Australian Government Sharing All Sorts Of Data
from the piecing-your-privacy-away dept
Just as the US Congress is realizing that (as many people suspected), the TSA has been breaking privacy laws in compiling information about people, it appears that the Australian government is going much, much further. The government has allowed "data matching" rules quietly be extended, meaning that many of the various databases that the government possesses are being connected to share all sorts of info that it doesn't necessarily make sense for certain government organizations to have. For example, why should the Tax Office know about your religious affiliation? Of course, similar systems have been designed in the US, but haven't gotten as far. Once again, it seems like government agencies are confusing "more data" with "smarter data."
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No Subject Given by Anonymous Coward on Jul 25th, 2005 @ 9:20am
No, governments aren't confusing anything with smarter *data*, they're confusing just about everything with "smarter" in general. They're expecting data to become this magic bullet, and that whatever is going to happen (terrorist or otherwise) will magically appear inside a little window atop a huge mound of meaningless information- not too unlike those fortune-telling eight-balls.
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