A privacy timeline and UK news

Surveillance News has created a rough guide to privacy, legislation and relevant UK news stories using Timetoast. Just click the image and interact with the timeline. Please do point out any major omissions.

Comment: 7 million downloaders – says the music industry

Reports that Peter Mandelson’s proposals to sever the internet connections of illegal downloaders will affect seven million filesharers in the UK have been debunked by the BBC. The figure may in fact be closer to 3.9 million people. The original statistics were said to be from a paper produced by a government advisory body, the [...]

Digital pirates and the big players: who will win?

This month Business Secretary Peter Mandelson announced plans to disconnect filesharers from the internet for downloading illegally. This comes after heavy lobbying from the creative industries who argue that hundreds of jobs will be lost if immediate action against piracy is not taken. But digital rights groups argue that ‘disconnection without trial’ is an infringement [...]

Media interest in data retention

Although headlines about Big Brother databases and BBC scare programmes have flared up particularly this summer, the media have been panicking about databases for some time, as indicated by Google Insights (click image to see original). Why the peak at 2005? Add the dates, and things perhaps become a little clearer. It was when the [...]