Excellent news! Independent schoos in the U.K. are encouraging all member schools to educate parents on what ContactPoint is about, and how to request that their child’s information can be “shielded”.
‘The Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents 1,280 fee- paying schools, has written to its members describing the new database, ContactPoint, as an “unjustified interference in the privacy of the majority of children and their carers”. ‘
The federal government is quietly working on a controversial plan to collect biometric information from visitors to Canada, immigration department officials revealed yesterday.
“The idea will be that we will take biometrics from people who are coming temporarily to Canada and need a visitor’s visa — temporary workers, students and visitors,” Claudette Deschenes, assistant deputy minister in the immigration department told members of Parliament. “Those who don’t need a visitor’s visa to enter Canada will be taken at the port of entry.”
Following in the footsteps of the U.S. border controls…. fun. I wonder what they are really going to use it for…and more importantly I wonder what privacy laws exist in Canada that will protect this biometric data? Read more on Toronto Sun.
The Information Commissioner in the U.K. Richard Thomas warns of ‘surveillence culture’ in Times online. Well what’s new… although he also brings into the discussion the ContactPoint database. This is the U.K. database containing details on every child in the country. Action on Rights for Children talk alot about this.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH-1IumXZbI&hl=en&fs=1]
Interesting discussion with Mark Zuckerberg last Thursday during a press conference . Facebook’s vision is to have a new, more perfect union with users when it comes to privacy and data ownership. Read more from cnet news.