ContactPoint: the BLOGDIAL predictions begin to come true
January 21st, 2010Over the years, BLOGDIAL has made many predictions detailing precisely what would happen if ContactPoint was rolled out. We gave detailed reasons, explanations and descriptions of how these bad things would happen, and now they are all coming to pass as we predicted.
ContactPoint database suffers ‘serious’ security breaches during trial phase
The controversial database containing personal details of all 11 million children in England has suffered at least four security breaches even before its nationwide launch.
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Over the past year, staff at England’s 150 main councils have been going through their records for vulnerable children – such as the offspring of high-profile parents or those fleeing abuse – whose details should be “shielded” for their safety.
we said:
On the first day that ContactPoint goes online, and all the 330,000 tokens have been distributed, a minimum of 330,000 children will have their records accessed. If these are printed out, they have escaped the database and are in the wild. Unless they are going to supply 330,000 secure shredders to all the ContactPoint users, you can guarantee that these printouts will be lost, sold and misused.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=757
At least 51,100 people have also demanded to have their personal information hidden from users of ContactPoint amid persistent fears that it is unsafe.
we said:
Rich still able to opt out
This proves that ContactPoint is not and cannot ever be secure, and that its users are not trustworthy and can never be trusted. The rich and famous will be able to opt out of ContactPoint. If ContactPoint were secure, there would be no need for this opt out option for the rich.
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=757
In November the Government declared that a pilot phase involving 20 councils and charities had been a success, and that the project will be taken up nationally.
we said:
This is one of the most absurd statements ever. Just when you thought that they couldn’t get more stupid, we have the imbecile ‘Kevin Brennan’ saying they need more time to CHANGE THE VERY NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE and RE-DEFINE THE RULES OF MATHEMATICS before they roll out ContactPoint.
The fact is, you computer illiterate JACKASS, no matter how long you delay it, not matter what you do to re-design it, data will always be copyable, and if you put together ContactPoint in the way it has been planned, it will still be copyable. Read how this is going to be done, in evidence already submitted to you. Even if you make it difficult for insiders with root level DB access, wholesale copying WILL take place on a page by page basis. Remember, there are going to be 300,000 people with authorized access; it will be impossible to monitor them all, like that PHD’s submission says.
No amount of security reviews will be able to stop people from printing off ContactPoint pages. Deloitte knows this. The alterations you are talking about will do nothing to reduce the risk you are putting all the children of the UK in.
These are the FACTS.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=895
But there have been at least three security breaches so far, in London, Staffordshire, Peterborough and Surrey, according to details obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
One “serious” breach involved two staff at Westminster City Council, where many politicians and public figures live, losing details of children that had been originally stored in an envelope.
we said:
And of course, piecemeal copying of ContactPoint is just as bad; with one million people granted access to it, printing off pages, saving screen grabs and just writing down details with a pencil and a piece of paper, these sorts of criminal activities could happen without a wholesale data breach.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1445
An official report admitted February’s incident had been a “serious breach of the duty to maintain confidential data securely”.
“Officers involved have taken all possible steps to locate the data and clearly understand the seriousness of this incident,” the report said.
we said:
No sanction will put the data back in the database, or repair the harm done to a child after the fact.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=757
and we said:
Firing the administrator, hanging drawing and quartering him and then feeding the remains to pigs will not put humpty dumpty together again. No penalty, not matter how severe can erase all the illegal copies taken from a database. That sort of magic is just that, magic and not part of the real world.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=750
Peterborough Council refused to release, under FOI laws, details of its report into its “minor” security breach, claiming it did not think releasing information was in “the public interest”.
“The incident in question was a minor disciplinary incident that was dealt with swiftly,” a spokesman said.
“Changes were made to remove the possibility of this happening again and at no time was any information released into the public domain or used inappropriately.”
That is what they say, but they cannot prove it can they?
we said:
Imagine a disgruntled employee makes a copy of the ContactPoint database and then does not make it public but sells it secretly to a criminal gang. No one would ever know that the copy had been made. Out of the 11 million children, hundreds would be cherry picked for kidnapping, and no one would be able to connect these kidnappings to the covert release of ContactPoint. That criminal gang could operate for years off of the ContactPoint data without anyone knowing.
