This week’s column is about the Home Office’s alleged new plans to keep a centralised record of the nation’s communications traffic data:
Can you “persuade others of the benefits of proposals or the value of a particular interpretation”? Then perhaps the recently advertised position of senior information officer at the Home Office’s new Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) is for you.
According to the description of the £45,000-a-year job (removed from the Home Office website, but, at the time of going to press, still available in Google’s cache), the IMP has been set up to “maintain the UK’s capability to obtain and exploit Lawful Intercept (LI) product and Communications Data (CD)”, using “a range of new technologies”. You and I will know IMP better as the nutty plans that have been making headlines all summer, plans to log details about every web page we visit, every SMS message we text and every email we send. And not only that, but to store all this “communications traffic” information in a central database.
Read the rest here.
Last night, I enjoyed watching Mischief: Your Identity for Sale on BBC3. This style of documentary (very Michael Moore) always leaves me wondering how much the film-makers massaged the facts to sensationalise the story. But being somewhat of an expert in these matters, thanks to my work with ORG, I know they’ve got it right on the money here. Michael Wills MP (who is in charge of Data Protection) and David Smith, Deputy Information Commissioner, come off particularly badly. Find out more about the programme here, and watch it for the next 7 days here.
(Snooper’s Paradise is an excellent permanent flea market in the North Laine in Brighton. I love it. The picture above is taken from their store front.)