Patients win choice of sharing medical records
Can you support Sgt Danny Nightingale?
Boom in private investigators risks avoiding surveillance regulation
Home Office Minister, Damian Green MP, has warned that unmanned drones must only be used by police as part of air support plans if it is both “appropriate and proportionate”.
Speaking at the launch of the National Police Air Service (NPAS) Green said “Drones are like any other piece of kit – where it’s appropriate or proportionate to use them then we will look at using them.”
Across the country, police forces are now busy tracking down people to hand over a DNA sample, not based on any current suspicion of committing an offence but purely because of historical offences that took place decades ago.
The civil liberties implications of this kind of operation are clear. People, currently not under suspicion for any crime and who have served their punishment for past offences, are now hunted down simply in the hope that the force will get lucky and clear up a case.
However, there is also a wider point. A pilot scheme carried out by Hampshire police gathered 167 samples, however none of them matched any outstanding crimes. Now call us pedants, but as pilot schemes go that doesn’t sound like a success. Indeed, you might even suggest that it was a waste of police time. The initial list was 471 people, but for various reasons – including people being dead – the force didn’t manage to collect even half their intended samples.
Time to check your Facebook timeline.
It appears that a glitch means some people’s private messages or chats are now visable on their timelines. Still to be confirmed or denied by FB.
How to fix it:
Click on a year on your the timeline.
You will see an item saying ‘xx friends posted on your timeline’
This appears to have been newly updated, and is where some people are saying messages are going. You can click on the small pencil icon (Edit or Remove) and press “Hide from Timeline” – you’ll need to repeat this for every year individually.
Apparently for some users messages have now been disabled.
The only way for your privacy to be absolutely safe is for data not to be retained at all. Facebook’s attitude has often been to hold onto as much data as possible for as long as possible, and this highlights the risks of that. Apologies may not be enough for people who have now had details of intimate conversations revealed to their friends.
It also demonstrates how acutely difficult it is to ever guarantee data security, and at a time the British Government is considering asking companies to collect even more data about their customers, emphasises the real dangers this poses even with corporate security operations.
Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has announced that he is to issue guidelines for social media prosecutions. In a statement the DPP said that “the time has come for an informed debate about the boundaries of free speech in an age of social media.”
The remarks follow the decision not to prosecute Daniel Thomas for posting a homophobic message on Twitter relating to Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield.
The Communications Act 2003 makes it an offence to send a communication using a public electronic communications network if that communication is “grossly offensive”. In this case the Chief Crown Prosecutor for Wales, Jim Brisbane, concluded that on full analysis of the context and circumstances the message was not deemed to be so grossly offensive that criminal charges were sought.
The internet of things is coming, and it’s not just the CIA who are 
excited.
Last week Intel, the chip manufacturer, predicted that by 2015 there will be more than 15 billion internet-connected devices and one third of these connected devices will be intelligent systems.
The CIA are already getting excited, with Director David Petraeus talking about the”transformational” effect on “clandestine tradecraft.” The proposed draft Communications Data Bill is so broadly drafted it’s been warned that a system to control your central heating could be covered by the legislation.
Big Brother Watch will be attending all three party conferences this year – here are the details of our events.
For the events at UKIP and Conservative conferences you will not need a security pass, however both the Labour and Liberal Democrat events are inside the secure zone.
Full details are below.
Based on data covering more than 2,000 secondary schools and academies, Big Brother Watch warns that there are more than 100,000 CCTV cameras in secondary schools and academies across England, Wales and Scotland.
With some schools seeing a ratio of one camera for every five pupils, more than two hundred schools using CCTV in bathrooms and changing rooms and more cameras inside school buildings as outside, the picture across the country will undoubtedly shock and surprise many.
To put into context the number of cameras, our research earlier this year found there are currently at least 51,600 CCTV cameras controlled by 428 local authorities.
The report, which you can download here, warns that the Home Office’s proposed system of regulation for CCTV cameras is not fit for purpose, with the newly created position of Surveillance Camera Commissioner having no enforcement or inspection powers.
Dear Prime Minister,
Re: Department for Education consultation on parental internet controls
We write to you as the consultation on parental controls closes. In recent years there have been two comprehensive reviews into the issue of child safety online, the Byron Review and the Bailey Review. They considered a wealth of academic expertise, parental concerns and technical input and both arrived at the same conclusion – parents are the best people to decide what their children can see.
To ignore these in-depth and comprehensive reviews and instead adopt a system of ‘default blocking’ would be a short sighted and dangerous step, while doing little to empower parents or children. As Ofcom recognised, blocking is trivial to circumvent and it is likely a default blocking system would lull parents into a false sense of security. A more complex, connected world needs parents to engage more with their children on issues of safety, privacy and personal development – default blocking undermines this dialogue.
Yesterday I was a guest on Radio 4′s PM Programme debating a new petition to be handed in to Government on Thursday calling for a ‘default block’ on internet browsing.
One of the key statistics relied upon by the campaign is that “1 in 3 10 year olds have seen pornography online “. They do recognise it was published in Psychologies Magazine in 2010, but the appearance is given that this is a serious statistic. It’s also used in their ‘Key Facts’ briefing.
When you dig a little deeper however, that definitely isn’t the case. The full section in the magazine reads:
“We’ve had plenty of letters from concerned readers on this very topic, and when we decided to canvass the views of 14- to 16-year-olds at a north London secondary school, the results took us by surprise.
• Almost one-third first looked at sexual images online when they were aged 10 or younger.”
So, the statistic – used to introduce the PM segment and at the heart of the petition’s press release – is based on one magazine’s anecdotal research at a single school.
Today a petition will be handed in calling for the Government to abandon its current position on internet safety and to instead enforce a ‘default block’ system.
The Coalition for a Digital Economy have summarised five reasons why this is a bad idea, while Christian blog Crimperman outlines the serious parenting and freedom of speech issues involved.
As we’ve previously argued, default blocking is a dangerous system that risks lulling parents into a false sense of security, while being trivial to avoid for youngsters. That’s why two independent Government reviews have rejected it and said it should be parents who decide what their children see. It also requires a major intrusion into our privacy, only working with a system of total surveillance.