Friday 21 May 2010

In the Big Brother house

The Open Rights Group write here that there's much to celebrate in the change of government, particularly in regards to privacy concerns. The highlight that much of the Lib Dem’s pre-election Freedom Bill seems to have been essentially cut and pasted in, including of digital special interest:

- The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next
generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
- Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
- The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater
transparency.
- Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
- The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
- Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
- Further regulation of CCTV.
- Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
- A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

No comments:

Blog Archive

My photo
I am director of the Media and Persuasive Communication (MPC) network at Bangor University where I also lecture on political-economy of the media. I am currently working on a book provisionally titled Deconstructing Privacy for Peter Lang and leading two empirical projects in connection with privacy perception and the use of new media for smoking cessation. I am author of Creativity and Advertising: Affect, Events and Process (Routledge, 2013); The Mood of Information: A Critique of Behavioural Advertising (Continuum, 2011); and Digital Advertising (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2009). Please contact me at mcstay@bangor.ac.uk if you are interested in Ph.D supervision or consultancy services.