Is there any point reacting to today’s news, given that we’ve already sleepwalked (I can’t help wanting to say sleptwalked, but that can’t be right) into a surveillance society. Aside from the cameras – of which we have more than almost any country in the world (I think we’re second after Singapore, but I can’t remember my source so I can’t be sure) – we’re spied on and followed by our bank cards, oyster cards, mobile phones and the best efforts of the Inland Revenue, Home Office and Police as it is. Surely a central Scary Orwellian Database Of Everything (or SODBOE) is only another small step in the direction we’ve been cruising in since 9/11. Well yeah, it is. But just the fact of having sleptwalked (couldn’t resist that time) up to the edge of a cliff is no reason not to wake up before stepping off it.

The difference between many small databases and one big database is a huge, crucial one. I’d almost rather carry an ID card.

See, we’re not comfortable with being watched, I know this. It’s faintly disquieting knowing that my location can be – has to be – known by someone every time I make a phone call, but that’s just how the technology works. Nor can I really complain that someone at the bank has a trace of every transaction made on my card. I’d be sorely glad of it if my card was ever stolen. It doesn’t follow from that that I’d be OK with my bank manager having access to a list of my phone calls – I’d feel pretty strongly that that was none of his business.

We know the data has to exist somewhere, but it really shouldn’t be in one place. Tony’s database would combine anything every public body knows about you, thus creating an increasingly complete virtual trace of your life. That’s a Hell of a lot of power over you that you’d be giving up to the SODBOE administrators. Never mind that we are currently governed by a war criminal, looking to hand over either to a competent but cowardly accomplice or a smiley but despicably slimy ad-man, never mind that this government has a truly appalling record for major IT projects – whoever is in charge, no matter how scrupulous, will be unable to protect all that data from misuse. It’s gonna get hacked, or abused by someone who doesn’t even need to hack it.

The only time anyone could need access to all my information is when the police are carrying out a serious criminal investigation. Under those circumstances, they would also be able to violate the privacy of my home – but they’d need a warrant to do it. Is it too much to ask that they get similar permission before violating my digital privacy? The concept of a stranger being able to read my detailed legal, medical, travel and financial biography on demand sends shivers down my spine. With the SODBOE, that stranger could be a policeman, a tax collector, or any seedy individual with friends in high-up places. Nah, that would never happen actually, there’s no corruption here and there never will be, obviously. Instead of continuing on a tirade about why this would be disastrous for our privacy and civil liberties (which should be pretty obvious), let’s hear the other side of the story.

The claim that this protects from identity fraud is laughable. My identity, at the moment, lies in so many different things that it would be spectacularly hard to “steal” it, except in a very narrow way for a very specific purpose. Someone travels on my passport, OK, that’s bad, but a passport is not the be all and end all of me, and I could prove that I was still me and the guy on the flight to Rio wasn’t. Putting all my identity eggs in one basket – especially a basket held by the corrupt and incompetent – makes me spectacularly vulnerable. What was only possible for a major terrorist organisation in a fairly outlandish work of fiction in the early nineties (the film The Net, with Sandra Bullock) could be brought within the reach of the most mediocre of gangsters in the reality of the late noughties.

This identity protection thing is only a secondary point of support for the SODBE, though. Apparently, communication of private data between government departments is horribly slow and inefficient. Actually, I have no doubts about that (although I’m suspicious that the family that allegedly had to give information 44 times after a bereavement may turn out to be just as fictitious as the boy who supposedly spent 15 years alone in one of Saddam’s cells). Still, between the present shambles and the SODBOE lies a pretty vast undistributed middle. Seriously, there’s another way. To claim, in any seriousness, that there’s no practical way of keeping this data safely short of a SODBOE, you’d have to know nothing about data systems beyond the musings of your drunken mate on the back of a beermat.

On my facebook profile, I describe my job as being a “pawn of the oppressor for free toast and fruit”. On a more serious note, my company designs, implements and maintains information systems for financial institutions. The flow of information on a market is crucially important; if someone has access to information they shouldn’t, the market is distorted and it makes little Baby Capitalism cry. This is taken very seriously indeed. When someone is caught sharing information not meant for them, and acting upon it, they may get a hefty fine or a swift dismissal, but they’re more likely to get banged in prison. Like Jeffrey Archer. So there’s no SODBOF (Scary Orwellian Database Of Finance). Exchanges and trading firms all have their own systems, often subdivided further and well protected, to remove the temptation to peek at forbidden data.

These divisions of information are called Chinese Walls, after the barrier that let foreign merchants trade in Shanghai without straying into the rest of China, and they’re an integral part of trading. You can violate the Chinese Wall by walking around it – by literally going and talking to another human being on the other side – but the computer systems are nice and separate. And guess what? They’re also really really fast.

If trading systems can send orders to the exchange in milliseconds, surely its not too much to ask government departments to transfer information within a few minutes or even – let’s be generous – hours. As for having to give information 44 times, that’s ridiculous, but there’s nothing to say people can’t give their information once to an agent – human or electronic, who cares – who would then automatically send the relevant information to each goverment department before deleting its own copy. It’s very simple, Tony. Oh, right, you’re too busy with your stirring speeches about war-fighting.

Look at what the French have achieved with their health system. Living in France has thoroughly disabused me of my teenage francophilia, but I maintain that the French health service is fantastic, a model we could use to reform our beleaguered and embittered NHS. For now, though, I just want to talk about its data systems. Every French resident who wishes can have all their medical data recorded electronically, to be consulted and updated upon every visit to the doctor. This data isn’t held by the Scary Orwellian Ministry Of Information, but on a card of which the patient has custody. The patient is strongly advised to let her doctor consult her Carte Vitale at every check up, but she can choose not to, and she need have no fear of the police, the immigration service or the tax collector getting his paws on it. This in France, the lazy obnoxious bureaucrat’s Paradise!

So, we’ve sleptwalked (heeheehee) long enough. The choice between accepting ridiculous bureaucratic delays or submitting to regular full virtual body searches is no choice at all. Wake up.