Patients win choice of sharing medical records
Can you support Sgt Danny Nightingale?
Boom in private investigators risks avoiding surveillance regulation
In a word, yes.
When news broke of the US Government’s wholesale request for data on Associated Press journalists,
The New Yorker quickly highlighted how US law allowed the Department of Justice to go straight to the phone companies, without notifying AP (although it’s own guidelines said this should not normally happen.) Because of this, there was no opportunity to test the justification for such a massive intrusion on the freedom of the press.
While the Communications Data Bill has scrapped, the one issue that remains live is the ‘resolution of IP addresses’ – particularly where mobile phone operators may have millions of customers using just a few hundred IP addresses. Deputy Director Emma Carr appeared on the Daily Politics yesterday to discuss the issue.
An IP address is (put simply) the address you access the internet through (although ways of masking this are nothing new nor particularly technically challenging). We think it reasonable that the issue is investigated so that where the police have an IP address from a service provider, they are able to trace that back to the person using the service. It may be possible to address this through small, technical changes to existing legislation, rather than a new Bill. Indeed, the draft Communications Data Bill went far, far beyond being a focused attempt to solve this problem.
We have warned on multiple occasions about the abuse of surveillance powers by public authorities and the subsequent importance of having judicial approval for officials who want to snoop on us, whether it is in the ‘real’ world or online.
Last year we highlighted that more than three million authorisations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) were issued, leading to questions about how and why the powers are being used. We also published research that shows that HMRC made 41,351 snooping requests for details of phone calls and mobile texts between 2009 and 2011. The only police forces to make more requests in the same period were the Metropolitan police and Merseyside police.
It has since come to light that HMRC has used surveillance legislation to identify a whistleblower who uncovered a ‘sweetheart’ deal with Goldman Sachs. Osita Mba had used the Public Interest Disclosure Act to write to the National Audit Office and two parliamentary committees in 2011 saying that the head of tax, Dave Hartnett, had “let off” Goldman Sachs from paying at least £10m in interest. The identity of Mba was then revealed to HMRC by the clerk of the public accounts committee, who sought clarification that he was a genuine revenue employee.
Following the story appearing in the Guardian in October 2011, Mba was put under internal investigation by the revenue, useing RIPA to access the emails, internet search records and telephone calls of a revenue solicitor, and his wife, Claudia.
Perhaps shockingly for many, RIPA allows HMRC the ability to view highly personal information of taxpayers, including the websites accessed, the mobile calls made or received, the date and time of emails, texts and phone calls. Despite the revenue claiming that RIPA powers “can only be used when investigating serious crime”, it is very clear from the use of the powers in this case, that this isn’t always so.
We have seen how new surveillance powers that are created, intended only for the most serious of crimes, very quickly becomes available to everyone from councils to the Health and Safety Executive. It is unacceptable for public authorities to keep secret details of why they are spying on the public and their own employees and to do so without seeking a court’s approval. Judicial approval for spying on us should be the norm, not the exception and the public have a right to know why and how these powers are being used.
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 this and it is another victory for Big Brother Watch campaigning to protect privacy.
Jeremy Hunt said on Friday: “”GPs will not share information with the HSCIC if people object…people will have a veto on that information being shared in the wider system”
One of the Prime Minister’s closest advisors has warned that the Home Office’s Communications Data plans to monitor email and web use could be “disastrous” and compared it to North Korea.
As reported by the Telegraph, Ben Hammersley, a Number 10 adviser to the Tech City project, the told magazine Tank:
“As a society, it would be stupid to build the infrastructure that could be used to oppress us. It just never works out well, because even if you’re using it for good stuff now, the fact that we don’t know who is going to be in charge in ten years’ time means that we shouldn’t give them free toys to play with.”
This follows remarks he made last year, when Mr Hammersley said the plans were ‘hilarious’ because of their technical naivety:
“The idea that the internet is like the postal service or like the copper line phone network in that it can be monitored in such a way is hilarious, because it can’t be technologically speaking, unless you become North Korea. Unless you become massively draconian you can’t either monitor propery or censor completely the internet.”
We previously highlighted the number of public organisations given access to the data – covering who you email, which websites you browse and the social media messages you send – is inevitably going to increase, with more than 30 already asking for the data before the bill has even been presented to parliament. This ‘function creep’ was also identified by Hammersley, who warned :
“I don’t trust future governments. The successors of the politicians who put this in place might not be trustworthy.
