I picked up the existence of http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/ via Twitter – a handy utility that takes a few seconds to use. Definitely worth checking your facebook profile.
Also worth posting again the Information Commissioner’s Office Personal Information Toolkit – textual, but still useful.
I’m feeling cynical. Maybe it’s what Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has to say about Google (see previous post) but its all-pervasiveness does bother me. Yes, it’s incredibly useful but I can’t help thinking Google’s take on “don’t be evil” differs from mine. So don’t forget the alternatives – for example just off the top of my head, AA routefinder for directions/distances, multimap, yell.com. Spread your internet use around a bit – don’t make it easy for google to have a complete picture of you!
Today a candidate who admitted “tweeting offensive comments” was removed from standing as a parliamentary candidate. Although Stuart MacLennan had removed his twitter account, cached pages and images remained available – and via a twitter storm in wider circulation than the original tweets (he has been in the top 10 “trending topics” in the UK since this morning).
Recently I finished reading Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s Delete: the virtue of forgetting in the digital age (Princeton University Press 2009). The book explores the dimensions and implications of digital technology with the result encapsulated as “society’s ability to forget has become suspended, replaced by perfect memory.” Records people, if you haven’t read it yet it’s worth it (but watch out for the weird binding on the BL’s inter-library loan copy which disintegrates on your hands).
Last week the Cabinet Office launched the report on Protecting Information in Government (http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/328380/protecting-information.pdf)
The report outlines progress that has been made since 2008 and the publication of the Data Handling Review. The Review put in place a set of mandatory measures for protecting personal data in central government departments, and highlights future challenges. The body of the report includes some detail about the activities undertaken by departments featuring in the central government hall of shame (mostly). Appendix A details progress made against the specific objectives of the data handling review.
Thankfully the report is mostly positive – although much of government was starting from a low base in its approach to the security of personal information. One of the wider positive outcomes (unfortunately from a very negative sequence of events) is that many ordinary people are now much more savvy about the use of their personal data. For example, at the time of writing the proposal “Scrap ID cards and roll back the database state” is the second most popular proposition on the Power 2010 website.
