Civil liberties in an information society (2)

E-health insider reports on the story I blogged about a while back. The Department of Health has written to all the people who sent in The Guardian's opt-out coupon, explaining that they don't have the right not to have their information added to the NHS Care Records Service (full text of the DH letter here). As is pointed out in the comments on the E-health insider page, the Data Protection Act doesn't stop organisations holding the information about you that they need to conduct their business, it only gives you the right of access to that information in order to ascertain that it is accurate and up to date, and places a duty on organisations to prevent unauthorised access to your information (i.e. to protect your data). Scaremongering? No thanks. Campaigns for better information security? Ooh yes please!