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NO2ID

The latest on Identity Cards and Databases in the UK

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1 year 2 days ago

March 13, 2009

09:32
Coincidence? The ad firm that helped Brown’s campaign wins lucrative contract for ID card
Ephraim Hardcastle writes in the Daily Mail: Gordon Brown’s Labour leadership campaign in 2007 benefited from the free ‘design services’ of advertising firm Abbott Mead Vickers. Surely there is no connection between this gracious act of philanthropy and Abbott Mead Vickers winning a lucrative contract to make the case for the new Identity Card. Candidate Brown stood unopposed [...]
Categories: Politics

March 12, 2009

23:45
Defending the ‘database state’
Michael Cross writes on the Guardian Comment is Free web site: My award for bravest attendee at last month’s Convention on Modern Liberty goes to David Varney. As the prime minister’s special adviser on “service transformation” – official-speak for joining up the data that government agencies hold on us – he’s one of the architects of [...]
Categories: Politics
15:40
ID cards appeal
The Burton Mail reports that South Derbyshire MP Mark Todd has called on the Government to abandon its plans for ID cards: Mr Todd has not supported the Government’s proposals and has monitored progress on the project, strengthening his opposition to the plans. In an adjournment debate in Parliament yesterday, he called on the Government to halt [...]
Categories: Politics

March 11, 2009

17:41
Care Record opt out patients told to explain reasons in person
Steve Nowottny writes in Pulse: NHS managers have told thousands of patients they will only be allowed to opt out of having a Summary Care Record if they come and explain their reasons in person, Pulse can reveal. More than 500 patients at an early adopter site in Birmingham have already been forced to explain face-to-face why [...]
Categories: Politics

March 10, 2009

12:05
Passport Service hires Alan Gilmour to market ID cards
Alex Brownsell writes in Marketing Magazine: The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has appointed former Lloyds TSB marketer Alan Gilmour to the new position of director of marketing and customer insight. He will head a high-profile drive backing its identity card scheme. The first task for Gilmour, whose most recent role was as marketing director at Heritable [...]
Categories: Politics

March 9, 2009

23:45
Jacqui Smith attacked by campaigner for ’spin’ over domestic violence ‘gimmick’
Nico Hines and Richard Ford write in The Times: The Home Secretary was ambushed at the high-profile launch of a domestic violence initiative today by a campaigner who accused her of “gimmicks” and “spin”. Jacqui Smith was attending the event to discuss a proposed register for known abusive partners when a leading activist accused her of hypocrisy [...]
Categories: Politics

March 8, 2009

04:16
Peter Hain: Gordon, you are without a narrative
Peter Hain writes in the Independent on Sunday: Despite Gordon Brown’s best efforts, Labour has not had a clear enough narrative right across government. Ministers have developed a habit of making technocratic speeches where the very purpose of Labour gets lost. On TV and radio, some now sound more like managers than politicians. Whatever their individual policy [...]
Categories: Politics

March 7, 2009

22:25
Government abandons data-sharing scheme
David Barrett writes in the Telegraph: The Government has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn over plans to share vast amounts of private data about individuals. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is to shelve proposals which critics said would have led to patients’ confidential medical records being passed to third parties. A spokesman for Mr Straw said the [...]
Categories: Politics
16:06
Only incompetence will save us from Orwell’s surveillance state
Alasdair Palmer writes in the Telegraph: The vast amount of data now being generated, and the impossibility of looking at it all, is, together with bureaucratic incompetence, the best guarantee we have that we’re not going to wake up one morning and find we are living in a version of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The biggest threat contained [...]
Categories: Politics

March 6, 2009

15:19
ID card ‘flash and dash’ warning
According the the BBC: The national identity card scheme could be “fatally” undermined by cheaply produced fake cards, a leading industry expert has warned. Toby Stevens, of the Enterprise Privacy Group, believes a shortage of fingerprint scanners could lead to an explosion in “flash and dash” fraud. And that, he says, could scupper the scheme before it [...]
Categories: Politics