That is a far more horrible scenario is it not? Do you feel queasy?
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1445
Two of the councils that acted as “trailblazers” for the information-sharing project in 2005 were forced to investigate after staff breached guidelines on data use.
East Sussex County Council said: “There was one incidence of inappropriate behaviour in the early stages of the project, with one practitioner sharing access information with a colleague who had not yet received access information.
“Both accounts were suspended until the issue was dealt with through the [council’s] usual disciplinary procedures.”
We said:
Tokens shared over phone in the one minute window
Depending on how it is set up, people will be able to share the random number on the token over the phone. When the session expires, the person selling access can sell a new random number to the scumbag who wants to get access to the data. In this way, the ContactPoint user can keep her token, limit access to her black market data clients and still remain in the system on a long term basis.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=757
Sheffield City Council said: “There have only been two incidents that have required formal investigation – both were identified by the internal auditing built into the system.
That means they have only detected two; it is impossible to know how many breaches there have been:
we said:
Just how are they going to know if the data was not sold on again? They cannot know this, and if the data is partitioned into small stripped parcels, whoever bought a stripped parcel will have plausible deniability. There are many data brokers out there who sell data aggregated from many sources. All they have to do is strip out all the data that makes the stolen database identifiable as ContactPoint data (the unique numbers and everything else, leaving just the names and addresses) and then they can add this data to their current databases and claim that what they have is simply what they were using previously. Lets say you choose to buy only the subset of ContactPoint where the children are exactly seven years old. You would be able to send a mailout to these families without raising too much suspicion.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=757
“The two incidents referred to above were considered to be ‘inappropriate use’ of the system by authorised users as per our user guidelines.”
Tim Loughton, the shadow Children’s Minister, said: “These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg.
“Once there are 400,000 users of ContactPoint there be scope for colossal abuse of the system. ContactPoint is not and cannot be secure.
“The Government should not be taking chances with the contact details of 11 million children – particularly given their appalling track record of keeping public data safe.”
He added: “Ed Balls needs to pull the plug on this dangerous project before it is too late.”
That means that he understands that he is a paedophile facilitator by knowingly setting up this database with foreknowledge that the data will escape and end in the abuse of children.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1426
Meanwhile, almost 44,000 requests to have children’s records shielded – making only their name, date of birth, gender and ID number visible on the system – have been received in the past year to more than 130 councils that are using the systems, according to figures provided to this newspaper. In total, officials have shielded more than 51,100 records.
Government guidance states that there are only “limited circumstances” where shielding should be allowed – where children or adults would otherwise be put at risk of significant harm.
we said:
Every Child Matters, but it seems, some children matter more than others.
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This is pure evil, and the fact that they are going to ’shield’ the identities of the children of the rich and famous proves that this database is dangerous to every child.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=742
The majority of councils said they had not completed the process, meaning that even more children could be shielded next year.
Critics say the effectiveness of the system is undermined if many children have their details hidden.
“These shocking security breaches reveal just how unsafe this database is,” said Annette Brooke, the Liberal Democrat’s Children’s spokeswoman.
“The initial pilots of ContactPoint raised serious security concerns, but the Government insisted on ploughing ahead with it.
“This intrusive database must now be scrapped. Parents have every right to demand that their children’s personal details are not put at risk.”
Where is the legal challenge to this outrageous scandal? The fail ridden LibDems can promise whatever they like; they will never be able to deliver anything to anyone. Only the Tories can destroy this database; it should be the first thing that they do when they take power.
we said:
ContactPoint: Online Catalogue for Rapists
“A RUTHLESS rapist found victims by getting a job as a care worker and trawling a council’s database for vulnerable young girls.
Simeon Kellman, 43, used computer records to identify teenagers who had just come out of the foster care system.”
A Department for Children, Schools and Families spokeswoman said further training and guidance had been issued to prevent further security problems.
The biggest bunch of lying, predatory, anti-family, subhuman garbage says, in essence, that they can secure ContactPoint. By what magic can they do this? The fact of the matter is that they cannot.
we said:
This is the danger we have been talking about for almost a decade; once the data is out, it can never be put back.
