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People who have nothing to hide shouldn’t worry about privacy. Giving up some privacy is necessary to fight terrorism and crime. The government can be trusted to keep our personal information secure. I am worried about the security of my personal information travelling on the internet and email. Which of the following organisations should have access to internet and telephone records without first seeking authority from the courts. Intelligence services but not government departments. Have you ever done any of the following? Applied under the data protection act to find out what information an organisation holds about, Used a false name and address when logging on to an internet site to protect your identity or used encryption on emails How many databases are you on? Council tax? Court files from divorce proceedings Mobile phone geographic location database Market intelligence database Insurance, genetic Amazon.com TV licensing tracking Electricity usage analysis Employment agency Supermarket loyalty Airline reservation systems http://www.experian.co.uk/corporate/index.html – the biggest credit checking organisation in the world. It holds detailed records on 40m individuals in Britain and last year (2002) carried out 80m checks on us on behalf of 300 companies, as well as the police and social security officials Experian knows who you are, where you live, and where you used to live. It knows who you bank with, who you have credit cards with and whether you have kept up payments. It knows if you have any court judgements against you, past bankruptcies or even voluntary arrangements with creditors. It will even tell other companies if you have failed to disclose any ‘detrimental data’ Applying for job? Employers can contact Experian to check over your CV – confirming which school and university you went to and when, and the grades you achieved. It will give the employer information about your financial history, confirm whether when you worked at previous employers and what your position was. Looking to rent a home? Experian pops up again. Its ‘tenant verifier’ programme will tell landlords – for £19.50 a go – if you likely to be able to afford the rent and if you telling the truth about your job. Buying a car? The DVLA has sold its database to Experian, which now boasts records of an astonishing 75m vehicles. (The Guardian, Patrick Collins, Sept. 7, 2002 How can you check your credit file? And how do you get any corrections made to your file ‘The information from the electoral roll is not covered by the Data Protection Act. By cross-referencing it with other data, all sorts of things become possible. Say you want to track someone down, as well as getting their name and phone number, you can find their address, the names of other people living in the same house, and the phone numbers of the neighbours, should you wish to ask them more about that person. Go to Upmystreet.com and you can find out how much their house is worth. 192.com will also provide you with a photo of their house which, when it pops up, has helpful red target marks pointing out their exact location, like the lines in a gun sight.’ (Felicity Lawrence, The Guardian, Sept. 7, 2000 192 says that all its data is in the public domain – so why is it a problem? Can you get your details removed from this database? Because anyone can trace details like Mothers maiden name, or place of birth, plus more Like proper biscuits, internet cookies have a nasty habit of leaving unwanted material in your computer. A web-site cannot automatically recognise viewers. It knows your internet protocol (IP) address, but you may share this with thousands of other users in your organisation [e.g the University IP address], or you may well be allocated a different IP address every time you use the web. So some sites send you a cookie, a small file which invisibly ‘tags’ your computer. It is then available to that web-server when you next log on. In simple terms, these files allow the website to monitor your comings and goings, usually without your knowledge or consent. It can simply contain an ID number, allowing the site to recognise previously registered visitors, saving you having to enter a user name and password Or it can store which language you speak, or other useful preferences. But it can be used to less innocuous ends. Many sites show adverts administered by third-party firms, and these firms also place cookies. These are then used to avoid showing you the same adverts repeatedly, but also to build up a pretty good idea of what websites you visit. ( SA Mathieson How do you stop cookies? By adding spy ware, or other software built into the security of the computer browser. Internet explorer or firebox. Stop cookies on security page at the link from the top of the page In the small print of the Sky Digital contract, for example – signed by 6m people – is a clause that commits subscribers to hooking the set top box up to a telephone line. What sort of information could be travelling down that line Information present on your computer Maybe how much you spend, what channels you watch, how long you watch it for Those who hang to the belief that what is said and done in the doctor’s surgery goes no further may be in for a shock. The government has awarded itself sweeping new powers allowing it to see and pass on medical records which identify individuals without consent. If