Sir

The Government's new report on "data-matching" (New data swapping powers broached - Guardian 12.4.02 p6) raises real dangers. Multiple public bodies collect up information about us - the Inland Revenue, the Passport Agency, the DVLA, the local authority council tax department, and many more. Many of us will have files with each of dozen or more bureaucratic bodies. So it's no surprise that some of these bureaucrats want to have a peek at the files held on you by others. This they euphemistically call "data-sharing".

Interestingly, members of the public questioned for the research accompanying this paper were clearly concerned about the government's use of personal information; were not convinced of the virtue of data-matching; and did not believe that the current safeguards are adequate.

Their many concerns included inaccurate or mishandled data, misidentification, malicious provision of data from anonymous sources, reversal of the presumption of innocence, unjust inference (jumping to conclusions from misleadingly-matched data), "soft" data such as professionals' opinions of them as clients, being seen to be a user of a stigmatised public service, and unauthorised access to or disclosure of personal information.

If they needed reason to be concerned, they need look no further than the work of the Benefits Agency. In the year to April 2000, 214 cases involving abuse of data by staff had to be investigated, including 63 cases of unauthorised access to computer systems and 20 cases of unauthorised disclosure of information.

Even if the government don't want to listen to our concerns, we hope they will listen to the public's.

yours

John Wadham
Director of Liberty