No matter what they say, no matter what assurances they give, they will never be able to secure data in databases. Period.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=2051
“Security is of paramount importance for ContactPoint and a significant set of measures and controls are in place. The use of ContactPoint is monitored and audited at both national and local level.
Someone clever said:
32. An audit system does not prevent all improper access. The Police National Computer, for example, has a substantial audit resource and yet the Independent Police Complaints Commission comments:
‘Every year sees complaints alleging the unauthorised disclosure of information from the Police National Computer. Forces have reviewed their methods of preventing unlawful entry but there will always be a few officers willing to risk their careers by obtaining data improperly.’[34]
“In the small number of instances where unusual activity has been detected or suspected, the local authorities involved immediately investigated and took the correct course of action.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=770
“None of these incidents led to data in ContactPoint being compromised, none involved any data being printed or downloaded from ContactPoint, and there is no evidence that any of these instances indicated malicious intent.”
She added: “This demonstrates that the stringent security processes we have in place are effective.”
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That is a bald faced LIE.
In this very article an incident is cited which,
“involved two staff at Westminster City Council, where many politicians and public figures live, losing details of children that had been originally stored in an envelope“.
That means that the information was on ContactPoint, had been PRINTED OUT onto PAPER and then stored in an envelope. If this incident did not involve ContactPoint, then why is it mentioned at all? And once again, all the assurances in the world cannot guarantee us that this has not already happened somewhere else, unbeknownst to this lying harpy at the DCSF.
As for this computer illiterate piece of trash’s use of the word ‘download’:
Every schoolboy knows that it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a database system accessed by browsers that can prevent the users of the system from copying the entries. The fact that ContactPoint holds ‘minimal’ (more on that later) details makes it easier to copy entries, since they can all fit in a small space in the browser and can be copied with a single click of the mouse. And remember, we are talking about COPYING entries; to use the word ‘download’ is disingenuous. The point about the dangers of this database is that the entries can be copied, will always be copyable and there is nothing that anyone can do to stop copying, short of not having a database at all. It is very important that right now, some journalist puts up a bounty for a photograph of a ContactPoint entry to demonstrate that anyone can make a copy of a ContactPoint entry, and that those copies can be transmitted to anyone anywhere, and the idea that the entries are ‘not downloadable’ is purely farcical.
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http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1747
These mental retards, child traffickers and monsters keep trotting out the same lie day after day, year after year without batting an eyelid; this is the measure of how venal, repulsive, corrupt, dangerous, dastardly, soulless, inhuman and filthy they are.
Anyone at any Local Authority or anywhere else who operates an account on ContactPoint is guilty of a very serious breach of ethics. There are no two ways about it. They are participating in a project that uses children to generate money:
we said:
The children of Britain sold to a French company that operates in 30 countries.
ContactPoint: The price of children
Like the title of this post says, the predictions are starting to come true. For all we know, a complete copy of the ContactPoint database might already be in the wild, circulating for hundreds of thousands of pounds per flash drive. And yes, the entire ContactPoint database could easily fit on a single key fob sized flash drive.
If a wholesale dump of the database has not yet been done, there is still time to erase everything and dismantle the system. This should be undertaken by the Tories as an emergency of war time urgency, because once the data is out, it is out forever and the genie can never be put back in the bottle.
In the meantime, ContactPoint must be rendered useless. That means you should reject any contact, service or approach of any kind that involves data sourced by ContactPoint. If you are in contact with ‘the system’ and you can find out what your child’s unique ContactPoint number is, you could start by making sure that anything you touch that comes from the LA does not have this number on it. I’m sure you can come up with your own ideas.
Sadly, we cannot rely on the morality of the people who are working with ContactPoint, who would not give up their jobs to save the lives of children they are abusing by touching that immoral system. As for the ‘Charities’ that have access to ContactPoint, I would suggest that no one give money to any charity that does not explicitly denounce ContactPoint and refuse any offer of access to it.
One way or another, either through the Tories or the economic collapse, ContactPoint is going to be destroyed as a working system. What is in question is wether or not a wholesale dump of its contents is going to be released to the public before that happens.
March 11th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
[…] We already know that the government explicitly accepts this proposition; the children of the rich and famous are to be excluded from the absolutely evil ContactPoint […]