Over the last decade there has been an increasing change in the nature of surveillance – particularly the ability to search online, through social networks and through semi-public sources of information, reinforcing the need for the law to be reformed to protect the public from unwarranted surveillance.
What needs to be made very clear is that just because information is on the internet, it does not necessarily follow that the police should collect and analyse it. It is essential that it the gathering of information is proportionate, necessary, balanced against the need of police to do their job, allows for a free and open internet and meets the public’s expectations of privacy.
Our recent report on the use of private investigators by public authorities highlighted how the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) is in fundamental need of reform to protect against unauthorised surveillance; whether that be acquiring data through social media websites or the use of private investigators undertaking surveillance without appropriate supervision and authorisation. As the Joint Committee on the draft Communications Data Bill Warned, the “language of RIPA is out of date and should not be used as the basis on new legislation.”
Facebook’s ‘likes’ could reveal the sexuality, political leanings and even your intelligence with an accuracy of between 65-95%. The study, created by Cambridge University, should will ring alarm bells for anyone who thinks that privacy settings are the solution to protecting information online.
The study, which used 58,000 volunteers, looked at Facebook “likes” and demographic information alongside provided psychometric testing results which are able to reveal personality traits.
The information was then fed into an algorithm which proved to be 88% accurate for determining male sexuality, 95% accurate in distinguishing African-American from Caucasian-American and 85% for differentiating Republican from Democrat. Christians and Muslims were correctly classified in 82% of cases and relationship status and substance abuse was predicted with an accuracy between 65% and 73%. Bizarrely, some strong but random links were found, such as Curly Fries with high IQ.
One in five councils have reduced the number of CCTV cameras on the streets since 2010, with some having no cameras at all. Cost should not be the reason for making decisions about the tools needed to keep the public safe. We have long argued for an approach based on community policing and the ‘broken windows’ experience from the USA. CCTV diverts resources away from efforts that have been proven to be more effective while increasing the blanket nature of public surveillance. Rather than just cutting cameras, how many councils are looking at what actually works to reduce crime?
Crime statistics from September 2012 showed that there had been an 8% decrease compared to the previous year’s survey; driven by significant reductions in vandalism, burglary and vehicle related theft. What is important is that crime is falling and the number of CCTV cameras is falling. Yet again the evidence demonstrates there’s – at best – a tenuous link and in reality no link between the number of CCTV cameras and crime levels.
The Freedom of Information request was submitted by Labour MP Gloria de Piero, of which 209 out of a total 326 local authorities in England responded to the request, 46 councils reported a reduction or have no “public facing” (not private cameras) CCTV cameras at all.
Unbelievably, tens of thousands of children, as young as 12, are still being subjected to the “undignified” practice of strip searches, despite reassurances from the Youth Justice Board.
Results from an FOI request found that there had been 43,000 recorded incidents of children being strip searched in young offender institutions, secure children’s homes and secure training centers in the 21 months up to December 2012, with only 275 searches finding “illicit” items. When items were found, the most common was tobacco and on no occasions were discoveries of drugs or knives recorded; hardly life or death situations. In 99.4% of searches nothing was found.
The humiliating and intrusive practice should only be used in a limited amount of serious cases against adults, never mind children. The regulation of these intrusive and disproportionate powers is far too weak and urgently needs to be properly addressed. Why are so many searches being conducted and yet so few finding anything? Is this yet another area where powers are being used frequently without suspicion?
New research published today by Big Brother Watch/ComRes finds that the majority of the British public are concerned about their online privacy (68%) with nearly a quarter (22%) saying that they are very concerned.
People are more likely to say that consumers are being harmed by big companies gathering large amounts of their personal data for internal use (46%) than they are to say that this enhances consumer experiences (18%).
As European data protection regulators prepare to take action against Google one year on from its revised privacy policy coming into force, more than 7 in 10 (71%) of the British public say that privacy and data regulators were right to investigate Google’s privacy policy and how it allows Google to collect and combine data on consumers.
A clear majority (66%) of the British public say that national regulators should be doing more to force Google to comply with existing European Directives on privacy and the protection of personal data
The message from consumers is clear – regulators were right to investigate Google’s new privacy policy and now they need to do more to force the company to comply with the law.