Dutch to Open Electronic Files on Children 532
Del writes "The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future. All citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database - including health, education, family and police records."
I wish this was a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
And so what if one malicious worker has exclusive rights to view several hundred children? It doesn't matter if they have access to the whole database or not, even a "small pecentage" could be several hundred or thousand children. This is a pedaphile's ultimate dream.
The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked. "Child protection services will say, 'Hey, there's a warning flag from the police. There's another one from school. There's another one from the doctor," Brouwer said. "Something must be going on and it's time to call the parents in for a meeting."And how long exactly will these records be kept? Also, this would be a good way to usher in a country-wide database of this sortfor every citizen. Start with the children, saying its "for the good of the kids", and then slowly introduce a more inclusive database, which would go under some other guise. It would seem that a database of children "for their safety" might be easier to pull of then a citizenry-wide database at first.
Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move.This could have good uses, and assuming it was used exactly for the intent stated, this would be an excellent service. BUT, more often then not, these kinds of things get abused in some form or another. In every government there is some malicious back-room government worker who goes below the radar. These kinds of things get abused, and when it is a child at stake, the risks are even higher.
It is inevitable (Score:1, Interesting)
To hand over such a wide and vast array of names, locations, places, births, lives, and deaths seems to cry to me of Neo-Communist or Fascist ideals.
Think about it. This is about the same situation that is presented in 1984 by George Orwell and I believe this would be the first step to a much larger, scarier and indeed more powerful Big Brother.
Finally, there is -no- such thing as -secure- data. This data WILL be leaked at some point in time, or someone will figure out how to extract things from the database without being caught.
There is already a nonexistant undercurrent for pedophiles and information of vulnerable children. Selling this kind of information speaks of a new Black Market; the Black Market of information, revised second edition.
Worse still, the situation could be even more far removed than anyone could perceive at this moment. Imagine this kind of a system implemented with such a thing like RFID. The numbers would make it easy for the government to follow Citizen #4032892, who learned of a few corrupt politians in the immediate government, was going to cry wolf, and was deemed to be 'silenced' in such a way that no-one would know it was the Government.
Regardless of whether or not this was intended as a 'good' or a 'bad' solution to the world's troubles, any centralized database of information will be broken into, stolen from, and immediately prone to the scrutiny of those who do not wish to be kept record in it due to its inherent security.
True also, this system would work nicely for things like medicinal and social purposes, but the potential for bad is far worse than equal to the potential for good.
Whereas the good effects of this system are only brought out through using something else other than the database, evil needs only information to thrive.
I believe that this is going to be a terrible folly on humanity's part. Also, this could be the first step to a much darker reality. When the government of your nation knows who you are, knows what you're doing, and knows everything about you, if you do anything to upset them, they have all the resources in the world to kill you outright before your 'radical' ideas spread.
Even worse, since it is a centralized, 'trusted' databse, the government could forge information on that person saying that his parents were terrorists and he was following in the same vein according to terrorist documents and bombs of various makes in his home [which were planted, of course].
Welcome to the Secure Future! Where if you believe ANYTHING you own is secure, you're a @#)(@NAin' looney.
I suspect that either people will realize the inherent flaws and reject the design or see to shallowly and never realize the potential for great evil within the slumbering beast masquerading as a gentle cat.
-James C. Woodall,
Author
Yeh but (Score:1, Interesting)
Funny how their radical ideas don't seem to inflict great harm on their society though.
Re:Serious Question (Score:3, Interesting)
That's in an ideal world, of course.
Re:Remove your tin foil hat (Score:1, Interesting)
You will soon enough.
Re:I wish this was a joke (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't forget... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wish it was more technical (Score:2, Interesting)
You think this is scary? Read on... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Who gives a damn if this is well intentioned... (Score:3, Interesting)
I completely respect some people's desire to live in anonymity and devote their lives to work while sending their kids to daycare, but I highly resent their desire to compensate for the resulting lack of community and parenting by forcing a nanny state on everybody.
Re:Principle is *backwards*--WE should own OUR inf (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the very titles of the tracks could be used to hide data as well.
And of course people can, and will, draw their own conclusions on a person based on their musical taste (or lack of).
Privacy issues vs. solving realworld problems (Score:3, Interesting)
In the town where I live, we had a small child die when here parents severely abused her. This was such a shock to the nation that an investigation was started. All the instances that are normally involved in child protection had one complaint. There was no central system in place to track problem children in the country. Basically you could abuse your child in one town, get caught, move to the next town with a clean slate. This has happened several times and the government decided to solve this problem. I believe this will do good and I also believe that the Dutch government are not going to abuse the system.