a range of health professionals – doctors, dentists, nurses, even speech and music therapists – do not divulge information which is requested they can be fined or hauled before disciplinary committees. Ministers argue that the new powers, enshrined in section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2001, are in the public interest. The information, it says, will be used for research and to contain epidemicsDo you trust your doctor not to divulge confidential medical and personal information about you Would you expect him (her) to risk being find up to £5,000 or charged with professional misconduct for refusing to pass on information if the government deemed it necessary? Or do you consider that the greater good arising from a properly informed health service should override qualms about privacy I would hope if asked by the proper authorities with an explanation of why he would be intelligent enough to make that decision because he has met me. However my records exist on the practises database. Which means this decision is debatable about whether the doctor is accountable for this decision Mobile Phone Mobile phone firms record the time and number of every call we make. That’s hardly news: it’s on our bills. But they also record who calls us, and when. This data is kept from between six months and six years, depending on the network. O2, for example, now stores it for a minimum of 12 months Mobile networks also keep records of our approximate locations whenever our phones are switched on by logging the nearest base station. In a city, this is likely to pinpoint us to within a few hundred metres. The next generation of mobile phones, already being tested in some countries, are due to have global positioning system technology built in, accurate to a few metres People who phone me are uncontrollable. However if I be careful with whom and where my number will be distributed then I have nothing to fear. For a parent or a loved one could have better accounts of where are their families. But more importantly it will help intelligence agencies to use when deemed fit. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) routinely retain the email recipient’s address, the sender’s return address and digital location, the subject line and the precise time the email was sent. Email seems so intimate, so private. In fact, your comments are dated, timed, logged - and very easy to forward. When we browse the web, ISPs log the times we go on and off line, the sites we visit and the digital location they allocate us for that session. When you use a provider or computer at work or in a internet shop you are risking privacy Keystroke logging allows others to read your messages as you type, as if they were looking over your shoulder. The software, known to be used by the FBI and many employers, can be hidden inside innocent programs such as word processing packages, and intercepts keystrokes to record what you type. The information is sent automatically to the eavesdroppers when you next connect to the web. You prevent key logging by not giving logging in details to your e-mail or provider. Avoiding any unwanted cookies controlling your computer and avoiding contact with unknown e-mails Smart cards are becoming increasingly prevalent around the world. Much more information can be stored on them than on magnetic strips and they can be programmed to perform multiple functions. Usually the size of a library card with a computer chip embedded in them, they can be utilised as credit or debit cards t or to access satellite television or pay for telephone calls. They can also store very personal information such as medical details…They can be used as security passes or, like an old-fashioned wax seal, as an electronic signature to authenticate documents. The gold blob may measure little more than 1cm square, but in that tiny space lies computing power which twenty years ago would have taken an entire room to accommodate Scientists from the University of Cambridge’s computer laboratory claimed that by firing light from a flashgun bought for £20 at parts of a smart card chip they could get to information stored on the card. It is not the first time attacks have been made on smart cards but many previous ones have been crude, unreliable and in some case required expensive equipment. The flashgun experiment may be more worrying because cheap and easily available technology has produced such results What other implications are there of the smart card technology getting smaller and more powerful One it can be concealed easily, and two it is possible that this chip could soon be read or used in some way against you A Florida-based nanotechnology company is developing an implantable microchip with sensors recording health data such as pulse and temperature that links to the satellite global positioning system network. The chip, small enough to be implanted under the skin, will transmit the wearer’s location and health data and will be able to trigger alarms if the person strays beyond pre-set boundaries. What are the dangers of this technology for privacy By implanting this chip it alters the biometric composition of the aura. It could also like any implant be faulty or connected to the body in a way that could cause other risks to the health In 1994, according to a report in May…16 town centres operated CCTV schemes, with a total of around 400 cameras. By the end of this year there