The Bad Data Story

It's a bit humorous....although some Germans aren't laughing.

So, as the G-20 Summit unfolded in Hamburg in early July.....there's a updated access listing handed out to the security folks to allow reporters in, and forbid certain reporters.  Roughly 30 reporters which had access before...are denied.

Thus begins this big long investigation because the thirty-odd reporters went ballistic, and wanted the reason for the denial of entry.

The Ministry of Justice now says....there are screwed-up records at the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).  Then they hint....oh yeah....there might be millions of illegal records kept by the BKA.  Yep, kind of a shocker.

'Data abuse' has been uttered a lot over the past twenty-four hours.

Some of the data entries are just plain wrong....some are trivial-like items which kept being added year after year.

Fixing this?  Everyone is hyped up and says in some public statement that this will have be fully reviewed and solved.  Time-line?  No one says much of anything.  We aren't talking about days or weeks here....this is probably a full-time job for twenty people for at least two years.

The odd thing is that it could cut across just about every single citizen in the country.  You could be asking for your data record and find that three entries exist....noting you attended some radical political party function at such-and-such bar.  But the truth is that you actually worked for the bar on rare occasions and your car was parked in the parking-lot....which some idiot cop simply ran around copying plate numbers.  That's how silly this whole data-base might be.

If you remember all the hype about Facebook, social media, and Google....that they might collect info on you....well....this is the same thing except it's the German federal government collecting, and yes, they did all the bad stuff like they suggest on Google.