Yeah well, it might be a long-standing practice in the US of A, where people have almost no privacy rights but here in the UK, we* actually respect people's right not to be watched, interfered with, data-mined, manipulated, pimped out and monetised.
This is a really fucking big deal - we only have Google's word that they won't use the data elswhere in their business and they are not a charity so we can't expect them *not* to monetise the insights that are derived from highly confidential data that was disclosed without asking - or even NOTIFYING - the people whose data it is.
We have the RIGHT to privacy - this means that we need to be given the option to CHOOSE to hand over our personal medical secrets to Google, not to have it done in secret by bureaucrats whose track record on confidentiality is pretty fucking terrible.
There are significant cultural differences in attitudes to privacy between the US and the UK and your dismissive attitude seems to indicate that you are either ignorant of these or are so parochial that you don't value cultural viewpoints that don't mirror your own.
*not our Government, obvs. Or our media. Or the idiots who believe what they read in the tabloid press. But still.....
Aside from degrading the web experience for millions of users, costing companies money better spent on accessibiity or security improvements and trashing analytics, it was only a matter of time before someone caught on to the nefarious possibilities of a popup that the user has been conditioned to see (and accept without scrutiny).
This law was one of the bloody stupidest moves in the history of technology and serves only to reinforce the unfortunate attitude that clicking a box can equate to "informed consent". A classic case of confusing the success of a mechanism with the desired outcome.
Kinda harsh - I don't think of myself as any kind of snowflake and we're not talking about technical IT knowledge here but understanding of privacy law and how it applies to a pretty unique non-profit health and social care organisation.
No doubt any other data protection expert can come in and suss it all out - just thought it might benefit the organisation if the learning curve for the new bod were a little less steep.....
In addition to the unfair implication of guilt; "personal data" (identifiable; relating to a living individual) which fits into the category of "sensitive" (in this case; pertaining to criminal offences, convicted or alleged) is subject to strict conditions for how it can be used. As the police cannot claim that tweeting is "necessary for the prevention or detection of crime"; their processing of this sensitive personal data is in breach of DPA, regardless of whether the allegation of drink driving is correct.
(Read that here once, can't remember who posted it)
Filtering out comments which are impolite is a good start. No-one needs to call someone a mindless jizzgargling fucknugget to get their point across. A site which allows free discourse provided that rules of courtesy are observed sounds like a good start to me.
That clause only applies to criminal offences under the Data Protection Act. This was a Civil Monetary Penalty which the ICO has levied for a breach of the 7th Principle.
Breaching the Principles is not in itself a crime (hence "Civil" Monetary Penalty). There are crimes under DPA, for example unlawfully obtaining personal data.
The charity *should* have contracts in place with the website provider that allow them to recover the cost of the fine on the basis that the contractor didn't do the job properly......bet they don't though.
Er... no, actually they went to the police just as they were supposed to and ended up in court where some moron with a robe and gavel basically said "I don't care, go away".
This has interesting implications for UK businesses which outsource functions to India. The Data Protection Act requires that where processing of personal data is done in other countries, the same protections are applied to the data as if it were being processed in the UK.
One of the requirements is knowing who has access to the data and what they will use it for. I would have thought that allowing $Unnamed_Govt_Official access to the data for $Unspecified_Offical_Purpose would be a clear violation of this requirement
Unfortunately as consumers, we have few options for making much of a difference to a company's behaviour by moving to a competitor as they're all at it! However, a flood of complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office may provoke some kind of response....perhaps a few companies might start rethinking the false economy of outsourcing...
From my experience working for an IT Service Provider on Government accounts - I can tell you that the UK Government is constantly being sued by civil servants with disabilities who have not been granted the level of accessibility they consider necessary to do their work.
Therefore now, every new project has *millions* set aside for the purpose of integrating the new software/service/hardware with the myriad accessibility requirements on the estate.