The great thing of living in Holland is that we have privacy issues up the kazoeks. For example, in the rest of the world when someone gets arrested the media can actually use his full name in press reports, no go in Holland. The guy that killed van Gogh is called Mohammed B. and is last name is never used! But they (the gov.) do keep pushing the limits. A while ago they sent out a massive SMS round asking for witnesses to some football violence. They basically asked the telcos to provide the Cell numbers of everyone that was in the stadium or near it when the incident happened. Results: some people were pissed off (logically) but they managed to catch around 30 people with this action.
I am happy to live in Holland and to be honest when I compare it to the US I feel safer and have more trust in my government.
Re:I wish this was a joke (Score:2, Interesting)
no access to all contents of the file does not mean that one person can only view a subset of the records, but only a subset of the information per reccord.
The dutch have allways been quiet complicated about personal data.
Many things are allready kept electronicaly, but even for authorities it is often complicated to get the data.
My sisters works at the national healthcare agency (?), she told me some horror stories about it.
(disclaimer: I'm from I Holland but live in germany now)
another example:
I my passport is my name and birthdate,but not my address.
This is because someone looking into my passport should know who I am, but it is none of his business to know where I live.
(For me this is complicated, becaus in germany, every passport contains the address, so german authorities often give me a hard time because I cannot provide them with my offcial address)
So I think it was intended that people accessing the database can see if I have a criminal reccord, but not my illness,
(exclusive-) or the other way arround.
Re:Yeh but (Score:2, Interesting)
In Norway we have this database (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wish this was a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
"Well intentions" do not excuse either incompetence or malice.
If the Dutch are doing this for the reasons you stated - i.e., preventing the abuse of childen because of incompetence in their bureacracy - there are obviously many other ways to eliminate that incompetence rather than doing a cradle-to-grave surveillance of people.
The parents moved, so they can't find out they had trouble with kids before? Gimme a fucking break. If you can find out about it afterwards, you can find out about it beforehand. This is just the usual CYA bullshit the authorities always trot out to explain incompetence and justify more repression.
Then malice comes in. This is merely an excuse for the law enforcement establishment and the politicians - which is the SAME group of scumbags in EVERY country, regardless of political setup - to build up their surveillance of people, so they can clamp down on "undesireables" - i.e., anybody they don't like or who doesn't like them.
Period. That simple. Anybody who supports this sort of thing is a moron or a malicious asshole - probably both.
Re:Problems with Kids Caused by Parents? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's a free country. Until there's actually proof of child abuse, collecting hints is the best we can do. And divorces, unmarried parents etc, those aren't even special nowadays, and it's not the state's business to tell people how to live. It is their business to step in and protect a child once it's established that it's in trouble.
This isn't Puritania, even though we currently have Christians in power. Drugs are recreational and something you sell to tourists, and the prostitutes are unionized. And we have some types of Puritans (mostly muslims, the Christians of that type went to America a few centuries back). Good for them, please leave the rest of us alone.
The thing that sucks about this country though is that we recently passed from political correctness hell into populist hell. But so it goes...
Re:You think this is scary? Read on... (Score:4, Interesting)
The proposal you refer to, does. You are right, we have a problem with politicians like Balkenende and Donner, who believe that they can control everything when they can monitor everyone.
But even more of a problem is that they believe that there is a war on terror to be fought against a hostile community. This belief came upon them when they had too close contact to the current president of the US. Said person indoctrinated them that troups should be sent to countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, to support a war against a phenomenon that they do not understand (and do not bother to understand).
As they really like to please people that appear to be powerful, the troups were sent. And now, they are faced with a "terror threat to the country". Instead of admitting that this is their own stupid fault, they try to cover their asses by inventing all kinds of stupid laws and regulations like the one you are referring to.
In fact:
- they are the real cause of the terror threat. when we had remained neutral there would have been no threat.
- they are exaggerating the threat, scaring people more than necessary
- the are introducing extra measures to constantly monitor people just in case
All in all they are just giving the terrorists what they want. First, give them a reason to attack. Then, scare their own people and take freedom-limiting measures.
Terrorists must be delighted by such a (mis)government! Everyone scared without having to throw a single bomb.
Old stuff - in Denmark (Score:3, Interesting)
On the positive side it is more comfortable and safe in many ways. The hospitals can always find all your medical records, etc etc. There are situation where you will be glad that you can always be found.
But, all in all, I don't like it. Take social security - if I have an accident and can't work, the state will know, and I will get as much help as possible to get on with my life, and even a pension - that is definitely very good. On the other hand, if I then after a while find that I can earn a little to supply my income, the state will automatically cut your pension accordingly - this is bad, because it means that I'll think 'Why should I bother?'
