Posts by The Mole 91 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Sep 2007
I must object strongly at the content of this article. If any politician reads this then they are going to be given way too many ideas and will probably immediately jump on the band wagon and promote it. The politicians won't have the attention plan to get to the end with the negatives, nor will they understand the sarcasm. You may therefore have hastend this on!!!
If I had one I'd cancel my subscription immediately for this,
consider yourself warned!
Warner I agree with you, but you are missing one point. This isn't just "personal data" we are talking about, as defined by the data protection act this is "sensitive personal data" as your surfing habits will reveal details such as sexuality (if you start looking at gay porn sites), trade union membership (must be some that don't use https to log you in), medical conditions/religious belief/ethnic origin/political opinion (if you subscribe or view regularly to a website about a particular condition/religion/ethnic origin/political party).
The requirement of the DPA is that explicit consent is required for processing of sensitive personal data, in my view automatic opt-in would therefore be unlawful even if they attempted to gain it by telling you there T&Cs have been updated - without positive action from the subscriber it can't be classed as explicit consent.
Andrew I disagree the DPA does apply. If all that was being transfered was 'personal data' then I agree a quick change to the T&Cs would cover them however as I posted before they can infer things such as your sexulaity and trade union memberships, these both count as 'sensitive personal data' and require explicit content for the processing. It's very unlikely that the courts would accept that a paragraph hidden deep within the T&Cs would count as explicit consent, this is particularly the case where you aren't explicitly agreeing to the new T&Cs just implicitly agreeing by not cancelling your account.
I still can't see how they can get round the data protection act, I can't see how they can argue that your browser profile isn't personal data, it's now considered that your ip address can be considered as potentially identifiying, and even if this isn't the case data contained within the html pages or post data certainly will contain identifiable data. At least some of that data will be "sensitive personal data" (if a user visits lots of gay porn sites, particular religiour websites, logs into trade union websites you can get a good guess at most of the following)
"In this Act “sensitive personal data” means personal data consisting of information as to—(a) the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject, (b) his political opinions, (c) his religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature, (d)
whether he is a member of a trade union (within the meaning of the [1992 c. 52.] Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992), (e) his physical or mental health or condition, (f) his sexual life, (g) the commission or alleged commission by him of any offence, or (h) any proceedings for any offence committed or alleged to have been committed by him, the disposal of such proceedings or the sentence of any court in such proceedings."
Schedule 3 (Sensitive personal data) of the data protection act requires that "1
The data subject has given his explicit consent to the processing of the personal data." there are other permisable justifications but none of these are relevant.
Based on this I can't see how they can legally function. Now they are going to argue that their annonymizer removes the personal data and it isn't stored...
however the DPA states:
""processing”, in relation to information or data, means obtaining, recording or holding the information or data or carrying out any operation or set of operations on the information or data, including—
(a) organisation, adaptation or alteration of the information or data,
(b) retrieval, consultation or use of the information or data,
(c) disclosure of the information or data by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, or
(d) alignment, combination, blocking, erasure or destruction of the information or data;"
By this definition the very act of the "Anonymizer" obtaining the information (being forwarded your web request or web page) and then erasing what they consider the sensitive/personally identifying stuff then they are processing the data and therefore fall under the data protection act. This is particularly the case as even if they don't have any personally identifiable data yet they will in all likely hood gain identifiable data in the future
"“personal data” means data which relate to a living individual who can be identified—
(a) from those data, or
(b) from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller,"
No matter how good your case there is always a chance that you will loose. If your case has any sort of complexity or matters of your word against his word then the chances of loosing going up. On top of that judges sometimes make mistakes, lawyers sometimes make mistakes and your opponents often can afford far better legal representation who are in a better position to find the obscure prescedents or tenuous legal arguments. Taking someone to court is a gamble and when to loose would mean to loose your house then even a 5% risk is likely to be too much for many people.
On the otherhand if they revamped the system so that the costs you win are proportionate and realistic of the difficulties you face then this would be a good start. Too many cases seem to seek massive settlements for emotional distress when there have been no real financial impact, the judge should tell these cases that emotional distress is a normal part of life and point them to a councillor or psych.
