Gordon is now on YouTube and Number 10 is busy Twittering away. It seems, though, that they are so pre-occupied with their new toys and the digital environment that they have forgotten to check what is going on in the real world. In the House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 12 May 2008 [...]

From The Register: BT's secret Phorm trials open door to corporate eavesdropping One was subsequently told over email by an official: ''It is important to remember that private companies such as ISPs are allowed to do certain things under section 3 of [the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act] that Law Enforcement Agencies cannot do without ...

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, was interviewed on ID Cards a few moments ago on Radio 4's 'Today Programme' - apparently students are going to be among the first targetted groups... We were assured that there would be no compulsion within the life of this government, but Jacqui Smith did NOT address questions on: bad data - what happens if ...

Information World Review revealed today, that in an experiment which apparently started in 2006, The UK government is to create a database that will hold the academic achievements of every citizen from the age of 14. The system has been under trial since 2006 and will allow colleges, universities and future employers to check whether prospective ...

For those of us who have been publishing views which are anti-ID Cards, there seems to be a whiff of vindication in the air. We have said (among other things) that ID Cards: will not provide the security that is their raison d'etrewill not workwill cost individuals real moneyInformation World Review (IWR) - Confusion reigns over UK ID cards - ...

... it seems that 'might is right' - of course, this isn't news, but in the light of the HMRC embarrassment, it is interesting to see just how far tunnel vision and supreme confidence in your actions (which might also be seen as ignorance and arrogance) can take you. (Obviously the ultimate answer is 'to war' but lets not go down that route ...

IWR reported today on Gordon Brown's ''talks tough on data sharing'' - behind his curious non-sequitur: ''We should not fear the advent of the information age, and it should not lead us to abandon or fear for our values,'' lay some good news (possibly). Only half a dozen years after a consultancy exercise about the sharing of public data, which ...

The e-Government Bulletin - ISSUE 249, 17 October 2007, and blog reports [quoted here in full]: Government websites may be stripped of their 'gov.uk' domain names if they fail to meet tough new standards of accessibility to web users with disabilities, according to confidential draft proposals seen by E-Government Bulletin. The guidelines, ...

The Open Rights Group (ORG) and Sky News both reports calls from ''Boffins'' (Sky News) or - more precisely, ''the Nuffield Council on Bioethics'' for a change in the law to stop the police keeping DNA samples from innocent people. As ORG says, The authors emphasised balancing ethical values, such as liberty, autonomy and privacy, against the ...

Some things I plan to come back to after the Bank holiday weekend:- Hillingdon: how significant is the use of ‘ ‘ around qualified, as in ‘qualified’ librarians? Hillingdon: and since when was a library a retail centre? Hillingdon: why couldn’t a local coffee shop have been given the opportunity? Why go for the ...