Rip up data and start again, firms told

A leading security expert has claimed the only way the UK will be able to lead the world in the adoption of big data is to scrap all existing customer databases which have been built without obtaining explicit, informed, and voluntary prior consent.
Just a week after companies were outlawed from using third-party data unless it can be proved prospects have opted in to receive marketing from other brands, former GCHQ and the US Department of Defense chief Dr Kevin Macnish is calling for the UK data industry to go further and rip it up and start again.
Macnish, who now works as a professor at Leeds’ University, made the demands – which appear to make the proposed EU data protection reforms look like a stroll in the park – in evidence submitted to the Parliamentary inquiry into the use of big data.
The House of Commons Science & Technology select committee is currently investigating whether the Government is doing enough to promote big data’s benefits to businesses, as well as looking into concerns over data collection.
In his evidence, published this week, Dr Macnish said the Data Protection Act should be extended to protect consumers who are increasingly involved in large data mining projects undertaken by corporations and governments, often unknowingly.
He also wants companies to be forced to set up “ethics review boards” to review all projects involving the collection and analysis of large data sets. They should sit in corporations, rather than the Government and be monitored by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Dr Macnish added: “The Government should place a ban on using data without explicit, informed, voluntary prior consent.”
Despite admitting that there will be losses associated with the approach – and other states might edge ahead of the UK by using data for which consent has not been sought – “this is the price for adhering to the universal need for informed consent”.
He concluded: “There is a need to gain public trust in big data as a technique. The best way for this to happen is through transparency of motives and consequences.”