A new report by the Open Rights Group, the digital rights campaigners, has found the data of people who are referred to the Prevent programme in the UK is being widely shared and retained for years.

The Prevent programme is designed as an intervention for people believed to be showing signs of radicalisation and if they meet a threshold defined by section 36 of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015.

Teachers, social workers, doctors, and people working for other public authorities are required to refer individuals to the Prevent under the Channel programme if they believe the individual meets these thresholds.

The majority of Prevent referrals – on average 90% over the last five years – do not meet these thresholds, however.

Despite this, the data of Prevent referees is retained and shared across multiple databases, with potentially harmful outcomes.

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.

Prevent referees are typically children who are being intercepted before they can be radicalised, but this can also lead to abuses of power against children with little rights, and fearmongering tactics to different racial, ethnic, and religious groups due to harmful steroetypes.

Referrals are stored within a national Prevent database regardless of whether they meet the threshold to be reviewed by a Channel panel.

The data is being held for a minimum of six years, but can be kept for up to 100 years. The government’s ‘rationale’ for this minimum retention period is in consideration of possible re-offenders, even though Prevent referees have not in fact committed a crime.

The Open Rights Group therefore claims that if there is no policing purpose for retaining data, this retention could be unlawful. Individuals are not necessarily informed that their data is being stored nor whether their data has been deleted after the six-year period or further retained.

Further, their report stipulates that there is a lack of oversight and parliamentary scrutiny over data sharing, processing, and storage of Prevent referrals that are inappropriate for Channel interventions but which are managed by police-led partnerships.

Once a case is managed by the police, national security exemptions can be applied to limit rights to rectification, access and removal. But the Intelligence and Security Committee does not deal with policing and the Independent reviewer of Terrorism Legislation does not oversee cases managed by police-led partnerships.

This means that new counter terrorism capabilities are being built without Parliamentary oversight or legislative safeguards.

Further, the report showed that the data of some Prevent referees is being shared with airports, ports, and immigration services, which could explain reports of referees being questioned at ports and airports.

As such, it is difficult for individuals to exercise their right to erasure and request data is removed because many will not know that they have even been referred to Prevent. The subsequent lack of transparency around data sharing would make it difficult for people even if they were aware they had been referred.

Problematically, there are particular harms for children who make up the majority of Prevent referrals.

Even if they have not been previously known to social services, a referral is shared with children’s services and the data will be kept for 15 years after the child turns 18. The data would therefore still be available after the child is adult, and can even influence assessments concerning their own children.

Children have experienced harms due to their data being retained as Prevent referees. A 16-year-old was rejected from a Sixth Form College because he was a Prevent referee, the report showed.

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The report detailed testimonials of children who’s data had been retained by the Prevent programme, including a data from a six year old whose parents struggled liberate.

“This is just another example of the blanket retention of data and unnecessary mass surveillance by the government,” Sophia Akram, Open Rights Group programme manager said.

“Not only is the Prevent policy ineffective, it is used as a vehicle to retain the data of hundreds of people every year with little purpose.

“Despite the lack of utility to state security, these referrals – and their storage, retention and sharing – can have disruptive and lasting impacts on individuals, including children as young as 6-years-old.”

The Open Rights Group is therefore calling on the government to impose an immediate moratorium on Prevent referrals, introduce a blanket ban on the retention of data where described thresholds are not met.

Further, they are calling for the end of the Prevent Duty to free up resources for different counter-terrorism strategies.