I believe the (original) idea of VAT was that it was a tax on 'luxury' items, items such as (most) food, childrens clothing, books, medical equipment etc are exempt and other items such as fuel are at a reduced rate. This is fairer than income tax as it takes into account your spending habbits not just your income, if there is a family of 2 and a family of 5 with the same income then the second family will have a lower total tax bill as they spend more of their money on necessities of life while the family of 2 will have a higher bill as they are more likely to have more disposable income to spend on luxuries.
By taxing spending there is also the argument that someone is more likely to save - if it has a big impact however I don't know
This is just stupid when memory cards will use less power, will be more reliable and are already available in larger capacities and smaller physical sizes. It would be far better just to come up with a read only standard for a memory card formatted (for instance) in the same way as existing dvds.
You are right Chris, most of the paper work is ass-covering. The crux of the problem therefore seems to be we are becoming an overly litigous country where people can't accept that accidents happen and that they just have to get on with it, instead if someone trips over they'll sue the council for emotional trauma.
We need to sort out the legal system so that damages of this kind can only be sort after for serious stuff, if you get slightly hurt, upset or suffer "emotional trauma" that is a normal part of life and you just have to live with it. Once that happens all the excess paper work and ass-covering wouldn't be necessary and things might start to work properly again (well better anyway).
Haven't you heard billy, having to prove your innocence is all the rage now.
Suspected terrorist? We'll arrest you, sentence you to curfew and monitor you without showing you the evidence that we have?
Been asked to decrypt the data on your hard drive? You have to prove that you aren't able to that you have forgotten the password, otherwise it will be prison and/or fine.
In the case here it is fairly reasonable if the BSA have proof you are using some software and the manufacturor has no record of seeling it to you or you registering it.
The problem I have with WGA and other big American unions is they have somehow become monopolies. Unions are a good idea, they allow groups of people to band together and push for better conditions and better pay. What seems absolutely crazy and appears to be against all of America's principles is they have unions such as the WGA which are so powerful that if you aren't a member then you can't get any work. Why does this exist in the land of capitalism? It is the same as the Mafia controlling an industry (though perhaps less bloody)
Mike your argument doesn't seem to hold up.
As long as the customer has to be the one to request the PAC code from their own provider then that provider has ample opportunity to give the customer counter offers, they can do it before the transfer process starts.
I can't see how 2 hours or 5 days makes any difference in preventing slamming, the simplest solution would be that as part of the processes a automated system calls the customer and informs them that the number transfer is about to start. This can give them the opportunity to talk to an advicer to cancel the process and has the added advantage the customer knows exactly when the transfer is happening and is without a working phone for the shortest period of time. The current system is annoying in if you are only upgrading your sim you can be left without working phone numbers for a annoyingly long length of time
Even if prepayement cards were made legal for only 18s only what about debit cards? I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure the card I had when I was a teenager would be sufficient to buy goods online. Perhaps the solution would be to require payment cards to encode an age value within the card number or similar? That way the prepayement cards could be sold as no age specified, 16, 17, 18 etc?
I like their strategy. They are going to give them to the people who either can't, or haven't yet had the opportunity to vote on the matter.
How will the bank account bit work? A child can have a bank account so what are the banks going to do, close all accounts when you turn 13? 17? or are the rules just going to be you aren't allowed an over draft unless you have a (non-compulsorary) id card?
Surely Windows 7 is just going to be all the bits that they left out of Vista as they ran out of time? So windows 7 will just be what Vista was promised to be late. Perhaps Microsoft have realised that their releases are always late and so by aiming to be early they may actually hit on time?
Jai what are your reasons for wanting to read an actual book rather than an electronic screen? EPaper is meant to be different too all current display technologies in that rather than emitting light it is just like a book in that it is reflective and the image is stable rather than being constantly refreshed. This should make for a much more book like reading experience although i've yet to see one in real life to know for sure.
Of course a book does have the advantage that it battery won't die. But then again you can fit a small library on an 8gb memory stick and chargers are tiny - particularly if it can be charged from a usb cable.
By the same logic your postal and telephone numbers wouldn't count as personal data. Also what about the single person households with secure internet connections then with a very high probability the person is identified.
