IWF – U-Turn

December 10, 2008 — 585

Following the farce of the Internet Watch Foundation banning a page on Wikipedia, and then standing by its decision, it has now changed its mind.

Though the decision not to ban the image only applies to the image being held abroad, and possibly not in the UK. The IWF says “Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures.”

While nobody (sane) wants to allow access to child abuse images, the question of IWF, and by proxy CleanFeed, making blanket decisions about how can access what, from child abuse to racist content, and possibly in the future D-Notices, is somewhat concerning.

What else have they banned that we do not know about? How many sites about political issues are we, in the UK censored from? Perhaps its not many now, but do we want to have a system in place that could, at any point, stop access to information about elections or taxation?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in UK Law, privacy. No Comments »

UK Firewall – the first real complaints?

December 9, 2008 — 585

The UK has operated a firewall for sometime now, similar in many ways to the Chinese firewall (Golden Shield), though the content that is filtered out is different, for now – though that may change

The UK firewall, controlled largely by the Internet Watch Foundation, and therefore the UK Police and Government is designed to block illegal pornography and other offensive material. However, due to the way it works nobody really knows what’s blocked. There is no published list, there are no published guidelines for what is and what is not blocked, web pages just disappear.

The end user is, in general, unlikely to know if a page has been removed as the error returned when visiting a removed web page is the standard 404 missing page error, implying it could be the hosting company that has the error, not state censorship.

Despite the obvious concerns of this technology being rolled out about across the UK there has been relatively few complaints about the subject in the mainstream media. But now the firewall, CleanFeed, has blocked a page on Wiki, causing widespread interest in the subject.

  • PC Pro: Brits blocked from Wikipedia over child porn photo
  • Brand Republic: Wikipedia page banned in UK over controversial child image
  • The Register: Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over ‘child porn’ album cover

The pictures are not pleasant (and even on news web sites, which are not blocked), but they have been on the album cover since the 1960s and 70s, and have been sold in record shops and book shops since then. Never, has there been a prosecution in relation to those covers.

So, is it the place of government to start censoring the internet? Well the UK government thinks so.

 

 

 

 

Posted in UK Law, privacy. No Comments »

Data Matching for Financial Transactions

November 25, 2008 — 585

UK law enforcement agencies are stepping up the use of data matching to trap money launderers and terrorist finance operations using information gleaned from the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) which banks and other financial institutions are required to file.

The development is revealed in the latest report on SARs activity from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which said that the acquisition of further data matching tools by the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) will enable the bulk export and import of data and “allow a better, more timely and proactive service to be provided to law enforcement”.

The annual report issued on behalf of the SARs Regime Committee insisted that the activity meets the requirements of the Data Protecction Act.

But it revealed the intention to widen its scope and invite suggestions for data matching exercises “from a wide range of bodies, beyond the traditional law enforcement community. The UKFIU will select the data sets to match on a case by case basis.”

It urged “reporters”, including accountants, financial advisers, money changers and others as well as the banks and financial institutions, to provide “full and correct data [in the datasets used for matching and in the information submitted in SARs] to assist with this and ensure the effectiveness of such exercises”.

The vast majority of reporters now file SARs electronically, and the committee has dropped plans to require this from the remaining handful using paper methods.

The UKFIU has launched a procurement process to increase the use of IT to enhance activity in a “SARs transformation” process due to be rolled out next year

Source

Posted in Forensics, UK Law. Tags: . No Comments »

Ever wondered why you get Junk Mail at your new home?

November 25, 2008 — 585

Ever wondered why you get Junk Mail at your new home? Its because your local council sells the details to junk mail companies.

In fact selling the electoral role is a pretty steady income for most councils.

Currently the Ministry of Justice are in discussion about banning this practice, but the MoJ have stated that they will look at the overall effect of just a ban “not just on the individual but the economy as a whole”. Which makes the ban unlikely. Also the junk mail industry has never reacted well to such a suggestion, stating, amazingly, that such an action would not be “environmentally friendly”!

Its nice to know that the MoJ have our data nicely protected, after they have lost so much of it.

