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Submission to the
Home Affairs Committee
Inquiry: “A
Surveillance Society?”
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During the past
five years, developments in IT have created unprecedented opportunities for
observing children and young people, for supervising and controlling their
activities, and for gathering and sharing data about their lives.
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Manufacturers of
commercially-available devices have exploited the marketing opportunities
presented by popular concerns such as child abduction, obesity and bullying,
while the government’s ‘risk management’ approach to children’s policy has
emphasised the use of IT solutions to monitor and share information about
children in an attempt to detect early signs of problems. In-depth assessment
and profiling tools have been developed that are believed to predict potential
criminality, social exclusion or educational failure on the basis of
statistical probability.
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Taken together,
these developments have significantly eroded children’s privacy rights,
guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and
reiterated by Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It
is now possible for a child to be under near-constant scrutiny throughout each
day.
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Because the
expansion in the use of IT has been piecemeal, there has been no overview of
the possible combined effect on children’s development of the various
technologies. There is certainly the potential for children to become
conditioned to accept a far higher level of surveillance than society now
tolerates. Given that privacy and decisions about self-disclosure are a
powerful means of regulating our relationships with others, consideration
needs also to be given to the effects of surveillance on a child’s maturing
sense of personal boundaries and autonomy.
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It should also be
borne in mind that over-confidence in technological solutions and poor
standards of information security can threaten the integrity of children’s
personal information, and may even place children at increased risk of harm
from hacking and careless or corrupt disclosure of data by those with
legitimate access.
Government
databases and assessment tools
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The wide range of
children’s databases and assessment processes is extensively covered in the
FIPR report to the Information Commissioner: ‘Children’s Databases – Safety
and Privacy’ available online at:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/detailed_specialist_guides/ico_issues_paper_protecting_chidrens_personal_information.pdf
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Given the
limitations of space, the complexity of the entire database system and the
large number of data protection, human rights and consent issues that it
raises, we cannot possibly do justice to the subject matter here. We believe
that it would be more helpful to the Committee for our briefing to concentrate
on the other areas that affect children’s privacy. However, the Director of
ARCH is a co-author of the above report and it therefore provides an accurate
reflection of our views and concerns. We respectfully suggest that Committee
members consider it essential reading.
Commercially
available surveillance devices
CCTV and Webcams
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There is increasing
use of CCTV in schools, and monitors may even be placed in pupils’ toilets.
Images can be relayed via Internet Protocols to control centres located
outside school, where they are accessible to local council staff.
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There is also a
growing trend towards using webcams in nurseries to enable parents to view
their children via a password-protected internet system. As the webcam
monitors an entire room, all parents can see all of the children at any time.
Some systems allow parents to nominate others, for example grandparents and
family friends, who may view the webcam. Parents cannot therefore know who
else is watching their child.
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Children are not
asked to consent to the use of CCTV. In the case of nursery webcams, all of
the advertising concentrates on the psychological benefits to parents. No
consideration is given to children’s dignity and privacy, nor to the fact
that, while parents may feel involved in their child’s day, this is not a
reciprocal relationship.
Biometric systems
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Electronic systems
are increasingly used in school canteens to monitor children’s individual
school meal choices, and in school libraries, where children’s reading habits
can be monitored individually, and also by ethnicity and gender. Many of these
systems use children’s fingerprints, which are converted into an algorithm
that is stored on the school system.
Some schools are also introducing fingerprint scanners for school
registration.
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There is mounting
protest that children’s fingerprints are being taken without parental consent,
and concerns that templates are transferable between systems.
This raises the possibility that the data could be used by other agencies for
other purposes. Although manufacturers claim that a child’s fingerprint cannot
be reconstructed from the algorithm, this is a red herring; all fingerprint
systems now use algorithms derived from a fingerprint, rather than the
fingerprint itself.
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Because the data is
held on school computers in relatively insecure buildings, its security cannot
be guaranteed. Burglary and theft from schools is not uncommon, and the
growing importance of biometrics is likely to make databases that hold
biometric data a target for organised crime. Manufacturers offer assurances
that the data is encrypted using 128-bit encryption techniques, but
developments in computing will undoubtedly render such assurances meaningless
within a short time. Even if a child’s data could be considered safe today, it
is unlikely to remain so, and the problem is exacerbated if schools do not
ensure the complete deletion of data from a computer hard-drive.
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We have been told
that ‘guidelines’ for schools on the use of children’s fingerprints will be
published on the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency
website during May; however, these will not in any way be binding on schools.
