Barcode Nation

It seems not a week goes past now without another example of public sector officials misplacing our private data. The latest dose of stupidity comes from a NHS Trust staff member in Lancashire. The health worker lost a memory stick being used to backup 6,000 records from clinical databases at HMP Preston.
The memory stick was [...]

…it may just land you with a visit from Plod.
 
The BBC’s Five Live Breakfast sparked a flurry of anti-surveillance texts this morning following their story on internet companies being forced to keep records of our emails.
 
From March, new legislation will force ISPs to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for one year. [...]

Reports that police have been granted new powers to snoop on your PC without a warrant have been denied by the Home Office.
 
According to the Sunday Times report, the Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan via Europe to allow police across Britain to conduct “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers to [...]

According to today’s Guardian, the private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use. This latest step towards a full surveillance state will be revealed in a consultation paper to be published next month by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
The article hints [...]

Researchers have uncovered a weakness in the internet’s digital certificate system that allows them to forge counterfeit credentials needed to impersonate virtually any website that relies on the widely used security measure.
More than 200 Playstation 3’s were used in this proof-of-concept attack that throws the issue of internet security wide open.