Data Protection - er, not really

[Rich OC]

do you read any of this stuff? It isn't helping your cause...

This is from your top link... apparently the United Kingdom's (and the European Union's) premiere electronic eavesdropping facility...tens of thousands of phone calls, faxes and e-mails are relayed daily

How many phone calls do you think are made in Longford every day, nevermind globally? Safe to say, tens of thousands...

And if you can plough through this lot you'll find the intercept base at Clooney in my hometown of Derry.

Found it. "Clooney Park, Londonderry (USN, closed 1970's)" You're clutching at straws I'm afraid.

Not one reference you've made suggests that every mobile phone call made in ireland or the UK is monitored. Will you do the decent thing and admit you over-egged the pudding on this one?

GCHQ Bude, Cornwall - part of ECHELON.

Well done, beat me to it.

I thought everybody had heard of GCHQ.

[cyberianpan]

Hello ECHELON nice to see you're back with us:
polonium , kill George Bush, Al Qaeda, jihad, TATP, Daniel O'Donnell, dirty bomb, grid overload.

Anyway not that we've some extra attention back to the real point: if a bank employee had been caught at this wouldn't the outcry have been far larger ?

Also given that we've got to trust the government (I could switch banks): Instead of reprimands for "snooping" how about if it is a public official that they get sacked: wouldn't that be a proper deterrent ?

cYp

[ibis]

Hello ECHELON nice to see you're back with us:
polonium , kill George Bush, Al Qaeda, jihad, TATP, Daniel O'Donnell, dirty bomb, grid overload.

Anyway not that we've some extra attention back to the real point: if a bank employee had been caught at this wouldn't the outcry have been far larger ?

Also given that we've got to trust the government (I could switch banks): Instead of reprimands for "snooping" how about if it is a public official that they get sacked: wouldn't that be a proper deterrent ?

It would certainly put the price of information up.

[riven]

I never really had any faith in it anyway. What I find most disturbing is the claim of the individual involved that a lot more people are up to it than him.

However, I do accept that its probably quite hard to police this area.

no it is not hard. A simple programme logging the activities of the people could be introduced and discipling those who breach their contact of employment would soon sort it out

[Dubliner]

I love the term 'a simple programme', it's something that brings joy to IT consultants everywhere.

Access monitoring and logging needs to be engineered into computer applications and very often is. The problem is not whether or not this data is collected but to identify when it has been accessed inappropriately.

Of the millions of records accessed by staff in DFSW, how would the access made my the person at the centre of the story have been identified as being inappropriate?

Mis-use of private data is rampant in the private sector....anyone get junk mail or marketing calls?

[seanad voter]

More from today's Indo :

http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 97811.html

[LiquidPaddy]

This issue was raised on Q&A on RTE last night, and I found the Minister for Education's attitude to be so blase about it, as if like, there is a problem at all, at all. No acceptance that with knowledge is absolute responsibility for ethical use of data [oh wait it was a FF minister].

But i'm absolutely disgusting that someone was passing info to crims - hope this is dealt with. Surely an electronic fingerprint would minimise this phenomenon.

[CookieMonster]

This issue was raised on Q&A on RTE last night, and I found the Minister for Education's attitude to be so blase about it, as if like, there is a problem at all, at all. No acceptance that with knowledge is absolute responsibility for ethical use of data [oh wait it was a FF minister].

But i'm absolutely disgusting that someone was passing info to crims - hope this is dealt with. Surely an electronic fingerprint would minimise this phenomenon.

No it would't. I would have accessed hundreds of thousands of files ever week, with all manner of personal information contained within.
There is no saying if I held them on my local drive and faxed the info out of the office of simply threw them into a spreadsheet.
There is evidence of me having accessed any given file but that's about it. From my experence personal information used by Civil Servants is used correctly and steps were taken to avoid any misuse. However there are always ways around these checks and it all boils down to trust.

[lostexpectation]

the indo guy didn't have clue what he was talking about either, he started talking about hacking when this was done by insider

[Dubliner]

From the Independent:

Official gave private details to media in new leak shock
Tuesday October 16 2007

A SENIOR civil servant has resigned after she was found to have improperly accessed and passed on personal records of up to 40 individuals.

The married woman, who worked at the Department of Social and Family Affairs for at least 16 years, was accused of passing on information to a Sunday newspaper, which then published the confidential details.........

I wonder which Sunday paper would be so unscrupulous as to publish leaked information?