This morning, the news media are reporting a startling recommendation by one of the UK’s most senior judges: that the Police National DNA Database (NDNAD) should cover every citizen in the UK, and every person who visits the UK. You can listen to Lord Justice Sedley talking with the Information Commissioner on the BBC’s Today [...]

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Yesterday, Home Office minister Jacqui Smith announced that she had signed a certificate to exempt Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police from certain provisions of the Data Protection Act. The move will facilitate the transfer of bulk data from the TfL’s congestion charging cameras, which the Met will be permitted to use when investigating [...]

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The Royal Academy of Engineering has just released a report entitled Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance Challenges of Technological Change. The report focuses on areas where the developments in IT have had a particularly significant impact on personal privacy. It gives examples of some of the harm that can be done by exposing people to [...]

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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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Greg Mulholland MP has tabled an Early Day Motion. It calls for government to address the concerns of parents over collection of biometric data in schools. Please write to your MP requesting that they add their name to this motion.
That this House is alarmed at the growing practice of schools collecting and storing the biometric [...]

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Great piece in The Guardian about how Adam Laurie and No2ID’s Phil Booth cracked the new hi-tech passport RIFD chips. If you weren’t worried about these new passports before, you should be:
Within minutes of applying the three passports to the reader, the information from all of them has been copied and the holders’ images [...]

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Trustguide reports on our views, beliefs and needs regarding trust, security and privacy in relation to new technologies. We like it very much - It should be required reading for politicians! Over the last 15 months HP and BT, in conjunction with the DTI, hosted workshops across the UK on a broad range of [...]

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Our very own Dr Ian Brown is going to be on BBC Radio 5Live, this Sunday 20 August. The Julian Worricker show will be running a feature on “blagging” personal information. Details are:
10:00 Worricker on Sunday
Spend Sunday mornings with Julian Worricker. Three hours of award-winning investigation, breaking news, politics, and entertainment. Julian [...]

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The House of Commons’ Select Committee on Foreign Affairs have published a report on East Asia that strongly critisices internet corporations working for the Chinese government to filter, censor and control web content. Back in February, American politicians did not pull any punches when they condemned Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco for “decapitating the voice [...]

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The European Commission have launched a consultation titled “Content Online”. Topics that are asked about include DRM, network neutrality, privacy online, lack of interoperability, protection of public interests, competitiveness, P2P and piracy. Input to this consultation will help shape a Commission Communication on Content Online, due to be adopted at the end of the year. [...]

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