Game accounts to be linked to ID in China

The Chinese Government’s next step is to implement a real name registration system in 2009, which would link game accounts with a given person’s ID number. Apparently the government claims to have a system implemented that can limit the number of hours each day an individual can spend playing games. This is the alleged motivation for this initiative, China’s young are spending too long playing online games. Read more..

Of course during online gaming young people are meeting for long periods of time other players from all over the world. This may start to give them new perceptions on the censorship that is going on in China… this is probably not desirable either for the Chinese government.

DPA amendments

There is some strange legislation changes happening in the U.K. It is an amendment to the Data Protection Act 1998.

Taken from computer weekly: “…an ‘information sharing order’ to share personal information. This seems to circumvent whatever purpose the information was gathered for; for example, child protection data could be shared with police, benefits officials or your local school. (……) Furthermore, the sharing process can include publishing that personal information.”

Just to give an example:
Part 8 — Data Protection Act 1998 (c. 29)
50A Power to enable information sharing
(1) Subject to the following provisions of this Part, a designated authority may by order (an “information-sharing order”) enable any person to share information which consists of or includes personal data.

(3) For the purposes of this Part a person shares information if the person–
(a) discloses the information by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making it available, or
(b) consults or uses the information for a purpose other than the purpose for which the information was obtained.

This means “mission-creep” is acknowledged as ok… not good. This provides an opening for the further sharing of any personal information that we have originally shared for a specific purpose, including our DNA data. After this change, there will be another amendment in a few years time, and bingo before we know it the DNA data of our children is stored and used for all sorts of unethical practices. Although of course, today we see them as so, in 20 years time, they will probably be accepted as normal.
Read more from computer weekly.

Thanks to ARCH blog for highlighting.

Virtual Shadows review

hi friends, just a reminder that if you’ve read the book Virtual Shadows don’t forget to leave feedback on amazon, this helps book ratings, and of course if the feedback is positive, more people will be encouraged to buy. I want as many as possible to read my book, not only because of book success, but because the book content is so useful for each one of us. Of course it is great as an author to have this opportunity to share what is in my head. This makes me feel that I have made a useful contribution society.

You will find in the BOX on this page a file called Virtual Shadows Index. This is the .pdf index of the book that you can take a look at. Later it will be possible to ‘look inside’ my book on amazon, but apparently this functionality takes a few weeks to get activated.