Stop the Database State

Manchester NO2ID Meeting

Saturday 12th June 2010, 12:00 noon. The Moon Under Water, Deansgate, Manchester.

Minutes of meeting
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The contents of the recent national NO2ID newsletters were discussed, and the minutes of the previous meeting were approved.

A big “thank you” to all our supporters for your help over the years :)

Medical records
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Despite NO2ID’s recent victory (a bill to scrap the ID scheme), there is still a lot of work to be done regarding the Database State. We are extremely concerned that the summary primary care records of patients are being uploaded onto an insecure, central NHS database, without the patient’s knowledge or consent. It is possible to “opt out” of this; however the default setting is that one has automatically given consent to upload, unless one specifically opts out. This is very bad news for the patients who were supposed to receive a letter through the post from their Primary Care Trust, containing details of the database and how to opt out. We are aware that many of these letters may not have reached their recipients.

ACTION: Dave to send information on summary care medical records to the public email list.

ACTION: Helen to contact The Big Opt Out for further information.

ACTION: Helen to provide Dave’s NO2ID contact details to the Practice Manager of her GP’s surgery, who is supportive of our concerns.

Erasing David
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A new film has been released, revealing just how hard it is to “disappear” whilst living in today’s Database State. (This has special relevance for innocent people with genuine safety issues, e.g. survivors of domestic abuse or honour crimes). Manchester NO2ID would like to hold a screening of this film.

ACTION: Dave to contact the Cornerhouse cinema to arrange a screening of Erasing David, similar to the one that we held when Taking Liberties was released.

ACTION: Helen to contact the Open Media Society at the University of Manchester, regarding a possible screening in September.

Street stall
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This will take place in St Ann’s Square, Manchester, from 2-4pm this afternoon. Dave has produced some flyers about confidentiality of medical records, and about how the ID card scheme has been “not scrapped enough”.

Election and Politics
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Thank you to the new coalition government for agreeing to scrap the ID card scheme. However, we do not know yet whether the coalition will be good for NO2ID’s aims. There is still work to do.

Thank you to Rachael for spending a great deal of time contacting local election candidates recently. We need to contact the new MPs elected in Greater Manchester, to raise awareness of Database State issues, and find out their opinions on such issues. As Labour abstained during the voting on the Bill which would scrap the ID scheme, it would be interesting to know Labour’s current position on ID cards.

ACTION: Dave to set up a NO2ID email address for Helen.

ACTION: Dave to draft a letter to the new MPs, and Helen to email it to the MPs.

ACTION: Helen to access and test sys admin features on our website.

Students Against ID (SAID)
==========================

Thank you to Sarah and Benji, for organizing the Freshers Fair stall and its logistics.

ACTION: Dave to contact NO2ID HQ for new centralized resources (e.g. flyers) to put on the stall.

ACTION: Dave to upload posters for upcoming SAID and NO2ID events on the Manchester NO2ID website wiki.

It’s great to hear that students at universities in Liverpool and Lancaster would like to set up SAID societies. Manchester University SAID will offer any support that we are able to.

Local publicity
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We need to turn our Manchester NO2ID website into a better resource for members of the public to get information about our campaign and events. Also, the format of the national newsletters may need changing – there is a lot of information (e.g. local events) that are not relevant for many people, and this persuades people to not read the newsletters.

ACTION: Dave to work on website and liaise with HQ re newsletters.

We also need to raise more awareness about other Database State target for future campaigning (e.g. medical records, Contact Point, school fingerprinting, CCTV surveillance). NO2ID as a campaign is not as well-known for these, as for our action against the ID Card Scheme.

We also discussed the pros and cons of our recent Guinea Pig campaign, and how we could plan future campaigns.

Upcoming events
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Street stall, 2-4pm, St Ann’s Square, this afternoon.
Next meeting: date, time and venue TBA.

AOB
===

Dave is attending the meeting of Regional NO2ID Co-ordinators in London tomorrow, and will report back to the local group with any relevant discourse.

We are intrigued as to the current legal status of ID cards, as they are not recognized by many agencies as a valid form of ID! We also wonder how many people who currently have an ID card are airside airport workers who were given an ID card for free.

ACTION: Dave to contact Paul re this.

[Ends]