The Conservatives, fired by the controversial arrest of their immigration spokeman within the House of Commons earlier this year appear to be somewhat exercised by the issue DNA sample retention by the police (Police policy on deletion of DNA records is shambles, say Conservatives | Politics | The Guardian).  The dear old UK Government appears to be fighting a rearguard action to evade the judgment from Europe that the retention of DNA samples and associated data on individuals who end up either not being charged or not being found guilty infringes human rights.

Freedom of information requests to police forces in England and Wales by the shadow immigration spokesman, Damian Green, reveal a huge disparity in the way records are treated. "The force most likely to remove your DNA profile is South Yorkshire, with 83% of requests granted," said Green. "However, of the total requests to 26
different forces, less than half were granted. Some forces, including Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire and Nottingham, refused to remove any profiles."

What's even more astonishing is the Government's belief that an individual arrested but not found guilty of a minor offence is in some way more innocent than an individual arrested but not found guilty of a serious offence.  As the Guardian reports:

The Register reports that the UK Government's much-vaunted and euphemistically named Internet Modernisation Programme (which of course represents State snooping on a vast scale) is going ahead as planned (Massive net surveillance programme on schedule).

This huge endeavour, which seeks to monitor and track all electronically mediated communications in a (probably vain) hope that patterns useful in crime detection may emerge was apparently begun in 2006, despite a consultation exercise that completely passed me by (I must have blinked at an inopportune moment). According the The Register:

The unelected Sith Lord Mandelson, who appears to have collared vast acres of political power in the UK via his all-encompassing ministry has his Digital Economy reports Ars Technica: UK "Pirate Finder General" law innocuous now, could get ugly.  This bill seems to fit the needs of big media rather than any form of human rights and justice.  Ars Technica reports:

The bill implements the Digital Britain report, which was completed earlier this year and attempted to chart a course forward for Britain in a high-tech world. It initially imposes two obligations on ISPs: they must forward warning letters from copyright holders to their subscribers, and they must maintain an anonymized list of the number of such warnings received by each subscriber. If a copyright holder asks, they must be shown the list, at which point the rightsholder can go to court and seek to uncover the names of the top offenders, and then sue them. There are no sanctions, but such sanctions could be coming. The government has written "reserve powers" into the law that can be deployed at a later date without needing Parliamentary approval.

...The Register: Spain warned on filesharing cut-offs, in which we are told that Commissioner Viviane Reding (the saviour of internet privacy in the UK) has said:

"If Spain cuts off internet access without a procedure in front of a judge, it would certainly run into conflict with the European Commission."

I think Lord Mandelson should take note, in light of his Digital Economy bill.

The Register reports today (UK gets final warning over Phorm trials) that the UK Government has moved closer to Infringement proceedings over the Phorm phiasco.

The UK government today came a step closer to international embarrassment over its failure to act against BT and Phorm for their secret trials of mass internet snooping technology.

The European Commission said it had moved to the second stage of infringement proceedings after the trials, revealed by The Register, exposed failings in the UK's implementation of privacy laws.

Lord Mandelson, the unelected Minister in charge of a vast swathe of Government business via his roles as the current First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council, has been pretty vocal of late over what to do about illegal filesharers.  As one who presumably mingles with the dinosaurs of big media, he's keen to hit back at individuals seen to be stealing content from the big media.

His latest proposals seem to strike at the core of justice - to disconnect individuals accused of illegal downloading.  Presumably accused by big media?  Anyway, The Register reports (TalkTalk to fight net disconnection plan) that at least one ISP is preparing to put up a fight. 

So, we're in the midst of a major recession, the Government has spent huge amounts bailing out the fat cats of international banking, and Joe Public is tightening his or her belt.  The Higher Education Sector, in which I work, is certainly feeling the chill wind of cut-backs, and in my Institution's case this comes on top of the Goverment's ELQ policy.

So, one might have thought that costly and pointless exercises such as the dreadful ID card plan, and the even more despicable Interception Modernisation Programme might have been curtailed or dropped.  Not a bit of it.  Computer Weekly reports (Home Office trebles consultancy spend):

As part of its authoritarian stance on everything the public do, the UK Government has set its sights on controlling ingress and egress across our borders, via the notorious 53 Questions that travellers will need to supply answers to before being allowed to travel.  This whole e-Borders shenanigans is projected to cost the UK Border Agency £1.3bn over the next 10 years.  And with the responsibility for collecting the data falling on the transport companies (ferry companies and airlines for example), it it likely that the traveller will have to cough up for the system, at least in part.  And of course, there is th issue that this applies to travel from the UK mainland to the Isle of Wight, making passports a requirement for internal travel.

Here's a list of the 53 pieces of information they will demand from us (courtesy of the Daily Mail)

Some time ago I signed an e-petition at www.number10.gov.uk - this aimed to question the establishment of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC), popularly known on the blogosphere as Ofquack.  I have little sympathy with quackitioners, practising a startling array of "therapies" which pretty much all lack evidence of efficacy.  Singh and Ernst's Trick of Treatment offers a good and clear overview of the major CAM treatments out there.  The petition read:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to require evicence of basic efficacy and safety for licencing by the CNHC."

