On 14/02/2020 13:46, NY wrote:
"Andrew" wrote in message
...
On 13/02/2020 00:19, wrote:


Andrew wrote:
If the government wants to know where all the people are,
they can always demand all the records from the phone companies
and supermarkets.

Phone directories do not include children, ages, occupations, or
people other
than the primary subscriber in the household.


Almost all that information is available from other sources.
The NHS records all birth and vaccination records. Local
authorities know where all the kids live, who their parents
and or guardians are.

HMRC have employment, company and VAT data. Lots of it.
The police have their PNC at Hendon.
The Security sources in NI used to have details of every house
including even things like, colour of sofa and curtains. All useful
stuff for interrogating suspects.

Everything that government statisticians and planners need to
know can be now be collated simply by doing a huge data trawl
on the existing government and 'private' databases. 100 years
ago this rich source of data didn't exist.

One big problem with using lots of different databases like this is
matching the entries that relate to the same person. That's why it would
be so much better if everything required one common ID (NI number) which
would show that John Smith on the utility company database was the same
as John Smith in the DVLA database and the same as John Smith who was
born on date at location with mother's maiden name of name and the
same as John Smith who works for company and earns salary.

I am pretty sure that was (maybe still is) the US system. One number for
everything - which of course means identity theft is a lot easier to
commit and a lot harder to put right afterwards.

SteveW