a lot of stuff and nonsense from eclectech

I discovered today that I'm the #1 Google hit for foolish and misguided plans. This pleases me, particularly as it's referring to my animation about Charles Clarke and his foolish and misguided plans rather than plans of my own devising.

I've been stumbling across a few reports related to this particular brand of Government IT related foolishness, so now seems a good time to clear those bookmarks out into a blog post.

You might remember* my moaning about the e-voting going on in the May elections - the Open Rights Group
produced an interesting report following their involvement in reviewing the process, and there's currently a Newsnight special about the particular cock-up involved in the Scottish elections. Not at all happy about what seems to have happened up here. Very poor show.

Given my current status as mum-to-be I've also been watching with concern at the government IT ID plans for kids. Senior social workers are warning of the dangers of the in-progress children's database, and the admission that "information about the children of celebrities and politicians is likely to be excluded from the system" fills me with particular fury. If it's not secure enough for them, it's not secure enough for me. I think it's time to contact some MPs and find out if they'll be asking for the details of their offspring to be excluded. I'm also in the rather odd position of hoping my kid ends up in a school without too many funds to fling about, as I really wouldn't be happy at the biometric information some schools are storing. School computer systems are not, I fear, secure enough to be using this kind of information. More about all this available at the ARCH blog.

Oh, and the DNA database our politicians and police are so proud of, they reckon it contains a good half a million errors. And 'they' aren't a campaigning group, or some numpty blogger having a whinge, it's the Government. Oh my.

And finally... spEak You're bRanes! A terrifying record of some BBC News 'Have Your Say' comments. I'm quite a fan of some of the terminally bewildered ones.

* although I suspect not, it's worrying enough that I remember my moans.

Labels: disgruntled, news links, open rights group