Thursday, September 15, 2005

Dutch to Create Cradle-To-Grave Database

An AP newswire article by Toby Sterling, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

The Dutch government will begin tracking every citizen from cradle to grave in a single database, opening a personal electronic dossier for every child at birth with health and family data, and eventually adding school and police records.

The Health Ministry says the new database will begin Jan. 1, 2007.

As a privacy safeguard, no single person will be able to access someone's entire file. And each agency that contributes to the records will maintain its own files as well.

But organizations can raise "red flags" in the dossier to caution other agencies of potential problems with children, said ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked.

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