1. Where’s the Equilibrium? Ross Anderson Cambridge

2. Where does it all end? Computing, communications, storage and search keep on getting better and cheaper As more industries get like the software industry, the incentives to price discriminate will continue to increase This affects government too Where will the equilibrium be?

3. Example – IPR From the 1970s onwards, the pharma, music and luxury goods folks lobbied for broader, deeper, longer IP rights In about 2004 it started to run out of steam! Opposition in Brussels from supermarkets, telcos, car parts makers … A big beefy lobby isn’t stopped by fine words but by another big beefy lobby pushing the other way This can be economic, or political

4. The Database State We wrote a report, ‘Database State’, on the big government systems that have personal data on all of us in the UK (or a large minority) Out of 46 systems, at least 11 broke human-rights law Most of the rest had question marks! But only a handful of these get the public worked up…

5. A Tale of Two Systems The ‘children’s database’ (ContactPoint) gets everyone worked up Has basic data on all UK kids – name, address, GP, school, whether known to social work Celebrities, politicians, witness protection subjects etc can opt their kids out Very negative image! Opposition has promised to abolish it

6. A Tale of Two Systems (2) The Population Demographics System (PDS) has pretty well all this, and more It is the health service’s address book and has an audit trail of all visits to phisicians, hospitals, and increasingly social care too No-one cares! Given what we’ve heard at this workshop, that’s understandable enough

7. Implications There’s a perpetual tension between efficiency and discrimination But political limits get established E.g. railway regulation in the 1870s Where will the privacy boundary end up, and why? How can we nudge it one way or another?