HM Revenue & Customs is drafting legislation that would allow it to release “anonymous” data on millions of taxpayers to private companies, researchers and public bodies.
The government hasn’t even consulted us before deciding to sell on our private tax information to anyone willing to pay. Instead, it's tried to sneak in the changes unnoticed -- they were buried in hundreds of pages of ordinary budget documents. Isn't that just typical of everything the governments have been doing in the last few years? They will publish some meaningless lump of trivia to give the press something to chew over while they try to sneak harmful regulations and legislations through the back door.
The legislation could be passed any day now. But if enough people stand up for our right to privacy, the government will have no choice but to back down -- or risk its popularity in the year before the General Election. If you want to be part of this movement then here's the link:
Tell HMRC not to sell our personal financial information to private firms for profit.
The government has misled people over “anonymous” data in the past -- supposedly unidentifiable health information turned out to include age, ethnicity, gender, postal code and NHS number.
Senior MPs are calling the plan “dangerous” and “borderline insane” at a time when gigabytes of data can be downloaded and sent around the world in milliseconds. The information would allow credit rating agencies to delve into people’s personal finances, and marketers and retailers could use it to practise price discrimination.
When NHS England unveiled a plan earlier this year that would have seen our private medical records sold to corporations, SumOfUs joined with 252,000 UK members to spearhead growing opposition to the proposal, and delayed the scheme by six months.
We’ve had success before; we can achieve it again. Governments need to be reminded that they are there to serve then people not for the people to serve them.
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