Last weekend I went to Oxford for a family get-together. On Saturday morning, we booked a guided walk around the City, taking in Trinity College, the Bridge of Sighs, Radcliffe Camera to name a few. The weather wasn’t brilliant but we finished our tour at Knoops for a delicious hot chocolate! I can definitely recommend a visit!
As we walked past the Sheldonian Theatre, the Guide pointed out the Weston Library on the other side of the road, and told us that during the Second World War, hundreds of holiday photos and postcards of the Normandy beaches were sent into the Library. The request for all this information came from those planning the D-Day landings – they wanted the pictures to plan the attack.
It made me chuckle, I know I’m a bit strange, but this strategy of using personal information by the government in a time of crisis wasn’t a one-off. Think about the recent pandemic, the success of the vaccination programme was founded on the amount of our personal information held by the NHS.
And only this morning, I read a post, thanks to Tim Turner, about the new privacy notice published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy informing people of the data that they are now going to collect for the Energy Price Guarantee Scheme. The notice assures readers that it doesn’t currently collect personal details such as name, date of birth or email address, but this will be kept under review so that “consumers’ privacy is safeguarded, whilst enabling proportionate access to energy consumption data.”
“Proportionate access” is a pretty loaded phrase and we’ll all have our own view on where the limit is. But, I doubt, very much that individual views will be taken into account when it comes to government agencies using our personal information for their advantage.
Do you know what your rights are when it comes to your personal information? Mention the GDPR and there are moans and rolling eyes, but the Regulations do a pretty good job of protecting those rights. The UK Government is keen to scrap the GDPR and reform data protection with the view that by allowing less restricted use of personal information, it will benefit the economy. It all sounds a bit sketchy at the moment but the questions you should be asking yourself are “why does that organisation want my personal information, and what are they going to use it for?” If the answer is unclear or you don’t like it, then don’t share it, and keep your information safe.