Another issue with IP addresses is not only are they an identifier in many places (eg BT provided ones) they also provide location information.
As the EU correctly states how personal the information is depends on the context of how they are being used. But there is always the risk that a low risk activity (a text log file of logins with ip address) is converted into a more highrisk activity (a database of logins is crossreferenced with an advertising networks database of adverts viewed on different sites by the same ip address and then further correlated to find the locality of said ip address).
I find it very tenious that the reason that this isn't a security flaw in flash is because flash is behaving the way it was designed too. This is complete rubbish.
It IS a security flaw in flash. I can see no justifiable circumstances why a flash script from the internet should be able to open a page to a private non-public ip address. It shouldn't be allowed.
I believe that I know how Sun are going to achieve the elimination of all data centres. It is a simple two step process.
1. Migrate operations from all Data Centres to new Utility Computing Centres.
2. Close all the no longer needed Data Centres.
Simple,
ps.
This business plan is confidential and proprietery. In order to use this business plan you must pay me ridiculous contracting fees.
I think the key difference here is that she only got the stuff from the one supplier (therefore conclusively proving the cause) and more to the point the supplier deliberately gave a free sample in order to get her addicted and physically craving more... which he then duely sold her at profit.
At the end of the day though she is a competant adult and it was her own choice to accept the free sample and take it and she was well aware of the fact that the drug was very addicted and would leave her wanting more therefore she knew the risks and unless he forced her to do it then it is her fault and it seems a ridiculous lawsuit.
Duncan this is a tram line not a train line, the difference is trams are slow moving and hence can stop very quickly (unlike your average train). Therefore I'd assume that the system is totally decentralized (and so cheaper), I'd guess the tram drivers have infrared controls within their trams which they use to switch the points. Through the use of basic procedures etc that the tram drivers follow I imagine the system works very well with minimal costs. The worst case is that two trams end up on the same track but this isn't a problem as long as the drivers are paying attention as they'll notice the other great big tram and stop in plenty of time. All this saves having complicated computer controlled networks, expensive cabling and computer errors.
I imagine this is what the orginal designers thought and they had a point. Unfortunately for them they didn't consider the security implications. At the end of the day though I'm not sure what a sensible solution is, a set of armed guards at every point maybe? Anything less and there is still plenty of options of physical intervention to manually change the point.
I don't think you can dismiss the claim that solar would become more efficient than coal or gas just because they too could use the technology.
There is the key difference that coal and gas require the fuel to be transported to the power station through systems that are relatively labour intensive when you include all the lorries, pipe maintainance, off shore platforms, tankers etc. Also include in this the moving parts and maintance required to keep the furnace maintained, clean, and full of fuel.
Solar on the other hand has the advantage that the fuel (light) has zero transport costs and (presumably) the system purely lies on the light being focused on the solid state device. There may be some moving parts as mirrors and lenses adjust angles, and there is probably some cleaning involved. But I could well believe that these things would be perodic operations as opposed to the continual monitoring needed by a fuel burning station.
I can quite believe that solar power could become much cheaper and efficient that carbon producing methods. Of course the key factor is how efficient the technology is and how big a temperature differential it requires. If it requires the electricity to be produced in a desert and run all the way across Europe to provide wet cloudy Britain with power then the net efficiency is likely to be less
I'm married to a primary school teacher, perhaps this should be mandatory for all education ministers? Then they may have an understanding of the workload that teachers are under already. The length of time it takes to write 30 reports containing about 10 subjects each is horrific. To do it termly (along with all the other paper work) is crazy, particularly as parents would no doubt complain if the comments don't change between terms.
Schools at least already provide already provide a (near) real time system for reporting behaviour of the pupils who need it. Amazingly the system is low cost and very accessible for parents. It involves sheets of paper onto which the teacher writes comment and is sent home with the child. If parents want even better feedback then they can (shockingly) talk to their childs teacher! Our secondary school also had a advanced system called a homework diary, into this I had to write the details of my homework and it had to be signed by my parents. If I didn't fill it in properly then my parents would question me. Even more advanced it too had a space for teachers to write in comments on behaviour and as a signature was required my parents saw it.
Of course none of this would work with a facebook or rss plugin, nor would it get the governments mates lots of money on expensive contracts.
