Strawberry Bivi
28-10-2006, 10:38am
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2425298_1,00.html
The danger of being stigmatised through hidden data-sharing is the subject of a report to an international data protection conference in London next week. We had to press him hard to give examples of how it happens before he detailed the cases that cross his desk. The worst concerned a little girl’s chance remark at school that resulted in her father being refused work because he had been classed as a suspected paedophile.
“A little girl was overhead in the school playground to say, ‘My dad “bonked” me last night’. And the dinner lady heard this and reported it to the school authorities.”
The social services soon established that the girl was referring to her father tapping her playfully on the head with an inflatable hammer. They closed the file but, in the days that had elapsed, details had been passed on to the police — and they were not updated. Five years later the man discovered that he was still registered as a suspected sex offender. “And that, in my view, is wholly unacceptable.”
The danger of being stigmatised through hidden data-sharing is the subject of a report to an international data protection conference in London next week. We had to press him hard to give examples of how it happens before he detailed the cases that cross his desk. The worst concerned a little girl’s chance remark at school that resulted in her father being refused work because he had been classed as a suspected paedophile.
“A little girl was overhead in the school playground to say, ‘My dad “bonked” me last night’. And the dinner lady heard this and reported it to the school authorities.”
The social services soon established that the girl was referring to her father tapping her playfully on the head with an inflatable hammer. They closed the file but, in the days that had elapsed, details had been passed on to the police — and they were not updated. Five years later the man discovered that he was still registered as a suspected sex offender. “And that, in my view, is wholly unacceptable.”