Things to make you go ‘Euuwww…’

Rather icky to hear that one in four commuters has bacteria from faeces on their hands, according to a survey by the London School Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. A rather distasteful fact which, curiously enough, makes me wonder if Home Secretary Jacqui Smith catches the Tube into Westminster, given that the Government’s controversial Communications Data Bill is destined to be included in the Queen’s Speech next month.

No, I’m not questioning the Home Secretary’s personal hygiene. But with sensitive personal information leaking from several government departments like a bloody sieve in recent months, the Government’s plan to establish a single, giant database to store details of every phone call and e-mail in the UK reeks of you-know-what.

This expansion plan for government surveillance is a massive infringement on our civil liberties and seems entirely inappropriate for a bureaucracy who can’t guarantee the security of the existing data it holds, let alone the billions of records the intercepting of all UK communications would create.

But on a more positive note… In a week when the MoD lost another unencrypted computer containing 1.7 million people’s data (weary sigh), kudos to Sharon Lemon and her team at the Serious Office of Organised Crime (Soca) for shutting down Darkmarket, a website used by criminals to buy and sell credit card details and bank log-in information. That one individual reportedly had spent £250,000 on obtaining personal data on Darkmarket in just six weeks from which he could have reaped as much £10 million speaks to the magnitude and sophistication of international cyber-criminals – particularly as access to the site was by ‘invitation only’ (!) and even featured ID-theft tutorials for beginners.

It’s a scary world out there, alright.