Newsbites

(this is slightly old now, I wrote it for something else but will post it here now)
This is a section of lots of short news items (on this occasion on data protection) that I though warranted a brief mention.
The taxman now has the power to listen to your phone calls, read your mail, place bugs in your house and car. Apparently this is something to do with fighting serious organised crime, something that apparently the Serious Organised crime Agency SOCA cannot do – it has these powers and more.
If you fly to the USA your plane company has to give them your credit card details. I know the US has a lot of debt but I don’t think many people would be happy if they started paying for it using peoples credit cards.
If you get a passport/ID card with a RFID chip in it the only way to stop people walking off with your personal details just because you walked within 25cm of their scanner is to hit the chip with a hammer (this will break it) and they will no longer be able to steal it. It is illegal to do this with US passports and although the passport would still be valid, the UK Passport agency would probably not be too happy either).
Some people want to use the NHS national database to get accurate results on obesity, apparently people are not telling the truth about how much they weigh when responding to surveys so instead the people want to take the data without your consent. It is of course vital for your health that the national obesity level can be reported.
The police have the DNA of over 1 million innocent people on record just because they can.
CCTV cameras may have microphones installed so that the security people can listen to your conversation as well as watch it.