THE Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), is the UK's independent authority set up to promote access to personal information held by officialdom, and to protect the public against the exploitation of this data.

In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Dr Ken Macdonald, the assistant information commissioner for Scotland, said: "We need to ensure that the collection of personal data isn't excessive, that there are appropriate safeguards and access to information, and that data isn't held any longer than is necessary.

"If this is done, then the public could be assured that information is not open to abuse. However, at the moment the penalties and powers of the information commissioner are not strong enough."

Today, if a police officer sells details of a person's criminal convictions to a journalist, or if a health worker passes patient detail to a pharmaceutical company, the worst penalty available is a £3000 fine. The ICO wants to see offenders faced with a maximum of two years' imprisonment.

Macdonald said there had been cases of private investigators wangling information from state employees that gave abusive husbands the whereabouts of their estranged wives.

The ICO has successfully lobbied government to include an amendment in its Criminal Justice Bill placing the penalty for breaching data protection laws at two years in jail. Macdonald says it must pass into law if people are to be properly protected.

The commission also wants powers to investigate government departments and corporations to ensure they are behaving properly with the sensitive details held on British citizens. At the moment, the ICO can investigate only if it is invited to do so by an organisation.

The ICO says its business is "not about pleasing government"; that's why it commissioned the disturbing report into the future of surveillance in the UK. Macdonald said: "We do have real concerns about where we are going as a surveillance society. We recognise that the more information that is held - from CCTV to store cards - the greater the potential risk for individuals."

Macdonald said the commission was "concerned about the breadth of proposals for ID cards". He also added that European nations, which had experience of Nazism and communism, were finely attuned to the need to make sure the most sensitive personal information - such as sexual orientation, political affiliation, trade union membership and religion - were closely protected from scrutiny.

"Should we be scared? Very glibly, some people say if you've nothing to hide, you have nothing to be scared of', but you will have something to fear if mistakes are made," said Macdonald.

"The vast majority of us are not involved in terrorism. Most of us have mortgages and bank accountants. A simple mistake, such as getting an address wrong, could wreck someone's credit rating, or you could get the wrong drugs from the hospital. That's why we need to minimise the risk to people. If the ICO gets increased powers, we can decrease the risk to the public."

Trevor Hemmings, deputy director of the campaigning civil liberties organisation Statewatch, said the ICO needed a much more muscular approach to the growing "totalitarian, almost Stalinist" nature of the surveillance society in Britain. He described the government's creation of the ICO as "tokenistic, a sop to public opinion".