ABSTRACT
The government held the initiative on population-data gathering and so, other things being equal, it could choose how to frame any congruent public political debate, or indeed whether to have any such debate at all. Its policy in this regard is the subject of the first section of this chapter. This shows that government allowed and encouraged any attention attracted by its data systems to fall on computers because here it could offer technical assurances to the people that all was well. Indeed, framing these serious political issues as technical problems, amenable to technical solutions, was a method of circumventing any political discussion with the public. This de-politicisation, which was inherent in the growth of the modern biopolitical data state in Britain is examined here.
