WRITTEN ON Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Official fibbing/bad stats, We told you so..., What do we want?

Bloody marvellous. When the database state + Experian connive to wreck your life, there’s no comeback! So rules Bill Blair (brother of the devout war-mongerer himself) in a High Court judgment, reported by El Reg: An entrepreneur whose fledgling business was ruined by a false entry in a court database has had his claim for […]

WRITTEN ON Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, We told you so..., What do we want?

Nine local council staff have been sacked for illegal access to the ID database, says Computer Weekly. * Cardiff and Glasgow councils sacked staff after they looked up celebrities’ personal records * Tonbridge and Bromley councils sacked workers for looking up their friends * Brent sacked someone who looked at their girlfriend’s details * A […]

WRITTEN ON Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, We told you so..., What do we want?

ContactPoint database could put 11 million children at risk Every child in England could be at risk because of security failings in the Government’s controversial children’s database, experts have claimed. By Heidi Blake Published: 3:19PM BST 03 Aug 2009 ContactPoint is designed to help protect England’s 11 million children by giving officials a single register […]

WRITTEN ON Monday, August 3rd, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Official fibbing/bad stats, We told you so..., What do we want?

It seems the mechanised state is slanderous (or libellous): Criminal Records Bureau errors lead to hundreds being branded criminals More than 1,500 people have been wrongly branded as criminals or mistakenly given a clean record by the government agency set up to vet those workin g with children, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. By Christopher […]

WRITTEN ON Friday, July 31st, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Pertinent Art, What do we want?

WRITTEN ON Monday, July 20th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Official fibbing/bad stats, What do we want?

More criminologists have pointed out the poor statistical analysis behind the Home Office’s DNA database plans, says The Guardian: “Flawed scientific thinking” in the government’s proposed changes to the DNA database will leave it open to further challenges by the courts, experts have said, in a stark attack on Home Office plans to overhaul the […]

WRITTEN ON Saturday, July 18th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Official fibbing/bad stats, We told you so..., What do we want?

Ben “Bad Science” Goldacre has a careful look at the evidence provided to justify DNA database policy by the Jill Dando Institute of Inappropriate Shroudwaving: In fact, this study from the Jill Dando Institute, attached to their consultation paper as an appendix, is possibly the most unclear and badly presented piece of research I have […]

WRITTEN ON Thursday, July 16th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Transformational Government, We told you so..., What do we want?

The database carrying the details of 11m children in the UK will be accessible by 390,000 users making the system highly vulnerable at thousands of endpoints. “Why the government has created this security headache in the first place, particularly when their track record on data handling raises serious questions, is something of a mystery”…said Richard […]

WRITTEN ON Monday, July 13th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Save Time and Money, What do we want?

Not only are our passports too expensive (cf €59 for the Irish); they leak our personal details through their insecure RFID chips. This is far from Ideal. This, it seems, is the device we need to cure the latter problem:

WRITTEN ON Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Identity, What do we want?

According to this report, Alan Johnson is abolishing compulsory ID Cards, starting with “air-side” airport workers. As always, the precise detail of this decision is crucial. But let’s hope that this decision marks the beginning of the end of the crazy ID project which has wasted so much money and so much valuable talent. Let’s […]