King's College London breached GDPR by sharing list of activist students with cops Kings College London breached Europe's General Data Protection Regulation when it shared a list of student activists with the police and barred the activists from campus during a visit by the Queen, an independent report [PDF] has found. Some 13 students and one member of staff were unable to access any of the campus sites as …
Indeed we only know he dictates stuff, not that he can write. The tablets supposedly given to Moses were never seen, locked up in the tabernacle. A bit like the golden tablets the angel Moroni handed out.
God is hesheit exists almost certainly predates human literacy anyway and what script and language would god use? Cuneiform and Sumerian most likely but who knows?
I don't think that many English kings really claimed divine right that much. And it certainly fell out of favour a long time ago. It died off with the Stuarts. It continued a bit longer on the continent. But England (and I think Scotland) were a lot less absolutist in general terms, and the crown was less powerful in comparison to the aristocracy.
In major part because kings of England weren't all that rich, having given out too much land for patronage in the years after Norman the Conqueror - so were more reliant on Parliament for money for boring stuff like fighting wars, or having an army.
Well I think there was a sort of general feeling that if you won a battle, then God was probably on your side - and if you lost it, he probably wasn't. Some sort of combination of "might is right" and "God helps those who help themselves."
William got to be a lot more absolute because something like a third of the Saxon aristocracy was dead after Hastings and Stamford Bridge (we've always had a football hooligan problem...). After the North rebelled and got crushed that only got worse.
Claiming divine right was also too good a way to get away with stuff - so was strongly discouraged by those around them who wanted to maintain their own power. If you're the Pope you don't want the king ordering the church around, and so when Kingy says stuff like I'm only accountable to God, the Pope might cut up rough. And if not the church, then the aristocracy. King John got forced to concede with Magna Carta that he was subject to laws - of course he reneged on it, and then there was another rebellion and he snuffed it before he could lose.
I think Charles I genuinely believed in divine right, and it's one reason why he miscalculated so badly (and so often) in his dealings with Parliament.
Although Charles 1 was a pain in many ways, his dealings with Parliament were doomed because they had the idea that the little people should pay taxes to run the Royal Navy which protected their ships. (It's all in N A M Rodger's The Safeguard of the Sea, for those interested).
The MPs of the day were exactly like the ERG of today; in politics to promote their business interests.
When they came to power, as anybody might have guessed, they kicked the common people even harder than the King had done. But the common people never got a choice as to which side they supported.
Benson's Cycle,
I don't think that's really a fair reading of history. Pym was probably more of an arse than Charles. But the point was an English King hadn't had the right to collect new taxes without parliament's agreement since John, if not so rigidly in the early days. You can't just dump 400 years of precedent and law. The reason Charles levied ship tax inland was not to fund the navy. The navy was already funded by the ship tax on coastal areas. He was trying to increase his revenue without parliamentary consent. Inland areas regarded it as a new tax, and thus illegal. Parliament agreed.
His father had a few novel ideas too. One was to stiff customary tenants of manors in royal hands for many years' worth of rent to confirm their tenancies. The manorial records were seized and gone through with a fine tooth comb and if there were any departures from what the auditors considered to be customary rents the tenants were accused of fraud.
My area was one that suffered. It's not surprising that it came out solidly for Parliament when his son had a bit of trouble.
We could have an elected head of state who has no real power, like the Irish do.
Hell, I might even vote for Liz if we did, but I don't think she should get the job just because of who her dad was, and equally, I don't think she should have been forced into the job either.
Of course she should be forced. No-one sane would take on that job. It's the sort of role you have to be prepared for from birth. God bless her, she's done a great job for a whole lifetime, but would you actively choose that? That amount of being in the limelight has quite literally destroyed people before now.
LOL - people still living in the XI century, not XXI.... when kings still died on the battlefield.
It's only a show now, dust in naive eyes... to ensure an easy life to your family.
But sure, if it's a birth right, you need to be prepared from birth.....
Wrong century. Richard III died in battle at the end of the 15th century.
The last member of the Royal Family to die in a military action was Lord Mountbatten, killed by the IRA in 1979. The 40th anniversary is next month.
And Harry Windsor absolutely could have been killed in battle in the 21st century.
