Finally - Liberty gets to grips with the issues in the bill

It is good to see that more than one piece of evidence to the ad hoc sub committee dealing with the draft local audit bill has raised the civil liberties and human rights implications of the broadly (and arguably badly) drafted provisions in Part 6.

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy12/liberty-s-submission-to-the-draft-local-audit-bill-committee-oct-2012-.pdf

If this issue affects you, write to your MP asking them to read and to support Liberty's evidence.  You might need to download it because it has not appeared on Parliament's web site yet.

This passage appears to me to sum up what is happening with the electoral register matches, especially with the rising 18s report:

Data thrown up by these technologies, often without any initial human intervention, will inevitably highlight entirely innocent activity as patterns which appear suspicious. These kinds of data processing carry the clear potential to mislead, given that they operate, by necessity, on the basis of simplistic generalisations about human behaviour or stereotypes about the implications of personal characteristics.

See also the comments here

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy07/serious-crime-bill-2nd-reading-commons.pdf

If people who have done nothing wrong feel that they are nevertheless being targeted by the criminal justice system the effect could be disastrous. We fear that these schemes will corrode the public faith and trust that is vital to the effective administration of justice in this country.

Well done Liberty!  Now we need Big Brother Watch to get involved with this one: it is right up their street. If they thought National Identity Cards were a bad idea, the sort of massive and intrusive state database which Part 6 paves the way for will have them very worried.