Group fights for privacy

2:19am Saturday 10th May 2008

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A Bradford campaign group has been formed to raise concerns about the role of private sector firms in the collection and storage of the personal details of members of the public.

The new group is a regional branch of the NO2ID group, the national campaign against identity cards and the identity database.

The group points to findings, in a report by Price Waterhouse Cooper, that almost 80 per cent of firms that have had computers stolen had not encrypted the data on their hard drives as evidence of its concerns.

Jason Smith, Bradford NO2ID co-ordinator, said: "We are all aware of the number of government departments which have lost disks containing the personal data of thousands of people.

"But this report highlights that these security breaches are not just happening in the public sector.

"Yet the government is planning to sub-contract out the collection of our biometric identities for use in the National Identity Card Databases to private firms.

"This will lead to a proliferation of the number of organisations which hold our personal information on electronic files. Can we trust them to keep it safe?

"Along with other NO2ID groups in Yorkshire we will be actively campaigning against and lobbying local companies that attempt to make a profit by partaking in the government's flawed and unpopular ID cards scheme."

The Bradford group of NO2ID meets on the second Wednesday of the month at Bradford Resource Centre, 17-21 Chapel Street, Bradford, BD1 5DT.

The group can be contacted at Bradford@no2id.net