March 5, 2009

18:36
Outrage on a sliding scale
Peter Wilby writes in the New Statesman: My outrage on civil liberties issues is on a sliding scale. At the top are no-jury trials, detention without charge, restrictions on rights to protest and, worst of all, the possibility that the British security services, and even ministers, colluded with torture and extraordinary rendition. Somewhere in the middle [...]
Categories: Politics

March 4, 2009

10:59
Right to privacy
The Independent’s leader-writer joins the attack on Clause 152: This data-sharing may include medical records. Doctors are understandably enraged, and the heads of Britain’s medical colleges have written to Jack Straw warning him that, while patients may trust doctors with their most private medical concerns, they will become less open if those details are shared with [...]
Categories: Politics

March 3, 2009

09:55
We will all suffer if Cameron’s brand of Conservatism fails
Jenni Russell, writing in the Guardian, says that the Conservatives’ policies on the Database State are preferable to Labour’s: Cameron has set the broad parameters, redefining his party as one that cares about being green and socially just, protecting civil liberties and devolving power. Beyond that, the leadership are openly canvassing for ideas. They recognise that [...]
Categories: Politics
09:49
Experts have ‘grave concerns’ over data sharing: the letter to Jack Straw in full
Representatives of several professional bodies have written an open letter to Jack Straw asking that medical records be exempted from clause 152: Dear Mr Straw We welcome your recent decision to rewrite the Coroners and Justice Bill and would like to request a meeting with you to discuss this further. We have grave concerns about the widespread [...]
Categories: Politics

March 2, 2009

23:45
Prime Minister’s health records breached in database attack
Dan Goodin writes in The Register: Personal medical records belonging to Scotland’s rich and powerful - including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Holyrood’s First Minister Alex Salmond - have been illegally accessed in a breach of a national database that holds details of 2.5 million people. The files contained names, ages, addresses, and occupations of the patients, [...]
Categories: Politics

March 1, 2009

17:26
CARD ‘SHARP’ SET OF I.DIOTS
According to the Daily Star on Sunday: Whitehall boffins in charge of introducing ID cards can’t even hang on to their own security passes. They are losing them at the rate of 23 a day, adding up to 17,000 over the last two years. And these are the same officials who are planning to fine members of the [...]
Categories: Politics

February 27, 2009

12:25
Breaking the grip of the ‘database state’
Sam Talbot Rice writes in Public Servant magazine: So far, we have heard the language of personalisation of public services, but have not seen the reality. Rather than devolving power and choice, ministers have set upon a course of transformational government that seeks to collect, in the words of their adviser, “a deep truth about the [...]
Categories: Politics

February 26, 2009

09:41
Recession is not an excuse to declare war on our freedoms
Mary Riddell writes in the Daily Telegraph: We cannot, in human or financial terms, afford ID cards and the assorted panoply of a surveillance state whose likely costs, according to the Convention on Modern Liberty, equal £33 billion, or the price of keeping our Armed Forces on active service abroad. In the reductive world of economic [...]
Categories: Politics

February 25, 2009

23:45
Publication of ID cards reviews would jeopardise support for the scheme, claims government
Tony Colliins writes in Computer Weekly: Publication of internal reports into the feasibility of the government’s ID cards programme would have jeopardised support from government agencies. The claim was made by Robin Woodland, director of policy at the Identity and Passport Service, in evidence to the Information Tribunal. The tribunal was considering whether two initial Gateway “zero” [...]
Categories: Politics

February 24, 2009

23:45
ID cards database breached by nosey council staff
Mark Ballard writes in Computer Weekly: Staff at 30 local authorities have been responsible for “serious security breaches” in the government database that will form the core of the national ID cards programme. Local authority staff have viewed sensitive personal records on the Customer Information System (CIS) run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), [...]
Categories: Politics
 
 
 
 
 

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