the Madrid bombings.

It is also well worth remembering the reasons why the identity card that was introduced in wartime was eventually withdrawn.

A member of the public refused to produce his ID card when asked to by a police officer. As a result, he ended up in court (my recall of some of the details is a bit vague). The judge pointed out the way in which the ID card had had functions added to it following its introduction and that, as a result, the relationship between citizen and state had been, or risked being, fundamentally altered. The state exists to serve the citizen. Not the other way around.

And the wartime card was just a card. What is proposed for us now - and this contactpoint thing is, ultimately, just an extension of this sort of thing - is much, much more insidious.

I get so angry when I hear that idiot Jacqui Smith saying that the ID database will make life easier. It will NOT make things easier than they are now. What it will do is make getting a bank account, going abroad, getting benefits, getting healthcare etc, etc, impossible once every system has been altered so that you can't access services or anything else without producing your card.

It is not being done for our convenience and benefit but for the convenience and benefit of this governement and any government that manages to get itself elected long into the future. I don't want to hand that kind of power over me to politicians. Do you?

To all those in favour of ID databases and children's databases, I think you are very trusting. Personally, I wouldn't trust this government to run a piss up in a brewery nevermind run a database system covering 60 million entries which can be accessed by something like 300,000 people.

This country is fast becoming an Orwellian nightmare of CCTV and state control. This must truly be the most sinister government in British history and if they get in at the next election I think the only move will be to leave this country before we all have cameras in our houses and chips embedded in our arms in the name of 'security'.

A very interesting quote by Winston Churchill - doesn't take a genius to see today's parallels imo -

"Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state. It will prescribe for every one where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say. Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance"

Put the pieces of the puzzle together - you can see where we're going...

In a well run, just and benevolent society, ID cards would be fine. Let me know when you find one of those.

I'm curious as to how I will get an ID card when they are made compulsory. How will I prove I am me? and will I find that someone has already come along and proved they were me already. Will I become a non person?

I'm partly serious. I can see gangs collecting info on people and turning up to apply for their cards. I don't have a drivers licence or passport. I don't have a birth certificate either. I could send off for one, but then so could anyone it seems. Presumably I'll be asked questions that they already have the answers to on file. But if it's on file then lots of other people know it anyway.

If ID cards are trusted 100% that will be really useful for some people with faked or stolen ones. If I am you I can take your bank account or house. If I have a card that says I am social services then I can take your children from the school. This is partly true now, but worse if you have a system that says the card is never wrong.

If you don't trust the card and have to prove who you are some other way then what is the point of the card.

I think that once you've read the first part of this page , you can really say that it would be a bad thing!
There ISNT enough protection for children at risk, if this helps, even just a tiny bit, what does it matter? All the information is already out there, its just in lots of different places. Surely this would allow and quick and easy check of any needed details about the child.
If social services ever took a child, they would immediately know of any past abuse, drs address, anyone who has parental responsability and plenty more.

Contactpoint existing wouldn't have helped Victoria Climbie. The link you gave states that it was a failure of the existing services. Underfunding was mentioned at one point. The money being wasted on setting up this database might be better spent on funding existing services.

I agree with Edam, madamez and jules. I've personal experience of having a child's name on a database having done bog all to improve help and accountability (because of his speech problems, DS was allegedly under neighbourhood early years service). who at nearly all contacts have passed the buck or been unhelpful. If professionals dealing with children had the resources to deal with and follow child protection concerns, that would do far more for children than a computer system.

There are plenty of cases where a child has been known to various agencies and has still been failed by the system. There are procedures in place to deal with children at risk. Problems arise when those procedures are not followed (for whatever reason) or when information in the authorities' possession is overlooked.

Having every child in the country on a database will not guarantee any child's safety and could place some at greater risk when the inevitable cock-ups happen (ref. HMRC) and data is "mislaid".

Loads of data is already in various systems but it is not all in one place, we don't, on the whole, have to pay them to collect it (except when we get something tangible and useful in return e.g. a passport) and there are limits on who has access to it. It is not perfect but the proposed system would be even less perfect.

If they offer guarantees of data security they are lying and if they can't guarantee its security then we should not permit it to go ahead.