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Patients win choice of sharing medical records


Earlier this year, we led the concern that a new NHS data sharing plan would see every patient's medical records uploaded to a new information system without the right to opt-out. We warned at the time that patient records would be out of patient control. On Friday, the Secretary of State confirmed that this will not be the case. We have worked closely with MedConfidential and Privacy International to ensure

The snoopers charter is dead


More than a year ago, we learned that the Home Office was resurrecting it's plan to monitor every British citizens' internet use. Big Brother Watch led the charge against these plans, giving evidence to Parliament, urging our supporters to write to their MPs and being the central force in the media campaign against the so called Snoopers Charter. We highlighted how the Home Office had misrepresented the work of

Can you support Sgt Danny Nightingale?


Three weeks today, Sergeant Danny Nightingale will report to the Military Court Centre in Bulford, Wiltshire for a preparatory hearing. This is as a result of the Service Prosecuting Authority exercising its right to seek a re-trial of Sgt Nightingale. Like many people, Big Brother Watch has been dismayed at the treatment of Sgt Nightingale. Despite his conviction being quashed at the Court of Appeal,

Boom in private investigators risks avoiding surveillance regulation


Our latest report highlights the growing use of private investigators by local and public authorities, particularly the number of times they are used without RIPA authorisation. The law in the UK, particularly the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, is broadly drawn to allow evidence to be introduced in court that in other jurisdictions would not be deemed admissible. Contrasted with the fruit of the poisonous

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Every click recorded

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Mastering the Internet | Leave a comment

As per the Daily Mail today, as part of the delightfully euphemistic "Intercept Modernisation Programme" the government is going to use our own money to monitor everything we do online.  So - not only are we going to be e-spied on by some group of faceless bureaucrats, we're going to have to pay through the nose for the privilege. Connect-computer-tv-screen

Britain owes a debt of gratitude to the Liberal Democrats for exposing the Government’s intrusive proposals, which represent a remarkable 1,700% increase on surveillance spending.

653 bodies would have the power to access this material.  Let us remember that surveillance powers under RIPA were used over half a million times last year,on everything from dog fouling to school catchment areas to putting bins out on the wrong day.  We don't even need to doubt whether the bureaucrats will use and abuse the intrusive powers being granted to them in law – we already have the proof of it.

By Alex Deane

Alex Deane in conversation with Douglas Murray

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Admin | Leave a comment

As detailed here, at Conservative Party Conference, Director of Big Brother Watch, Alex Deane, was joined on stage by Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, Douglas Murray, to discuss the topic 'Civil liberties and Security: Are they compatible?'

The event, kindly provided by the Freedom Association and hosted in the fantastic Freedom Zone, was a great success…and now you too can watch the debate unfold below.

By The Big Brother Watch Team  

A legacy of big brother intrusion

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in DNA database | Leave a comment

As I wrote in a blogpost below, British citizens won a major victory yesterday when the Home Office announced that its plan to keep the DNA profiles of those arrested – but never convicted of a crime – for between six and 12 years had been dropped from the policing and crime bill.

Child-computer This news, which we had all been waiting for since the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2008 against the British government's policy of indefinitely retaining DNA samples taken from individuals that had not been convicted of any offence, was greeted with much relief and satisfaction by civil liberties campaigners such as ourselves.

However as this story from South Tyrone demonstrates, the DNA database has created a legacy which will be difficult to erase quickly.

According to the report, the police in Northern Ireland hold genetic samples belonging to around 400 young people aged 17 and under from the South Tyrone area on their DNA database.

A PSNI spokesman responded to the story saying:

"The DNA database has proven to be a very valuable tool in the fight against crime…PSNI policy is to retain DNA profiles obtained from all persons falling within the terms of the relevant legislation.

"It is important that people understand that it is not a criminal record to which public authorities and others have access and there are considerable safeguards in place to govern how DNA information can be used."

The fact remains that government announcements will often take quite some time to percolate down to individual police forces. Indeed, that it has taken over 12 months since the European Court ruled – with Acpo explicitly telling its officers to ignore the ruling in the interim – shows that we may be waiting a while yet before the DNA of innocents is finally removed from record.

