Next Census, Senseless.

In quite astounding news, the Government are planning to outsource the collating and retention (but not collection) of census data to a foreign company. Either Deutsche Telekom or, more worryingly, Lockheed Martin.

That would be the same Lockheed Martin who is a major defence contractor for the US Government. And that would be the same US Government whose Patriot Act requires all US firms to hand over any data the Government want without any protections or need for court time for a subpoena.

Angela Eagles, the Treasury Minister, has assured MPs that the data will be safe because "We have received legal advice that there is no risk that that would happen," she told the committee on Wednesday. So that's alright then, isn't it?. She continued;

"Some of the arrangements that would be made would ensure that data was owned and kept within the UK."

Right, because data leaving the country for no apparent reason never happened before, has it?

"There has been no evidence of the US Patriot Act being used to subpoena companies that are not US-based."

And I think the word you may have missed out of this sentence is "yet".

/me checks next available flight out of the UK