Transparency or blunder?

The Consejo para la Transparencia (Chile’s Transparency Council) has informed the Electoral Service (SERVEL) that, for the sake of transparency, it can no longer sell personal data, but must hand it over free of charge to anyone who asks for it.

Source: http://www.elmostrador.cl/opinion/2010/06/09/la-traicion-del-consejo-de-la-transparencia/

The state of personal data handling in Chile is pretty bad, and with this the Transparency Council has made it even worse.

Personal data cannot be passed around like this. The big problem we have in Chile is the existence of a single identifier, the RUT (the national ID number), which makes it possible to identify people and cross-reference their information. Add to that the fact that it can now be completed with people’s home addresses (a field present in the electoral roll database). With that and a bit of business intelligence you can learn a lot about people, far more than they want. This is a profound mistake.

This decision is a regrettable blunder (to avoid using stronger words).