A quarter of the UK's largest public-sector database projects, including the ID cards register, are fundamentally flawed and violate European data protection laws, according to DataBase State, a report published today. The report also fingers the UK's national DNA database and the Contactpoint index of all children in England as particularly flawed.
Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, the report identifies 46 UK government databases and systems, more than half of which it says fail tests of privacy or effectiveness, and thus could be illegal under European privacy law.