The ACT Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, announced yesterday that nine departments and agencies keep a total of 312 databases with personal information in the ACT Government _ perhaps Little Sister is more appropriate.
Unlike Big Brother, Little Sister will allow you to peek at the files. To help the peeking, Mr Connolly, and the Federal Privacy Commissioner, Kevin O’Connor, launched yesterday the ACT Government Personal Information Digest.
It is hard to swallow how much information is kept by government on its citizens: from the punishment book to the registrar of bee-keepers; from birth certificates, to death certificates and beyond to wills and probate; from applications for grants by artists to applications for trade licences from artisans; from records of those who have hired the Erindale Centre to those who have had x-rays.
The digest lists who holds the information; how it is held (computer, paper, microfiche); where it is held; how many records; how long they are kept; who has access; what sort of material is listed (from, in the words of Arlo Guthrie, the colour of your toilet roll and if your cousin’s queer); the purpose of the record and whom to phone to arrange perusal for accuracy.
The digest tells us something about Canberra: there are 15,500 people with senior’s cars (to give freebies to oldies); 600 people keep bees and there are 50 registered rabbit owners. Four thousand complained about the garbage and 2600 complained about the health system. Three thousand sought treatment for drug abuse. Sixty-eight people have pranged into electricity poles and 4000 have not paid their electricity or water bills. One hundred and forty thousand have had x-rays and only 100 have sought relief from government mortgage payments.
The imperative, of course, is to keep the records separate. It is data-matching that causes invasions of privacy and abuse of power by the Big Brother of Orwell’s imagination.