This government is obsessed with collecting every piece of information about you. Through a myriad of laws and schemes it wants to know everything about your life, your home, possessions, money, entitlements, pensions etc etc. 

It tells us in so many ways how safe this information will be with government, how it will provide protection from identity thieves.

It is now passing a new law – specifically designed TO GIVE THAT INFORMATION AWAY. 

Why does it want to give all your social security information away. – SO YOU CAN HAVE A NEW DIGITAL TV SET.
 

The new law is the Digital Switchover (Disclosure of Information) Bill.
 

This bill allows the government to hand over information relating to social security and/or war pensions to another person on request, if that person is:

• The BBC,
• A company that the government, the BBC or a nominee of the BBC holds a majority stake in,
• any person engaged by the BBC, or the secretary of state, or a company as described above, to provide any service connected with switchover help functions (including establishing whether a person needs help with the switchover).

And what information does the Government think it needs to give the BBC about you that is so important in providing you with digital services.

namely—

• their name, and any alias by which they may be known, marital status (if known), address and date of birth;
• their National Insurance number;
• whether they are eligible for any of the benefits that will establish entitlement to help and (if so) those in respect of which they have an award of benefit;
• the fact that they have ceased to receive such benefits, where that is the case;
• details of any partner (including details of date of birth and National Insurance number) and whether they receive pension credit, income support or income-based jobseeker’s allowance (to check upon what level of support the household is entitled to);
• if the qualifying person for disability living allowance is a child, whether the responsible adult or adults is receiving pension credit, income support or income-based jobseeker’s allowance;
• whether they live in a residential care or nursing home (so helping to ensure that the right kinds of help are available in residential care and nursing home settings);
• details of any person appointed to act on their behalf (to allow such people to be contacted to alert them to the availability of help);
• the fact that they have died, where that is the case.
  

Now why on earth would the BBC need such information.  If it was a simple case of ‘is this person entitled to receive help or to receive that help for free’ then a simple request to the relevant government department who could say yes or no, or to provide the recipient with a certificate to say that they were entitled to a free service would be more than adequate. 

Time to say NO to government. Time to say your personal details are your personal details not theirs.

Say NO to ID cards, Say NO to databases, Say NO to NHS spine, say NO to data sharing. 

Write to your MP and tell him NO, NO, NO.

To put this into perspective, when the Government introduced paper ID cards during WW2, it was planned for the information about you to be used for 3 purposes.  To Identity you to the police, to use for food rationing and to receive medical care.

When it was abolished in 1952 it was found government was using that information for 157 different purposes. 

So whatever they tell you today, you can be sure it will be used for something different tomorrow.