I highlight the story from South Tyrone this morning to again reinforce our opposition to the DNA database. Most if not all of the 400 children on this database will not have committed a crime and their presence on the database means they are tested as criminals before some of them can even walk or talk. 

By Dylan Sharpe 

Media Coverage – Tuesday 20th October

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Media coverage | 2 Comments

Metro – Quarter of all workers have criminal records

Metro 20.10 …But barrister Alex Deane, of privacy pressure group Big Brother Watch, said: 'The benefit to the police of retaining the data is minimal. The cost to the individuals can be huge – and often potentially life-ruining…'

Yorkshire Post – Conviction details of 1m to stay on police database

Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, which campaigns against intrusions on the privacy and liberties of ordinary Britons, described the court's decision as "crazy".

"The benefit to the police of retaining the samples is minimal," he said. "The cost to the individuals, as the stories demonstrate, can be huge and often potentially life-ruining."

Northern Echo – Northumbria Police among forces allowed to keep records of old minor convictions

…Alex Deane, director of privacy pressure group Big Brother Watch, branded the judgement “crazy”, while Anna Fairclough, a lawyer for the civil rights group Liberty, said it “forgets the privacy rights of millions”…

Times – Appeal Court upholds police right to retain minor conviction details

…Alex Deane, director of privacy pressure group Big Brother Watch, said: “We have a Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in this country, which tries to do exactly what it says on the tin — rehabilitate people back into society…

LBC 97.3FM – Alex interviewed by Petrie Hosken on 'The Whole Show'

Newspapers Politics.co.uk – 'No limit' on police database

…Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, said: "This is crazy. We have a Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in this country, which tries to do exactly what it says on the tin – rehabilitate people back into society. However, the police are effectively stymieing this by retaining fingerprints from age-old, spent convictions…

Daily Mail – One million 'minor' convictions will stay on police files after forces win appeal court ruling

…Alex Deane, director of pressure group Big Brother Watch, said of the judgment: 'This is crazy. The benefit to the police of retaining the samples is minimal. The cost to the individuals can be huge – and often potentially life-ruining..'

Public Service.co.uk – Met wants mobiles that do iris scans

…Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, said: "This [is] another example of the police looking for ever more expensive and intrusive technologies which, more often than not, detract rather than aid conventional policing…"

Home Office u-turn on DNA retention

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in DNA database | 3 Comments

Regular readers will be aware that ever since this blog started just over a month ago, we have been campaigning against the retention of the DNA of innocent people on the national DNA database.

DNA_testing First we exposed the fact that the timings the Home Office had used for keeping the DNA of those charged, but not convicted of a crime was based on incomplete research.

Then Alex detailed our government's failure to abide by the European Court of Human Rights ruling preventing the retention of innocent people's DNA.  

Well today we can bring you the news that the Home Office has announced that its plan to keep the DNA profiles of those arrested – but never convicted of a crime – for between six and 12 years depending on the seriousness of the offence has been dropped from the policing and crime bill that is going through parliament.

A Home Office spokesman said:

"We have now completed a public consultation on proposals to ensure the right people are on the database as well as considering when people should come off.

"The Government will take the most expedient route to address the issue as soon as possible in order to comply with the European Court's judgment."

This is great news. The Government had been deliberately foot-dragging on this issue because they didn’t want to accept the consequences of having unanimously lost the European case.

The DNA of innocent people shouldn’t be retained on any database. The Court so ruled: the Government has finally been forced accepted it.

What we need to see now is prompt action to remove innocent people already on the database – many of whom have been waiting and campaigning for this news for years.

By Dylan Sharpe

CCTV – the placebo effect

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in CCTV | 1 Comment

It's always encouraging to discover that not every politician is blind to the fact that CCTV has problems as well as virtues. 

As detailed over at the Burton Mail in an admittedly hyperbolic statement reflecting my own experience as a criminal barrister:Cctv-width140

Labour councillor Gordon Rhind, speaking at a meeting of the council … said he did not think the technology would secure convictions.

