Sean Things Aloud

Ann Cavoukian, prominent leader and intellect in the privacy space, recently said in a tweet that “your home is the last bastion of privacy”. Whilst this is arguable considering the onslaught on “smart devices” in the home, her response was aimed at a House of Commons working paper titled “CCTV Surveillance by your neighbour”. The paper outlines the responsibilities of the home owner to use CCTV in their private lives carefully and ensuring they protect the privacy of their neighbours. You can find the paper here: http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01803/SN01803.pdf CCTV cameras for the home are nowadays easy to get and install, there are now “smart” door bells with cameras and microphones too, so the obligation to use these to protect your property responsibility is important. Nobody has the right to invade the sanctuary of another person whether this be their inner most being, their thoughts and ideas, or their home. However this topic is not as new as we might ...

This is a topic that comes up all the time and there are various views out there so I wanted to add to the debate. I specifically want to emphasise 2 key points: It is not just about your name It needs to be contextualised Definition The new General Data Protection Regulation (for short we will call it GDPR) defines it as follows: Personal Information - any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. So what is an "identifiable natural person"? GDPR go on to explain that this is someone who "can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person" It is also important to stress that GDPR and EU law seeks to incorporate into this definition as many pieces of information about you as poss...

Before I begin if you are an American Citizen then congratulations. You are a first-class citizen and do not need to read any further. For the rest of us we need to have a talk about some facts that you will need to get used to. Let me say it as plainly as I can... You are second class citizen of the world. You do not deserve privacy and protection of your personal information, what you do, what you see online, who you talk to etc. So unfortunately, we all need to get used to it. So, what am I referring to? Well we have President Trump to thank. According to him if you are not American then you are a second-rate citizen of the world. Regarding your rights to privacy and a private life as are all our rights as human beings and enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Right, they do not exist. On twitter Cobun Keegan (@cobun) highlighted that the executive order President Trump enacted on "public safety" directs all federal agencies that the Privacy Act should not extend...

Social media services are available everywhere these days. In many ways they help people communicate, keep in touch with loved ones and generally find out what is happening within communities and the world at large. However there are also side effects to these services which must be understood and managed. For example vulnerable people or sensitive relationships should remain private and confidential but in a recent article, Kashmir Hill writing for fusion.net (see references below), highlighted how one social media services used data and metadata about people to violate privacy and confidentiality. Hill recounted how Facebook suggested patients of a a psychiatrists be friends. This relationship should be confidential however Facebook afforded these patients to work out who else were patients of the psychologist in question and potentially able to determine their health concerns. The concern is that this psychiatrist did not look up or befriend any of her patients on Facebook. Whilst F...

I am all for enforcing law, catching and prosecuting criminals and terrorists and preventing harm to vulnerable members of our society. I am also for protecting civil liberties, freedom, the right to decide how our personal information is collected and used and the right to defend any misrepresentation of our personal information. So it is hard to square these two and there will always be a tension to get the right balance. A few news items I have been watching over the last few weeks really made me think (again). Many countries are enacting more stringent laws to allow governments more access to our data with lower barriers to enter but allegedly more oversight or governance. For example the USA has enacted the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act (CISA) and the UK has the “snoopers charter” or as it is called “Investigatory Powers Bill” (to be far not enacted but almost). However how do we square giving more and more powers to the government when we can’t trust them to keep it s...

There is a lot of disquiet about the changes being proposed to the Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) currently going through the British parliament. One article that recently appearing online titled "British Spies collecting phone data for 14 years (www.goo.gl/YnBkOC) would imply that they have all the powers they need, whether covered by law or not (why ask if you can do it anyway). So why does the government need more powers when they don't worry about or use the ones they have today? Watering down encryption One part that I have particularly being hearing about is that it proposes to water down encryption. Some people are saying that the new amendments will require organizations to assist in bypassing encryption and therefore weaken encryption protocols. However, this does not appear to stack up. The act, introduced in 2000 and having gone through four updates, already had the obligation on organizations to hand over decryption keys to law enforcement agencies or f...