When IT Meets Politics

"Who do you trust? The Government, Marmite, Michael Fish .. Tesco .. ? So begins Matthew Gwyther, in a Management Today editorial on corporate trust. Debate over on-line trust is even more surreal.

Those who believe in the benefits of the on-line world must act rapidly and effectively to turn the current backlash against its perceived insecurity into well-informed votes of customer confidence in those who practice, not just preach, secure information sharing.

The petition on the No 10 calling for urgent action on an NHTCU replacement has been signed by two of the House of Lords Committee on Personal Internet Safety, many leading lights of the ICT world and not a few journalists

The growing flood of data leak stories means that few, if any, large UK public sector ICT programmes will be progressed until political confidence is rebuilt. That is a major challenge for an industry that has lost touch with reality

From puberty to senility we are urged to put intimate details on-line via services like Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, Linked-In and Friends Re-United to be trawled by friends, predators, on-line marketeers, anti-piracy lawyers and information aggregators.

The debate over the ID cards and register took new turns this week with leaks over the nature of the "incremental approach" and reports of major suppliers losing interest in bidding for a big centralised scheme.

The authors of the House of Lords Select Committee report on Personal Internet Safety are seeking comment on the Government Response with a view to doing a follow up exercise. The Earl of Erroll, explains why, in this “guest blog”.

I have just received an e-mail from "The Excellent Network" on "10 Thinks you didn't know last week" inviting me to click for actions in the coming week. If arrived just after a reference to another data breach at US supermarket chain; I decided not to trust it. I also concluded that my wife was not irrational when she declined to trust the security of our local supermarket.

I have agreed to chair the session on "Ethical aspects related to the use of government on-line services" at the European Commission workshop on "Ethics and e-Inclusion" in early May. In parallel I am mapping "issues and players" for the new UK Internet Governance Forum. As with climate change it looks as though we are walking backwards into a most uncertain future.

Yesterday at Infosec the Information Commisioner said that the Cabinet Secretary's Review was expected to be focussed on "issues of accountability and governance", indicating that the heads of departments would be personally responsible in the event of serious data breaches. But where is the guidance on how to share information securily going to come from?

This week the Economist publishes an excellent article describing the ambivalent attitude of the British Public towards Civil Liberties and the Surveillance Society. It could be, but is not, summarised as: "We want to be looked after but do not trust the systems".

I am indebted to GC Weekly for notice of this alarming announcement from the Herod Office and the respsnse from the No2AD campaign.

The government has published controversial plans for gathering data on individuals with new bionumeric technology, while helping small businesses. The use of bionumerics, or "people counting", will involve everyone registering in person at a national network of taxation offices. Everyone will travel to their family's town to enrol, a move which the government believes will boost the hard pressed tourism and donkey industries.

This is to remind you that February 13^th is the deadline for inputs to the Identity and Passport Service consultation on the secondary legislation under the Identity Cards Act 2006 that will establish the detailed procedures required to introduce ID cards and in particular for the Critical Workers Identity Card Scheme that is due to start in late 2009.