TOGETHER with many others I have just received my tax coding notice. It is basic in nature but we now being are invited to log into the HRMC gateway to see and check more detail. This seemed sensible, so I jumped through all of the hoops required of me and ended up with a 12-digit personal ID. When I logged in there was a little more information but not much. As I thought about it I came to the conclusion that I had just updated the UK Government’s file on me.
They already had my name, address, National Insurance number and financial details. As part of the login set up I have now tied many more strands of information together for them.
a. I gave them my passport details which obviously has a fairly recent picture.
b. I gave them several pre-set samples of my speech for them to create a voice recognition file on me, supposedly to make logging in easier.
c. I gave them my email address which, I suspect, can be easily linked to my Facebook and Twitter accounts.
d. I gave them my everyday password that I use for a fair number of things excepting banking transactions.
All it needs now is for the NHS to use any one of my blood samples to create a DNA profile and the set is complete.
In the news there is a story about Cambridge Analytica (“Election data chief caught saying they use bribes”, The Herald, March 20). It did an exercise based on Facebook where it paid a large number of people to use their Facebook login to complete a survey. From the answers to the survey, their Facebook profile and including their lists of friends they devised an algorithm that gleaned much more information about all of these people, including the friends, so that they could use it for targeted messages. These messages can be written, and accurately directed, to influence both commercial and political choices that the many thousands, whose details they have, might make.
I now wonder what goes on in places like GCHQ and the feedback they provide to their political masters in the background. Are we really marching down the road to an updated 1984? I would be surprised if, in the name of “security” our covert operations people have not either before or now set up similar analysis of much of the population.
DS Blackwood,
1 Douglas Drive East, Helensburgh.
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