LIVERPOOL council leaders are challenging the Government’s scheme for a database which will hold information about every child.

The city is one of 17 local authorities in the North- West piloting the ContactPoint system which is designed for child protection.

However, the Liberal Democrat-led administration said yesterday it had serious concerns about the database which would be accessed by up to half a million public sector staff, like teachers and social workers.

Source: Liverpool Daily Post
Hat tip: @privacyint

A court has ruled that schoolchildren may rate their teachers online, rejecting the case of a woman who argued that her rights had been infringed by pupils who gave her bad grades on a popular website.

The rights of the woman, a teacher of German and religion, had not been compromised by the ratings and pupils had a right to offer an opinion as long as they did not hinder her professionally, the German Federal Court of Justice found.

Source: Times Online

The government said that it will back the Pan European Game Information system to help consumers make informed choices about video games, removing responsibility from the BBFC.

The announcement is one of a raft of new measures that will be introduced in the wake of the Digital Britain report. The government gave its backing to the enhanced video game PEGI classification system following a four-month consultation period, in which it sought the views and opinions of experts and consumers on the best way of amending the current classification process.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

The Family Online Safety Institute is calling for more research into the phenomenon of ’sexting’ as it warns of the extra responsibilities and implications of expanding internet services for all.

In a conference designed to coincide with the launch of the Digital Britain report, FOSI is bringing together academics, corporate experts and industry trade bodies to discuss online safety for children, particularly around mobile phones.

Source: guardian.co.uk

Richard Thomas, who stands down as Information Commissioner this month, said he has “grave concerns” over how the Independent Safeguarding Authority will operate when it is launched over the next year.

Checks on applicants will include so-called “soft intelligence”, such as allegations made to the police which proved unfounded and did not result in a conviction. Mr Thomas fears this could lead to people being wrongly judged unfit to work with children and having their careers and reputation damaged.

He also attacked the controversial move for a database containing details of every child in England as a step too far.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Earlier this year, on a school day like any other, we shuffled into our politics class at 11.20 on a Monday morning. What we didn’t notice straight away were four tinted CCTV domes hanging from the ceiling including a huge monitor dome staring right at us. Confusion and anger broke out among us. A teacher casually stated that they were for teacher training purposes. After a thought of “God, George Orwell was right”, some of us angrily packed up and left – we weren’t comfortable working in a classroom with cameras.

Source: The Guardian

A controversial database featuring the details of every child in England will be officially launched next week, despite lingering concerns over safety. It is the first time staff will have open access to the network which contains information about children’s schools, parents and GPs. The move comes even though the system - covering 11 million under-18s - has already been delayed three times because of faults. Contactpoint has also been described as “almost certainly illegal” by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, a civil liberties group, following privacy and security concerns.

Source: The Telegraph

apComms, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Communications … is launching an inquiry into Internet traffic to assess regulation of ISPs and a range of Internet traffic issues from behavioural advertising and privacy to child abuse images and Internet neutrality to answer what role Government should play when it comes to Internet traffic.

Submissions are invited on 5 questions by 22nd May and evidence sessions will be held in Parliament in June, with the final report expected in the Autumn.
…
Inquiry questions

Although we intend to address the broad sweep of all of these topics and make a range of recommendations; we would particularly like to learn how these five specific questions should be answered:

#1 Can we distinguish circumstances when ISPs should be forced to act to deal with some type of bad traffic? When should we insist that ISPs should not be forced into dealing with a problem, and that the solution must be found elsewhere?

#2 Should the Government be intervening over behavioural advertising services, either to encourage or discourage their deployment; or is this entirely a matter for individual users, ISPs and websites?

#3 Is there a need for new initiatives to deal with online privacy, and if so, what should be done?

#4 Is the current global approach to dealing with child sexual abuse images working effectively? If not, then how should it be improved?

#5 Who should be paying for the transmission of Internet traffic? Would it be appropriate to enshrine any of the various notions of Network Neutrality in statute?

Source: apComms, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Communications