I am all for people with disabilities having equal opportunities and going out to have normal working lives by the way. But if we want to consider ourselves a civilised and supportive society, we have to recognise that these things will cost money which cannot only be taken from the people who benefit.
Of course, if we all decide not to contribute to the increased cost of a more accessible and democratic society we could just drop the hypocrisy and admit we don't want to pay to help *other* people....that's just not what capitalism is all about y'know....
According to The Independent, the judge has added Weiner to the Sex Offenders Register for the specific purpose of causing the general prison population to identify him as a pervert and make him suffer, even though there is no indication that Weiner possessed this material for any purpose other than to screw up Thomson's life.
I think Weiner is a scumbag who deserves to go to prison, but he is *not* a sex offender and does not need to be kept away from children's playgrounds when he is released. I certainly don't agree with this tactic by the judge - surely placing people who are not sex offenders on a list of sex offenders renders the list meaningless for any monitoring or preventative purpose? And since when was justice about eye-for-eye revenge in this civilised society?!
They could get the money for these bounties from rape victims and this a portion of this money can be given to bounty hunters who have the legal authority to conduct these sorts of investigations.
I suspect that approach would lead quite quickly to a situation where only rich victims could afford to buy co-operation in hunting down their attackers. And quite possibly, where people would not respond to requests for assistance unless there's "something in it for them" and "at the right price". p How about we give the police enough funding to do their jobs properly, refuse to accept corruption and incompetence and take a very close look at measures that might mitigate the chances of people growing up to be abusive psychos? Just a thought.....
"....Just imagine it for a moment. Whole populations getting educated and healthy, and secure and aspirational. Women's rights, for Christ's sake. We can't *afford* these things to happen, Chris. Who's going to soak up our subsidised food surplus for us? Who's going to make our shoes and shirts? Who's going to supply us with cheap labour and cheap raw materials? Who's going to store our nuclear waste, balance out our CO2 misdemeanours? Who's going to buy our arms?"
If someone is willing to pony up the accreditation fees
....twenty thousand quid. Not surprisingly, the list of CAPS-approved products is quite short and the suppliers that *are* accredited are a) making a mint and b) not inclined to improve their clunky, difficult-to-administer products in any way since all UK Govt clients are locked in to using them anyway.
Not sure how this relates to the technology under discussion.....admittedly this happened in the UK - should the police have had a warrant for their IR scanner?
The UK's NHS Direct site has a Self Help section where a series of questions about your symptoms will lead to advice on how to react - ie: make an appointment with a GP / rest/fluids / go to A&E now! It's very useful - especially when it can take days to get a GP appointment and you're not sure whether it's really serious enough to have to take the time off work.
While the NHS have been slated in the past for their stupid uses of technology, this one seems to be - for once! - both appropriate and useful!
Afraid I have to disagree with you there. In the UK at least, there are many bloggers whose output is verifiably more truthful, better-written and more apropos than that of most "professional" journalists. While the journalists are concentrating on how many women Tiger Woods has slept with, how breakfast is good for you and generally toeing the corporate party line, there are bloggers like this chap: Anton Vowl who writes coherent (if occasionally profane) and well-researched articles about important issues - often pointing out where the "proper" journalists have got it wrong and then admitted it later in very small writing.
The quality of bloggers is just as variable as the quality of journalists. From the many examples of cut-and-paste journalism that have been seen lately, it would appear that "following up on leads, research and fact-checking" are far less of a priority than publishing the latest celebrity scandal or product press release.
Much of the damage of rape comes not from the actual act (unless it was particularly violent) , but from all of the stigma and media circuses surrounding it
Um....no. Really no. Much of the damage of rape comes from the sense of violation, of powerlessness, of shame and humiliation that someone has used your body without your permission - in fact in direct opposition to your wishes and you couldn't stop it. There really are very very few experiences in life that compare in terms of horror and emotional destruction.
