|
| |
Monday, Dec. 3, 2007
PERSONAL DATA DEBACLE
When we let machines down
By DAVID HOWELL
LONDON — Dinosaurs, so we are told, died out because they were too big. Or
some say they were wiped out by an asteroid. No matter — all agree that
their basic problem was size. They were just too large, their brains were
too remote from their bodies, and their control systems could not cope.
Could the same fate now be overtaking the giant databases and centralized
systems so beloved of modern governments?
In theory such centralization of data in society ought to make for more
efficiency. Having every citizen's details and links with the state all
gathered in one place is a bureaucrat's dream and sounds consumer-friendly
as well. One single reference point instead of all those different offices
and different forms to fill in — what could be better?
But in practice there are some very human problems. Holding all data about
society in one place poses huge issues of security and safety. What
happens if such vast stores of information about everybody are stolen or
just mislaid?
Just recently the British Labour government has been brought almost to its
knees by just such an occurrence.
Two computer disks, containing personal details and bank account data of
no less than 25 million people (almost half of Britain's population), held
in a government center, went missing in the post. The information lost
pertained to every family in the land receiving benefits from the state
for their children. In the wrong hands they could lead to theft from banks
accounts and identity fraud on a national scale.
How the disks came to be in the post, or how they were lost, is too long a
story to tell here. But the main point is that this event illustrates
dramatically the extreme vulnerability of very big and centralized data
storage. Computers may be able to gather and handle reliably more and more
information in smaller and smaller spaces. But human beings make mistakes.
This dangerous disconnection between human fallibility and gargantuan
machine power is not, of course, new. But the onward march of information
technology, enabling just about everything to be stored on one disk or
even one microchip, and with nanotechnology waiting in the wings to
squeeze all information into a dot, has made it very much greater.
Daily evidence accumulates that while automated machines get ever more
clever, ordinary men and women who have to manage them are struggling to
keep up.
Everyone has had to become accustomed to talking to a computer, rather
than a person, on the telephone with endless button choices — press one
for this, two for that, three for the other. When finally a live person is
found, he or she is usually baffled by anything other than the most
routine problem. The computerized system is the overlord and dictates the
way forward.
At the shop counter the simple cash register has long since been replaced
by a screen, in theory storing every customer's details and transmitting
them to some central storehouse. In practice the shop assistant pushes
buttons feverishly to find out what has gone wrong, or simply accepts that
the machine is "down" and long queues form or shoppers are turned away.
As this mismatch grows, it could well be that the public mind could be
shifting as well — away from universal admiration for bigger and more
centralized systems and toward much more localized and fragmented
patterns.
Thus villagers want back their shops in place of, or at least alongside,
the all-powerful supermarket chains. Bank customers want branches to visit
instead of remote services. People want to talk to people, not online
robots.
Massive organizations like the British National Health Service and the
state education and school system are being revisited to see how they can
be loosened up, with more diversified provision and less centrally
controlled uniformity. Hostility to information-loaded identity cards, all
connected to a central data bank, mounts, especially if the data
centralized is then shared, as is being suggested, with the European
Union's other 26 member states.
In a way there is nothing very new about this trend. Throughout history
the small platoons have always been fighting for their rights and freedoms
against the big battalions. But in the 20th century it was undoubtedly the
leviathans that won every battle, whether in the name of Stalinist
communism, milder state socialism or just industrial logic and efficiency.
Now, in the 21st century, the logic is going into reverse. Public trust is
being withdrawn from central state systems. Big organizations, whether
government departments or big commercial chains, are tolerated but no
longer loved.
As a result, the same technology that allowed the establishment of
national data banks, squeezing an entire society's personal lives on to a
single disk, is now being deployed for the opposite purpose — to challenge
the big decisions and to create a mosaic of smaller and more human-scale
worlds instead.
The missing disks may yet turn up untouched, and the weakened British
Labour government may yet regain some of its balance. But the trust that
ordinary citizens used to put in their rulers — and the awe in which the
state was once held, with its apparent stock of superior knowledge — will
not return.
Another myth has been exposed. The constant assurances from the
authorities and public agencies have all along been that personal details
centrally stored would be safe and held in complete confidence. It turns
out not to be so.
David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of
the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of
Lords (howelld@parliament.uk www.lordhowell.com).
|
