And, Of Course, UK ID Card Database Abused

from the and-so-it-goes dept

It's been pointed out time and time again, that if a government (or a corporation) puts together a big database of information on people, that database will be abused. It's just what happens. Yet, with the UK gov't looking to store (or have ISPs store for it) all sorts of info, it's worth noting that its current ID card database was apparently being abused to look up info on celebrities. Yes, the people doing the snooping were apparently caught and fired, but it still highlights that these sorts of databases are never really private, and someone with access will always try to use them for purposes beyond what was intended.

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Bad Idea: UK Launches Database Of Info On Every Child

from the who-thought-this-was-a-good-idea? dept

Apparently, some folks in the UK haven't yet realized that no database is fully secure, and any large database of info will almost certainly be abused at some point. In what appears to be a stunningly bad idea, the UK has put together a giant database including info on every child in the UK. The goal is for it to be used by childcare professionals, but you can bet it will be misused quite soon. As internet law expert Michael Scott notes: "Who thought this was a good idea? And why?"

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UK Drops Plan For Government Internet and Phone Database; Tells ISPs and Operators To Retain The Data Instead

from the shell-game dept

The British government says it has dropped its plans to create a central database "of all phone calls, e-mails and websites visited." Instead, it wants ISPs and phone companies to hold all of the info. A government minister says having all of the information in a central database represented an intrusion of personal privacy, and that having individual firms store it raised fewer concerns. That may be true, but privacy issues still exist; simply storing all the data in different places might mitigate some risk, but it certainly doesn't eliminate it. Meanwhile, the government wants to expand the data that communications companies must retain for 12 months, going beyond phone records and web sites visited. It also wants them to hold on to records of third-party information crossing their networks, including phone use and internet traffic from outside the country. And, to boot, it wants them to organize all of the data to make it easy for authorities to search. Two issues remain: first, again, throwing more and more data into the retention mix won't magically make the country safer, it just makes it harder to find useful data. Second, this seems like little more than a cunning political ploy to replace a pretty reprehensible plan with one that's only slightly less worrisome. The revised plan still raises plenty of issues, but hey, it's not as bad as the original plan, so it must be pretty good, right?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Are A Quarter Of The UK Government's Databases Illegal?

from the that's-how-it-works dept

Governments keep trying to build bigger and bigger databases -- and almost every such database eventually gets abused in ways that harm privacy rights. One of the most aggressive governments in building such databases has been the UK -- and a new study of such databases has found that approximately a quarter of the UK government's databases are illegal in that they don't do nearly enough to protect individual's privacy and civil rights. Of course, these sorts of things don't get any attention until it's too late -- and there's a big enough abuse or leak to really lead to public attention.

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Israel Trying To Build Biometric Database

from the privacy? dept

Reader Ido alerts us to the news coming out of Israel, that the Senate there has moved forward on a bill that would create a huge biometric database including data on all Israelis, and refusing to provide such data could land anyone a year in jail. As the article notes, there's a rather loud uproar about this, as many Israelis fear not only for their own privacy and civil liberties, but wonder just how such a database will be abused -- either by gov't officials or by hackers. It sounds like the bill still has a ways to go before becoming law, but this appears to be yet another move by a government to mistakenly assert that taking away people's privacy somehow makes them more secure.

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Creating A List From A Database? Prepare For A Patent Infringement Suit

from the promoting-what-progress? dept

Thanks to the whole slew of folks who sent this in: TechCrunch has the details on Channel Intelligence, a company that owns a ridiculously broad and obvious patent on creating a list from a database and is now suing a whole bunch of small websites that offer things like wishlists. Read through the claims of the patent and see if you can explain how a single one is possibly new or non-obvious to those in the space. As TechCrunch notes, the lawsuits are all targeted against smaller websites, rather than the big players like eBay or Amazon. There are a variety of reasons why this might be. Channel Intelligence may have approached those companies and actually received a token payout (cheaper than a lawsuit for those companies). Or, perhaps more likely, it's using these smaller lawsuits to bring in some additional cash and to establish the myth that this patent is valid. That was common a few years back, before people started suing everyone at once for patent infringement. Patent holders would mostly target a few small companies, who wouldn't be able to launch a strong legal defense -- use those "victories" to build up a warchest while also claiming that it showed how the patents are "valid."

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The Problem With A Database Of Prior Art Is You Don't Know What's Worth Putting In

from the not-so-easy dept

Dan Berninger, who I almost always agree with, has tossed out a suggestion for how tech companies can deal with situations like the one where Verizon was able to squeeze millions of dollars out of Vonage using patents that clearly never should have been granted, as there was tremendous amounts of prior art on the patents (much of which was brought to light by Berninger himself). His suggestion is that tech companies should create "a formal process of contributing software innovations to the public domain." It's one of those ideas that sounds good in theory, but won't work in practice. In the past, we've explained why similar ideas (such as a database of "obvious ideas" for the sake of prior art) will never work.

The main reason: if you're not in the business of generating patents, you generally don't think all of the little things you do are worth patenting or dropping into a database. They just seem obvious and natural, so you don't even bother. It's only in retrospect -- when someone else has patented the concept -- that people start to realize that they wish they had some sort of record of the obvious ideas they had or things they did years before the patent was filed. Sure, people will submit some ideas here or there, but it simply won't seem worth it to many people, especially on very minor things, or very broad things like setting up a hands-free kit in a car. That seems so obvious, why would you even think to patent it... or put it in a database of prior art? So, while it's a nice idea in theory, it will fail in retrospect, because the ideas and concepts that need to be in a database will seem so obvious that people won't bother entering them until it's too late and someone else already has the patent.

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Spying On Your Ex-Girlfriend Not Quite What Homeland Security's Database Is For

from the just-saying... dept

Every time we hear of yet another plan for the government to set up yet another database of information about people, we wonder about how it will be misused. Supporters always talk about how helpful such databases are (which is debatable), but rarely are willing to take into account how such systems are going to be abused -- and they're always abused. The latest such case involves an employee at the Department of Commerce who used a Department of Homeland Security database to track an ex-girlfriend. This wasn't just a one-off thing either. He apparently used the database 163 times to check up on her. Then he threatened to have the woman deported and her family killed. So, as the government continues to push the boundaries in trying to collect more and more data on everyone, it's at least worth asking if the potential for abuses is taken into consideration and how they're dealt with (if they're dealt with at all).

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