No Mr Bond, I expect you to fill out the form
Britain’s security and intelligence agencies used not to exist, officially. Now, you can download documents discussing MI5 officers' failures to fill out electronic forms. On 3 May, someone new to the approval process for accessing bulk personal datasets reported that it was being over-ridden. One imagines he or she was unpopular with colleagues; hats off, nevertheless, for protecting both the privacy of the largely innocent people on those databases and MI5’s reputation.
The detail in the documents released by Privacy International from its tribunal case against the agencies is remarkable, but they have not received vast amounts of coverage - thanks to Computer Weekly for commissioning me to write about them, this month and in June. Edward Snowden’s leaked documents are sexier.
But I reckon the tribunal documents are a superior source. They are up-to-date and legally approved by senior officers at the agencies – it would be a foolish civil servant who lied in a witness statement. The agencies are trying to win their case, so are providing all the detail they think is needed to achieve that.
They are not an independent assessment (unlike David Anderson's new report), but long, dull legal documents like these are also the ideal place to disclose interesting information, on the basis that hardly anyone will read them.
For all these reasons, they are worth reading.
* As tweeted a few weeks ago, I have added being an associate analyst for technology, media and telecoms market intelligence firm Ovum to my freelance work. I will be focusing on healthcare IT.
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I read
CW@50: Bugs, blunders and bad practices, Mike Simons, Computer Weekly - a celebration of its greatest hits over the decades, including investigations into NHS and other government IT
Pharmaceuticals: Staying power - how big pharma makes billions from drugs after patents lapse, David Crow, Financial Times (free registration allows access to three articles a month, this one alone is worth it)
Correspondence on FOI on travel of Edward Snowden (itself released under FOI) showing quite how much work goes into FOI, PDF, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Brainjacking – a new cyber-security threat, Laurie Pycroft (Oxford PhD candidate; led Pro-Test campaign in 2006 demonstrating in favour of responsible biomedical animal research utilising), The Conversation
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Map of the month: Team GB's Rio medal-winners
Team GB’s medal-winners from Rio 2016 come from all over the country and beyond, as this interactive map of those winning individual medals shows. The data on places of birth (from Team GB) makes it possible to work out a medal table of regions and nations.
The East of England comes out on top with four golds, thanks to Max Whitlock’s two golds (born in Hemel Hempstead) and one apiece from Laura Trott (Harlow) and Giles Scott (Huntingdon). It is closely followed by African-born Britons with three golds – two from Mo Farah (born in Somalia) and one from Justin Rose (South Africa) – and the West Midlands, with gold medals won by Joseph Clarke, Adam Peaty (both born in Staffordshire) and Nick Skelton (Warwickshire).
Full table and longer version of this post
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