The UK government is as obsessed as the Stasi with charting our lives but the edge over the DDR - computers

The Stasi was relentless in its pursuit of data collection, despite its lack of decent technology. The everyday details of the country's citizens were instead logged meticulously by pen on paper. In the 21st century, the UK government is equally obsessed with charting our lives, from the pills we take to the type of sex we have. But it has one massive modern-day advantage over the east Germans - computers.

From biometric passports, to national ID cards, to an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau, the data is - or will be - all stored for use by one authority or another that needs to know, or just wants to know, what we are up to. And it will all be accessible by thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people.

A case in point is the £224m Children's Information Sharing Index, administered by the Department for Education and Skills, and due to go online next year. It will hold the names of every child under the age of 19, their addresses, dates of birth, schools, colleges and GPs.

Alongside these personal details will also be logged a list of all the agencies, including the police, social services and educational psychologists, that have had dealings with the child. Sensitive issues such as mental and sexual health, we are assured, will not automatically appear, or at least not without parental consent.

The justification presented for any new computerised data collection system is generally along the lines of simplification, speed and continuity; that is, when we are not being told that it is to combat terrorism and fraud.

With the children's index, the further, and slightly more compelling, argument is that it is a response to the 2000 Victoria Climbié inquiry, which found that, had all the relevant agencies communicated with each other, Victoria might not have died.

How much better, those in charge say, to allow easier online sharing of information between the professionals, thus allowing more preventative work with families at an earlier stage. This sounds admirable in theory. Certainly, it was distressingly clear to those of us who attended the Climbié inquiry that the system did need a complete overhaul.

This is where I risk being accused of Luddism - a charge I naturally deny. Because I firmly believe that before committing any of this information to a national database, the public must be assured that it is secure.

The children's index is, after all, a system that will store the details of 11 million children and be available to teachers, social workers and others with a "need to know". The checks and balances, we are told, include ensuring all users undergo training and an enhanced criminal records bureau check. Every request will be audited.

But if these security fears are groundless, why has the education minister, Lord Adonis, said: "Children who have a reason for not being traced, for example where there is a threat of domestic violence or where the child has celebrity status, will have their details concealed"?

The same concerns surround the new National Health Service Electronic Care Records system, or the "spine", as it has become known. Part of the government's multi-billion-pound NHS National Programme for IT, it will allow all patient records to be uploaded on to a central computerised "warehouse". This will link 30,000 GPs and 300 hospitals and any number of healthcare workers will be able to access it.

Perhaps I am a tad paranoid. But my suspicions were not eased when the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, wrote to every GP last December asking for the names of patients refusing to co-operate.

This request was swiftly withdrawn after the British Medical Association protested. The government's argument nevertheless remains that the "spine" is a life-saver: that if you live in Pontefract and have an accident in Penzance, emergency crews will have faster access to your medical records, and that if you are allergic to antibiotics or to any other medication, doctors will know what to give you.

But that information lies alongside details of your abortions, nervous breakdowns, sexually transmitted diseases - all those aspects of your medical history you would rather your GP kept safely locked up in his filing cabinet.

And if I am paranoid, most doctors are just as worried: a poll last November revealed that 60 per cent of them fear the system risks patient records being stolen, sold to the highest bidder or even used for blackmail.

This is not about rejecting progress. It is instead quite simply and fundamentally about security; it is in essence a plea that as society's reliance on computer technology moves inexorably forward, there should be some sort of guarantee that our personal details will be safely stored and protected.

The junior doctors' fiasco shows how easy it is for supposedly secure data to make its way into the public domain. The online Medical Training Application Service was so thoroughly breached that medical students' personal details, including their addresses, mobile phone numbers, sexual orientation and criminal records, made their way into the public domain.

In the forthcoming movie, Ocean's Thirteen, the Eddie Izzard character describes an artificial intelligence system that "can't be hacked, that can't be beaten".

Those in charge of the "spine" and the children's index would be unwise to make any such promises.

Victoria Macdonald is social affairs correspondent for Channel 4 News

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