Rape is an emotionally-charged subject - it's one of the worst experiences anyone can go through at any age.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah well, it might be a long-standing practice in the US of A, where people have almost no privacy rights but here in the UK, we* actually respect people's right not to be watched, interfered with, data-mined, manipulated, pimped out and monetised.
This is a really fucking big deal - we only have Google's word that they won't use the data elswhere in their business and they are not a charity so we can't expect them *not* to monetise the insights that are derived from highly confidential data that was disclosed without asking - or even NOTIFYING - the people whose data it is.
We have the RIGHT to privacy - this means that we need to be given the option to CHOOSE to hand over our personal medical secrets to Google, not to have it done in secret by bureaucrats whose track record on confidentiality is pretty fucking terrible.
There are significant cultural differences in attitudes to privacy between the US and the UK and your dismissive attitude seems to indicate that you are either ignorant of these or are so parochial that you don't value cultural viewpoints that don't mirror your own.
*not our Government, obvs. Or our media. Or the idiots who believe what they read in the tabloid press. But still.....
...some amusing background on the cookie law https://silktide.com/the-stupi...
Aside from degrading the web experience for millions of users, costing companies money better spent on accessibiity or security improvements and trashing analytics, it was only a matter of time before someone caught on to the nefarious possibilities of a popup that the user has been conditioned to see (and accept without scrutiny).
This law was one of the bloody stupidest moves in the history of technology and serves only to reinforce the unfortunate attitude that clicking a box can equate to "informed consent". A classic case of confusing the success of a mechanism with the desired outcome.
Braaaaaaaaaaaans!!
Good thing I'm female then! ;-)
Kinda harsh - I don't think of myself as any kind of snowflake and we're not talking about technical IT knowledge here but understanding of privacy law and how it applies to a pretty unique non-profit health and social care organisation.
No doubt any other data protection expert can come in and suss it all out - just thought it might benefit the organisation if the learning curve for the new bod were a little less steep.....
This came up a while ago with another police service and was blogged on by one of the UK's foremost data protection experts. The campaign was slapped down by the UK's privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office.
In addition to the unfair implication of guilt; "personal data" (identifiable; relating to a living individual) which fits into the category of "sensitive" (in this case; pertaining to criminal offences, convicted or alleged) is subject to strict conditions for how it can be used. As the police cannot claim that tweeting is "necessary for the prevention or detection of crime"; their processing of this sensitive personal data is in breach of DPA, regardless of whether the allegation of drink driving is correct.
Didn't people used to be hanged for this kind of thing?
"'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good'"
(Read that here once, can't remember who posted it)
Filtering out comments which are impolite is a good start. No-one needs to call someone a mindless jizzgargling fucknugget to get their point across. A site which allows free discourse provided that rules of courtesy are observed sounds like a good start to me.
Don't lase me, bro!
That clause only applies to criminal offences under the Data Protection Act. This was a Civil Monetary Penalty which the ICO has levied for a breach of the 7th Principle.
Breaching the Principles is not in itself a crime (hence "Civil" Monetary Penalty). There are crimes under DPA, for example unlawfully obtaining personal data.
The charity *should* have contracts in place with the website provider that allow them to recover the cost of the fine on the basis that the contractor didn't do the job properly......bet they don't though.
....or cancer
And they live longer with arthritis, osteoporosis, a failing immune system and dementia. Yeah, sounds like fun.
The Torchwood mini-series "Miracle Day" springs to mind.
Judges in the UK don't use gavels.
This has interesting implications for UK businesses which outsource functions to India. The Data Protection Act requires that where processing of personal data is done in other countries, the same protections are applied to the data as if it were being processed in the UK.
One of the requirements is knowing who has access to the data and what they will use it for. I would have thought that allowing $Unnamed_Govt_Official access to the data for $Unspecified_Offical_Purpose would be a clear violation of this requirement
Unfortunately as consumers, we have few options for making much of a difference to a company's behaviour by moving to a competitor as they're all at it! However, a flood of complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office may provoke some kind of response....perhaps a few companies might start rethinking the false economy of outsourcing...
