This Guardian article highlights the odd way that Great Britain treats personal data. On the one hand, laws that govern what private companies can do with personal data are rather draconian compared to, say, the United States. On the other hand, there seems to be almost no effective limit to what European governments can compile.
In this case, the UK is creating a single database to track every child in the country. The database will give each child a unique identifying number and contain everything from the name and address of the child’s physician to info on parents, what schools the child has attended, etc. And only about 300,000 people nationwide will have access to the database.
The Guardian article is about a report examining the security procedures for access to the database — a report that the government refused to publish in full. Of course the best method would be to simply not create such a monstrosity in the first place. As a review of the database’s security noted, “there will always be a risk of data security incidents occurring.” And because of the overreaching nature of the database, a security breach threatens the exposure of sensitive data about literally every child in the UK. Oy.