Information defines people in the eyes of organizations that don’t know them. Societies and civilisations have grown in their complexity and organization, and so too has the information collected about us.

Many of us will be familiar with the biblical story, where Emperor Augustus declared that all should be registered. So it goes that Joseph and Mary travelled to Bethlehem for a Census, an unforeseen consequence of this administrative requirement was Jesus’s humble start in a stable. One suspects that the intention behind the Roman’s Census was not to facilitate arduous journeys on donkeys, or to provide a handy fable on the disparity of accommodation between ancient Kings and the Lord Saviour. It was rather to gather information on the rank and property of the Empires’ citizens. From this information taxes were levied, and determinations of entitlement were based. Only through the office of the Censor, whose duty it was to carry out the census, was the Empire able to realize its administrative power of governance. It was also this same authority and office that bore responsibility for the regulation of public morality (Regimen Morum), this being the trait that gave rise to the word ‘censorship’, now part of the language that forms our modern understanding of state control.

Times change, thankfully information has been freed from the priesthood by the print press, freed from elites by education, and in modern times freed from oppressive states by the internet and social networks. Yet as we all know technology, not even the much coveted iphone is the forbearer of utopia, but rather a tool shaped by man. As such it has not always worked on the side of democratisation and liberalisation. Communications networks such as the telegram system also enabled governance of global empires; the radio gave dictators power to speak into every front room, and computers the ability to store information about us in vast databases.

One new British institution that has benefited from our technological capacity to manage information on a database is the Independent Safeguarding Authority. This ‘authority’ is tasked with checking the backgrounds of people within a community, and creating the entitlement amongst other things, to ferry children to and from sports club. Such micromanagement of interpersonal relations is not anything new, but it would historically have been an administrative bridge too far, for all but the most determined and repressive of states. I’m not aware we ever asked for our relations to be micromanaged by a state that can check a database for past offenses, suspicions and allegations or, whether we were particularly happy about such decision making being taken away from our own communities.  Such questions and arguments about by the new application of technology are cutting right to the heart of our relationship with the state and the future nature of governance.

The newly formed Identity and Passport Service is one of the British Government’s solutions to an interconnected world, stemming from an agenda paper entitled Transformational government, it seeks to utilize new technology to govern in a particularly unpleasant manner. The world that its proponents envision is one where identity is determined by the data held and shared by detached organisations rather than by personal knowledge or recommendation. To them the world is a chaotic place where evil lurks, only by structuring society neatly can order be restored. To employ an analogy, IPS is the modern day incarnation of the Census taker, desiring us all to be registered and defined on a record inexorably tied to government, enforced through legal and supra-legal systems. Like the ancient office of the Censor, IPS can also act directly as the arbitrators of justice with their own system of civil penalties for non-compliance. They also have the ability and means to facilitate the provision of information they collect to other administrative arms of governance.

Sharing data between government departments is not a means to reducing the number of times you have to provide information, but rather an attempt to centralize power and decision making across distinct departments that currently each has their own distinct role. Sharing enables bureaucracies acting as supra-legal entities any piece of information collected about you in one sphere of life to form the basis of decisions regarding the provision of services, benefits and entitlements in another sphere of life. The Criminal Record Bureau and Independent Safeguarding authority determines whether we are entitled to work with children, the DVLA determines if we can drive and the DWP determines if we can gain benefits, and so on.  In Ancient Rome the census determined rank of citizen and entitlement. Under transformational governance, it will be Whitehall, the National Identity Register and a myriad of other data-sharing initiatives. The policy aim is replacing the records held independently across current departments for agreed specific and defined administrative purposes with an interconnected web of database systems, with open-ended and shifting purposes.

When it comes to the collection and use/misuse of information, in some ways yes it can benefit society as a whole, yet there is a risk of causing a disadvantage to people.  15,000 people last year who had ‘nothing to hide’ were falsely labeled as criminals by CRB checks. The administrative processes that determined this gave them little recourse to prove their name and regain the entitlement and standing they previously held within society. This is clearly to the disadvantage of CRB’s victims, but widely accepted by many as a means of preventing criminals working in sensitive areas. As the collection of information affects people in very serious manners it becomes not just an administrative question about our technological capability, but also an ethical and moral one.  The ethical dilemma of collecting more information is often poorly expressed in utilitarian terms of a balance between privacy and security — that an act can be morally justified if it results in the greater happiness. Yet will more security always make us happier, and how is such a judgment based when the consequences are yet to be seen only speculated?

