Who guards the guardians?

As the government, and the country as a whole, gain greater powers and increased technical ability to collect and retain data the risks to individuals privacy and liberty increases.

The mantra of “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” is often used by supporters of the surveillance state; implying that the innocent do not need to fear those controlling the surveillance

Part of that statement relies on the assumption that the people with access to the data can be trusted. If the people who have access to all of this data are not 100% reliable then the system is 100% guaranteed to fail. So who are the data guardians?

Who are the Data Guardians?

The data guardians are those who are able to create and/or access the huge volumes of personal data collected. Many people think that these data guardians are James Bond-esque characters, with our personal data protected by a variety of systems from lasers to burley men with guns, and only those with a true heart and noble cause are able to access this huge amount of information. Further more, its often thought that despite all these checks and balances the data guardians only ever only invade the lives of the criminal megalomaniacs with plans for world domination.

Sadly, this is very far from the truth.

Many data guardians are in fact low paid, poorly qualified civil servants, with little to no carer prospects. They are the CCTV operators working shifts, the civilian support staff in the police, the low paid  security staff at airports. They are not thwarting Al Queda terrorists, or toppling Saddam Hussien, instead they are monitoring normal, every day people, peering into the lives of innocent people as they go about their daily business.

Some of the staff who can authorize additional surveillance of individuals, or whole areas, are minor councilors - low level politicians who are elected with only a tiny percent of the electorate.

These data guardians have access to so much information, from naked body scans and medical records, to phone logs and banking records, that they have information about everyone, all the time.

The nature and the sheer volume data, combined with the number of staff and agencies handling the information means that there is motive and opportunity for the data guardians to misuse the data.

However is there the technical ability to misuse or steal the data from the goverment?