Big Brother
Rebecca Thompson
Computer Weekly
Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:21 EDT
© ComputerWeekly
Over 90,000 innocent people have been added to the
DNA database since the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
ruled against the practice
The figures, which were obtained by the Liberal Democrats, showed 433,752 DNA profiles had been added to the database since the ECHR ruling on 5 December 2008, equalling 1,480 per day. In the same period, only 611 profiles were removed.
There are now nearly 5.5 million DNA profiles on the database relating to 4.8 million people. The government estimated in 2008 that 20% of people on the database are innocent - meaning records of one million innocent people may be held on it.
The Home Office recently dropped proposals to keep the DNA of innocent people for
12 years, but privacy campaigners want it to go further.
Adam Smith
Halesowen News
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:18 EST
Children in Halesowen are having their fingerprints taken for a new £23k biometric school dinner scheme.
Windsor High School has insisted the biometric 'kiddyprinting' is not out of the ordinary but parents have complained the measure is another sign of a 'Big Brother' society.
The cashless school dinner system allows parents and the school to check children are eating healthy meals and prevents them spending their dinner money at the local chip shop.
The new system cost £23,000 to install but the school received a Government grant to cover half the costs. Concerned parent Heloise Morgan has demanded all evidence of her child's fingerprint be destroyed.
She said: "Where is it all going to end? If we have come to the stage when children think it is normal to give their fingerprints to get school dinners then the world surely has gone mad."
Yakub Qureshi and Neal Keeling
Manchester Evening News
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:12 EST
Police seized video footage from a primary school after children were filmed on a CCTV system as they changed for gym lessons.
The recording was seized after angry parents protested outside Charlestown Primary School in Salford.
The parents had discovered that the school's surveillance cameras were running round the clock and some children had been inadvertently filmed changing into gym gear in their classrooms before PE lessons.
Staff at the school had contacted police to ask them to remove the protesting parents. But after speaking to the parents officers took the footage from the cameras and a computer hard drive.
Police have studied the images and decided no further action is needed.
Katie Drummond
Wired.com
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:16 EST
© wired.com
The Air Force is looking to harness advances in bio-science so they can "degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive abilities." It's all part of a
$49 million dollar bio-research effort unveiled last month by the Air Force Research Lab's "Human Effectiveness Directorate," and it's the latest in a series of out-there military ideas to mess with adversaries' heads.
Once upon a time
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:23 EST
Hey, relax. It's not going to be the end of the world -- but as my headline says, in time it may be the end of the internet
as you know it.
Cory Doctorow:
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:
* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
Chris Huhne
The Guardian
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:12 EST
Intrusive 'Al Capone' powers will be extended to bodies such as the Royal Mail unless we stop the government's mission creep
Powers originally given only to the police and police agencies to seize criminal assets are now being extended to councils and other public bodies, including the Royal Mail. Once again, legal powers voted in to deal with terrorism and organised crime are being
rolled out for use against minor offences. The most famous example is the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), which could originally only be used by nine organisations (such as the police and security services). It can now be applied by over 800 public bodies. After mission creep, ministers have invented
mission gallop. As a result, highly intrusive techniques are now routinely used to spy on ordinary people,
their children, their pets and their bins.
Joanna Sugden
Times Online
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:58 EST
Almost a third of parents said the right to opt out was important regardless of the child's age
Parents are to be forced to allow their children to have sex education before the age of consent, the Government announced today. Under the new laws, when children reach 15 their parents will lose the right to withdraw them from sex education.
At present parents can remove their children from lessons about sex until they are 19.
The move forms part of new laws that will make sex education compulsory in primary and secondary schools from 2011. Faith schools will not be able to opt out of any part of the new curriculum, although they will be able to teach topics within the "ethos of their faith".
Lance Ulanoff
PC Magazine
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:48 EST
Thanks to Google's new Dashboard feature, anyone with a Google account (essentially a Gmail address) can see everything the company is tracking about them. It's an amazing, one-stop shopping tool for managing all of Google's services as they pertain to you. It features, among other services, Gmail, Google Search Results Alerts, Calendar, Contacts, Docs, iGoogle, Latitude, Picasa Web albums, YouTube, and of course Web History. Virtually everything you've done with Google and its array of services can be found here, in sometimes excruciating detail.
My Search history currently goes back two years. Every query is features a date- and time-stamp. I know that Google captures this information, but to see it so highly organized and accessible via one Web page is somewhat unnerving. I should relax. Ninety-nice percent of the information is private - Dashboard indicates what's public with a cute little crowd icon next to it. Better yet, I can erase any history information I don't want to keep.
Gabriel Milland
The Daily Express
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:06 EST
Home Secretary Alan Johnson wants to prevent a 'Big Brother' society
Critics yesterday blasted plans to water down councils' snooping powers for not going far enough.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson outlined moves to curb the ability of town halls to spy on people putting bins out on the wrong day.
Only council chief executives will now have the power to order covert surveillance operations and a new code of practice will supposedly ban their use for minor matters.
Official figures show that methods like hidden CCTV cameras have been used 50,000 times by local bodies since Labour gave them the powers in 2002. One use will now be to track a hard core of 50,000 absent parents who fail to pay for child support.
But Opposition spokesman criticised yesterday's move.
Adrian Jenkins
Burton Mail
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:54 EST
Eurocratsʼ plans to fit ʻspy boxesʼ in all cars have been slammed by Burtonʼs biggest driving school and the townʼs taxi chief.
They spoke after Burton Euro MP Philip Bradbourn revealed that the proposal had been recommended by a three-year study for the European Commission.
He claimed the black box gadgets would send 20 separate items of information, such as speed, destination and direction, to a central monitoring hub up to every few seconds.
Officials thought the devices would help reduce road accidents and congestion, but the Tory said they would more likely be used to implement 'pay-as-you-drive' road charges and branded them 'another affront to our civil liberties'.
Janet Churchley, joint owner of Burton's LDC School of Motoring, in Borough Road, agreed, fuming: "It's ridiculous and Big Brother gone mad. Why on earth would you want everybody knowing where you were going and what you were doing?
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