Fat chance of that happening, more like he would have got other people killed, hence why he was "requested" to return home, and then was transferred to the AAC where Apache's don't operate alone and identifying which one was his would be quite difficult, coupled with Apache's being a very capable foe even against armour, let alone militiamen.....and all so he could play soldier. People forget his wearing Nazi uniform, referring to a Pakistani cadet as "our little Paki friend" amongst other "gems", but thats all forgiven since he set up invinctus right?
We've got an effectively powerless UK monarch, and I loyally approve. Keeps the career politicians away from the glory. And from the really expensive personal stuff. Imagine if any recent prime minister thought they had the status of national symbol, they would go mad. Or more mad than they actually did. As it is, they have to report in to her regularly, in person. Mind you, I bet she's dreading Boris Johnson.
I do wonder, however, whether HM The Queen visiting a university during term and exam time and causing this disruption in the first place was a good thing, compared to not doing it. But I wouldn't want her to feel unwelcome.
There are other solutions. Here in Portugal the president reviews the proposed laws, and is representative of all Portuguese, also the millions abroad. It is not generally a highly political post, even if the last one (Cavaco Silva) presented a new low.
I have much respect for the incumbent
Prince Charles is a fan of homeopathy (FFS!!!!!) and Deepak Chopra's "Quantum Healing", his sons love Nazi uniforms ... I am not really allowed to deface the ruling monarch, and I am not sure how far I can go before I get banned on here ... it does entail a higher house with hereditary and high priest MP's, in the XXI century - hereditary and high priest MP's in the XXI century!
I agree that Charles Windsor has some very funny ideas, though no madder than those of the average (goop) Hollywood celebrity. But can we get this one clear? It was Harry who wore an Afrika Korps uniform. He has also done some other rather silly things not unknown to other young Army officers, most of whom do not have degrees in intersectional feminist studies, but are quite good at getting the lads to take on the Taliban.
I can make out an argument based on psychology and sociology that it is a good idea to have a non-political Head of State, and an election inevitably brings politics into it (we'd probably end up with King Farage*). The reason is that then the chief executive of the Government cannot be at the top of the tree, which is a valuable check. In the US the President is no longer the President, the one who holds the balance, but a kind of elected Emperor.
In WW2 in Italy, the King was able to depose Mussolini. But in Germany, there was nobody to depose Hitler, and in Spain the same in re Franco. It was only with Franco's death that the monarchy was restored and Spain started to return to democracy.
Perhaps the answer is that a monarchy is a terrible system, a democracy is a terrible system, but a democracy which has a notional monarch is perhaps slightly less terrible than either.
*Because King Nigel would make us even more of a laughing stock.
I agree that Charles Windsor has some very funny ideas, though no madder than those of the average (goop) Hollywood celebrity.
Fine, Mia Cyrus or whatever she's called for next monarch then, right ? Just any celeb will do.
But can we get this one clear? It was Harry who wore an Afrika Korps uniform. He has also done some other rather silly things not unknown to other young Army officers, most of whom do not have degrees in intersectional feminist studies, but are quite good at getting the lads to take on the Taliban.
Ok, then, I grant you "the prince's son" (without plural), the rest of your rebuttal is off topic.
In WW2 in Italy, the King was able to depose Mussolini. But in Germany, there was nobody to depose Hitler, and in Spain the same in re Franco. It was only with Franco's death that the monarchy was restored and Spain started to return to democracy.
All jolly good, but ... may I ask, what does any of this have to do with my remarks on the UK's political institutions, where nobody checks on the PM (position soon to be known as PL for "Prime Liar", if the polls are to be believed) or parliament ... well, except another pain, the house of lard, where a bunch of inbred hereditary bloodsuckers, who have never heard of hardship, let-alone lived it, assisted by a bunch of brain-washed high priests (no I am NOT making this up!) are supposed to be some kind or moral compass ? Seriously, guys, seriously ... I doubt that even a Reality Distortion Field as strong and powerful as Apple's could fend off this ...
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A retired policeman I know once talked to me about the difficulty of upholding the right for people to go about their business and the right to protest. But he's absolutely clear that people have the right to protest because what honourable policeman would want to help run a dictatorship?
There are many different kinds of police.
