Last week saw two healthcare policy ideas discussed. One sounds fairly promising, the other is fairly silly. Fortunately, the former is the one that is likely to prevail. Continue reading “Exercise or lose benefits idea fails friends and family test”
Category: Privacy
Child Protection Information System could work, but it won’t be easy
Yesterday saw The Times reporting plans for a new Child Protection Information System, which aims to link up and log data on all children’s visits to A&E or an out of hours (OOH) GP with social services’ at-risk registers. (Log-in required, both for the Times story, and hopefully for the new system as well.) The Department of Health confirmed the story, which has also been followed up by the Guardian, BBC, Telegraph, Sun, Independent and EHI (via my NHS news and comment feed @ImpatientNHS). Continue reading “Child Protection Information System could work, but it won’t be easy”
Roadside cameras suffer from large gaps in coverage, police admit
Automatic number plate recognition cameras stay secret after freedom of information tribunal told of patchy picture
I first applied for the location of police ANPR cameras under Freedom of Information (FOI) three years ago. This article, below and on page 14 of today’s Guardian, is the result of, in effect, a successful failure for FOI. In June, the Information Tribunal reversed its 2011 decision that Devon and Cornwall Police should release its camera locations. However, the evidence the force provided to this year’s tribunal, both written and verbal, sheds new light on the functioning of these systems. Continue reading “Roadside cameras suffer from large gaps in coverage, police admit”
The biggest council CCTV spenders per resident: Westminster… then Tamworth
Big Brother Watch’s newly-released data on £515m of council CCTV spending between 2007 and 2011 (covered by my colleague Sade Laja on Guardian Government Computing) is even more interesting when combined with population numbers. Obviously, camera spending per capita is not a perfect measure, as some areas clearly have security needs beyond those of their immediate populations. This would help to explain why Westminster is the biggest spender per head of population: £46.75 over the last four years, compared to a UK average of £8.27.
Continue reading “The biggest council CCTV spenders per resident: Westminster… then Tamworth”
MI5 makes 1,061 bugging errors
Security Service was responsible for 62% of wrong applications for communications data in 2010
More on privacy issues here. Continue reading “MI5 makes 1,061 bugging errors”