Recently in HO anti-fraud disclosure CoP Category

It looks as if the combined efforts of the WhatDoTheyKnow.com FOIA request submission and tracking website, together with the interest in the topic shown by the BBC Radio 4 iPM programme - Share What They Know?, has eventually resulted in the disclosure of the "missing" Statutory Code Of Practice, which is supposed to regulate the infinite powers under the Serious Crime Act 2007, for public authorities to share your personal sensitive data, with private sector "specified anti-fraud organisations".

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

See our resulting FOIA request via the WhatDoTheyKnow.com website:

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

The actual Code of Practice is available from the WhatDoTheyKnow.com website entitled:

Data Sharing for the Prevention of Fraud (.pdf 277Kb)

Code of practice for public authorities disclosing
information to a specified anti-fraud organisation under
sections 68 to 72 of the Serious Crime Act 2007

Incredibly, in spite of all the recent lost sensitive private data scandals, this Code of Practice manages not to make a single mention of strong encryption

There is no clue as to why, when the Code of Practice was presented to Parliament on their return from the Summer recess, on Monday 6th October, the accompanying Statutory Instrument came into force on 1st October.

Why could the Home Office not have made the legal powers only come into force at the same time , or after the publication of the Code of Practice ?

Were they planning to dither and prevaricate and not bother publishing this weak Code of Practice for several months longer ?

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:

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.

Email Contact

Please feel free to email us your views about this website or news about the issues it tries to comment on:

email: blog @spy[dot]org[dot]uk

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WhatDoTheyKnow.com

WhatDoTheyKnow.com - FOIA request submission and publication website from MySociety.org

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Watching Them, Watching Us - UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign
UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign

NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card
NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card and National Identity Register centralised database.

Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.
Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.

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FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

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Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans
Data Retention is No Solution - Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans.

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Save Parliament - Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)

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Open Rights Group

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Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

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Amnesty International's irrepressible.info campaign

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BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

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NGO in a box - Security Edition privacy and security software tools

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Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team." - does this apply to the Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government as well ?

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Committee to Protect Bloggers - "devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government."

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Icelanders are NOT terrorists ! - despite Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's use of anti-terrorism legislation to seize the assets of Icelandic banks.

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No CCTV - The Campaign Against CCTV

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I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist !

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Power 2010 cross party, political reform campaign

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Cracking the Black Box - "aims to expose technology that is being used in inappropriate ways. We hope to bring together the insights of experts and whistleblowers to shine a light into the dark recesses of systems that are responsible for causing many of the privacy problems faced by millions of people."

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Open Rights Group - Petition against the renewal of the Interception Modernisation Programme

Yes, Minister

Yes, Minister Series 1, Episode 1, "Open Government" First airtime BBC: 25 February 1980

"Bernard Woolley: "Well, yes, Sir...I mean, it [open government] is the Minister's policy after all."
Sir Arnold: "My dear boy, it is a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you can have government."

FOIA Links

Campaign for the Freedom of Information

Office of the Information Commissioner,
who is meant to regulate the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Scottish Information Commissioner,
who similarly regulates the Freedom of Information Act (Scotland) 2002

Information Tribunal - deals with appeals against decisions by the Information Commissioners.

Freedom of Information pages - Department for Constitutional Affairs

Friends of the Earth FOIA Request Generator and links to contact details for Central Government Departments and their Publication Schemes

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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