“Despite the lack of utility to state security, [Prevent] referrals – and their storage, retention and sharing – can have disruptive and lasting impacts on individuals, including children as young as 6-years-old.”
If you’re referred to Prevent, your data rights are made difficult to enforce.
The right to erasure is weakened by a lack of transparency about data sharing between multiple databases and national security exemptions used by counter-terrorism police.
"The overwhelming majority of people subject to Prevent referrals did not meet the threshold for a de-radicalisation intervention, yet their data is being retained for at least six years."
ORG's report raises serious concerns about the Prevent programme (UK).
Our report into widespread data misuse under the Prevent programme comes as referrals have spiked following the Israel/Gaza conflict.
Students should have safe spaces to process the world around them without fearing it’ll mark them for life. Prevent is a flawed programme that undermines freedom of expression and abuses data rights.
Lacking in oversight and transparency, the national Prevent database operates in the shadows.
Prevent masquerades as a safeguarding measure while the police exercise security exemptions over data to limit protections in favour continued surveillance of mostly Muslim communities.
"Findings from the Open Rights Group report has revealed a lack of oversight surrounding the data retained by the Prevent programme, and the particular harms against children this could cause."
Our report shows the urgent need for a rethink of Prevent.
Our report into Prevent reveals that data is being retained and shared across databases with potentially harmful outcomes, despite most referrals resulting in no action.
ORG's Sophia Akram explains how data rights are weakened under Prevent.
ORG’s investigation into the Prevent duty has uncovered shocking widespread data sharing due to finding a poorly redacted FOI, as revealed in The Observer today.
“We hope this information will help the thousands of affected people to exercise their data protection rights and get their data removed from the myriad of government databases where it is held... Harms could continue for the rest of a referred child’s life.”