Posts by Deepthroat

Facebook strips away a bit more of your privacy – but won't say why

Consent

Interesting piece on consent but it falls foul of EU laws on processing personal information. Because they will know where you are based on the data hoovered up, any advertising served that is "local" to you is using geolocation and the law prohibits that without explicit consent and a user must be able to revoke that consent at any time without charge or loss of service. Making it a condition of taking a service is not explicit nor is it freely given. Of course being American they won't give a damn.

As for the parental agreement bit - that's no different from a website asking the child to make sure their guardian is OK with it or a phone in saying that they must have the bill payer's permission to use the phone. Not exactly the hardest bar to clear!

UK data-blurt cockups soared 1,000 PER CENT over last five years

Re: Privatised services

Probably quite a few but here's the thing. Current UK law only penalises the data controller and not the processor and most privatised services are done on the basis that the private firm is a "data processor". Of course, the PA could sue the company for the breach but the damage's been done in terms of reputation and media coverage. It's unlikely that any case would actually get to court so no chance of any media coverage of the redress. The new EU Regulations proposes to change this imbalance and make the processor equally liable for breaches. That may have the effect of focusing prevously ambivalent companies processing public data.

As for the encryption thing - perhaps the f%^kwit that wrote the advice that unencrypted stickscould be used to back up encrypted drives should write the letter to the lawyers when company data ends up in the hands of a competitor.

Using copyright to avoid Freedom of Info law? Ha, ha, NICE try!

Old News

It's silly season again - the FOIA has always allowed the publication under the Act of copyrighted material. All that happens is that the copyright restrictions pass to the requester so they can't reuse it for personal gain without permission. When whatdoyouknow.com started up this was a common refusal and the ICO ruled at the time that such an exemption could not be used. Now, if the publication of material would breach confidentiality clauses in any contract then there may be grounds for refusal under that provided it would be an actionable breach but in general most information can be published.

Stop this time wasting and get on with publishing

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is dead at 56

RIP

What a loss to the world. May not have liked Apple but no question one of the brightest minds of the late 20th early 21st centuries