Of course some will say that this is not because the state has a file on you, but the truth is that it enables the more anal-retentive of the state's beancounters (ie the majority) to take your money away if you are too alive, in effect knocking you down. The only (legal) way to counter this kind of shite is to change the laws - and as a result the Danish social laws are now incredibly complex - and tend to change very often as well.
It sure won't help the children... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/1126760833908
Just to translate the first paragraph:
It can't become any lonelier for a boy of 11. Your girlfriend has been murdered, the police doesn't believe you, and think you are responsible. The inspector assigned to assist him becomes a hard-cop interagator. The child phychologist there to protect him secrectly tapes "confidential" conversations and passes them on to the police.
A first child phychologist supports the boys story , but is then ignored and replaced by another who then continues to support the police in their interogations for days on end -- for crying out loud, the kid is 11.
Even when the police had already already arrested another suspect for the murder, the statements don't match the police "picture" of what happened and the boy is continuedly pressured to modify his story.
yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:gestapo wtf (Score:4, Interesting)
The cases that have been in the media in the last year (which are just a few examples, as 1 to 2 children *a week* are killed by abuse in the Netherlands!) are cases where the family was already under control of a child protection agency. The situation was known to the 'gezinsvoogd' (custodian? it's the person assigned responsibility over a child by the judge when there are serious problems) but they didn't react, or at least not very effectively.
The reasons this system doesn't work are simple:
1) The safety of the child is not a priority. In most of the agencies there is a huge pressure to make sure the child stays with the parents. Even if the parents have repeatedly physically abused the child! The reason given for this is that it is better for the psycologicaldevelopment of the child to stay with its parents. True, but first things first, please...
2) History is disregarded. Parents from who children have been taken because of abuse are allowed to keep their other children. Apparently this is a 'different relationship'. Go figure.
3) The organisations charged with protection of the children are both inadequately funded, and inadequately run. There is usually no clear structure or guidelines on how to deal with different cases, no place to get expert help (ie. no child psycologists available, and no budget to go to an external expert), no rules on how to keep records, even!
Fixing these problems is not done by linking databases. It's done by reorganisation of the system, and proper regard for children's safety as *the* primary requirement.
And Now For A Totally Different View (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:gestapo wtf (Score:2, Interesting)
Recently our Dutch government has made the decision to create a personal identification number just to gather personal data, like who's lending which books in the library.
This to illustrate how intentions can change on these subjects.
The reason for these changes is to fight terrorism. Yay for our (Dutch) government and our allies.
I'm just wondering how long it would take for them to create a red flag system based on this system, to include data about what books they might read, and when it will be used against you.
How long will it take for our government to reason, if you're not with us, you're against us, and therefor a terrorist.
Re:Can someone enlighten me... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:gestapo wtf (Score:4, Interesting)
Read The 14 Characteristics of Fascism [ratical.org] by Dr. Lawrence Britt - the USA hits every single point square-on, with the possible exception of point 5 (rampant sexism), although the paper goes on to clarify "opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy", so maybe half a point then.
However, by instituting a system such as the Netherlands', they make it much easier to start monitoring their citizens and restricting civil liberties in the future - all you need is to not stop updating the database after the child passes 18, and you've got some of the scariest bits of 1984 right there.
Short version: The US is far further down the track, but the Netherlands just massively upgraded how fast they can catch up.
Re:gestapo wtf (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently.
Ten years ago in USA you couldn't be arrested, detained without trial, denied even minimal Geneva Convention protections and tortured and abused without restitution merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And the USA was widely regarded as the shining example of representative democracy and civil liberties to the entire world.
Your point?
Re:I wish this was a joke (Score:2, Interesting)
What is up with this attitude? When I was in school, I never had to study, always got A's on quizzes, things just came to me naturally. However, instead of being harassed by the teachers or fellow students, I was simply recognized as a really good student. If anybody had a question about math, science, English, Japanese, computing, whatever, they just asked me and I answered as well as possible.
Unless my school was a total deviation from the norm, smart kids don't get harassed unless they start acting like jerks.
Re:gestapo wtf (Score:3, Interesting)
Dutch Jew population before the war: a few hundreds of thousand.
The danish resistance had the convient luck that neutral Sweden was only 30 odd miles away over water. The ferried most of them over in one(!) night.
Yes, I'm dutch, yes my grandparents, greatgrandparents maybe didn't do everything they could to save the jews, but this comparison with Denmark, I've heard it before, and it's just too easy.
Re:In Norway we have this database (Score:2, Interesting)
- simpel and effective way to reserve against commercial junk mail. All marketers are required by law to wash their databases (This actually works very good! I have not seen an ad with my address on it for many years.)
- no fuss at elections (no registration required), easy to vote in advance when you are out of town etc.
- all correspondence from any public office will go to the correct adress. (Also from the traffic/police department...)
