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Big Brother Awards for Privacy Invaders
Dozix007 writes "The Register reports that the shortlist for this year's Big Brother awards for nasty privacy invaders has been released. The awards include: Worst Public Servant, Most Invasive Company, Most Appalling Project, Most Heinous Government Organisation and Lifetime Menace Award - now renamed the David Blunkett Lifetime Menace Award. Pressure group Privacy International, which organises the awards, said it was overwhelmed by nominations for Blunkett, the Home Office and national ID cards but they had been recognised in previous years."
FP? Seriously though, isn't logging and keeping track of mod points also an invasion of privacy?
Where is the US equivilent ????
I had never heard of this list however the more publicity it sees the more awareness it raises. It is very interesting and I am not currently using any products from any of the mentioned companies and will now know to avoid them in the future. If more lists like this were in the popular media, companies would be at least held a little more accountable for there actions by those customers who care about such issues and do not have the time to gather the information about them elsewhere.
I'd like to see an annual list of organizations, companies, banks, utilities that sell your address and phone numer to marketers. I expect if I sign up for a "club card" at Safeway or some other retailer, that my info is potentially up for grabs, but when I signed up with Sierra Club, my junk mail exponentially grew, and I OPTED OUT!! of the sharing info option. I think they probably kill more trees than they save. I've received 3 renewal notices from them since February of this year, and my membership expires in August!
They hardly track my every move - they're primarily used after the fact to identify people or to follow people attempting to evade the police.
They're all in public places, I have no expectation of privacy in a public place and I'm not committing any offences, it really doesn't bother me.
The nation ID card, OTOH, is a minor problem for the government - at last count almost 80% of population were against them and 30% said that they would go to prison rather than carry the card (Numbers subject to statistics).
Did you check the option to opt-out of the list of opt-out people? Did you check the list to mark your information as inherited opt-out? You know, if you give your info to the marketing division, they might share it with the collections division, who might share it with the membership division, and somewhere along the line the "private" bit on your data didn't line up in the database, and someone in the corporate affairs insurance services division closes a deal on 50,000 new leads. :)
I've always been suspicious of that opt-out crap, too. Like all the spam mail that says "click here to be (re)moved from the list". Removed from one list, added to another.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Never give a charity with no purpose your address.
I once gave my address to The March of Dimes Foundation, but that was a mistake.
At present, the only charity with my current address is the local NPR affiliate, and they haven't abused it to my knowledge.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
Dude, you have to pay a television tax. People go around with antennaes in hand and vans to observe what households have televisions running and whether or not they've paid their television tax.
You guys have cameras observing you every second that you're outside your home. Regardless of your justification, that's just wrong.
And you guys are worried about a national ID card? Jesus.. a bit schizophrenic, eh?
As someone who has been attacked viciously in the UK under the gaze of CCTV, and the CCTV footage being instrumental in getting the offenders locked up, I can't say I mind CCTV.
What I'd mind is if it was used proactively, e.g., for tracking people without their knowledge using face recognition systems. I believe a person has the right to go about their day without being tracked and logged in databases "Citizen #45932842 logged at Market Square 8:23:23" and so on.
Dude, you have to pay a television tax. People go around with antennaes in hand and vans to observe what households have televisions running and whether or not they've paid their television tax. ...in exchange for which they get television which (hold on to your hat here) **doesn't suck**.
No. They don't have vans and shit, that is just scare tactics.
What they do is monitor who buys TVs, and if someone buys a new TV that doesn't have a TV license, they pay them a visit. I know I had to give my name and address when I bought my TV and that was for TV licensing purposes (it isn't a tax, more like a mandatory TV subscription, the price isn't that bad now with several channels and radio stations, as well as the website and interactive stuff being paid by the fee, but 10 years ago the BBC was really badly managed financially).
For that, we get advert-free television that is meant to be politically unbiased. It doesn't have any pressures from advertisers at least. OTOH it sucks when you want to have a piss and there are no ad breaks.
The cameras aren't observing *me*. Yet. And they are only in city centres and shopping centres for the main part.
There was a pretty interesting bit on the BBC ("car wars" i think) that showed how london police cars are fitted with cameras that automatically scan car registrations and will notify the PC if it spots a vehicle with either outstanding tickets or no insurance. Despite some false positives, it seemed to work pretty well.
CCTV raised a lot of concerns when it was first rolled out, but now that it's here people seem to have accepted it - even more, people seem to appreciate it given the added sense of security and the positive effect on violent crime rates. Still, before we all get all warm and cuddly, we should remember that, at the end of the day, it's a system for surveillance of the general public. Just because the people jogging the joystick today aren't abusing it (it even caught that shocking bit of police brutality in Manchester a while back) doesn't mean the next bunch won't.
#!/usr/bin/english
The government doesn't know where anybody is, fucktard.