He said: “In my experience of CCTV, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) won’t prosecute unless the offender is looking straight into the camera, wearing a T-shirt with their name and address on it.

“But I’m all for anything that makes people in Swadlincote and South Derbyshire feel safer.”

Emphasis added.

By Alex Deane

A criminal ruling on criminal records

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Databases | 4 Comments

Breaking news on the BBC website: five police forces which challenged a ruling that they should delete records on criminal convictions from their database have today won their appeal.

Hands_tied Lord Justice Waller, sitting with Lord Justices Carnwath and Hughes, ruled that retaining information was far easier to justify than actually disclosing the information to others.

"If the police say rationally and reasonably that convictions, however old or minor, have a value in the work that they do, that should, in effect, be the end of the matter"

The appeal was made by the chief constables of the Humberside, Staffordshire, Northumbria, West Midlands and Greater Manchester forces.

However this is actually crazy. We have a Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in this country, which tries to do exactly what it says on the tin – rehabilitate people back into society.
 
The Police are now effectively stymieing this by retaining data from age-old, spent convictions, which then go on to show up when people apply for jobs a generation later.
 
The benefit to the police of retaining the samples is minimal. The cost to the individuals, as the stories of the people who made the appeals demonstrate, can be huge – and often potentially life-ruining.

I have written about this in greater detail on Conservative Home's CentreRight page.

by Alex Deane

Cataloguing the innocent

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Databases | Leave a comment

This morning it is being reported that Scotland Yard holds at least 1,500 photographs of protesters on a computer database, many of whom have not been convicted of a crime.

Database The pictures apparently include photographs of people in custody and 'overtly gathered intelligence images', whose sources included police photographers who cover big demonstrations.

The Metropolitan Police have said that the images are "stored in case (they are) needed for use in civil actions against police, complaints against officers and criminal proceedings."

However the fact remains that many of these people are completely innocent and have seemingly been catalogued for exercising their democratic right to protest.

Whatever your personal views on their cause, we should all support the right for people to voice dissenting opinions in Britain today.

These photos represent not only a further acceleration of our big brother state; they also trample over three centuries of social and political freedoms in Britain.

By Dylan Sharpe 

Just because it brought a smile to my face…

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in CCTV | Leave a comment

Surveillance Camera Catches Man Stealing Surveillance Camera

By Alex Deane

ID cards: register at your peril

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Big Brother Watch Posted in ID cards | Leave a comment

The Manchester Evening News are reporting that just 2,000 people have signed up to the ID cards trial currently taking place in Greater Manchester, and only 10,000 nationwide have registered with the Home Office website to get an application form.

Idcard The £30 voluntary scheme is being rolled out across Greater Manchester later this year as a trial for the national card. This follows on from news earlier this week, that the Home Office was offering its own staff the chance to be among the first people in the UK to have an identity card.

According to the report, a spokesman for the Identity and Passport Service explained the poor take-up so far by saying: "I don't think that 10,000 people is very low when you think that we haven't really marketed the scheme yet."

Now, while 10,000 is pathetically low given the population of Great Britain, the question remains why anyone is registering for one of these cards.

As explained by our friends at No2ID,

"Every registered individual will be under an obligation to notify any change in registrable facts. It is a clear aim of the system to require identity verification for many more civil transactions, the occasions to be stored in the audit trail. Information verified and indexed by numbers from the NIR would be easily cross-referenced in any database or set of databases. The "meta-database" of all the thousands of databases cross-referenced is much more powerful and much less secure than the NIR itself."

In essence, each one of the 10,000 people who have willingly given up £30 for one of these new cards is opening themselves up to, not only the most powerful and intrusive surveillance the state currently has available, they are also signing up to a lifetime of punitive fines and harassment, as the authorities endeavour to keep their biometric information up-to-date.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have pledged to get rid of ID cards and Gordon Brown is currently backing away from them as fast as he can.

Do not sign up for one of these cards.

By Dylan Sharpe

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