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 A new national child digital database has been set up in England. In such an archive personal information as name, address and telephone number of about 11 million English children have been filed up excluding the records about kids with famous parents, as confirmed last week by the British Department for Education and Skills (DfES).
The index doesn’t include also the contact details of children with violent parents.
The database has been approved last week by English Government and it will come into effect in 2008 with the purpose of linking sensitive information of children to their families. The database will be accessible to hundreds of thousands of officials, but the fact that someone’s data will be omitted, seems to be as an evidence that such a system might pose a risk to children safety.
The measure, actually, raises some questions about the database effectiveness and fairness because imparting the privilege of choosing whether being included in the database or not, convey the idea that the government had "no confidence" in the system.
Indeed a quite determining aspect is abut the criteria by which “celebrity” will be defined, since it is a very fluid term assembling a wide range of cases that go from of high-profile clergy to reality TV contestants.
According to Robert Whelan, deputy director of the rightwing Thinktank Civitas, the children of politicians won’t appear in the archive for sure, as he reported to The Telegraph.
The problem is that child abusers and other criminals could use the database to extract "interesting information” , moreover the restrictions on information about the child victims of domestic violence would probably involve denying violent parents who do not live with their children the right to access the database and thereby discovering their address.
But if there is the possibility that such information could be traced , how can they assert that the database ios safe?
Education minister Lord Adonis told the House of Lords earlier this year: "Between 300,000 and 400,000 users will access the index. Children who have a reason for not being traced, for example where there is a threat of domestic violence or where the child has celebrity status, will be able to have their details concealed."
What about the other children?
Such a measure comes after the initiative to put a Safety Button on the English version of MSN, that will allow children to contact police when harassed online.
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 |   So.... Written by Guest on 2006-09-04 14:26:37 |
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