The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | yesterday
Yesterday’s ‘Freedom not Fear’ event in Parliament Square resulted in this fantastic photo-mosaic It was great fun lugging our sheets of photos around and watching the finished product emerge. More on the Open Rights Group blog, including links to more pictures.
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 11/10/2008
I doubt if anyone has missed the news that EDS has lost a portable hard drive containing: the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of those serving in the army, navy and RAF. It also includes next-of-kin details, as well as information on 600,000 potential services applicants As you might imagine, while [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 07/10/2008
Harry Fletcher talking about youth justice - or the lack of it - in Guardian Society: Probation officers who once had caseloads of 30 and knew the individuals personally, now talk of 80, 100, or even more. The response of management to this crisis has been to increase the caseload limit and to advise staff to [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 05/10/2008
Given the potential for disaster here, it’s surprising that this story didn’t make it into the nationals: An item of networking kit bought from eBay for just 99p ($1.79) gave privileged access to an internal network at an English county council… Mason bought the remote access kit for his business, but was surprised when it automatically connected [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 03/10/2008
The UK has duly been examined by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and their concluding observations are here. (pdf) As we expected, they have majored on the treatment of asylum-seeking children, children in custody and our unacceptably low age of criminal responsibility. They have also given the government a sharp rebuke about [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 01/10/2008
Recommended reading: Tony Collins’ examination of 13 government IT fiascos and his related analysis of why Labour has failed so dramatically on large IT-based projects. Building a bridge from the US to England may seem a good idea in theory but it is not practical. Yet ministers embarked on the technological equivalent with the NHS’s [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 29/09/2008
Here’s a headline that makes our last 5 years of hard slog feel more than worthwhile: Conservatives would scrap controversial ContactPoint child database A flagship database of every child living in England, which is due to be launched by the government next year, will be shutdown by a Conservative government. I’ve just unearthed a briefing I wrote as [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 24/09/2008
At a Labour conference fringe event, Home Office minister Meg Hillier told the audience that the age for ID Cards could possibly be lowered to 14. This is now being denied. Who are we to believe? Meg Hillier? on Monday, Ms Hillier said a ministerial working group was thinking about extending the scheme to younger children [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 23/09/2008
Following Liberata’s complete IT screw-up of the Education Maintenance Allowance: The Department for Children, Schools and Families said there was no guarantee that pupils would get their grants - worth up to £30 a week for 16- to 18-year-olds - this side of Christmas. The Guardian adds: It will prove deeply embarrassing to the government, particularly [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 22/09/2008
Barnardo’s reports that the use of custody for children has risen 550% over the past decade. The charity says the number of children and young people imprisoned in England and Wales is the third highest in Europe, behind only the Russian Federation and the Ukraine. A quick question. Which shadow home secretary said this? “It is really [...]
Liberal England (Free subscription) | 20/09/2008
Good news. The ARCH blog - ARCH as in Action on Rights for Children -has woken up.
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 18/09/2008
ARCH members will know that we have put in a Freedom of Information request for the full security review of Contactpoint (following publication of the executive summary) so far without success. Our internal appeal has now been rejected and so it’s onwards and upwards to the Information Commissioner and, probably, the Information Tribunal. Amongst other [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 17/09/2008
The importance attached to risk assessment tools is increasing, with news that the Youth Justice Board is introducing a ’scaled approach’ to young offenders: Young people committing the same crime could get different sentences under the Youth Justice Board’s (YJB) Scaled Approach, charity Nacro has claimed. Under the plans, the Scaled Approach policy would see [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 16/09/2008
An impressive hat-trick this week. On the bright side, it’s good to see that nobody has made any of those irritating claims about taking data security ‘very seriously’. First off the blocks: The discovery at a Cornish nightclub of a computer memory stick with details of troop movements on it is being probed by the Ministry of [...]
The ARCH Blog (Free subscription) | 12/09/2008
It would be nice to say we’ve been dozing on a beach in the Maldives for the past three months, but in fact we’ve been travelling to Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool… the closest we came to the sea was Cardiff, where it rained so hard that we could only watch the waves breaking on Penarth [...]
