Category: News

Update posted 1:30pm, Friday 22nd April I have added the Plaid Cyrmu statement and the fact that the Conservatives have promised to repeal the Human Rights Act Please find in the blog coverage of all the privacy aspects from the manifestos of main political parties election; the order is Lib Dems, Conservative, Labour, and Scottish Nationalist and Plaid Cymru. The text is cut and pasted from their manifestos. I have not covered the Greens, UKIP and the rest – so sorry.

Can you remember those intelligence test questions of the form: “X is to Y” as “C is to D?”.  Well here’s a new one: “Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety is to democracy” as the “European Union’s Freedom, Security and Justice Directorate is to privacy”. Whereas the former willingly silenced dissenting voices by removing heads at Madame Guillotine, the latter is wilfully cutting out any basic data protection requirements when making binding international agreements. Given the considerable democratic deficit in the

If readers want to examine an interesting example of how to manage a data loss, have a look at what happened at the London Borough of Barnet (see references). A data loss involving 9,000 children followed a burglary of the home of a member of staff. The loss included the Council’s computer equipment (a laptop), CD Roms and memory sticks along with other items from the house. Like most organisations, the Council had implemented procedures and policies to ensure that

If ever you wanted an example of why there should be an express linkage between the Human Rights Act (HRA) and the Data Protection Act (DPA), then consider the front page lead of last weekend’s Sunday Times (followed by other newspapers such as the Daily Mail). It reported that the police were using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras to collect millions of car number plates, dates and times when cars passed the cameras and keeping the resultant personal data

According to a press release issued at midnight, yesterday, regulations have been tabled before Parliament to allow a complete set of toe-prints to be added to the list of ID Card biometrics (see references below). The Government also claim that the new biometric will allow for shorter queuing time at airport security as anyone who is requested to take their shoes off (e.g. when passing through airport security scanners or a whole body scanner) will be able to have their

The Government has decided to mandate the processing of excessive personal data and expose more young adults to ID theft. How? Just read on. Just imagine you run a night-club that requires a licence to sell alcohol. A new law, enacted using Ministerial powers (thus ensuring limited Parliamentary scrutiny) requires you to have an “age verification policy” that “applies to the premises in relation to the sale or supply of alcohol”. In addition, that “policy must require individuals who appear

Whilst reading excerpts of Hansard to children at bed-time (it works a treat – they soon become bored and drop off to sleep), I became aware of an element of Labour’s strategy for the forthcoming General Election. In essence, it is: “Labour fights crime with more CCTV and an extensive DNA database”. No doubt, when senior police officers are interviewed on the telly about these subjects, they will sagely nod their heads and say something like: “Yes please. We really