Details of Petition:

"The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) issues approval certificates to Supplementary, Complementary and Alternative Medicine practitioners, but this approval is currently independent of actual evidence of efficacy or safety. It is likely that practitioners will use CNHC approval to imply efficacy and safety, even though it promises no such thing. We, the undersigned, therefore petition that the CNHC requirements be tightened to include evidence of efficacy and safety."

As reported in the BBC this week (Science and tech committee reborn), once again the UK Parliament has a committee to oversee science.  In recent ministerial revamps, the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills (DIUS) was merged with BERR to form a new super-ministry - Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) - for Lord Mandelson, who seems to have emerged from the political wilderness to which he was consigned after a scandal too far a few years ago.  Interestingly, this means there's no Government department with Education or Science in its title.

Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation is quoted as saying:

The UK Government's obsession with knowing what we've done, what we're doing, and what we're planning on doing is not only intrusive but borders on the dangerous.  The Daily Telegraph reports (ID cards: taxman allowed access to personal data) that tax official will have access to data held by the ID card system.

HM Revenue and Customs staff will be able to examine people's financial transactions on the scheme's database and search for evidence of undeclared earnings or bank accounts.

HT: Grumpy Twin

My MP, Nadine Dorries, has been at the receiving end of accusations from the Daily Telegraph that she too has been on the expenses take (My MP gets "expenses" letter from the DailyTelegraph).  Now, I've got a bit of a soft spot for Nadine, despite her political belief being approximately the polar opposite of mine, that her parliamentary activities being pretty appalling.  I guess that's because she's always taken the time to respond to my letters and emails.  Well, except for the one pointing out that she really shouldn't be supporting homeopathic hospitals - particularly as the chucks around her past like as a nurse.  I also found her slightly juvenile blog articles quite appealing.  Valdemar Squelch, commenting on an article at Heresy Corner quite shrewdly observed:

Her whingeing, self-righteous style would be almost acceptable if she were 14, had just painted her bedroom black, and had been told by her parents that they're not going to buy her and her friend Clovinda tickets to a death metal concert.

I was unfortunate enough to see the BNP's party political broadcast last night on TV.  I am not sure of what the rules for such broadcasts are, but in terms of pure misrepresentation of historical fact and by sailing pretty close to the wind on stirring up racial prejudice, it was a pretty nasty piece of work.

Nick Griffin portrayed the Second World War as having been won by (exclusively) white christian Brits.  Never mind the millions of Soviet citizens, never mind the Poles and the Czechs, never mind our colonial troops of various races and nationalities, never mind the US military, never mind all the others, why should the BNP let a little bit of historical fact get in the way of their vile outpourings?  I hope more of the public care about the truth.

The BBC reports (DNA data plan comes under fire) that the Government's wholly inadequate response to the European Court of Human Rights ruling that retention of DNA profiles of individuals who have not been convicted of an offence is attracting considerable criticism.

In response to a number of commentators' objections to the Government's plans to continue to retain these data for up to 12 years,

I've had pretty good exchanges of letters and emails with my MP, Nadine Dorries over the years. While I don't share political beliefs with her, and disagree pretty fundamentally with her on a number of issues, I've found her quite responsive as an MP.

Of course, I'd been wondering when she'd get a communication from The Daily Telegraph as part of their investigation of the sleazy expense claims that MPs make - and I see from her blog that she has indeed received such a letter (Dorries Blog - The Daily Telegraph). Ms Dorries exudes a palpable sense of outrage in her response, which I suspect she wrote in a bit of a rage and in haste! It reads as though the letter was accompanied by a list of accusations, some of which would appear from her response to be errors.  The Daily Telegraph article is available online (MPs' expenses: Tory MP Nadine Dorries admits she only spends weekends and holidays in her 'main home').

Chris Williams of The Register certainly has been working hard, and this in a week that's absolutely stuffed with stories relating to Phorm's violation of internet privacy!  Today, he reports (Tory 'terror' affair shows danger of ubiquitous surveillance) on the circumstances surrounding the arrest a few months ago of Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green:

The "national security" justification offered by Jacqui Smith for the warrantless counter-terror police raid on a fellow member of Parliament's offices was trumped up by officials embarrassed by a series of leaks, we've now learned. The information about immigration failures fed to the Tories was politically damaging to the Labour government, but arguably in the public interest, and certainly no threat to national security.

Henry Porter's written in The Guardian on the growing desire of the present UK Government for data control...and the spiralling costs (Paying billions for our database state).  There are two frightening aspects.

Firstly, the evident desire of our Government to find out what we are all up to - innocent or under suspicion, we are all targets for the prying eyes of the State.

So, despite Home Secretary Wacky Jacqui's decision to scrap the Interception Modernisation Programme (or at least the database aspects of it), she's still desperate for the security services to get their mitts on our internet activity.

The Register today (Jacqui's secret plan to 'Master the Internet') revealed details of the grandiosely named Mastering the Internet (MTI) project, which will see GCHQ using DPI techniques to monitor internet traffic:

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has a website of essays related to the internet and privacy, and many feature discussions of Phorm's vile and intrusive technology, tested in the UK as "Webwise".

You can view the essays here.  There are contributions from individuals on both sides of the fence (but mostly it seems anti-dpi).