On 16/02/2020 15:15, John Rumm wrote:
On 14/02/2020 12:22, Andrew wrote:
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.

I admire your faith in complex government IT systems to pull all this
data together.


And it's not just a matter of pulling data together. The various
sources mentioned aren't all high quality: e.g. HMRC don't have
/up-to-date/ addresses for all employees. That's why the Citizen
Information Project planned in the noughties was going to be so pricey -
and still fall well short of a population register like the ones in EU
States (from memory all bar Ireland and Denmark).


--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid