[THE low'n order Inhy has from the Tory…]

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THE low'n order Inhy has from the Tory right-wing. racontatives and one- ments'. if their owners. The names an then be used to check against other files kept on people. • According to an article in the latest issue of of Computing, since 1979 a simple vehicle check to find the name and address of he owner has also autonatically accessed the stolen and suspect vehicles ndex', which contains information on cars of nterest to the police. At least three, and possibly his covers are for the use the of the Special Branch.

The significance of this becomes clear when you consider that vehicle checks are not just used to recover stolen cars but also to monitor movement of vehicles of 'interest'.

In 1976, only 25% of the 120,000 entries in the stolen and suspect vehicles index referred to stolen cars, and the use made by local forces reflects this. In 1979, according. to Computing, Bedford police made 127,933 stolen vehicle checks but reported only 3,710 stolen vehicles. Figures for Gwent were 61,854 and 1,414 respectively.

As the Computing article states: 'Without public discussion or announcement or debate in Parliament, the police have set up the basis of a countryside intelligence system that monitors vehicle movement.

Not all police information is kept centrally on the PNC. An increasing amount of data is held by 'collators' , based in local stations who gather local 'criminal intelligence' Thames Valley police have undertaken an experiment THE law'n order lobby has in 1976 to centralise this information on à computer.

Although the Thames Valley police are keen to dispute anything said about their system, they are not too prepared to supply much information about how many people find their way into the computer or Two senior policemen answered queries about this as follows: 'The majority of the information in on criminals. You have to trust us." 'To my mind, all the information in there is factual (!). We are simply providing a service for the lads."

Duncan Campbell has managed to get figures of the size of the different files on the system. The file on people is around 160,000 (some 10% of the region's population, though the police claim that this includes crime victims).

It is growing by 120 records a day. The file on 'occurences' - noncriminal events - contains 148,000 records and is growing by 175 a day. On the other hand the file on crimes only contains 49,000 records - one-third of the predicted capacity.

This sort of system makes detailed policing of an area much easier. A new system in Greater Manchester will add to their from the Tory right-wing, locally collected information, information on their area from the PNC.

Although the Thames Valley system is independent of the PNC, the Home Office admitted that the main obstacle to hoiding locally collected information centrally was public opinion. Their long term aims are 'one definitive record held centrally" and 'to computerise completely the central definitive record avaliable to all forces"

The MI5 system, according to Duncan Campbell's and Steve Connor's deductions provide such a centralised system, in which records of individuals are held, uniquely identified by their National Insurance number.

The size of the storage on the new computers, ordered secretly four years ago, is such that if MIS built up its own files from scratch it would take years to get anywhere near the capacity obtained.

The conclusion Duncan Campbell draws is that MI5 is receiving large amounts of data directly from other government computers. Two other facts point in this direction: MI5's secret charter gives it "access to the records of such government departments and agencies as you may deem necessary for the resentatives and onepurposes of your work. Secondly, the Ministry of Defence was experimenting in linking the computers into a network in the mid-70s, and ICL, the computer supplier is still working on this.

Neither the Inland Revenue nor the DHSS would deny that MI5 had access to their records, given that there is evidence that MI5 uses National Insurance numbers as identification, there must ments. be a considerable flow of information from the DHSS's Newcastle NI computers to MI5.

The MI5 project was conceived and set up in total secrecy without any Parliamentary discussion or accountability.. Something that represents a serious threat to civil liberty is outside the law or the framework of Parliamentary democracy.

(Maybe Michael Foot should ponder this before rabbiting on about how Tatchell, Wall and Benn are enemies of democracy). The police systems mentioned are also out of control by either local police committees ur of Parliament, covered by a cloak of secrecy.

The labour movement must fight for that secrecy to be removed. The state's information gathering and surveillance poses above all a threat to trade unionists and the left.