There have been a few stories dotted around the media this morning linking to a poll conducted by IT company, Unisys.
The top line to come out of the research is that 75% of Britons do not trust the government to keep their data safe - a statistic that leaves you wondering who the other 25% of people asked were.
Indeed, data loss by government departments over the past 10 years has reached chronic levels and is a major weapon in the armoury of anti-database campaigners like ourselves.
However, as reported elsewhere, other results from the polling revealed that a surprising 56% of respondents were prepared to hand over biometric information to retailers and other institutions as a means of verification; including around 90% being ok with using fingerprint or iris recognition.
These statistics become more dubious when 64% of those surveyed admitted they didn't have faith in private companies to look after their personal information and 83% were apparently worried about the unauthorised accessing of personal information.
Without seeing the polling questions I don't want to be overly definitive in my response; but I feel that if the public are clearly worried about public and private bodies holding onto their personal information as demonstrated by the polling results, headlines such as 'UK ready and willing for biometric fingerprinting' might have jumped the gun somewhat.
A fingerprint is more precious than a pin number - we mustn't be tricked into giving away our biometric data under false pretences.
By Dylan Sharpe
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