Identity Theft Check

The creation of the central electronic patient record in regions where it had planned for an accelerated implementation has been suspended by the Department of Health. The BMA (British Medical Association) was informed that the work would stop in the identified regions until appropriate public and professional awareness has been raised. This was after the BMA had called for the halting of developments, claiming that patients had not been informed. A BMA spokesman said it welcomed the decision by the DoH to suspend uploads. The creation of records will continue in early adopter areas and will only be suspended in five ‘accelerated work’ regions.

The UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has directly blamed Israel for forging passports used in January for the assassination for a Hamas military boss. The founder of Hamas’s military wing, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was assassinated in a Dubai Hotel by  a hit squad who entered Dubai using forged British passports. SOCA, the UK’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency, carried out an investigation and the British victims were all questions and found completely innocent of any identity theft. Most of those questioned live in Israel and hold dual citizenship. Assurances have been sought from the Israeli foreign minister by the UK Government, that British passports will not be misused again. David Miliband also reiterated that the UK had no prior knowledge of the assassination.

A bug which has existed in the popular Firefox browser for nearly 10 years is to be fixed imminently.
The bug relates to the web history of a browser and basically allows a hacker to discover which sites have been visited by checking the cascading style sheets which display the links in purple and not blue.
A spokesman for Mozilla, the developers behind Firefox, stated that some sites might look slightly odd after the changes, especially sites which use more than colour to differentiate visited links, but the privacy advantages far outweigh this. Firefox has a 25% share of the worldwide browser market and is a favourite amongst software developers especially due to the large amount of browser plug-ins which can be easily installed.

Through charging the general public, the UK Home Secretary has stated the identity card scheme should eventually pay for itself and that to end the scheme at this stage would be a waste and counterproductive.
The Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party are planning to drop the scheme as part of their election manifesto. The scheme is estimated to cost £5.3bn over 10 years. The opposition parties are stating that in reality the cards are only voluntary and over 13 million people would be required to sign up for the cards to cover the costs. Current estimates indicate only 3,000 are likely to apply for a card. Identity cards came into effect in November 2008 for foreign nationals only but people who live in the North West of England can now apply for a card. In February 2010 the scheme was extended to 16 to 24 year olds who live in London.

Provisions to mitigate data loss should be included in European electronic waste disposal laws, according a European data protection supervisor. There have been calls for manufacturers to integrate privacy-enhancing techniques into computing devices by design, in order for companies and organisations to delete sensitive data more easily.
The marketing of second hand devices that have not had sensitive information removed before resale has also been raised. Under UK law, data must be deleted from obsolete equipment. An ICO spokesperson said that under the DPA companies have responsibilities to store personal information securely but to also delete it once no longer required. After the new powers for the ICO came into effect in April, companies can face a maximum fine of 500,000 for breaches of privacy law.