Wikio - Freedom of information

Home Office and PA Consulting lose the names and addresses of all the most serious criminals in the UK (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:37:29 GMT

It appears that the Home Office and their sub-contractor PA Consulting have put people's lives in danger, by losing an unencrypted memory stick, containing the personal name and address details of every prisoner in in the UK, about 84,000 people,...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Yet Another MI6 Secret Intelligence Service recruitment website (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:21:42 GMT

The spy business in the UK seems to be booming, at least so far as the creation of Flashy, if somewhat flawed, recruitment websites is concerned There was a front page advertisement for MI6 Officers in The Guardian on Wednesday...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Defence, Intelligence and Security Agencies, MI6, UK Politics

The Guardian - MI5 Restricted document - Understanding radicalisation and violent exrtremism in the UK - whistleblower leak or propaganda briefing ? (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:26:24 GMT

The Guardian newspaper (Thursday 21st August 2008) claims a Front Page Exclusive story with three articles and a bloated 350Kb .pdf image scan of a single page: MI5 report challenges views on terrorism in Britain Exclusive: Sophisticated analysis says there...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Defence, Entertainment, MI5, UK Newspapers, UK Politics

Music GCSE's lesson for life (Open Secrets)

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:22:26 GMT

GCSE results are out tomorrow, and a particularly interesting exam will be the music one set by the OCR board. Students who took this back in May were either delighted or disturbed to discover that the answers to some of the questions in one paper were given away in the copyright acknowledgments at the end. For example, the examinees had to listen to a piece of music and identify the composer, a task...

Source : Open Secrets (subscribe)

Explore : OCR, Software

Giving the Commons grief (Open Secrets)

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:00:58 GMT

It's not only Rother Council which has been quarrelling with whatdotheyknow.com. The House of Commons authorities are also involved in a continuing tussle over the site's policy of automatically publishing responses to freedom of information requests. This dispute has attracted the attention of Cabinet Office IT minister Tom Watson (himself an FOI requester when a backbench MP), who comments 'Oh good...

Source : Open Secrets (subscribe)

Explore : The House of Commons, The Parliament, UK Politics

Sunday Telegraph magazine article on the harrassment of photographers by jobsworths - time for a bit of sousveillance ? (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:55:06 GMT

The Sunday Telegraph "Seven" magazine, has an article about the illegal Harassment of Photographers by officious jobsworths: Has our increasingly paranoid society declared war on the humble 'weekend snapper'? Last Updated: 12:01am BST 17/08/2008 Page 1 of 3 An amateur...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Entertainment, The Sunday Telegraph, UK Newspapers

Draft Constitutional Reform Bill Clause 43 (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:45:41 GMT

As we get further disillusioned with what passes for effective Parliamentary scrutiny of this Government's never ending output of ever more complicated legislation, which seems to be a substitute for actually achieving anything positive, we did notice that some of...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

10 Downing Street website relaunch failure - Government IT cockup or foerign cyber attack ? (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:38:25 GMT

According to the junior Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson, a blogging pioneer amongst Westminster politicians, who is meant to be in charge of some of the Government's IT system strategy, there was supposed to be a new version of the...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Cabinet Office, Government, Tom Watson, UK Politics

10 Downing Street website relaunch failure - Government IT cockup or foreign cyber attack ? (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:38:25 GMT

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Cabinet Office, Government, Tom Watson, UK Politics

Civil Nuclear Constabulary to be expanded into a Critical National Infrastructure Police force ? - some obvious worries (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:55:37 GMT

The Mail on Sunday has an interesting Government leak / briefing: Anti-terror patrols secretly stepped up at power stations By Jason Lewis Last updated at 12:43 AM on 10th August 2008 Massive expansion of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary is being...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Has the National Risk Register been politically censored ? (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:49:25 GMT

The Cabinet Office has now published a peculiar document, the so called National Risk Register (N.B. you may have to change the file extension of the downloaded file to be able to read it - .pdf.- 45 pages) 1.1 The...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

BBC World Service series about FOI (Open Secrets)

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:13:34 GMT

Over seventy countries across the world now have freedom of information laws, covering over half the world´s population and promising them the right to know more about what their governments are doing. But how much difference do these laws make in practice? Who really uses them, or even cares about them? And what happens when the backlash strikes? These are some of the questions considered in a BBC...

Source : Open Secrets (subscribe)

Review: Surveillance Unlimited: How we've become the most watched people on earth - Keith Laidler (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:01:09 GMT

Surveillance Unlimited: How We've Become the Most Watched People on Earth by Keith Laidler. UK £ 10.99 Icon Books UK Publication May 2008 ISBN 978-184046877-9 We had hoped to publish this review several weeks ago, but there has been...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Authors, Culture, George Orwell, Literature

Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport report - no specific mention of controls on blogs, but they want to track and trace mobile phone images (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:08:30 GMT

What actual use to the public, are Select Committees of the House of Commons, and the Reports which they publish ? The Labour Government invariably cherry picks a quotation from the summary of such a Report, especially if it was...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Computer industry, Gateway, The House of Commons, The Parliament, UK Politics

Trades Unions betray their members over Labour ID Card scheme (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:52:21 GMT

Politics.co.uk are reporting that Unions approve ID cards Monday, 28 Jul 2008 13:42 Britain's trade unions have accepted the government's proposals for ID cards, opening the way for the plans to feature in Labour's next election manifesto. The decision came...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

The Guardian: MI5 targets dissidents as Irish terror threat grows - the numbers do not seem to add up (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:08:34 GMT

The relationship between the mainstream media and anonymous briefings by intelligence agency and police sources is a strange one. The Guardian has, mysteriously, published a couple of figures, which do not appear in the Annual Reports of the Interception of...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Defence, Entertainment, Media, MI5, UK Politics

Blog break but more from Rother (Open Secrets)

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:15:00 GMT

Blog break but more from Rother28 Jul 08, 02:15 PM

Source : Open Secrets (subscribe)

Light blogging (Open Secrets)

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:18:53 GMT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/blog28/vanilla/acs'dnainitialtitle=Light%20blogging&dnahostpageurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2008/07/light_blogging.html&dnauid=movabletype28_33357&s_baseHeadingLevel=1&dnashow=&dnafrom=0&dnato=499&dna_encoding=iso-8859-1&s_sssicomponent=1&s_sssiCommentCount=&dna_list_ns=movabletype28[_]&s_commentprofileurl=/blogs/profile&

Source : Open Secrets (subscribe)

Channel 4 TV 7pm - Car Bomb documentary by Robert Baer - what about the Infernal Machines ? (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:46:31 GMT

We will probably watch tonight's Channel 4 TV documentary entitled Car Bomb by former CIA agent Robert Baer, set to be broadcast at 7pm. However the publicity piece in the Sunday Times does make us wonder about the quality of...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)

Explore : Channel 4, Channels

Annual Report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner to the Prime Minister and to Scottish Ministers for 2007-2008 by the Rt. Hon. Sir Christopher Rose (Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk)

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:49:51 GMT

Annual Report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner to the Prime Minister and to Scottish Ministers for 2007-2008 (.pdf 32 pages) by the Rt. Hon. Sir Christopher Rose, published on 22nd July 2008. Unlike the other two RIPA Commissioners, there is...

Source : Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk (subscribe)