Posts by KeithR 379 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Dec 2014
"The sort being engineered by the Sir Humphreys of this world.
Damnit, man, don't you know we're facing Padeo/Terror/Drug/Crime-ageddon and the only way to deal with them is to snoop on everyone's internet activity!"
You seem to be confusing Civil Servants with the Daily Mail.
They're not the same.
"If you want to use some of my bandwidth, you can pay for it. Until then, I reserve the right to block, blank or otherwise mutilate anything destined for my connection."
And - for free - you'll also get the opportunity to watch the internet slowly shrivel up and die...
"But some of the ads have become SO intrusive I just loaded a blocker. And yes, I have the self-playing videos as well. It's MY data stream damn it! You can f*cking well ASK my permission before playing."
This, really.
I'm not miltantly anti-ad on principle: it's the experience that results from allowing ads, rather than the ads themselves, that provoke me to block them (I've been blocking them waaaay before it became A Thing - anyone else remember Siemens' "WebWasher? I was running that in 2000).
With bandwidth no longer being an issue, I'd happily accept some ads - but until they're delivered more unobtrusively, and are better targeted (I don't really mind Google's servings - they're usually on point, but I don't give a flying fark about pensions advice some random US pensions broker when I'm in the UK and nowhere near retiring), ad-blocking it will have to be.
"However this proposal will fundamentally break the principle that for each government service, the data that is collected is only used for that service"
No.
As long as the subsequent use to which data are put can be described as "not incompatible" with the original purpose for processing, you'd be surprised how much further data can be exploited (and I don't necessarily mean "exploited" pejoratively).
This presumes proper "fair processing" activity - transparency and openness about the subsequent use, a legal basis for it (be that consent, legislation, court order or whatever) but it's eminently doable, and always has been.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/principle-2-purposes
"Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes."
As usual, tons of knee-jerk in the comments here, but - trust me on this - the policy makers in the government organisations that become involved in these proposed novel datashares/uses are careful to an almost obsessively paranoid degree, about good governance and proper lawfulness/fairness considerations; and - trust me on this too - kick out unacceptable proposals on a daily basis.
And will continue to do so, even if this initiative rolls out.
Let me put it another way: Cabinet Office gets told "no" a lot...
"This whole site oozes snide. If it causes you offence when it's directed at Google then I guess there must be a little bit of Google love there..."
Naaah. Snide makes the world go round, but in this case there's a damn' sight more snide than is actually warranted..
Snide for snide's sake is just lazy.
"The whole government's approach to privacy and security is paranoid to say the least..."
This is preciesly fuck all to do with "government", and everything do do with a jumped-up clown in what passes for a uniform getting carried away with the power he thinks it gives him, and his utter ignorance of the application of the relevant law...
"One of the primary concepts encapsulated in limited liability exists to ring fence the debts of a company. If it didn't, then you could go straight after the directors and their personal assets."
Nope.
This isn't a company debt - it's a lawfully applied financial penalty for a breach of UK law.
Utterly different, and criminal directors are absolutely fair game for asset-stripping in these circumstances..
"I read this in Worstall terms - the retail industry is now getting more efficient and will have lower operating costs to pass on to consumers. Those who are employed will soon be free to do something more valuable within society, and as society we are as a whole, richer for it, as we are getting more productivity from fewer people."
And it's EXACTLY that sort of crap that earns Worstall all the loathing he so richly deserves.
"Compare this to the high street - devoid of selection, out of stock"
There ya go.
I can live with the rest - in fact I will happily pay over the odds to support local business when they've got the the thing I want - but they almost never do.
I'm not talking about esoterically exotic bits and pieces either: the last thing I tried and failed to buy on my local high street was a plug-in USB 3 sd/CF card reader.
How much shorter would this article have been if the boss' question:
"So how secure is it?"
HAD JUST BEEN FUCKING ANSWERED PROPERLY STRAIGHT OFF THE BAT.
Ha-ha and all - very funny - but this is exactly the smartarse, "you're not in on the joke" bullshit that so many techies are hated for. And rightly so.
"Even an idiot like myself can do it."
That sentiment is probably at least partly right... .
The world over, government employees are limited - by contract, by policy, by technical measures and by threat of immediate dismissal if they try do anything about it - to using only the software Sys Admins (and management) have decided they "need".
So - great idea and all, except... not.
"- print the document
- cut out the sensitive information with scissors
- put the paper on a non-flat surface
- photograph it with a cheap hand-held camera"
Not entirely practical when dealing with responses that might number hundreds - or on occasion, thousands - of pages...
"That's the one the Civil Service went for some time ago as reported here at the time."
Really? Which "the Civil Service" is this?
Because my bit of it - which deals with between 6 and 7 figures' worth of SARs a year (depending on how you count requests: all requests for personal data are SARs, but we don't expect every one to be handled via the full formal SAR regime) - has, since I set up its original Data Protection Unit some fifteen years ago, done all of its redaction using the old-school-but-reliable "print off; redact with indelible ink marker; photocopy; CHECK; release to data subject" technique.
(My FoI colleagues use a broadly similar approach for stuff that they release - except that the data are rescanned for electronic transmission).
In that time, although we've had our fair share of RFAs from the ICO (though significantly fewer than any other comparable UK Gov Dept), NOT ONE has been related to fecked-up redaction.
Staff properly trained by people who know what they're on about, can make up for most technical shortfalls.
And lazy sweeping statements like yours irritate me.
"Doesn't the use of the (abusive?) term "fanboi" indicate a comment from the USA?"
Nope. I'm UK born and bred and I find myself using it quite a lot about pro [insert non MS OS of choice] zealots on here who are too stupid to get past the notion that NO OS is perfect; and that - warts an' all - what MS does suits many of us (who don''t want their OS to be a hobby in its own right) pretty well.
"For some of us - open plan just does not work and while that may be unpalatable to the office planners and the bean counters, they ignore it at the risk of lost productivity."
Indeed. I provide legal advice on complex matters of information law compliance and I work in a room full of techy gobshites who can apparently only communicate by SHOUTING! at each other, utterly ruining my ability to do the kind of deep considerative work I need to do, day after day.
I could be MASSIVELY more productive if I had peace and quiet - but that'd involve spending money (and accepting just how wrong open plan can be), and HM Gov won't be having that...
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