The British government has decided to extend its secure email to include councils. Government Connect, the name of the program, will allow local authorities and central government to exchange information securely over a private network. According to the article by WhatPC, they’re all supposed to be connected by April 2009.
“Government Connect (GC), a £33m programme to extend central government’s secure email network to local councils, passed two very significant milestones last week.”
There’s an interesting article by WhatPC? that took place in Great Britain. According to the article only ten percent of the people surveyed said they trusted the government with their personal information. About the same number, nine percent, said they trusted online retailers. It seems people don’t feel as safe online.
“You would have had to be living in a vacuum over the past year to miss the influx of data protection headlines. Data breaches are an increasingly visible threat, making data security a particularly profitable market.”
CNet has an article that made me chuckle today. Apparently NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes whose business has been mentioned on this very blog a few times, appeared before Congress and took quite the business model beating. Lawmakers found the “opt-out” policy “contemptible”, “flatly illegal” and one went as far as to say the opt-out practice “goes against everything the country’s been founded on.”
…under questioning from Markey, Dykes refused to answer whether he thought an opt-in standard should be applied. “I really must protest…I think you’re forcing me into a ‘Have you stopped beating your wife recently?’,” he said. (Markey replied, to laughter: “No, no, no, it’s ‘Have you stopped beating the consumer?’ is the question.”)
The Washington Post has an article about the U.S. Senate committee hearing yesterday on Internet advertising and privacy that is equal parts entertaining, hopeful and terrifying.
Terrifying because of the lack of knowledge the senators have on the issue. Entertaining because of some of the senator witness exchanges. Hopeful because they seem to realize they’re not experts and are trying to learn more. We could see progress.
The Senate hearing had been called as fears grow that the massive volume of information that Internet companies are collecting about users is violating their privacy.
According to an article appearing on ZDNet.co.uk:
The UK’s information commissioner is warning that the government has not paid enough attention to the dangers of data sharing.
“The tenor of the government’s argument has focused closely on the benefits of data sharing, paying perhaps too little attention to the potential hazards associated with ambitious programmes of data sharing,” stated the report. “The government has consistently laid itself open to the criticism that it considers ‘data sharing’ in itself an unconditional good, and that it will go to considerable lengths to encourage data-sharing programmes, while paying insufficient heed to the corresponding risks or to people’s legitimate concerns.”
According to CBC.ca, Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, is calling on Google to fight a court order to give media company Viacom the records of every video that users have watched on YouTube.
Ann Cavoukian said the ruling was “particulary disturbing from a privacy perspective” in a letter she sent Tuesday to Sergey Brin, Google’s president of technology and one of the company’s founders. The commissioner made her statement public on Thursday.
A new bill that will come into effect in January 2009 will give the Swedish intelligence agency, which has the unfortunately uncool sounding name of National Defence Radio Establishment, the right to scan all international communications at will.
Apparently the Swedes aren’t all in agreement over the new powers. Check out the full SC Magazine article.
Google’s global privacy counsel has also weighed in. Peter Fleischer said: “By introducing these measures, the Swedish government is following the examples set by governments ranging from China and Saudi Arabia to the US government’s widely criticised eavesdropping programme.”
Supporters of the bill say it is necessary to help counter the growing threat of terrorism.
The law was passed by a slim 143-138 majority, with some last minute amendments made to appease opposing ministers.
PC Magazine (via Reuters) is reporting that Google would endorse a federal privacy law.
Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote to Google in May asking for details about the search engine’s privacy practices since it acquired competitor DoubleClick.
Google told Barton in a letter dated June 6 that it would support creation of a federal Internet privacy law. A copy of the letter was obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.
It would seem that British councils have no qualms with snooping. Almost a week ago today I blogged about how some councils in the UK had been invoking snooping legislation to watch citizens without requiring judicial authorization.
Today in The Telegraph, another story about how some councils have been analyzing the contents of randomly selected household’s non-recycle bins.
Residents were only told about the investigation after the contents of their bins had been collected “to ensure that the sample was representative”.
Mid Sussex District Council defended the move and said the rubbish was being analysed anonymously to see how much food waste people were throwing away.
The California Legislature seems to be tentatively endorsing a bill that would allow pharmacies to partner with drug companies to send out letters reminding patients to refill their prescriptions.
The bills sponsor seems to be getting all kinds of flack for allegedly being indebted to the pharmaceutical industry.
Senate Bill 1096 by Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, is sponsored by a medical information company facing an invasion of privacy class-action suit that alleges some practices the legislation would make legal.
…
Calderon, who has received more than $21,000 in campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy chains, said his bill does not allow “marketing or sales pitches.”
Whatever the case may be, there doesn’t seem to be much effort employed to avoid having this look “shady”.
