> And I don't think this makes us any more of a surveillance state than other countries, because the government is supposed to retain official records of all these things anyway.
England has a frustrating situation where the government collects all this stuff, and stores it all on computers, but in separate data centres in different databases and in incompatible formats.
So anytime I need to interact with them I have to fill out bizarrely long paper forms.
I work a bit in suicide prevention, and the length and complexity of the disability benefits forms[1] are implicated in some deaths by suicide, as well as some attempts.
[1] as well the brutality of the system. They have a lot of rules, and fiercely enforce those rules, but the first two lines of advice workers often don't what those rules are.
England has a frustrating situation where the government collects all this stuff, and stores it all on computers, but in separate data centres in different databases and in incompatible formats.
So anytime I need to interact with them I have to fill out bizarrely long paper forms.
I work a bit in suicide prevention, and the length and complexity of the disability benefits forms[1] are implicated in some deaths by suicide, as well as some attempts.
[1] as well the brutality of the system. They have a lot of rules, and fiercely enforce those rules, but the first two lines of advice workers often don't what those rules are.