In a meeting today, Elizabeth Denham from @ICOnews assured me that she was “relaxed” about the UK keeping “high data protection standards”.

The Government have today appointed IDS @MPIainDS, Theresa Villiers MP and @GeorgeFreemanMP to front the axing.

gov.uk/government/pub… @ICOnews @MPIainDS @GeorgeFreemanMP This is what they say about #GDPR.

The #OnlineSafetyBill means:

(1) The Home Secretary decides what content FB and Twitter must remove, and how;

(2) Companies must be able to read your private messages

(3) Services that don’t comply get banned from App Stores, blocked on ISPs

politics.co.uk/comment/2021/0… Goodbye, e2e encryption for private messaging, explains @WebDevLaw.

It has been a long road since 2013 when @OpenRightsGroup @BigBrotherWatch @englishpen and Constanze Kurz took the UK to the ECHR over the @Snowden revelations:

privacynotprism.org.uk

Donations from across Europe paid for us to go the ECHR. Today the ECHR came in with its final judgment that the UK’s laws were deficient and lacked crucial safeguards.

openrightsgroup.org/press-releases…

This should be all over the papers. Racial profiling of voters without consent is not acceptable.

opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocra… And, you may ask, why isn’t it all over the papers.

EXHIBIT ONE: The @ICOnews Press Release

ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/…

On the face of it, this is welcome news:

@Google are introducing e2e encryptions for Android RCS messaging

blog.google/products/messa… This is announced, coincidentally I am sure, during a debate on #onlineharms in the Commons.

In the UK, there is pressure for the Government to ban or “licence” e2e encryption of personal messages as @WebDevLaw wrote on our blog last week

openrightsgroup.org/blog/org-signs…

So far not much coverage of the Commons Trade Committee’s Japan Trade deal report

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmse… It matters when MPs start looking at things the Government is not keen to discuss.

Here they discuss the privacy impacts of “data flow” commitments

Today the @NHSuk COVID tracing App is launched, and they have ended up using the privacy friendly technology from Apple and Google — and even adopted the same approach for QR code scanning in pubs and bars.

A huge win for privacy, the Govt set their face against this.

*BUT* * If you are poor, don’t have a smartphone, then your privacy is not properly protected.

* Instead, you hand your details to the venue with no safeguards

* And when you talk to test and Trace, we still know nothing of how bad their privacy is, or if problems are fixed

I guess most people who are on the #twitterwalkout won't be monitoring this.

But rather than just walking out: why not also start using @joinmastodon which has much stronger policies and community around reudcing hateful content?

eg: mastodon.online Here are more alternatives: joinmastodon.org/#getting-start…

WIn for @OpenRightsGroup:

Government admits to ORG that England's test and trace programme 'breaks GDPR data law'

bbc.co.uk/news/technolog… What happened here:

ORG was already concerned because the App had a late and bad Data Protection Impact Assessment.

When the manual Track and Trace programme was launched at the end of May, Politico reported no DPIA had been done.

politico.eu/article/uk-tes…

The debates over statues and today David Starkey’s racist remarks puts me in mind of this.

Doing some Wikipedia research in 2018, I found one of those statements that were “citation needed”. In this case, though, it really felt like it needed resolution, one way or the other. Yes, you read that right. A school in Lincolnshire had allegedly designed its' logo to refer back to what is the most famous Jewish Blood Libel of the middle ages.

en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti…

Government faces court action from @OpenRightsGroup over NHS Test and Trace privacy failings wired.co.uk/article/nhs-te…

They failed to their mandatory data security audit. We say the Government is being reckless by failing to audit their data security and privacy.

Ho hum, it seems that @unsplash are actively hostile to marking up content with any suggestion of @creativecommons licencing.

I added a link to a CC licence, saying I was OK with people using that if they preferred: and Unsplash simply deleted my text. On their Slack channel, I asked people if they could guess why @unsplash images are never found on @Wikimedia websites.

My question and answer explaining the licence incompatibility?

It was deleted.

I really am heartily sick of @pixabay's licence. Anything is permitted - except uploading pictures to a competitor website.

The result: images cannot be combined with Creative Commons content.

Ugh. For example, someone made a cc-by-sa video and published it on Wiki Commons:

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Erkl…

One small image within it came under @pixabay's CC-toxic licence; result, the whole video’s cc-by-sa licence was technically in breach of @pixabay's deal.

ORG staff @PascalCrowe and @mattr3 have today
exposed the insane levels of profiling

UK political parties apply to YOU
To YOUR Electoral Record.

openrightsgroup.org/campaign/who-d… They are deciding what your age is, your marital status, your family size.

openrightsgroup.org/campaign/who-d…

A few days ago I heard about @ZDF, the German TV channel, releasing around 50 video clips for free use, as cc-by (creative Commons).

The first topic they addressed? Climate change.
The reason? To combat disinformation.

zdf.de/dokumentation/… Already many have English subtitles, from Wikimedia:

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:…

so you can watch them and see the kind of content available.

@haciaith @Nwdls @bryns @carlmorris S'mae, erstalwm! Mae yna gyfres newyss o fideos cc-by o safon uchel, wedi'i rhyddhau gan ZDF o'r Almaen, mae cyfle mawr i'w trosglwyddo rhai i'r Gymraeg, i ddangos is S4C, BBC ayyb esiampl o'r fath beth dylwn nhw wneud … … Dyma nhw, ar safle ZDF: zdf.de/dokumentation/…

Listening live to @ResonanceFM on the @NHSX App

resonancefm.com #Covid19UK “talking to government insiders … too much noise, for meaningful results … bluetooth simply not accurate enough̦” says Peter Warren on @ResonanceFM

I think we can conclude the government “lost control of the narrative” on the #tracingapp.

There are many other areas where personal data and trust will surface; is the Government ready for that?

They have same pattern of poor information and little transparency. #COVID19UK There are a myriad of questions about Palantir and Faculty to come. Palantir are named as processing “anonymised” personal data for the #COVID19UK Testing programme.

gov.uk/government/pub…

A tonne of information is now out there for @NHSX App, released without fanfare.

Key documents include a FAQ (with some errors) and the Data Protection Impact Assessment.

faq.covid19.nhs.uk

In the FAQ, a link to the DPIA

faq.covid19.nhs.uk/article/KA-010…

#TrackingApp I’ll quickly point out an error or two:

faq.covid19.nhs.uk/article/KA-010…

OMFG

UK starts to build second contact #tracingapp—using Apple / Google tech

ft.com/content/446df5… via @mikarv Admission 1: Battery life and iPhone problems are emerging

#tracingapp #Covid19UK

What do you do tho, when the misinformation is generated as a result of fears and suspicions fed by a slow and non-transparent government?

https://twitter.com/DamianCollins/status/1258349271105130496

I’ll give a very concrete example here. In my twitter stream, lots of people are claiming that the @NHSX App is built by “Palantir”, or “Faculty, the friends of Vote Leave”, or is just a plain “Dominic Cummings” App.