From my experience working for an IT Service Provider on Government accounts - I can tell you that the UK Government is constantly being sued by civil servants with disabilities who have not been granted the level of accessibility they consider necessary to do their work.
Therefore now, every new project has *millions* set aside for the purpose of integrating the new software/service/hardware with the myriad accessibility requirements on the estate.
I am all for people with disabilities having equal opportunities and going out to have normal working lives by the way. But if we want to consider ourselves a civilised and supportive society, we have to recognise that these things will cost money which cannot only be taken from the people who benefit.
Of course, if we all decide not to contribute to the increased cost of a more accessible and democratic society we could just drop the hypocrisy and admit we don't want to pay to help *other* people....that's just not what capitalism is all about y'know....
According to The Independent, the judge has added Weiner to the Sex Offenders Register for the specific purpose of causing the general prison population to identify him as a pervert and make him suffer, even though there is no indication that Weiner possessed this material for any purpose other than to screw up Thomson's life.
I think Weiner is a scumbag who deserves to go to prison, but he is *not* a sex offender and does not need to be kept away from children's playgrounds when he is released. I certainly don't agree with this tactic by the judge - surely placing people who are not sex offenders on a list of sex offenders renders the list meaningless for any monitoring or preventative purpose? And since when was justice about eye-for-eye revenge in this civilised society?!
I suspect that approach would lead quite quickly to a situation where only rich victims could afford to buy co-operation in hunting down their attackers. And quite possibly, where people would not respond to requests for assistance unless there's "something in it for them" and "at the right price".
p
How about we give the police enough funding to do their jobs properly, refuse to accept corruption and incompetence and take a very close look at measures that might mitigate the chances of people growing up to be abusive psychos? Just a thought.....
From "Market Forces" by Richard Morgan
Global Democracy my ass
One word.
Tommyknockers
I'd as much love a vaccine against TB, but I don't see that happening for awhile
Um......this?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_Calmette-Gu%C3%A9rin
If someone is willing to pony up the accreditation fees
Make sure you insulate your house properly, or you might get a knock at the door!!
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/242592-police-find-the-hot-spot-but-not-the-pot
Not sure how this relates to the technology under discussion.....admittedly this happened in the UK - should the police have had a warrant for their IR scanner?
The UK's NHS Direct site has a Self Help section where a series of questions about your symptoms will lead to advice on how to react - ie: make an appointment with a GP / rest/fluids / go to A&E now! It's very useful - especially when it can take days to get a GP appointment and you're not sure whether it's really serious enough to have to take the time off work.
While the NHS have been slated in the past for their stupid uses of technology, this one seems to be - for once! - both appropriate and useful!
Biffin's Bridge! http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=biffins+bridge
Afraid I have to disagree with you there. In the UK at least, there are many bloggers whose output is verifiably more truthful, better-written and more apropos than that of most "professional" journalists. While the journalists are concentrating on how many women Tiger Woods has slept with, how breakfast is good for you and generally toeing the corporate party line, there are bloggers like this chap: Anton Vowl who writes coherent (if occasionally profane) and well-researched articles about important issues - often pointing out where the "proper" journalists have got it wrong and then admitted it later in very small writing.
The quality of bloggers is just as variable as the quality of journalists. From the many examples of cut-and-paste journalism that have been seen lately, it would appear that "following up on leads, research and fact-checking" are far less of a priority than publishing the latest celebrity scandal or product press release.
Um....no. Really no. Much of the damage of rape comes from the sense of violation, of powerlessness, of shame and humiliation that someone has used your body without your permission - in fact in direct opposition to your wishes and you couldn't stop it. There really are very very few experiences in life that compare in terms of horror and emotional destruction.
Rape is an emotionally-charged subject - it's one of the worst experiences anyone can go through at any age.