Technology Impacts

Council leaders in Sheffield said they will not allow the city to take part in trials of the Government’s identity card system after Manchester signed up for a pilot project.
Sheffield Council leaders will place a motion before the council next week proposing the city rule itself out of any future project to test the cards.

Liberal Democrat leader Coun Paul Scriven said the announcement that Manchester would take part in a trial beginning in the autumn should not prompt Sheffield to follow suit. Read the rest of this entry »

The surveillance society is in full flood. We are more watched than ever. We have to live under an ever larger array of regulations and laws, governing how we park, where we drive, what rubbish we throw away, how much tax we pay, and what we think and say. Even the most law abiding find it increasingly difficult to keep up with all the laws you have to obey. It is a compliance society with a box ticking culture.

Much of it is as ineffective as it is oppressive. Making everyone xerox copies of passports and gas bills before undertaking simple transactions does not stop well funded big time crooks from operating. Setting and enforcing tight speed limits does not stop accidents which are often caused by something other than excessive speed. Picking on individuals for saying the wrong things and going in for public denunciation does not stop all nasty thoughts. All this and the rest does spawn ever larger bureaucracies, and makes it more difficult for the energetic to do things that might make life better. Read the rest of this entry »

It is a frustrating experience trying to access a website and finding out that you are blocked from it. This is especially true for travelers outside US who want to get connected to their loved ones at home. Just because the country they are in imposes some restrictions, their freedom has been limited.

Another dreadful experience would be finding out that because of your IP address your accounts were intruded. Your log-in data and passwords have been exposed. Your identity has been stolen. Read the rest of this entry »

There will always be times when you don?t want other people to know which sites you?ve been visiting, whatever you use the Internet for. The problem is that we all leave a trail of evidence about our whereabouts and whimsies whenever we open a browser.

To save our blushes, the brand-new version of Internet Explorer ? IE8 ? features a new InPrivate Browsing mode. When it?s activated, Internet Explorer won?t record any URLs, cookies or temporary Internet files, leaving all other users clueless about what you?ve been up to.

While some people are quick to dub InPrivate mode ?porn mode?, Microsoft is keen to point out that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to browse in private. If you sit down at a computer in a hostel, hotel or Internet cafe then it?s not unusual to come across the browsing history, email addresses and sometimes passwords of the previous user. Read the rest of this entry »

A new three part series looks at why the UK has become one of the most watched places in the world - with millions of CCTV cameras, a growing network of number plate recognition cameras, one of the largest DNA databases in the world and government plans for the basic details of all our phone calls e-mails, and every internet site we visit to be logged and kept.

We all benefit from better crime detection and from easier and cheaper services. The government argues that: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then you’ve got nothing to fear.”

He goes inside the CCTV nerve centre, sees how all of our journeys can be monitored, and meets undercover agents, those who are watched and those who have fallen foul of modern surveillance. Read the rest of this entry »

For years, we’ve been pointing out that there’s really no such thing as an anonymized dataset. There’s almost always ways to associate data back to people. We’ve seen it happen over and over again as companies claim they’re releasing an anonymous dataset, only to discover later that it’s not so difficult to re-nomynize it. In fact, there was even a recent paper on how to re-identify people based on an anonymous data set. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that yet another “anonymous dataset” has been shown not to be very anonymous. This time, it’s about GPS data that was supposed to be scrubbed of identifying info, but some researchers have found that it’s not hard to put that data back together, knowing that the two main places people go are home and their office. Read the rest of this entry »

The roving eye of Google?s Street View camera has been out and about in Cheltenham, UK.

Residents spotted the van in the area this week, capturing images for the website?s extensive mapping programme.

The site features photographs of every street in towns which have been ?mapped? by Google?s mysterious-looking cars with blacked-out windows.

People living in St Mark?s had mixed views on whether or not they were in favour of their homes, gardens ? and even themselves ? being caught on camera.

Jess Cave, who lives in Spenser Road, gave it the thumbs up.

She said: ?I think it?s only a bit of fun so I don?t really mind. I don?t feel like I?m being spied on and I?m not bothered by it. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer manufacturers must take responsibility for dealing with electronic waste to ensure toxic trash doesn’t fall into the wrong hands

Dell, the world’s second largest PC manufacturer, announced earlier this month that it is imposing a ban on the export of used equipment bearing its name to developing countries ? unless the equipment is in full working order and intended for legitimate use. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been quite troubling that for years various schools have simply accepted propaganda and totally inaccurate “teaching materials” about copyright and used them to teach students. These programs have been created by both the RIAA and the MPAA, at times. More recently, a lobbying organization backed by both of those organizations, the Copyright Alliance (which has a long history of making up the most fantastic myths about copyright) has been pushing a copyright curriculum on schools. Tragically, unsuspecting schools have been using the pure propaganda put out by the Copyright Alliance as if it were some sort of impartial and accurate educational material on copyright. It’s not. Not even close. Last year, one of the world’s foremost experts in copyright, William Patry, took the Copyright Alliance’s founder to task for having “chutzpah in abundance” in basically making up what copyright and fair use is about, and presenting himself as some sort of expert on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »

The government issued a little-reported document this month on ID cards. It was quietly published when the home secretary Jacqui Smith announced that some volunteer members of the public in Greater Manchester would be the first to receive ID cards in November.

These are 10 things from the document, ?Identity Cards Act Secondary Legislation - An Impact Assessment?, which might not be generally known:

1. The ID Cards Act 2006 imposes on citizens a duty to update information held on them on the National Identity Register (NIR). Cardholders can receive civil penalty fines if they fail to update information held about them on the NIR or notify the Identity and Passport Service if their card is lost or stolen. Citizens may also be in breach of legislation if they fail to notify a change of address within three months. It is open to the government to charge a fee for updating the register. Read the rest of this entry »