- some banks use the adress from the database when they issue cards - this makes it hard to optain a card in another persons name.
- makes it quick and cheap to process applications (E.g. an application for a student loan from the State Educational Loan Fund would take only a few days.)
- makes it very hard/impossible to be polygamous...
- access and use of the data is controlled stritcly by an independent agency.
Do not missunderstand me; I am no fan of government control, and probably more or less as paranoid about loosing my citizen rights as the average slashdot-reader, but I have no bad experiences with "Folkeregisteret", and I have troube imagining how you can run a country without one...
Re:gestapo wtf (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have any decent evidence to support this hypothesis? I'm not saying he hasn't, merely that your arguments seem deeply flawed, and are therefore no basis to allege such a conclusion.
"Why else would characteristic 3 include "terrorists" as a scapegoat when the regimes he allegedly used for the study never focused on such a group?"
Maybe because back then the word "terrorist" [etymonline.com] wasn't thrown around with quite such wild abandon as these days? Thesaurus.com gives us such synonyms [reference.com] as "agitator, insurgent, insurrectionist, malcontent, mutineer, nihilist, rebel, revolter, revolutionary" and "anarchist", and these have been used as scapegoats by authority figures since the beginning of time.
It's also interesting that Fascist states seem to have more problems with terrorists than non-fascist states, due primarily to their repressive and authoritarian actions.
"And since when is being a terrorist-- by definition someone who kills, steals, and destroys to force an agenda-- defensible? Are terrorists victims now? Lumping terrorists in with ethnic minorities and "liberals" (nice one, Larry) is suspect."
The point I think he's trying to make is not that these things are acceptable, but that they're scapegoated [google.com] for things they didn't necessarily do, or their level of threat is wildly exaggerated to permit the authorities to become more repressive and have the population simply accept it.
Scapegoated has a different meaning from "rightly blamed", and scapegoating is always bad.
"Also, scratch number 4 (after all, the liberals keep telling me we didn't allocate enough troops to Iraq or Afghanistan originally and that costs money)"
Number 4 is not strongly so in the case of the US. Nevertheless:
1) Hypothetically, merely because the opposition is also arguing for a single "fascist" element that doesn't mean the party in power isn't also tending towards fascism. In addition, the "liberals" were initially campaigning not to go into Iraq. Now they've failed (and your troops are there), they're campaigning to at least give them enough equipment to have a chance of staying alive. This is very different to prioritising the overwhelming supremacy of the military, which is what the point is all about.
2) Bush is spending a disproportionate amount of money (and raising international tension) developing new high-tech military gadgets like bunker-buster nukes, SDI defence systems and the like.
The keyphrase here is "supremacy of the military", not "having more soldiers than anyone else", or "well-funding all aspects of the military equally".
"number 6 (please point out the state-sponsored censorship in the NYT, LA Times, or Air America Radio)"
Point six says "controlled mass media", not "rigid censorship". In fact it explicitely goes on to state "in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives".
I'm not being offensive, but did you even read the linked article, or just decide you didn't like what it was saying and skim over a few words of it?
"number 10 (haven't seen troops breaking up strikes lately)"
Granted, this doesn't apply too strongly to the US, but then the "labour vs. bosses" fight was largely over many years ago, and workers now have certin rights enshrined in law. In reaction, corporations are simply off-shoring jobs to third-world countries with no such labour laws (and cheaper expenses), as fast as they can. Several Bush economic policies have also eased this flood, not stemmed it.
"The rest could conceivably be argued by some radicals."
Hehehehe, are you serious? I'd have said the following
Re:gestapo wtf (Score:1, Interesting)
> representative democracy and civil liberties to the entire world.
Only in the US.
The rest of the world had seen your ill-fated War on Drugs, your absurdly high prison population, your tendency to sentence men to death even though many of them are innocent [aclu.org], your habit of carrying out dangerous experiments on unsuspecting citizens [wikipedia.org], your habit of supporting dictatorships [thirdworldtraveler.com]in other countries, ...
The US has not shone so brightly as it likes to believe for many years. That you could not see your current situation coming doesn't mean the rest of the world had intentionally blinded itself as well.
Re:Remove your tin foil hat (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate argments like this. It's the same kind of argument that's used to push the USA-PATRIOT act: these aren't new capabilities - we already use them against drug dealers, now we're just expanding to use them against "terrorists" too. No one stops to ask whether the precedent-setting actions against drug dealers (or the precedent-setting government collection of data in your case) was actually right to begin with (in the case of anti-drug laws in the US, most people had no idea that such laws had been passed). Nor is it a valid argument to say "we already do a, b, and c, so there's no harm in doing d". Action d may very well be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.