I assume that if you have been given access to view health records you will have a legitimate reason to do so. The people who coded the system have a reason for looking at any and all parts of the system - it's because they coded it and they need to get at it to maintain, fix and secure it. They may be short-term contractors. None of the IT contractors I know have been CRB-checked. If not, then you leave yourself open to prosecution. Well yes, that's the essence of committing a criminal act. The likelihood of being caught and prosecuted and the potential sentence are things criminals tend to take into account as they plan their exit strategy. to see something confidential, as a professional person I have to sign up to the fact that I will treat it in the manner in which it is due... signed confidentiality clauses... CRB check... hypocratic oath... Sure, they have to sign a confidentiality agreement to say they won't be naughty. This would be the major difference between a nice, law-abiding person like yourself, and a criminal who wants to make a large amount of money and has already decided to do something illegal. Try as I might, I cannot imagine a criminal who would be all set to steal millions of people's records who would suddenly stop and think "oh no, I can't do that, I signed an agreement" and give up on the whole plan. we shouldn't have a computerised system because there are some evil people out there. No. That's not the argument. There's always evil people and there's always incompetent people. People are people. They screw up. The argument is that at present, they can screw up a limited number of people, rather than *every person in the country*.