Tags: ,
Posted in Data Misuse, UK Law. Tags: . No Comments »

Lectures: Evidence and Procedure

November 23, 2008 — 585

Lectures on Evidence and Procedure

Lecture 1: Legislation and Procedures: Civil and Criminal Laws

Lecture 2: Evidence, Exhibits, and Chain of Custody

Lecture 3: Legislation and Procedures: Search and Seizure

Lecture 4: Legislation and Procedures: Planing an Investigation and Ethics

Lecture 5: Evidence and Procedure: Court Systems

Lecture 6: Evidence and Procedure Practical

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Forensics, UK Law. Tags: , . No Comments »

Computer Misuse Act Gets an Update

November 16, 2008 — 585

The Computer Misuse Act, which was written in 1990, is better known for its failures than its successes. One of the problem with the CMA is that it is 18 years out of date, and as such has not allowed for some of the latest crimes of Distributed Denial of Service.

A Distributed Denial of Service, DDoS, uses multiple systems (the numbers can be in their thousands) to attack one other system and this type of technology just was not legislated for in 1990.

The changes came into effect on 1st October 2008 (for England and Wales), despite the change in the law being passed in 2006,  by the Police and Justice Act 2006

.

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: , ,
Posted in UK Law. Tags: . No Comments »

Extension to the UK Firewall

November 16, 2008 — 585

The UK Government could be about to provide more infrastructure to prevent the population accessing information. This time the infrastructure is a legal frame work.

The Intelligence and Security Committee has recommended that the government create legislation to stop media outlets producing news that government does not want to.

The headline sales pitch of this is that its in the interests of “national security”, i.e aimed at military operations. But the recommendations are also that reporting on police operations can also be prohibited.

There is already the “D-Notice” in place in the UK, and despite scouring the news papers recently I have not seen any evidence of the battle plans for Afghanistan, the MI5 Org Chart, or the internal plans of GCHQ.  The occasions that the news papers have got hold of “priority” police operations is because is been leaked – that means that the police have called the news papers, to make some money or to further a political agenda, and the papers have printed it. Is it right to create new laws as the police have not got their house in order? Also, at least this way we know what’s being leaked, better this way than directly to the suspects!

The question that needs to be asked is: Do we need more laws to give the government greater secrecy?

In a different time there would have been more trust over the government, and the law in itself is not dangerous, if its well used, but with examples of misuse of data and data collection methods by the government, there is a concern that more there is greater control and monitoring of the population.

Death by a thousand cuts? Or totalitarianism through a 1,000 laws and a million CCTV cameras?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in UK Law, privacy. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Doctor uses Medical Records …Illegally

November 14, 2008 — 585

If the evidence of the Data Guardians misusing data was not already enough, with numerous examples of the police and councils misusing information and the government losing data faster than they are giving money to the banks, another case hardly seems relevant, but it is worth reporting because its slightly different.

In this  latest case n surgeon, Mr Hans Desmarowitz, a vascular surgeon photographs, maps, personal information and medical records relating to a secretary.

This information was stored on his PC and offered to private detectives to investigate her and her boyfriend, all very creepy…and the government want to allow for more access to medical records

 

 

 

Tags:
Posted in Data Misuse, Data Protection Act. Tags: , . No Comments »

EU Trumps UK

November 12, 2008 — 585

There are two key cases that show that the UK law is secondary to EU law.

The first is the case of Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie in 1963. In this case the EU overruled the Dutch Government on import duties, as they contravened the Treaty of Rome. This showed that EU law had supremacy over nation law.

In the second case of R v Secretary of State for Transport in 1990 EU law was found to be senior to national law, even though the  act in question (the Merchant Shipping Act 1988) which was passed to protect British fishing interests, and related to Britain having rights over its own waters and coast line.

This demonstrated that not only does EU law pull rank over national law, but it also pulls rank over national law and national interests.

 

 

Tags: ,
Posted in UK Law. Tags: . No Comments »

Burma Oil Co V Lord Advocate

November 12, 2008 — 585

During World War 2, the UK forces bombed, deliberately, Burma Oil Companies supplies. This was to prevent the Japanese from gaining access to them. After the war the company, Burma Oil, sued the UK government for the loses. To avoid paying the costs of the Uk created a law called the War Damage Act, 1965, which was to be put into effect retrospectively.

This case, Burma Oil Co V Lord Advocate, upheld this; meaning that Parliament can create laws that can be enacted retrospectively.

Posted in UK Law. Tags: . No Comments »
« Older posts