The Open Rights Group have set up a spiffy site, Statebook,  to illustrate the dangers of the burgeoning Database State in the UK. 

It's an effectve illustration of how the UK's intrusive data collection habits threaten our liberties and freedom, and how the future looks to be mapped out.  The recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust revealed that not only is our government remarkably keen to get their dibs on considerable quantities of data on us and our movements, but that it's equally inept in obeying data protection regulations.

Lord Carter is the author of a report for the UK Government, Digital Britain.  The UK Government, its Departments and other agencies have been remarkably ineffective over the fracas about Phorm's deep packet inspection technology, its covert testing by BT in 2006 and 2007, and its more open testing by BT on 2008.

Well, what's this in a Guardian report (Government's broadband-for-all pledge in jeopardy)?

The BBC is reporting that the European Commission have launched an action against Britain over the Phorm phiasco (EC starts legal action on Phorm):

I blogged the other day that there might be an interesting conflict of interest in Lord Carter's office (Why Lord Carter is pro-Phorm?).  Lord Carter of course wrote the Digital Britain report, and is a bit of a mover and shaker in Government circles when it comes to digital issues such as broadband rollout (remember Phorm claim their technology will help fund broadband expansion).  The news revolved around the fact that among other activities, Phorm's Kip Meeks works as an advisor to Lord Carter.

Chris Williams of The Register has been digging (The Register - Phorm director advises UK.gov broadband minister):

A list of websites supposedly blocked by the Great Australian Firewall, most of which (but by no means all) are porn sites, has been posted at Wikileaks.  Since the list was posted, there have been recurring reports that Wikileaks has been blocked or shutdown.  It's also possible that high traffic in response to this and other stories has overwhelmed the Wikileaks servers. 

According to Wikinews, blocking is taking place (Portions of Wikileaks, Wikipedia blocked in Australia):

This is the kind of story that fuels my worries about the database state we in the UK are walking into.  The Guardian reports that The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has examined a sample of 46 UK government databases and found significant issues (Right to privacy broken by a quarter of UK's public databases, says report).

46 databases, including the new ID card database and the DNA fingerprint database were examined to see whether they met standards of privacy and effectiveness,  Of these, 11 were found to be so failing they should be scrapped.

The fallout from the revelations of just what is on the Great Australian Firewall blacklist continues, even as Wikileaks is still submerged.  The Age reports (Labor's blog-watch plan hits Whirlpool of dissent) reports the latest utterances of Stephen Conroy, the minister behind the assault on internet freedom:

THE Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with documents singling out a website critical of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy for special mention.

As reported by the BBC (Extent of council spying revealed),

Councils in England and Wales have used controversial spying laws 10,000 times in the past five years, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show. 

I happen not to think that watching "adult" movies is a particular sin (if one is that way inclined, well....), but the recent furore over the Home Secretary's expenses scam claims actually annoy me for another reason.  That is that the culture of claiming expenses seems so ingrained that everything is thought of as fair game by the average politician.

A report at the Daily Telegraph indicates some of the items on Wacky Jacqui's claim (Jacqui Smith's other household expenses claims):

The Guardian reports on UK proposals for EU-wide vehicle surveillance (Big Brother is watching: surveillance box to track drivers is backed - dated 31/3/09, so presumably not an April Fool!):

The government is backing a project to install a "communication box" in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe, the Guardian can reveal.

As a child, I can remember my parents illustrating the lack of freedom within states such as the USSR by pointing out that the citizens of such countries were not accorded the freedom to move and travel at will within the borders.  Little did they (or I) know that such restrictions would be proposed by a UK Government. The new proposals are, of course, a consequence of the much pushed and overstated terrorist threat.  This time the measures are held within Contest 2 legislation, which The Guardian's Henry Porter has picked up on (Planning a day trip to the Isle of Wight?) :

 At what stage, I wonder, will those who say the loss of liberty isn't happening concede that it is? Maybe if they examine page 113 of the Contest 2 (pdf) counter-terrorism document, which Jason Lewis of the Mail on Sunday pointed out means that anyone boarding a ferry to the Isle of Wight, flying between British cities or travelling to Northern Ireland will have to provide their name, date of birth and address.

The Open Rights Group reports (Data retention endangers democracy):

European legislation that came into force today requires internet service providers to retain details of user's emails, net phone calls and other web traffic. This requirement, imposed on all all EU states, is a serious erosion of our fundamental human right to privacy. 

The Guardian reports (Straw bows to pressure over data sharing) that the Government's controversial plans to permit government agencies to correlate and combine data held on citizens have been withdrawn.  I previously reported on clause 152 in the otherwise innocuous sounding Coroners and Justice Bill Part 8 - Data Protection Act 1998 (c. 29) (The UK database state comes a step closer...).  Now it seems that privacy campaigners have had an effect:

Jack Straw last night scrapped controversial government proposals that could have allowed patients' medical and DNA records to be shared with police, foreign governments and other bodies.

The Register has a report on the House of Lords privacy meeting (Phorm CEO clashes with Berners-Lee at Parliament), and it sounds as though sparks were flying.

It would seem that comparisons have been made between the pathetic response of the UK government to the far more robust attitute of the US government:

 The Register - Phorm CEO clashes with Berners-Lee at Parliament

The Times - Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee wants ban on snooping on internet users

Two reports in the press highlight the database dangers the UK is sleepwalking into.

The Guardian reports (DNA details of 1.1m children on database) that the details of over a million children remain in the national DNA database,  despite over half of these individuals having no criminal convictions.

This morning, Ben Goldacre, the Guardian columnist and Bad Science blogger) has written on the difficulties and dangers of datamining to identify criminals and terrorists (Datamining would be lovely if it worked).

He's written this on the back of an IPPR report (The National Security Strategy: Implications for the UK intelligence community), and he's raising issues of accuracy and false positive rates - clearly analogous to evidence-based medical trials, which are closer to his usual blog fare.  Goldacre quotes the author of the report:

The BBC reports (Protest officers seized balloons) that some unusual items were confiscated from a power station protest group.  Supposedly items are meant to be confiscated to prevent offences being committed, but a FOI request reveals that along with the aforementioned balloons,

items taken included blankets, a walking stick, a clown outfit and soap.  [...]  A mountain bike, cycle helmets, bin bags and party poppers were also taken from protesters entering the camp site.

The Open Rights Group have reported on the Lords Constitution Committee report on surveillance and privacy.  This is a monster document, which can be read here: Constitution Committee - Second Report. Surveillance: Citizens and the State.  It's a big document, and it perhaps easier to digest via the ORG synopsis, and as the ORG say, "Those with nothing to hide can still have a great deal to fear".

The RIPA sections are interesting (Committee report section; ORG interpretation), in light of pretty clear local council abuses of RIPA ro spot fly-tippers etc.

A bit of a rumpus about UK science funding policy erupted this week, following publication of a letter to the Times Higher about the move to increase the emphasis towards funding science with a more immediate benefit to the UK economy. This manifests itself as a two page document (the Impact Summary) that now forms part of every Research Council grant application (in addition, I think, to the short "Beneficiaries" section that already exists.

This policy seems to be favoured by the Science Minister, Paul Drayson.  Lord Drayson is a politician with a commercial science/engineering background, but who has never been elected to public office.  he was ennobled, and reaches Minister status via a seat in the House of Lords.  Interestingly, as befits a proponent of grant applicants predicting and outlining future benefits of their yet to be performed research (not just economic but social as well), he appears to claim sixth sense "I saw it coming, says minister of sixth sense Lord Drayson".