How did they know they were activists in the first place? What was the list compiled from if they were not known to college disciplinary proceedings? Denying it was compiled based on race only makes me believe that is exactly what it was compiled on, either that or there is some other information sharing going on between the police and the college.
That's a weird logical jump to make. They might be radicalised, say, and disposed to take action against the leaders of the religions of the kafirs, or the heads of state of countries that have supported the zionist oppressors or their allies, or the heads of state of a nation that mounted operations against righteous jihadists. King's has a rather well renowned Department of War Studies; probably one of the very few in existence.
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I'm afraid I will line with the previous comment about "no lines of responsibility". ICO will investigate, and, say in 12 - 24 months it will have imposed a fine (MAYBE) which will be paid by...? Well, definitely NOT the individuals who made that decision to block students's entry. They will receive _no_ punishment whatsoever.
Again... PREVENT imposes a duty that could potentially conflict with GDPR. The main no-no isn't the sharing per se, but the none consultation with the nominated DPO for the organisation. GDPR isn't a big scary monster which will rip your head off if you include, say, the email address of the various departmental heads involved in the incident in a published PDF of the inquiry, but it does rather impose a procedure to follow to at least audit the decision trail saying if it's OK to do that or not. It's still early days, and they are still establishing a set of relevant "case law" that will act as a guide in future.
Doesn't it say a bit more about the country that a major public university has a secret banning list of students that it gives to the police and the only offence is some computer offence of sharing their email address without filling in the right paperwork?
You have a good point there. It definitely tells you something about the state of this nation. But what *other* criminal offence would there be?
I mean it's technically not a crime to have a secret blacklist of people is it? Well apart from the processing of data bit. It's what you do with it - like blacklisting people from the building trade for union activism etc. There are clubs that won't have you as a member if you're on a list... all now covered by GDPR. So that's the ONLY crime. I mean it's not morally right, but since when has immorality been automatically criminal? And there are other countries where this is much worse. Are there any nations better at this? Isn't it a reflection of the people?
Your statement is completely correct, but there is a subtlety.
As with any group in society, the intersection of the set of feminists and the set of arseholes is not the null set (ahem, Julie Bindel, and recently Germaine Greer.)
However, this doesn't invalidate the general principle that people who support equal rights for everybody are less likely to be arseholes than those who don't.
Applying this to the KCL case, people who support equal rights for Palestinians are less likely to be arseholes than people who want to shut up stroppy students.
Back in the day when I was a student there was a somewhat annoying Trotskyite demonstration outside a college, and some extremely naughty people inside dropped flour on them out of a window.
The police were asked to intervene and managed to get as far as the Porters' Lodge, where they were duly asked to produce a warrant. By the time the argument was over, of course, there was no trace whatever of the miscreants.
But those were the days when the college security saw it as its job to prevent annoyances to the young gentlemen and the Fellows, not assist in them.
... that this must be more than "just" a breach of data privacy legislation.
Creating a list of names of people "against whom there was neither evidence of criminal activity nor any internal disciplinary findings", and providing it to the police? Not quite libel - but what?
Point 61 in the report show serious over reach by the security & estates department in collecting information and the use of Whatsapp (point 60) for any security or personal related information should be grounds for dismissal, that's far worse than collecting GDPR sensitive info in the first place.
Taking part in a student on-campus demo two weeks earlier seems to be enough grounds for getting access pulled.
Is there any insight into the past placard waving & arm linking behaviour of the KCL senior faculty and staff who actually did stand only a few feet from Her Maj?
Call me cynical, but given there's fuck all redress for a data protection breach, ever, I reckon the whole thing was premeditated and losing the subsequent court case factored in as an offset to the aim of keeping the great unwashed away from her madge.
It's like when police "accidentally" kettle protestors, and are slapped on the wrist after the event.
From the report it seems that the access control system they were using has at least been installed in such a way that it made denying access to a particular location not easily achievable. I expect they have a number of access zones, each graded as low, medium or high security. All the general access, low security, real estate like lobbies, refectories, libraries and the shortcuts between buildings that the general public would otherwise make use of if they could are probably lumped into one big group, so a script can tick a single checkbox via an API somewhere during enrolment / HR starter process / email account creation (probably Azure / Active Directory, since I believe they are thralls of subscribe to Office365 for most of the mundane stuff). The medium level stuff like research-only corridors and reserved IT suites probably needs a signature on a bit of paper from a tutor or lab manager. The high security areas, like comms rooms, biological services, library archives etc probably needs a bit of paper signed by a head of department or has some HR process attached to it like CBR checks or the like.
