[BRIEF NOTE] Birth of the Panopticon?
Sep. 19th, 2005 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThis AP report is remarkable.
Right now, for instance, if someone set about even a desultory Googling they could determine the outlines of my biography nicely. If they went to a couple of other search engines as well, they could find all the more detail on me. Centralizing and rationalizing sprawling databases in a single system is very Weber-rational-bureaucratic and was bound to happen, certainly in the very Weber-rational-bureaucratic Netherlands. I'm just not sure if this is a good idea at all.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records — the health ministry said Tuesday.
As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise "red flags" in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.
Right now, for instance, if someone set about even a desultory Googling they could determine the outlines of my biography nicely. If they went to a couple of other search engines as well, they could find all the more detail on me. Centralizing and rationalizing sprawling databases in a single system is very Weber-rational-bureaucratic and was bound to happen, certainly in the very Weber-rational-bureaucratic Netherlands. I'm just not sure if this is a good idea at all.
