From the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) website, I read the following:
“The UK is recognised as a leading user of CCTV”
This seems like a very nice way of saying “they’re always watching you” and I love how they’ve managed to make this sound positive and almost something we’re meant to take pride in as a nation.
I recently saw a very passionate speaker from the ICO give a talk at a data security conference. I’m not 100% sure what he was talking about, partly because I don’t think his talk had a point, and partly because it was about 4pm at this point and my brain had gone numb out of what I would favorably call crushing boredom.
The main thing that I picked up from him however was how much he was pushing the ICO as a force for good and a powerful defender of rights and justice and that it Should Be Taken Seriously.
It is probably my before-my-time cynicism that doesn’t allow for me to believe that an individual could enjoy his job so much that he genuinely felt this way about the organisation that he worked for, but I put this down to spin, which I feel has been confirmed by them referring to the UK as a “leading user of CCTV”.
The impression that I get with the ICO and certainly the message I take from their website is that they’re trying too hard and they don’t know what they are. On the one hand they’re trying to be like the big-scary FSA with their quasi-enforcement notices and auditing, but on the other hand they seem to be trying to appeal to a teenage audience for some weird reason. I suppose part of that is that fact that the ICO is set up for corporate and consumer purposes, so it has to cater to both, but that doesn’t stop the fact that I’ve spent that the last 10 minutes poking around trying to see how long we have to keep records for our answer phone messages without any success.
I suppose none of this is any real surprise. Our data protection laws are notoriously inconsistent and variable, bordering on the chaotic. A speaker earlier on in the conference I attended that I was fully awake for mentioned that even law firms specialising in data protection will be breaching the legislation because it is literally impossible to keep up with due to the dynamic nature of the issue.
I have perfectly illustrated the nature of someone not having a point in this blog post, as I’ve rambled all over the place too, but I think what I’m driving at is that I’m sick of spin. It’s cute as a game, and hilarious as a play on words amongst friends to make something sound the complete opposite of the reality with just a turn of phrase, but when it has become a profession and institution in and of itself, I think we’re in trouble.
I’m not naïve enough to assume that everyone should tell the truth all the time no matter what, but maybe a little less of the spin mongering would pull us from the brink of double-think-induced collapse.
Not Quite the Right Sort of Fruit
For a long time, I’ve realised that I need to have more fruit in my diet, so my brain registered that I should get an apple.
That’s the only way I can reconcile that my brain has allowed me to get an iPad…
This post has been composed and published whilst I sit on my bed. This is a novelty to me. More than anything else, I didn’t expect it to be so easy to write on the touchscreen keyboard thing. Admittedly, I wouldn’t want to write a novel on this thing, but it’s not bad at all.
I’m not a fan of apple, I’m not one of those fundamentalist Steve Jobs followers, and I abhor iTunes…..but my goodness, this is marvellous!
Quick Comment: ID cards and Facebook
 One of the first things that the new government in the UK have done is announce that they are scrapping the contentious ID card scheme that the old-new-labour government was trying to push for some unknown reason.
 This is great news: The removal of a money sink that nobody really wanted and would not only be an infringement on civil liberties but would not work in the way that they wanted it to.
 A thought crossed my mind though, and maybe this just shows that I’m behind the curve, but maybe the reason they scrapped the scheme wasn’t to save money or to protect civil liberties, but just because the whole thing is entirely redundant with the popularity of Facebook.
Why spend time and money issuing everyone with an ID card and enforcing their constant possession of said item when people are quite happy to spend hours and hours of their spare time updating their own ID card in the form of their Facebook profile, including pictures of where they’ve gone on holiday and where they go out with friends, who they are associated with, what their world views are, dates of when they leave the country and return and in a lot of cases, actual physical addresses?
Private detectives have never had it so easy!
A Change of Scenery
I’ve just spent the evening messing around with my flat and rearranging all of the furniture.
It’s amazing how much of a different mood you can put yourself in by just moving things around a little.  It actually feels like I’ve moved into a new flat. I’d found myself lounging around in the evenings, not really managing to achieve anything and even staying away from my computer for large stretches of time, which although sounds productive, actually means I just end up watching television all night instead.
I just can’t help feeling that there’s something I’ve overlooked or not thought through properly and as a result hobbled various functions of my room.
I would post pictures, but it would feel weird having pictures of my bedroom up on the internet.
But Wait, Where’s My Update?
Considering I’ve spent a fair amount of time tinkering again today, I’m a little perplexed as to where the actual post is for this evening. It’s at this point that I realise I didn’t write anything today and have instead just messed around with code (as well as de-grease an oven and launch a polar expedition into the freezer) and make some very small, yet significant to me, changes to this site.
I still need to alter a few things. A bit more space between lines of text would be quite nice, and maybe a slightly larger font wouldn’t go amiss either. Details, details.
The Tortoise Welcomes You
Greetings.  If you are reading this, then you are probably reading the first post of this blog.
A brief introduction: My name is David Hing and you are currently a visitor in the realm of davidhing.com. This blog is the blog of David Hing.
I am a writer of sorts. The accurate description would be a “struggling writer” who is really struggling to write. I still have a day job in insurance administration, I have an academic background in Ancient History and more recently Law, an obsession with games in board and video format, an increasing fascination in programming, and an on-again-off-again relationship with creating comics.
Chaotic Tortoise breaks down thusly: Chaotic refers to my critically short attention span with any single over-arching project and a tendency for my mind to wander far and wide when I’m trying to get anything done whereas Tortoise indicates that I tend to work on my own personal projects rather slowly. The way I could really prove this is by waiting six months before making another update, but I’m not that committed to making that point.
Don’t Mention the Misconduct!
From City AM this morning, I picked up this little nugget under their “Marketing Campaign of the Year”:
 “Celebrities do it all the time,” said Norwich Union when it changed its name to Aviva. It argued that the old name – which dated from 1797 – was due a change in a world where it operates in 27 countries, and that one name should be used across the group.
Of course, the name change from Norwich Union to Aviva was nothing to do with the £1.26 million fine levied against them by the FSA for being incompetent when it came to protecting client data and protecting against fraud that was so damaging to their reputation that they had to distance themselves from their own name. Of course not. What a crazy suggestion that would be. It’s because the name was old. And they work in countries that don’t know what a Norwich is.