Child database plan under attack

From the Independent: Child database plan under attack following missing discs debacle

It seems the schools secretary Ed Balls has ordered a review of the Children Act database(s) in the wake of the HMRC-NAO data loss debacle. Good news on the surface but it has little or no prospect of it having any effect other than window dressing, in a transparent attempt to be seen to be doing something. If he was really serious he'd start by getting Terri Dowty, Ross Anderson, Ian Brown and the other folks who produced the report for the Information Commissioner last year, highlighting the risks to children’s safety of the government’s policy of creating large, centralised databases on children, in a room and listening seriously to them and acting on their advice, rather than treating them as outcasts with agendas to be ignored.