Typically arguments for the Database State don’t even put forward a factual or statistical account of how effective a measure is at providing security. We hear about some mythical balance between security and freedom, or from single high profile cases where the technology has been of use. Rarely do we get to examine the weight on the scales or the balancing point, and worse by even engaging in such a debate we presuppose that privacy and security are mutually exclusive principles. One typical defence against a Utilitarian argument for the Database State relies on an individual right to privacy. Rights-based arguments can be founded on either a notion that as human beings we have a natural (inalienable) set of rights – such as Thomas Paine proposed, or alternatively that they are the formation of social contracts and a consensual relationship between the state and the citizen such as Rousseau reasoned. Rights theories may help to protect individuals from the gravest misuse of power by states, for instance in providing some legal protection from institutions, or other people who seek to take them away or remove them, but in themselves no theory of rights explains why such abuses of power arise in the first place. They provide some defence, but fail to tackle the underlying systematic problems of governance.

The relationship between information, people and the state is fundamentally a power relationship with the growth of technology our technical abilities to collect, store and manipulate data sets develops at a rapid rate.  Communications enables data to be shared between free individuals through the medium of social networks, internet as a phenomena is a wonder to behold, particularly in regimes where conventional communication is more easily restricted.  Yet at the same time great risks are associated with the flow and control of information.

Today a million people’s tax records can easily fit on a lone piece of media. When information is centralized and controlled, individuals’ influence over how it is used is diminishes. As individuals we are faced with a Hobson’s choice when interacting with the state and corporate monopolies. We either accept the terms of data collection or we walk away and sacrifice the benefits to be gained by interacting with the entity in question. In handing over the data we are likely to receive some benefits, for instance in using a debit card I may gain the convenience of not having to hunt down an ATM but on the downside someone may use the knowledge of my transactions against me.

The Database State is the ultimate data monopoly, it stands in antithesis to user generated data shared amongst networks on a consensual basis. It represents a monolithic structure in which even a  nominal sense of choice no longer remains, a structure in which a small number of people gather data on the rest of us and use it to create systems that control and regulate us. Simply put the Identity Card Act 2006, seeks to create the definitive set of data, that then defines who we legally are as people in such a manner that makes the Domesday Book look like a child’s doodle.

What happens though when the terms of the data collection become more demanding and our choices for interacting with alternative entities diminish? When dealing with business I might be able to pay in cash if I so wish, or I could pick an alternative search engine if I didn’t want Google to collect my details. If there is only one supermarket in my small town and they have a terrible privacy record what can I do? If the State starts demanding increasing levels of personal data for basic interactions required living a free live what choice do I have then? What will happen when I need to go on the register to obtain a passport to travel, will I be willing to sacrifice my freedom to see the world and experience other cultures?  ID cards we are told are voluntary, but the database behind them can only diminish our choices in its totality and the way it seeks to supersede all other sources of information.

To understand why these abuses of power occur, and are justified, we need to examine the function of government.  We live in a society that is perhaps safer than it has ever been; we enjoy long life expectancy, and the benefits of science, technology and medical intervention to improve our quality of life. Yet government still functions as if providing further protection and security was its ultimate goal. When tragedy occurs or things go wrong, we seek to blame individuals, asking in that moment of heightened passion straight after an event, “Why couldn’t more have been done?” The media often compounds this by calling for heads on a plate, shock and outrages sells stories, and can also bring down governments or remove officials from office. Government’s desire to provide security can therefore be framed both a reaction to some genuine threats that exist but also as a means of avoiding accusations of not having done enough in the aftermath of an event.

There is a dangerous notion that missing a piece of information could result in a tragedy, and that more information will always prevent it. A shop that now fails to install a CCTV system is seen as leaving an unlocked door for shoplifters, a council that fails to install CCTV is seen as failing to tackle crime or anti-social behaviour. Regardless of the effect, that CCTV has on solving such problems the perception of acting is a requirement for preventing accusations of complacency. The same is true with DNA retention; the latest proposals from a government being dragged kicking and screaming to confirm with the European Court on Human Rights is that once arrested, even after acquittal it must be kept on a database for six years. The sad truth is despite us having the most authoritarian DNA retention system in the world, the government is scared they would be blamed, if just one person whose DNA was deleted then committed a serious crime. Yet are these fears realistic? Should we not accept a degree of risk as we do every time we get into a car? Are we losing just our privacy, or is the increased surveillance we are now experiencing leading to a breakdown of trust and vicious cycle of paranoia and accusations, not just within government but also creeping into the workplace and our private lives?

Our generation therefore faces a question, it’s a not a new one but it is brought to the forefront once again by technology. Do we want a centralized and often undemocratic bureaucracies making ethical decision about what data is collected and shared, or a network of communities which we empower to vouch for our identities, reputations. If our freedom or liberty needs to be restricted then it needs to be done by our own communities by those who know us, in courts of law where our peers decide our fate. Not by officials deploying algorithms to data-sets, determining likely risks and restricting entitlements. Do we want government that spies on us; tries to define us on an Identity Database, to check on our interactions ‘just in case’ we are doing something wrong, or a government that facilities a means of proving Identity that puts the individual in control of their own information, personhood and destiny.  Amongst much protest Britain is going down the former route, our only hope is that amongst the great democracies of the world it ends up doing this alone.

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