The government has set up an independent commission to
see whether present public and private sector data-collection and
sharing schemes go too far towards invading individual's
privacy.
Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, and Mark Walport,
director of the Wellcome
Trust, will head the investigation. They have still to agree
their terms of reference. They are expected to report to the
justice secretary, Jack Straw, at the end of June 2008.
A spokesman for the Information
Commissioner's Office said the aim was to balance the
individual's right to privacy against the efficiencies that
data-sharing create.
He said the investigation was needed because the public sector
has collected "vast amounts" of data about people, and that private
sector bodies such as banks and Tesco were doing the same.
He said the ICO had published a
framework guideline in October that helped firms decided what
data they could share and when. "This investigation will tell us
what more we might need to do, and what extra powers the ICO
needs," he said.
The ICO will host a conference on
"Surveillance Society: Turning Debate into Action" at
Manchester's Bridgewater Hall on 11 December 2007. It will launch a
handbook on "Privacy Impact Assessments" at the conference.