Only incompetence will save us from Orwell's surveillance state

It's 25 years since 1984, and more than 60 since Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's wonderfully gloomy novel, was published. Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of those books that have shaped our collective vision, even if, as a survey revealed last week, it tops the list of books which Britons lie about having read. Orwell's invocation of an all-knowing, all-seeing state which controls the thoughts of all who live under it was so striking that it created what is now one of our most abiding fears: are we sliding towards a Big Brother state which watches and manipulates us all?

There is one reassuring aspect of contemporary surveillance which Orwell left out: it is limited by human fallibility. Surveillance in Nineteen Eighty-Four is relentlessly efficient. Nothing is overlooked, nothing is missed. But surveillance in 2009 is incompetent: officials forget to put film in the cameras; they lose the secret data their have gathered, leaving it on trains or in bars; and they frequently never get around to consulting what they do manage to keep hold of: there is simply too much of it.

The vast amount of data now being generated, and the impossibility of looking at it all, is, together with bureaucratic incompetence, the best guarantee we have that we're not going to wake up one morning and find we are living in a version of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The biggest threat contained in the Government's proposal to introduce identity cards is not that it will create an all-knowing state which will crush each and every one of us. It is that officials will bungle when they enter the data, or misread it, so that the wrong people will be identified as benefit cheats or as terrorists (accurate identification of both being the main purpose of ID cards).

The introduction of computer systems has been consistently mishandled by the Government, thank God. The NHS has spent £6 billion on its new data system – and it still doesn't work. Last week, Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee reported that tens of millions of pounds had been wasted on a computer system designed to enable Government departments to consult secret intelligence quickly and securely. The system has now been abandoned because it doesn't work and never will.

Thanks to Nineteen Eighty-Four, we concentrate on the state as the agent of data collection and surveillance. But in 2009, everyone appears to be at it. YouTube has thousands of short video sequences taken by people using the cameras on their mobile phones. Have they each got written permission from the people whose usually embarrassing, sometimes humiliating, and nearly always undignified actions they record? There is more surveillance on the internet than anywhere else. Although it is centrally collated, it isn't feared, because it doesn't fit Orwell's template.

The material on YouTube is intended to provide entertainment. Most surveillance derives from a different motive: the desire to minimise risk. That's why anyone working with children has to undergo a Criminal Records check. That's also why private companies are willing to buy personal data. Last week the Information Commissioner revealed that there was an illegal market in the construction industry for data on the reliability (or otherwise) of individual workers. A lot of those details turn out to have been irrelevant or just plain wrong, but I am willing to bet that construction is not the only sector where a market for such information exists. Although the methods are illegal and unfair, it's hard to blame a business for wanting to minimise its exposure to risk. It is why banks and credit card companies collect detailed data on every person's credit history. They do so usually with our consent, because it is a condition of getting a loan or a credit card. And when they don't bother – as during much of the past decade – disaster follows.

In law, the Data Protection Act is all that stands between each of us and the misuse of the personal information now stored on other people's computers, whether it be medical records, records of our purchases, our credit history, our employment or whatever. The Human Rights Act guarantees "the right to a private life", which ought to inhibit the Government from proposing legislation that destroys that right. Unfortunately, the present administration appears not to understand that fact. The Coroner's and Justice Act, making its way through Parliament, contains a genuinely shocking provision that would allow ministers to make an order allowing any personal information to be disclosed to a third party (such as another Government department, or a private company), regardless of whether the information was to be used for a purpose related to that for which it was obtained. Doctors have already voiced concerns that it means that medical records could be disclosed without the patient's consent.

Jack Straw, the Minister of Justice, now says the relevant clause will be abandoned – although he also plans to introduce a new clause with similar effects. The ubiquity of government incompetence may prevent ministers from creating Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it won't stop them trying.