What does privacy mean in an age of ongoing privacy breaches? With new privacy law coming online in Australia on March 12, our Privacy in Practice series explores the practical challenges facing Australian…
What does privacy mean in an age of ongoing privacy breaches? With new privacy law coming online in Australia on March 12, our Privacy in Practice series explores the practical challenges facing Australian…
The UK government has decided to hold off on plans to upload GP records onto a central database for six months. But it may have to drop the plan permanently unless it can provide satisfactory answers to…
Electronic medical records are essential for treating rare conditions. I have a two-year-old daughter with a rare medical condition. She is seen by three doctors and is on a number of different medicines…
Last week NHS England announced that the care.data scheme would be put on hold for six months while efforts were made to “build understanding of the benefits of using the information, what safeguards are…
Patient records are an irreplaceable resource for health research for the benefit of individual patients and populations. They allow researchers, for example, to examine how our lifestyles might determine…
Another day, another data breach. The response to that breach tells us something about privacy law, the media and bureaucracies. On Wednesday, The Guardian revealed that the Department of Immigration and…
While every year since the advent of the internet has had its share of privacy stories, 2013 has been a cornucopia of news about surveillance and personal data. Undoubtedly, the biggest story of the year…
Even before opening his stocking on Christmas morning, Barack Obama has his holiday reading cut out for him. His Review Group on Intelligence and Surveillance Technologies has handed him a 300-page report…
Children consistently delight and surprise us, and make us hoot with laughter. It’s only natural to want to share these moments with friends and family. But the trend of posting information about our young…
What happens when an Amazon drone drops through your roof or lands on the neighbour’s toddler while delivering a parcel? Can an unhappy pig farmer shoot down a drone operated by animal rights activists…
We collect huge amounts of data. In health, this includes data relating to inpatient and outpatient care, mental health services, prescribing and primary care. Big data is when the amount of these data…
Tesco, a British grocer with global status, has this week teamed up with Alan Sugar’s Amscreen to take personalised advertising to the next level. By means of Amscreen’s proprietary facial recognition…
Over the past year or so, surveillance issues have become more visible to the public, especially forms of what Australian computer scientist Roger Clarke calls “dataveillance”, or the systematic collection…
A few days ago Paul McMullan, former deputy features editor on the News of the World, popped up on a Sunday morning debate programme with his oft-repeated lament that, in the wake of the “chilling effect…
George Clooney revealed details last week about “his” spy satellite over Sudan, which he funds to keep an eye on the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who has been accused of war crimes. The Satellite…
In this election campaign the major parties are carefully dancing round an elephant in the ballroom. The elephant is big and a bit frightening. Its name is privacy policy. Recent months have seen expressions…
Do you have a right to be “forgotten” by Google searches and other internet search engines? That question is being considered in Europe currently, where the European Court of Justice has received advice…
In the wake of former CIA employee Edward Snowden’s revelations of the PRISM NSA mass surveillance, people are once again asking why the general public should care if they’ve got nothing to hide. “Nothing…
Recent news of widespread phone and internet surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) has raised serious questions over the ethical and legal obligations private companies face to protect the…