Thanks to everyone who came along to Parliament Square this morning and made the ORG/No2ID “Big Picture” event such a success. The sun was shining as we constructed a massive 4m x 5m collage of all the photos you’ve been uploading of UK surveillance state ephemera over the past couple of weeks.

The result was [...]

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I’m pleased to announce that I can now reveal the location for our live collage of the hundreds of surveillance state photos you’ve been taking this week for the Freedom Not Fear, Big Picture event.
On 11 October, we’ll gather underneath the statue of Winston Churchill on Parliament Square in London to build an image showing [...]

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Happy-snappers unite! We need as many people as possible to take photos of stuff that embodies the database state, and the UK’s world-famous surveillance society (wake up! You’ve just walked into it).
On 11 October, No2ID and the Open Rights Group will make a live collage of the images you’ve taken in a prominent location in [...]

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The Data Sharing Review, commissioned by the Prime Minister last October to look at the use and sharing of personal information in the public and private sectors, published its final report today. The report argues that data sharing is shrouded in confusion and spotlights deficiencies in the organisational culture of those who collect, manage and [...]

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The House of Commons Justice Committee has today released a report into the protection of public data. The report is a good summary of the state of play and, in particular, of developments since the Chancellor announced to Parliament in November last year that HMRC had lost confidential records affecting 25 million UK citizens.
The report [...]

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On Monday next week Kieron Poynter of PricewaterhouseCoopers will publish his report into the failures that led to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) losing 25 million confidential records about UK citizens claiming child benefit. The HMRC fiasco, and privacy debacles before and since, demonstrate a public sector culture of complete disregard for the privacy and [...]

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Professor Ross Anderson, UK computer security expert and Chair of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, appeared on Newsnight last night, to discuss the HMRC data loss fiasco. He labelled the fiasco “an accident waiting to happen”, and calmly, methodically, indicted the Government for brushing aside the advice of security experts who have been warning [...]

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The current issue of Private Eye has an eight-page special report into the NHS Programme for IT and Connecting for Health. The report, by Richard Brooks, gives a history of the project since its ill-fated conception in 2002, and highlights the work of Computer Weekly and e-Health Insider in bringing the less functional aspects of [...]

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Last week, news emerged that the board of South Warwickshire General Hospitals NHS Trust is allowing clinicians in their Accident and Emergency department to share smart cards. Apparently, at an average of between 60 and 90 seconds, login times were compromising efficiency in this very busy hospital department.
Although Connecting for Health had previously advised that [...]

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