Is it at all acceptable for Theresa May’s Government to hold and share data from EU citizens living in the UK, when the former Home Secretary herself scrapped the ID cards scheme in 2010 because she thought there was a civil liberties argument against them?
First published in December 2018.
The Home Office is forcing every EU citizen applying for Settled Status to accept its Privacy Policy that allows it to share all data with “public and private sector organisations in the UK and overseas”.
We now have a reply to our freedom of information request.
We requested a wide range of information to establish what data is transfered, to who, where it is processed and stored, and under which jurisdiction.
Although the Home Office is holding that information, it is refusing to provide it:
“[...] the disclosure [...] will make the application system vulnerable to malicious attacks and hamper our ability to effectively operate immigration control.”
Apparently, the disclosure of how data is shared and processed will make “it possible to circumvent immigration control”.
We thought that the Settled Status system does nothing else but checking HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions’ records and does a criminality check against national and international crime databases. How knowing where and by whom data is processed allows to circumvent this is beyond us.
In summary, the British Government is creating a central register just for one minority in the UK, the EU citizens, holding data it can share freely, and in secret, with undisclosed private and public organisations in the UK and across the world.
This is truly shocking.🔷
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