And now it’s Google’s turn, this time it’s privacy

Simon Davies, who writes a Blog called the Privacy Surgeon has today commented on the EU Commission’s latest intervention against Google. His article, Europe to Google: respect our laws or face the consequences details the actions taken by the EU’s regulators, led by France which has amongst the strongest data protection and privacy laws in the EU. His article’s title sums up his views as to what is happening.

I have been meaning to write up my views that Google may have jumped the shark, but it’ll have to wait ’till another day, meanwhile, here’s another piece of evidence. …

#lab12 conference diary

#lab12 Despite being a member of the Labour Party for 38 years, I have never been to conference before; I have just returned from Manchester, where I attended for 2½ days. It was rather fun, jolly useful and thanks to some of the people I met, inspiring.

I got there late-ish on Sunday and met up with my comrades from Lewisham Deptford CLP, including @vickyfoxcroft, @joe_dromey, @joeperryuk, @mjrharris and @Len_Duvall in a bar near the conference centre. I had been disappointed that the conference and fringe running order had not been sent to me until after I bought my train ticket. This meant I missed part one of the shenanigans and the debate on “Refounding Labour” which I had wanted to attend. After the Lewisham meetup, I moved on to the New Statesman party. I think as a subscriber, I should have had an invite, I didn’t, but anyway, I got in OK. I met up with one of their staff, and expressed my views that I didn’t want to pay to read Dan Hodges and could they stop publishing his stuff. I was advised to write to the Editor, Jason Cowley, with that view, but I can’t find his email or twitter handle! Poor show! …

Citizens not Suspects

I attended the Open Rights Group’s London meetup on Monday night; Rachel Robinson, Liberty’s Policy Officer was speaking at the Angel, a pub near Old St, probably the inspiration for the London monopoly board space. She spoke about planned legistation in the UK known variously as the Communications Capabilities Development Programme or the Communications Data Bill. Interesting how the British Government develop such annodyne names for their oppressive measures, the Digital Economy Act vs the US “Stop Online Piracy Act” or the “Commerce before Leisure on the Internet Act”, I made the last one up, or I think I did. …

They won’t snoop, if you’ve nothing to hide (1985 style).

A night at the ORG London meetups, talking to Jim Killock he asks why the Labour Party and Trade Unions aren’t opposing the Communications Data Bill; he forecasts a time when these new laws will be used against the Unions. He’s too young to remember the last time this was an issue,

Bugging Harriet Harman and the NCCL, and leading Trade Unionists in the NUM, AEUW and CPSA.They probably wouldn’t be breaking the law today, and the CDP will make it easier. Massiter was a warrior for the truth, a brave women;  I am grateful for her courage and Nick Davies is still fighting the fight.

The Denning quote in the last five minutes is quite fun.

“…the Security Services …are to be used for one purpose and one purpose only, the defence of the Realm.

Most people in this country would, I am sure wholeheartedly support this principle for it would be intolerable to us to have anything in the nature of a Gestapo or Secret Police to snoop into all that we do…even at the behest of a Minister or a Government department…”

This isn’t the article I expected to write when I set out to attend, perhaps I’ll post my notes tomorrow. …

You can’t keep the Spies out

While continuing to think about the privacy and regulatory issues that Cloud computing raises, I was point at this article in the NY Times, called “Does Cloud Computing Mean More Risks to Privacy?“, which looks at the US legal position and points out that the US police and even civil investigators will find it easier to get data from third parties than from the entities originally authorised to have access to private data. The article seems to have been categorised as news due to the release of the World Privacy Forum’s latest report, “Privacy in the Clouds“, …