Among yesterday’s front pages was a data visualisation which, at first glance, was one of the most effective I’ve ever seen: the Independent had made an infographic showing yesterday’s £6bn budget cuts in context - as a fraction of a debt mountain.
Then I looked closer - and something’s very, very wrong.
Can you tell what it […]
Got my first front page splash this week, in Press Gazette. Might make me something of an old-media dinosaur, but seeing a story running big on a front page is a pretty good feeling. Somehow it’s more exciting than the front page of a website, though maybe as a generation genuinely grows up with the web imprinted in its culture that’ll change.
Anyway, the Information Commissioner’s backlog will remain until at least 2010 - one in three FoI complaints take over six months to resolve, and one in five take over a year. That’s including those complaints which are dismissed as invalid, too. The ICO are blaming “higher than expected” caseload, which is frankly rubbish. The Commissioner said in 2006 he expected 2-3000 complaints in the first year, potentially rising to over 5000 by 2009. They received under 2500. Goes to show how meaningless having a 20-day limit on responding to requests, 40 days on reviews, when you have no deadline whatsoever for complaints.
On the flipside, the ICO did acknowledge my request on receipt, respond in full (one week early, no less), and supplied some extra details extremely promptly when requested. Credit where it’s due - if only they were all that good.
Gosh, the folks over at the Telegraph are daring: using “information technology experts” they’ve found over “20 key pieces of information” about Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, for only 35p.
The article mentions warnings about “too much information” being posted to social networking sites, and criminals allegedly selling bank details online.
So, what have our intrepid Telegraph experts been getting involved in? Are they irrevocably steeped in criminality? Are they heck.
My hunch is that the main source for their info is that hotbed of vice, 192.com. In addition to the usual directory enquiry services, they offer searches of the electoral rolls, register of birth marriages and deaths, and some basic director info (think Companies House-lite)
What’s the evidence? I have none but the price paid. 35p (plus VAT) is the price for a “credit” on the site. With what you can get for free elsewhere, some regular directory enquiry searches, and sparing use of the paid for facilities, you could get “20 key pieces” of information on ANYONE.
That may well worry you – as, I’m sure, would the knowledge that anyone can order a copy of your birth or marriage certificate, wholly legally. They can also look up details of your mortgage and house price, company directorships, and with some work, shareholdings. Makes you wonder why you shred your data so carefully, really, doesn’t it?
So yes, less scaremongering over all this ID theft malarkey. It’s not so much that people wouldn’t go through your bins to steal, if necessary. It’s more that they just really don’t need to.