I'd imagine that a fully-qualified pilot is one who has passed his private pilots license, a comercial pilots license (or may be a military equivalent), various exams, getting the requisite hours flight time logged, further training for flying in clouds, ensuring that you keep your training and number of flight hours up to date as I believe they can expire, and no doubt extra training for flying UAV. Therefore someone who just has their Private pilot license would be deepend a qualified pilot but not fully qualified to handle a UAV, simple really.
I imagine that the air exclusion zone isn't really intended to protect the UAV pilots but to protect other pilots who probably aren't expecting a drone to be flying around and which may well be harder to detect than a normal plane.
So it'd cost about 20bn to 'upgrade' all the aircrafts to have this peice of equipment which the terrorists (if they really wanted to) could probably work round simply enough, or possibly exploit? I wonder what impact spending 20bn on healthcare, infrastructure, famine reduction, education etc in Africa would have on the terrorist situation?
Interestingly a couple of years ago there was a big fuss about laser pointers being targeted at pilots to blind the pilots and make them crash (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/06/laser_man_letters/) now they are wanting to do the opposite and shine laser pointers back down on the public!
Fraser I don't think the approach is perfect, but (hopefully) the ICO coming in and giving the NHS a good telling off will cause a cultural shift and force them to take more care about personal data and improve things for the next time. (This is probably very optimistic but that is what the ICO is attempting).
What would the point of fines be? For a company it has a (kind of) direct impact on the shareholders who then presurise the company in performing better (assuming the fines are more than a tiny blip on the balance sheet). In the companies case therefore the fine has a purpose.
For a tax payer funded organisation what is the point of a fine? All it does is give a big monetary figure of how bad the NHS has been and ultimately result in less tax payers money being spent on what the NHS is meant to be spending it's money on. The actual fine will probably end up back in the Treasuries bank account and will probably be instead spent on consultants or some other waste of tax payers money. I doubt neither the ICO or NHS will get the money back. So the net result of a fine would be to punish the tax payer and waste their money.
Peter, you can either a) take a copy of my software in which case I still have a copy and what you would be guilty of is unauthorized access and copyright infringement
b) You can delete my software in which case you'd be guilty of authorized access, unauthorized modification and liabel for damages or
c) You can copy then delete my software in which case you'd be guilty of all of the above.
In this case I imagine it was more he made unathorized modification to the game objects to label himself as the owner in which case the original 'owners' can get a copy of their stuff back (assuming that they can prove they brought it, wonder if they got virtual receipts?) he will be liable for damages here but whatever way you look at it it is just modification of computer files and not burglary. Might be able to class it as fraud or obtaining goods through deception at a push though.
Considering when I'm filling my car up at the pump I'm stood bored with nothing to look up except the figures on the pump spinning until the tank is full and this takes a couple of minutes I would have thought you have the perfect candidate for some good old context sensitive banner advertising (keyword 'petrol') with an audiance who literally can't run away from it. Filling the car is boring enough that people might actually look at it!
It's my understanding that if you receive something clearly by mistake then you are obliged to make reasonable efforts to inform the sender so that they can arrange for the return of it. In the same way if you find a wallet/valuable in the street then you should hand it in to the police. If having done this duty and after 6 months the sender/owner hasn't responded/arranged for the return then you can legally claim it.
Don't know what sky router you got but my one came with a random SSID (well it mentions sky in it but the rest of it is random) and by default WPA enabled with a random password (Unless they use the same algorithm as Eircom but it looks random). Yes the SSID is broadcast and the key is printed on the router but then if they have the level of access someone could just as easily plug a cable into it...
Why in these demo's are there always two nice people standing either side of the person ready to grab hold of them and lower them to the ground gently? If they really want to demonstrate how humane they are and not likely to cause injury they should at least make it vaguely realist... no mats and nobody to catch him as he falls
I thought that under the Data Protection Act by Law Orange would be required to delete personal information they held on you when it was no longer needed. If they no longer have a commercial relationship with you (ie you aren't using their dial up service or paying them any money) then I would expect that they delete the email and failing to do so would be illegal.
I don't understand why people are expecting that an ISP they no longer use should still provide them email access. They are a business not a charity
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