Forget the census, they could just Google us all: Government considers using search engines as source of cheap info on citizens' lives

• Proposal has raised questions over the Prime Minister's links to Google
• Search giant's image battered over failure to pay more than minimal taxes
• There could also be deep rows over possibility of invasion of privacy

By Steve Doughty
PUBLISHED: 23:23 GMT, 25 June 2013 | UPDATED: 23:23 GMT, 25 June 2013

It takes a lot to make the prospect of filling in a 52-page census form appealing.
But the suggestion that Google’s vast stores of data could soon help replace it probably does the trick.
Internet search engines could be used as a source of cheap information on citizens’ lives, interests and movements, a government paper has suggested.

What does Google know about you? The company's vast stores of data could replace the census in a plan to use the internet as a source of cheap data on citizens' lives, interests and movements, it has been suggested

It could spell the end of the national census, which was first conducted in 1801 and has been carried out every ten years since, apart from during the Second World War.
It aims to cover every home in the country but the last census – the 52-page giant in 2011 – missed out three-and-a-half million people. It cost nearly half a billion pounds, a price the Treasury considers too high.

 

But the possibility of abolishing it in favour of information taken in part from controversial internet multinationals risks deep rows over privacy and David Cameron’s apparent closeness to Google.
The company is suffering major damage to its reputation following its slowness to curb child pornography and its failure to pay more than minimal taxes in Britain.

Links: The plan has raised questions about David Cameron's closeness to Google, which has been slammed for paying just minimal taxes in Britain

There also remain questions over its close links to Mr Cameron, some of his aides, and some ministers.
The Office for National Statistics has been working out ways of replacing the census with ‘administrative data’ from NHS, tax and benefit records, the electoral register, school and university rolls and other public sources.
But officials also want to use information from the private sector. ONS documents have canvassed the idea of tapping into companies with databases each covering more than ten million people.
Firms mentioned include Tesco, the E.ON energy supplier, Thames Water, and Nationwide. The idea of using Google and other search engines to replace the census was raised in a document produced by the Government Statistical Service which will be discussed at a behind-closed-doors conference today.
The meeting is mainly concerned with Beyond 2011, the Whitehall programme for finding an alternative to the traditional census.
A session of the conference will be devoted to ‘alternative data sources’ which ‘include sources like internet search or transaction data and information collected and held by commercial organisations’.
One example of how this could work is Google Trends, a publicly-available website which shows the most popular searches broken down by subject and location.
It could be used to find data on migration by, for example, checking the number of searches for jobs in Britain made in Romania.
Both Google and the ONS said yesterday that the two sides have held no meetings. A spokesman for Google said: ‘Google Trends is a publicly available service. We would never sell third party information.’

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