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Govt secretly acquired charity data to target people for deportation
Oooh this doesn’t sound good -
The Home Office secretly acquired sensitive data, showing the nationality of people sleeping rough on the streets, in order to remove them from Britain ...
A chain of emails sent by senior Home Office immigration officials show how they used information that was designed to protect rough sleepers to target vulnerable individuals for deportation. The internal correspondence shows the Home Office repeatedly requesting and finally gaining access to a map created by the Greater London Authority (GLA) that identified and categorised rough sleepers by nationality.
The secret arrangement meant frontline outreach workers tasked with helping the homeless by collating data for the GLA were inadvertently helping the Home Office to remove people who were from the EU or central eastern Europe.
More: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/19/home-office-secret-emails-data-homeless-eu-nationals
Data is regularly ‘obtained’ from many ‘private’ sources by most government departments. In most if not all cases it was never intended for this to happen.
Take loyalty cards (Tesco Clubcard & Nectar). The information contained on both of these is a goldmine for departments that are looking into the financial affairs of individuals.
Well yeah but the DPA anyone?
Data is regularly ‘obtained’ from many ‘private’ sources by most government departments. In most if not all cases it was never intended for this to happen.
Take loyalty cards (Tesco Clubcard & Nectar). The information contained on both of these is a goldmine for departments that are looking into the financial affairs of individuals.
Indeed - this from 2005
A magistrate who found a £3,250 Rolex watch in a supermarket and gave it to his wife as a 60th birthday present was fined £600 after being found guilty of theft.
Geoffrey Rowlett, 67, who has sat on the bench for 30 years, claimed in what the court called an “incredulous story” that he bought it for £1,500 from a shop on his way to a Masonic meeting.
Southampton magistrates heard that Carol Scott reported her watch lost or stolen on Jan 16, 2002, after visiting Tesco in Poole, Dorset.
Rowlett, a building surveyor, was caught almost two years later after taking the watch for repair at a jewellers near his home in Poole.
It was identified from its serial number as having been lost or stolen.
Inquiries with Tesco, through its Club Card loyalty scheme records, and receipts of purchases showed Rowlett had been in the shop within two hours of Mrs Scott.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1482200/Magistrate-fined-for-keeping-lost-Rolex.html