White Rose is a protest blog collective focusing on civil liberties in the UK.
It was set up to point a finger at the erosion of personal freedom in the UK.
Government's active measures introduce new means of control such as identity cards and surveillance cameras, the passive measures such as weakening of double jeopardy and presumption of innocence.


The arguments
The resistants
Gabriel Syme and Perry de Havilland of Samizdata.net to rally the Anglosphere behind the UK.
White Rose contributors are those bloggers and non-bloggers who oppose restrictions on personal liberties.

To find out how to become a White Rose contributor, please go here.
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Not so anonymised after all

Maybe White Rose should have an additional category entitled "Better Late Than Never". I've certainly done several such WR postings.

Here's another, from the Independent on August 25th:

The case of Stephen Kelly, who was found guilty in February 2001 of culpable and reckless behaviour, exemplifies the way the police and courts can access medical details collected as part of a research project.

That establishes that we're dealing with a different Kelly. The guts of the story is that supposedly anonymous research data ended up being used to prosecute somebody, which is just the kind of thing we are constantly promised isn't going to happen, can't happen, must never happen, etc.

During the investigation of Kelly, police obtained the anonymised codes from patient medical records and used them to seize the scientific evidence that established the genetic similarity between the Aids viruses Kelly and his girlfriend had.

So much for "anonymised".

Professor Leigh Brown was angry at the information being used. "These databases will have an important role to play in developing our understanding of genetic variation and disease, but what will protect them from seizure by legal authorities?"

Indeed.



Comments

But information from congestion pricing schemes would never ever be used for any other purpose.

Posted by: David Sucher on August 31, 2003 04:36 PM
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