1. Hire yourself some staff who know what the Internet really means for
government, and fund a university to start training more who really
understand both worlds:

2. Free your data, especially maps and other geographic information, plus
the non-personal data that drives the police, health and social services,
for starters.

3. Give external parties the right to interface electronically with any
government or mainly public system unless it can be shown to create
substantial, irrevocable harm.

4. Commission the world’s first system capable of large scale
deliberation, and hold a couple of nation wide sessions on policy areas
that you genuinely haven’t made your minds up on yet.

5. When people use your electronic systems to do anything, renew a fishing
license, register a pregnancy, apply for planning permission, given them
the option to collaborate with other people going through or affected by
the same process.

Source: mySociety

The head of MI5 is also concerned that the development of new ways of telephoning over the internet could represent a “significant detriment to national security” and that new powers are needed to tackle the threat. While calls can be monitored, phone bills - which can constitute vital evidence in prosecutions - are not available from internet phone services. “If we are to maintain our capability we are going to have to make decisions in the next few years” he said, “Because traditional ways are unlikely to work.”

Source: The Telegraph

The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.
…
Richard Clayton, said that remote searches had been possible since 1994, although they were very rare. An amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 made hacking legal if it was authorised and carried out by the state.
…
Police might also send an e-mail to a suspect’s computer. The message would include an attachment that contained a virus or “malware”. If the attachment was opened, the remote search facility would be covertly activated. Alternatively, police could park outside a suspect’s home and hack into his or her hard drive using the wireless network.

Source: The Times

Mr Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, told The Independent that surveillance technologies are developing at breathtaking speed. In a direct criticism of Britain, he said: “It is therefore worrying that new legislation proposals intend to expand the authorities’ power to allow personal data collection and sharing. Although safety measures are foreseen, the adoption of these measures would increase the risk of violation of individuals’ privacy.

“The retention and storing of data is delicate and must be highly protected from risk of abuse. We have already seen what a devastating and stigmatising effect losing files or publishing lists of names on the internet can have on the persons concerned. This is particularly relevant to the UK, where important private data has been lost and ended up in the public domain.”

Source: The Independent

The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.

Source: The Guardian

Fears that sensitive genetic and health data will not be kept securely may be slowing recruitment to a medical research project designed to help further understanding of how to tackle deadly medical conditions.

Only one in 10 are signing up after receiving a letter inviting them to take part in the UK Biobank project. A report seen by the Guardian suggests that “security is likely to be a key decisive consideration for potential participants”.

The report, commissioned by the Biobank ethics and governance council, shows that members of the public fear information from their medical records, together with blood and urine samples they give, will be shared with private companies, and they are particularly opposed to the possibility that it may be passed to organisations overseas.

Source: Guardian article

I’d be very interested to know your views - supportive or not. Internet regulation is not in my policy area but I promise you I will forward your views to Andy Burnham and Lord Carter

Source: Tom Watson MP Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office.

The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, says in an interview today that the government is considering the need for “child safe” websites – registered with cinema-style age warnings – to curb access to offensive or damaging online material.

He plans to approach US president-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration with proposals for tight international rules on English language websites, which may include forcing internet service providers, such as BT, Tiscali, Sky and AOL, to provide packages restricting access to websites without an age rating.

Source: The Guardian.

Their findings, which drew from stolen data harvested from these drop zones between April and October 2008, were staggering: 33 gigabytes worth of purloined data from more than 170,000 victims. Included in those troves were more than 10,700 online bank account credentials, 149,000 stolen e-mail credentials, 5,682 credit card numbers, and 5,712 sets of eBay credentials.

Source : Washington Post

Yahoo has stepped up pressure on Google and Microsoft’s online privacy policies after announcing that it would remove personally identifiable information from its database after 90 days. Yahoo currently anonymises user log data after 13 months, compared to nine months for Google search data. Microsoft keeps its users’ search data for 18 months but had pledged to lower that to six months if other search engines did the same. In another first, Yahoo’s new policy applies to logs of views and clicks of all its pages and advertising, as well as search.

Source: Financial Times