Who knows me?
Now this is something that either slipped completely under my radar – that, or we just forgot about it. It was (re)brought to my attention by Jennysis, validated by BBC News, and concerns a company that almost all of us will have to deal with at some point: the DVLA.
This is a body who hold my name, my address, my photograph, my signature and my driving licence number. If I fail to keep my contact details updated with them, I may be committing an offence. And they’re making money out of me.
As far ago as the year 2000, the government was challenged by the RAC as to the practice of selling data to those who claimed “reasonable cause”. In 2005, the government announced a review of the practice, as they did in 2006 when it was discovered that the DVLA made £6.5m for the practice that year. Yet it’s still going on today, leaving the doors open to make like hell forthose who haven’t done anything wrong. My details can be sold without my permission to any company who can justify their request, even if they have a criminal record.
So who can do it? Well, you have to firstly register with the DVLA for a fee of around £3000. Then, for each request you make, you pay a small charge and boom, you know the registered driver’s address. And you can then do what you want from that data. The theory is to make people pay parking fines when they run off; the result, as seen above, is chaos.
Now recently local councils were finally banned from selling edited versions of the electoral roll to commercial companies, who then would proceed to bombard us all with junk mail. So why should the government escape, just so one of their departments can make a ton of money out of us?
The Amnesia Party remains highly concerned at this. With the continual data losses, security breaches and data losses, it is scandalous that there is a database – itself which could easily get lost or stolen – of our personal details which is being used essentially as a marketing tool. How can you be expected to remember all the companies getting hold of where you live and what you drive? We are committed to forcing this disgraceful practise to be stopped as soon as possible.
Vote Amnesia, because we will… um… do stuff. And stuff.
19 Oct 2008 11:00
| 
Tags: Politics Vote Amnesia
| 
Comments (2)
| 
Report a problem
Loading…
Jennysis
[Adds DVLA to her list of “Things That Piss Me Off”]
Bastards.
Vote Amnesia!
20 Oct 2008, 12:35
Samuel Boulby
Cars: making 80% of your actions somehow illegal since 1905.
23 Oct 2008, 14:23
Add a comment
You are not allowed to comment on this entry as it has restricted commenting permissions.