The shadow education secretary has said the opposition would replace the directory of all children in England with a small targeted system.

Gove told the Telegraph that ContactPoint would “increase the risk” of abuse of vulnerable children. “The government has proved that it cannot be trusted to set up large databases and cannot promise that inappropriate people would be able to access the database. It would be irresponsible to implement something that is such a danger to our children,” he said.

Source: Kable

Labour politicians at the annual conference this week admitted the party has run into “considerable problems” with major IT programmes and policy over the past 10 years.
…
Former home secretary Charles Clarke said Labour has experienced “all kinds of problems” since coming into power in 1997. “The potential of IT, whether it is individual records in the NHS or ID cards, is enormous understanding it and how to procure it is very difficult,” he said.

Source: Computer Weekly

Britain’s trade unions have accepted the government’s proposals for ID cards, opening the way for the plans to feature in Labour’s next election manifesto.

Source: Politics.co.uk (via Spy Blog).

KableNet reports:

A government expert group has warned of a ‘large impact’ on the National Identity Scheme from those who cannot use fingerprinting, such as many elderly people

Hat tip: Glyn, writing on the ORG-discuss mailing list.

ZDNet.co.uk reports:

[GNU founder Richard] Stallman criticised the use of open-source software . . . in the online payment system for the Oyster contactless cards used on London’s underground rail network. . . . He also warned that the RFID chip on the card might be read at other times, allowing information to be gathered besides details of Tube and bus travel.

Via the BBC:

The new work tracked 100,000 individuals selected randomly from a sample of more than six million phone users in a European country. . . . The researchers said they were “not at liberty” to disclose where the information had been collected and said steps had been taken to guarantee the participants’ anonymity.

From Ars Technica:

Deutsche Telekom, the European Union’s largest telecommunications firm and owner of the U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile, stands accused of snooping on business journalists, members of its supervisory board, and its own executives in an attempt to uncover the source of leaks to the press.

. . .

The case bears a striking resemblance to the 2006 Hewlett Packard pretexting scandal, in which the company hired private investigators who obtained employee phone records under false pretenses.