We remain deeply concerned that children’s biometric data may be compromised
by theft; that the data may be misused, and that children will become
habituated to giving up their biometric data far too readily. In our view, the
increasing importance of biometrics for security-critical functions means that
they should not be used for low-level purposes.
Location-based
services
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There are a number
of companies selling location based services to parents. These purport to
enable parents to track children via their mobile phones, by logging on to a
website that displays the whereabouts of the phone. Parents can also pre-set
boundaries and routes, and receive alerts if their child deviates from them.
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A new generation of
GPS tracking devices and mobile phones is now coming on to the market; we are
told that ‘Mobiles2Go’
is about to launch a major marketing programme that will see its ‘i-kids’
tracking phone placed on sale in supermarkets and High Street stores. We are
also aware of a device called the ‘KinderGuard’
currently under development: a location device that also includes biometric
sensors to transmit details of a child’s heart rate and skin temperature to
parents. This indicates when a child is under stress, and also lets parents
know if their child has removed the device.
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There is no
statutory regulation of any of the above devices, beyond the Data Protection
Act 1998. Providers of mobile location services have agreed a voluntary code
of practice,
but this does not include any requirement that service providers should
undergo police checks. An attempt to amend to the Safeguarding Vulnerable
Groups Act 2006 to introduce such a requirement was resisted by government.
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Although the code
says that devices: ‘should not be marketed in any way which exploits
parents' concern or fear that their child may become a victim of crime’,
it is clear that some companies are very close to this line.
DNA Retention
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On 4 April 2004,
police powers were extended to allow DNA profiles, fingerprints and other
information to be taken without consent from anyone arrested on suspicion of a
‘recordable offence’. The police may keep this information indefinitely, even
if the person arrested is never charged, or is subsequently acquitted.
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With the help of
MPs and the Children’s Commissioners, we have made repeated but unsuccessful
efforts to obtain accurate Home Office figures for the number of children on
the National DNA Database (NDNAD) who:
(a)
did not receive any disposal or further action
(b)
received a reprimand or final warning
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Using the Youth
Justice Board figures for juvenile arrests and disposals, we believe it is
possible that DNA profiles of around 200,000 children who have received no
disposal may be on NDNAD, and a further 200,000 profiles of children who have
received reprimands or final warnings.
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The existence of a
child’s profile on NDNAD puts the onus on him/her to justify the presence of
his/her DNA at a crime scene, and may lead to unwarranted suspicion. Although
this is equally true of adults, children are at far greater risk of injustice.
Almost one quarter of arrests are of 10-17-year-olds, and the range of
databases holding sensitive information about them has considerable potential
to prejudice the position of those whose records include predictions of the
likelihood of future criminality. We are profoundly concerned that whenever a
positive DNA match is made, the police will access other information held on
the child, and that this will create a set of assumptions that will influence
police attitudes, including the likelihood of guilt.
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It is extremely
important that children and young people are kept out of the youth justice
system unless there are no other options left, and recognition of this fact
has led to the reprimand and final warning schemes. There is also a growing
body of evidence that arrest and/or questioning by the police has negative
effects on young people’s behaviour. The Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions
and Crime, a ten-year longtitudinal study of 4,000 young people that began in
1998, found that:
“…being caught by the
police had a particularly strong influence on whether young people gave up
delinquency entirely: the more times they had been caught by the police, the
less likely it was that their level of delinquency would be zero at either sweep
5 or sweep 6.”
The explanation
offered for this finding is that young people find it very hard to escape from
being labelled ‘criminal’. There is a real risk that the presence of a young
person’s profile on NDNAD will lead to disproportionate police interest and
questioning when there is no other evidence of involvement, and lead to
increasing anger and alienation on the part of the young person.
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We are concerned
that speculative familial searches are being conducted on NDNAD. This has the
potential to cause great difficulty and distress to those children whose
paternity is not as they had assumed,
those who are adopted, and those who have changed their identity because they
are escaping domestic violence or are subject to witness protection.
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In our view, it is
entirely wrong to retain the DNA of children and young people who have not had
any action taken against them, or who have been acquitted by a court.
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Retaining the DNA
profiles of those who receive reprimands and final warnings defeats the
purpose of the scheme, which is to prevent young people from entering the
youth justice system for low-level, often first, offences. It increases the
likelihood of further contact with the police and risks ‘locking in’ young
people to the criminal justice system, rather than providing them with an
opportunity to change their behaviour before they are faced with more serious
consequences.
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Where a child has
been convicted of an offence in the courts, we believe that DNA profiles
should only be retained in line with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.
April 2007
Terri Dowty
Director
Action on Rights for
Children
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