Saturday 24 November 2007

This year's must-have Xmas present ...

From the excellent b3ta website

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Might come-in-relevant stories

Times November 15, 2007
Doctors may be prosecuted if their laptops are stolen
Frances Gibb, Legal Editor

Doctors who have laptops containing patients’ records stolen from their cars could end up in court.

Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, said a “blatant breach of fundamental observation” should attract criminal penalties.

He told the Lords’ Constitution Committee that this was a new criminal offence being sought to enforce compliance with data protection laws.

The offence would be for knowingly or recklessly flouting data protection principles. Offenders could be fined up to £5,000 in a magistrates’ court or unlimited sums in the Crown Court.


Fat lot of difference that will make when only 1/4 million people have access to all my health records anyway. Makes more sense to give me copyright in my own data, then at least I'd get tuppence each time someone reads about my thrilling bunions without being authorized a 'free copy'.


BBC News 17 February 2007
Nationwide laptop fine

The financial regulator has fined Nationwide Building Society almost £1m following the theft of a laptop from an employee's home last year.

Imprisonment penalties required for government officers as there is no point in suing them or fining them, sez I.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Laptops get stolen and lost all the time.

So the key to this is, people shouldn't have sensitive data on lap tops, unless it is anonymised and encrypted and password protected and so on.

That said, a few imprisonments for people at HMRC (starting with The Gobling King and The Badger) seem to be in order.

Henry North London 2.0 said...

I like it. I forget about b3ta these days as I'm not reminded about it regularly enough.