Home Office - latest copy or draft of the Serious Crime Act 2007 Code of practice for disclosure of information to prevent fraud

Having been chided by the estimable Julian Todd, for not making use of the ver improving WhatDoTheyKnow.com FOIA request submission and tracking website, we have decided to try our luck in sending in an FOIA request through that website, rather than directly via email.

See the Spy Blog article The next Home Office data security and privacy disaster ? Sharing all our financial details with private sector "specified anti-fraud organisations"

Will we get an idea of what the alleged data handling security and privacy safeguards are supposed to be, before the new powers to circumvent the Common Law Duty of Confidentiality which used to protect our financial and medical details, which come into force on 1st October ?

The text of our WhatDoTheyKnow.com - FOIA request:

Watching Them, Watching Us

12 September 2008

Home Office, Direct Communications Unit, 2 Marsham Street, London
SW1P 4DF, Switchboard 020 7035 4848 Fax: 020 7035 4745 Textphone:
020 7035 4742, E-mail: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.homeoffice.gov.uk

via : http://www.whatdotheyknow.com

Friday 12th September 2008

Dear Sirs,

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please disclose:

===========

The latest version or draft of the Statutory Code of Practice which
"The Secretary of State must prepare, and keep under review"
according to the

Serious Crime Act 2008 section 71 Code of practice for disclosure
of information to prevent fraud

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2007ukpg...

===========

Please provide the information, ideally by publishing it on your
public world wide website, or alternatively by email.

Ideally this should *not* be in the form of a "copy and paste"
locked Adobe .pdf file, or similar, attachment.

In the unlikely event that this information is not already
available in a standard electronic format, then please explain the
reasons why, when you provide the information in another format.

If you are proposing to make a charge for providing the information
requested, please provide full details in advance, together with an
explanation of any proposed charge.

If you decide to withhold any of the information requested, you
should clearly explain why you have done so in your response, by
reference to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 legislation.

If your decision to withhold is based upon an evaluation of the
Public Interest, for a Qualified Exemption, then you should clearly
explain which public interest(s) you have considered, and why you
have decided that the public interest in maintaining the
Exemption(s) outweighs the public interest in releasing the
information.

If you decide to conduct a Balance of Public Interest evaluation,
you need to estimate any additional time which might be required,
and to inform me of this in your Substantive Reply, within the
mandatory statutory limit of 20 working days for you to respond to
this Freedom of Information Act request.

Under Section 16 the Freedom of Information Act, you have a duty to
provide help and advice, as to how this current request may need to
be modified, if necessary.

I look forward to receiving the information requested as soon as
possible, and in any event, within the statutory 20 working days
from receipt of this email i.e. no later than Monday 13th October
2008

Yours Sincerely,

[pseudonym]

[pseudonymous email address]

N.B. My Name and Address may be available on request, but neither
of these are required at this stage under the Freedom of
Information Act, according to Guidance and legally binding Decision
Notices from the Information Commissioner's Office.

About this blog

This United Kingdom based blog has been spawned from Spy Blog, and is meant to provide a place to track our Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests to United Kingdom Government and other Public Authorities.

If you have suggestions for other FOIA requests,  bearing in mind the large list of exemptions, then email them to us, or use the comments facility on this blog, and we will see  what we can do, without you yourself having to come under the direct scrutiny of  "Sir Humphrey Appleby" or his minions.

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FOIA Links

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Office of the Information Commissioner,
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Scottish Information Commissioner,
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UK Government Information Asset Register - in theory, this should point you to the correct Government documents, but in practice...well see for yourself.

Access all Information is also logging some FOIA requests

foi.mysociety.org - prototype FOIA request submission, tracking and publication website

Blog Links

Spy Blog

UK Freedom of Information Act Blog - started by Steve Wood, now handed over to Katherine Gundersen

Your Right To Know - Heather Brooke

Informaticopia - Rod Ward

Open Secrets - a blog about freedom of information by BBC journalist Martin Rosenbaum

Panopticon blog - by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops. Timothy Pitt-Payne is probably the leading legal expert on the UK's Freedom of Information Act law, often appearing on behlaf of the Information Commissioner's Office at the Information Tribunal.

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