will be 500 schemes in operation, recording, scanning and saving data from some 40,000 CCTV cameras. According to a House of Lords report, when private systems are taken into account, there are more than 1.5m lenses covering public spaces in the UK. One might be entitled to assume that the technology at least works. In fact the available data on CCTV’s crime-busting record is far from unequivocal. Of 24 systems reviewed in the Nacro ( crime prevention charity) report, only 13 were found to have coincided with a significant reduction in crime. In seven cases, there was no detectable change, while in four instances crime had actually gone up since the introduction of surveillance monitoring. In several cases the deterrent effect of CCTV was observed to wear off after a period, when crime rates began to creep upward again Most damningly, perhaps, the Home Office’s own surveys into the usefulness of the technology have suggested that something so simple as improving street lighting may be four times more effective in reducing crime. (Esther Addley, The Guardian, 7 September 2002 What else is the CCTV system being used for Neighbour hood watch schemes. Looking for famous people, litter bugs and car crimes such as speeding or unusual driving NCIS ( National Criminal Intelligence Service) can bug your phone, intercept your emails and have you followed by undercover officers or criminal informants. The websites you’ve been browsing are not off-limits, either. In 1992 the agency had 400 staff. Now it has more than 900. Its budget this year was £93m, three times the figure of five years ago. NCIS was set up to perform specific, fairly limited tasks. During the 1980s, the 43 police forces in England and Wales recognised that certain crime-fighting initiatives and investigations required a national overview. Rather than being run autonomously, a number of indexes and databases were put under the NCIS umbrella for central management. They included the national identification bureau ( formerly the criminal records office) the national drugs intelligence unit, the national football intelligence unit, the animal rights index and the running of the newly enhanced police national computer. NCIS also subsumed the offices of the European police agency, Europol, and Interpol, giving an international dimension to its coordinating role The agency has been growing inexorably since then, bolting on new departments – such as the national high-tech crime unit – and responsibilities, including the assessment of suspicious financial dealings. NCIS now gathers intelligence on everything from the internet to immigration. (Nick Hopkins, the Guardian, 7 September, 2002 The state should have, on occasions, the right to information about individuals. But what safety measures should be put in place? Only if a certain crime is suspected should the info be released to the correct authority. And even then this info should not be leaked to the public domain or else those responsible should have to be accountable. IE a fine or sorts. Relocation families etc could be at risk. The boundaries of the private sphere are shrinking. Some may protest at each new intrusion, others will defend each on its specific merits, but the overall trend is clear. Places that were once considered off-limits and secret are now open to view. And that goes beyond the private lives of public figures. Each one of us, however retiring and ‘private’ we might be personally, is the victim of constant incursions into the realm we once considered our own. We are surrounded by unseen men with long lenses: the press if we’re famous, but also big business and big government – and all of them using state-of-the-art technology, including the electronic gadgets we have come to rely on. We, meanwhile, are left desperately shielding what privacy we still have, like a person frantically reaching for a towel after a stranger has walked in the bathroom Or is that a bit too easy? It’s certainly comforting to see ourselves as the victims of this scary, external threat – but it might not be the whole picture. For if we think hard about privacy, and ask what has really made it as endangered a species in modern Britain as courtly romance or stiff formality, the answer does not lie only in the realm of surveillance and monitoring. It’s also about a cultural change, in which modesty, reserve and discretion – those sentries of privacy – have come to seem like values which are quaint or even vaguely repressedThe menace is out there, no doubt about it. There are cameras and gizmos listening and watching and collating data on our intimate sleeves every minute, even as we sleep. Even so, the threat to our inner space is not only outside us; it’s within, too. Big Brother is watching us, to be sure. But we are also inviting him to take a look. ( Jonathan Freeland, The Guardian, 7 September 2002 Summarise in your own words Within this violation of privacy our worlds are becoming smaller we can travel long distances cheaper and longer and the same goes for contacting one another but this idea of cameras being a menace is strange. Ironically it is creating personnel control. And is does this by preying on mans emotion, like fear or self obsessive obsessions that we have become important, by filming and monitoring are actions like we are rock stars or famous.
More: http://www.hsengine.com/s?w=electoral+register
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