By "lumping" all the low security zones, where everyone should have access, into a single group of zones, you make life easier for the estates and facilities / security staff.
Each access control point / car reader would therefore receive its own specific whitelist of cards... compare the card to the list and if you are on the list you are allowed, if not you are denied. This stands in opposition to having a blacklist as well, a list which is checked first and if the card is on there then access is denied and no further checking is bothered with. If you had blacklists AS WELL, then you aren't going to be adding too much to those, so it can be a manual process. Less bother than setting up a new grouping of zones which excludes the temporarily high security campus, adding the blacklisted ones to that, then removing the all areas group, only to reverse the process 12 hours later.
Of course, I expect many of the buildings simply have an open lobby where you flash your card at a meaty guy in a suit / bouncer, and they aren't going to check a white or a black list, they're just going to get suspicious if you look a bit shifty and nervous. It's only when you get to the libraries and "in-campus" unguarded doors that you're going to get your swipe checked.
In any event, it's an embarrassment, and somewhat disconcerting that they'd go so far as to check CCTV against the access logs in order to determine who might be a troublemaker over one particularly inflammatory incident.
Sadly they have longer form than that. The mention of a south London site prompted me to do a bit of checking. The buildings that held my old department have gone which I knew about. So, it appears, has the building that replaced them and so has the department, in fact a whole bunch of science departments. Even my old hall of residence. All the property seems to have been sold out to developers.
Bastards!
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"I want to reiterate that discrimination on any grounds is unacceptable and is damaging to our community"
"Profiling" and Discrimination used properly are tools. I'm using "discrimination" in a broader sense and not for action against somebody due to their skin color. Previously granted access is often suspended when there is a VIP visit or special function. If the group of students is known to be anti-monarchy or has a tendency to show up everywhere with a placard and a rehearsed suite of pithy chants, I expect that the school would not be enthusiastic about their attending an event with the Queen.
All sorts of places have lists of people that are banned. There are many lists that a state will keep of foreign nationals that will be denied entry at a port or will undergo a higher level of checking. I'm not vociferously political yet I am on a list somewhere as I'm always "randomly selected" for additional screening when I fly and have decided not to fly anymore unless I'm at the controls. Lots of lists are shared. Get asked to leave a casino in Las Vegas and if you have been naughty enough, your name and photo may show up on the watch list of other casinos.
As a developer, I'd like to suggest a software solution to this. The relevant modules are presumed to have been imported:
def dealwith(employee):
if !employee.ask("Did you have any knowledge of this?"): return
if employee.ask("Did you report this to the relevant authority?"):
authority=employee.ask("What authority was that, then?")
dealwith(authority)
return
supervisor_knowledge = employee.ask("Did your supervisor know about this?")
security.inform("We have another card for you to block out.", employee.cardnum)
hr.update(employee.id, employment_status=hr.NOT_EMPLOYED, flags=hr.DO_NOT_EMPLOY)
employee.employed = False
for colleague in employee.colleagues:
dealwith(colleague)
for subordinate in employee.subordinates:
dealwith(subordinate)
dealwith(employee.supervisor) # security warning, not trusting potentially unreliable result of variable supervisor_knowledge
employee.inform("Oh, dear. Unfortunately, you're going to have to leave now and never come back.")
return
dealwith(email_to_police.sender)
print("Done")
"Were were subject to malware on our system and breached GDPR" (BA with massive turnover) ICO Result: massive cashcow fine.
"We willingly gave data from our system and breached our own policies and GDPR" (KCL) ICO Result ...?
Will be interesting to see what happens with the ICO investigation ... consistency should and would be expected ...
I think a lot of it will hinge on if at any time, even in a casual phone call, the cops asked for the information before it was volunteered. Mind you, I'm not sure I'd consent to the processing of my PID if the reason for the processing was compiling a list of dissidents. They'd probably present that as being "processing of data related to the security of individuals, the institution and its teaching, research and other activities". Which of course we would all have no objection to. Right, kids?
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