Britain’s welfare Blockchain sparks privacy concerns

A trial to pay Britain’s welfare claimants using blockchain technology has come under fire by the Open Data Institute.

The Department for Work and Pensions also know as DWP initiated initiated trials with GovCoin Systems earlier in June to pay benefits directly to claimants using a Blockchain system, the same technology behind the decentralised currency Bitcoin.

The Open Data Institute founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt said the system was ‘very concerning’.

The Blockchain provides both complete transparency and security of transactions but also opens up the ‘Big Brother’ discussion as it would allow the DWP to monitor every penny spent by claimants.

Published by

Irvine Dane

Acting editor

One thought on “Britain’s welfare Blockchain sparks privacy concerns”

  1. Blockchain by its nature is a pseudonymous record of transactions that can be traced back to find records of all transactions.

    Yes this does create a loss of privacy as it is a public record, this record does not identify the individual only transactions and value,

    The biggest concern is on illegal transactions which will be blocked.by the record created on blockchain. Fraud, cheating etc can be proved.

    The person who fears public Blockchain record has criminal intent at heart.

    Private Blockchain is of no value apart from maintaining the organisation records of its controller. Such chains create room for double spends and may fail to match public records. as proven on multiple occasions the most recent being Cryptsy. a US Based digital coin exchange.

    Many more private Blockchains will go the same way. Only public records of Certain Blockchains can economicaly survive times test..

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