Google Dashboard

Readers of my Blog will be well aware of my previous criticisms of the company’s ambitions to gather all of the world’s knowledge on its servers, and my concerns over its infringement of traditional ideas about privacy.
It is therefore of considerable interest that Google has just launched Dashboard.  This is intended to provide users of [...]

Hollywood, star brokers and influential charities

This recent article in the UK’s Sunday Times magazine is well worth a read.  In it, Jonathan Foreman provides  insights into the ways in which the power brokers of the talent agencies match influential charities with guilt-ridden celebrities.
I particularly enjoyed the following clips:

“Over the last decade and a half, the agency foundations have grown in [...]

Google books – philanthropy or piracy?

In the Observer on 30th Augsut, William Skidelsky has added a contribution to the debate about Google’s plans to create the world’s biggest online library.  As he comments “Google has already scanned 10 million books in its bid to digitise the contents of the world’s major libraries, but a copyright battle now threatens the project, [...]

Freedom on the Net

For those who may not have read it yet, Freedom House’s publication entitled Freedom on the Net: a Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media and published in April 2009, provides a very valuable assessment of the balance of interests in the spread of the Internet and mobile telephony across the world.
As Freedom House’s blurb [...]

Is the UK becoming a police state?

The Sunday Times published a front page report today noting that: ‘THE government is building a secret database to track and hold the international travel records of all 60m Britons. The intelligence centre will store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details for all 250m passenger movements [...]

Is the UK becoming a surveillance state?

The BBC has today highlighted a recent House of Lords’ debate, noting that:
‘Electronic surveillance and collection of personal data are “pervasive” in British society and threaten to undermine democracy, peers have warned. CCTV cameras and the DNA database were two examples of threats to privacy, the Lords constitution committee said. It called for compensation for [...]

Google and privacy

A BBC report raises concerns about privacy issues associated with Google’s new tracking service, Latitude.  This uses data from mobile phone masts, GPS, or wi-fi hardware to update a user’s location automatically.  Although it is an opt-in service, there are fears that not everyone may know that their phone is broadcasting their location.
There is, though, [...]