Liberty Alone

Shocking news from Ross Anderson here:

auditors called 45 GP surgeries asking for personal information about 51 patients. In only one case were they asked to verify their identity

He also recounts that in 1996 whilst advising the BMA 30 false-pretext phone calls were detected within one week at one health authority. Reporting this to the Department of Health resulted in them being told not to work with the health authority anymore.

This is going to cost lives soon. It already is indirectly.

Of course, what do you expect from a state run service?

Ross Anderson a security researcher a Cambridge Univerity’s Computer Lab certainly has a nack for coming up with good ways to describe security and privacy issues. He invented the term “programming Satan’s machine” to describe creating secure computer systems.

He hits the right note again, describing the slow creep towards a surveillance state as being like boiling a frog - if you increase the heat quickly it jumps out, but if you increase the temperature slowly it gets used to it and stays in the water, eventually dying.
The same is what is happening to our privacy and with it our freedom.

Governments all over the world are slowly increasing the level of surveillance of the general population, aided by fear of terrorism (promoted by governments) and increasingly fear over environmental damage. In this walk, Britain is leading the way amongst the ‘free world’ with China leading the way in the rest of the world.