ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an examination of the attitudes of the British people. It begins by showing how the government promoted the growth and spread of IT as a safe means of gathering, storing and using data and then determines that the reality of government data security was very different. This chapter then reports on surveys of the British people’s attitudes towards data gathering in general and computerisation in particular showing the levels of fear and hostility that were prevalent at the time. The chapter concludes by showing how the 1998 Data Protection Act was passed and analyses and details the government’s unwillingness to sign up to the terms of the European directive that was the genesis of this legislation.