CCTV cameras (at the moment) aren't facially recognising people as they walk around. They are recording what's going on, and if a crime happens then the recording is replayed to help with the investigation. Also many cameras might be linked to a viewing room, just so that trouble can be identified and police dispatched quickly to the scene.
Now if face recognition systems were attached to the CCTV systems, or if it was used to find more than just criminal action to get dealt with, then there would be a problem. You can argue that getting the CCTV in place is step one in a grander scheme sure. But that has yet to be proven.
I'm not happy that on certain roads you can't speed in general because of CCTV, OTOH speeding is illegal and dangerous. CCTV placed at lucrative, rather than dangerous, spots is simply WRONG. It shouldn't be used to make money as a stealth tax.
Yeah, because it's not like they don't package up lots of public video from the UK and make television shows out of them wherein private UK citizens are shown throughout the world doing things in which they were recorded... so much for privacy when Discovery or FOX makes a two hour television special featuring videos from your government public surveillance cameras.
Can anyone in the US what's the big deal with a national ID card? In this part of the world and in many other countries there are national ID cards and nobody cares. I understand you use your SSN and driver's license for what we use the ID card. So what could be the problem in having one?
Not trolling, I always wanted to understand your point of view about this.
My website
and let me take the opportunity to thank all of you Britons for pay this fee to keep the BBC around. As an American, I trust the BBC news more than any organization; especially for news about American.
Also I love fun comedies like The Office. Jolly good show!
Open Source Sushi
... doesnt it make sense to put the camera there?
Exactly. It only becomes evil if they take it one step further out, i.e., they identify a nice, long, straight, wide section of road, purposedly set a low speed limit fully knowing people aren't going to respect it, and then add automatic surveillance.
sigs are hazardous to your health
"They [CCTV cameras] hardly track my every move - they're primarily used after the fact to identify people or to follow people attempting to evade the police."
To identify thieves, and then completely ignore them, in the usual manner of UK police. (yes I've got clear CCTV footage of a theft including peoples' faces, no nothing was ever investigated)
And no, they don't track your every move unless you happen to be interesting|drunken|funny enough that they'll film you and show it on national television for a laugh! Turn to ITV any weekday evening for yet more CCTV footage of people you know walking down the street.
My understanding was that a TV *does* emit radio waves, and that they can and do track them. They also do it the easy way - look for TV sales, look for houses with no TV (in this day and age???) and hassle them (I had no TV for a few years and got a good few "reminders"). When they think they can make money at it - they DO get the detector vans out though. Student flats - hand held detector wandering from floor to floor (Students are very poor at getting licences, but most have a TV). S.
You are overrating some parts of anglosaxon law system.
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The basis of UK law is that everything is permitted unless specifically prohibited (reverse is true in many countries)
This was even truth in comunistic countries. I agree that this was (probably) inventeted in UK as a rule, but it is common thing in most of the even semicivilized (read: dictatorship countries) world
UK invented many of things in legal systems that we take for granted, but you should be aware that nothing lasts forever! For instance, UK legal system does not allow you to go to second instance court in many cases - which is, from continental point of view, serious abuse of human rights (IIRC, if you are trialed by jurry, you can't complain to their decision; they allowed this recently, but only in some extremely rare cases).
Not to mention last report of Lord Hutton (if I had luck to spell its name correctly). In most of the world, ad-hoc parlamentarian comitee would investigate that, not prime minister's favorite judge. Ok, I am sounding like flaimbaiter, but these examples clearly show why we (including Britons, no matter of their past achievements) need more organisations like Privacy International.
No sig today.
For instance, UK legal system does not allow you to go to second instance court in many cases - which is, from continental point of view, serious abuse of human rights (IIRC, if you are trialed by jurry, you can't complain to their decision; they allowed this recently, but only in some extremely rare cases).
Er, well, whilst it is true that in the UK you cannot appeal on a question of fact (ie you cannot appeal the jury's decision on guilt or innocence) you can certainly appeal on a question of law. So your point is somewhat wrong.
But to make the comparison with "Continental" jurisprudence is spurious at best. It is critical to remember that in the Common law tradition it is up to the state to prove guilt and that the defendant is innocent until such proof beyond reasonable doubt is offered, and then accepted by the jury of 12 of the defendants peers. Such a presumption of innocence does not exist in the Roman/Napoleonic model from which the vast majority of the continental jurisdictions derive their criminal justice. This "golden thread" of British justice (Thank you Rumpole) and he role of the jury is at the heart of the difference.
However back to the original posters point. The constitution of the UK (and there is one, its just not written down) is founded on the idea that all things are permitted unless prescribed otherwise by law. The codified rights and duties of the continental criminal codes do not present the same ideals of freedom as this. Indeed I would suggest that the simple fact that the grandparent post actualy asked the question about "what is so wrong with having to have an ID card" says more about the fundamental differences about continental Europe and the UK than any subsequent post.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."