[Crispin Aubrey and John Berry: harassed for lifting…]

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Crispin Aubrey and John Berry: harassed for lifting a corner suchan THIS BILC. WHICH Black peopie will suffer specially from increased state most likely to want this. information - the police and security services. 40 million . personal records are already held on the Police National Computer (PNC) at Hendon and the Special Branch holds 1.3 million records at Scotland Yard (their only interest is political activists).

This sort of information gathering and surveillance preceded the use of computers, but computerisation makes for far wider availability and easier and faster storage and retrieval of information.

A number. of scandals recently have served to indicate the extent of state information gathering and the way in which the information can be abused.

The first and probably best known example emerged through objections to the renewal of licences for a number of London casinos. It was alleged, and later proven in court, that police officers had, through their access to the PNC and thus to the DVLC, provided the casino owners with the names and addresses of the owners of AE GON HM TODAY Convention dhy Unsted Kingdom 307-3 i resurine the cars parked outside rival casinos at a charge of 80p a time.

More recently, the retiring Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, John Alderson, revealed some of the information kept on innocent people by his force. This included people involved in anti-nuclear campaigns, opposition to blood sports or members of Anti-Apartheid.

In February, the Sun revealed that it had paid €500 to a firm of 'computer snoopers' to see how much information they would be able to provide on a Labour MP, Michael Meacher (with his agreement).

The results showed that 4L - -amans insoleon trac able to gain access to bank, une company uivviveu wao Thatcher said that she madinal ond malino rorneria. meucar alu puute sorvius. "shared the distaste that this information should be available", but, as we shall see, the government has demonstrated its unwillingness to do any more than is the absolute minimum about it.

In the last few weeks, articles in the New Statesman and Computing have revealed the most secret and probably the most sinister of the extensions of state information gathering: MI5's acquisition at a cost of at least £20 million of two large ICL computers with backing storage capable of holding recoras o. 150 words of descriptive information about 20 million people. This system was acquired without Parliament even Knowils. No-one asked by journalists Duncan Campbell and Steve Connor would specify its purpose, beyond vague talk of "national security"

- a concept which is supposed to silence all but the most persistent and ''unpatriotic" inquirers.

The keeping of computerised information raises a number of related issues.

- whether the keeping of the information is justified

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