I don’t normally read the Daily Mail but did this morning. Two stories of note, if they’re to be believed. The first is the DVLA selling details of car ownership to all sorts of crooks and unpleasant characters.

This has all sorts of implications for data protection and how much we can, or cannot trust government agencies to safeguard data, and treat it confidentially and securely. The article referred to yesterday makes a good point about ’scope creep’ and how the use of ID cards could create all sorts of possibilities which have not yet been considered (for example, texting was almost put on as an afterthought to mobile phones and have proved to be extremely popular and well used). The proposal seems to be for the creation of a ‘national identity database’; how safe and secure will that data be?

And the second story could be described as the ‘consumer fights back’. So tired is one American of telephone answering systems that he’s created a website to help people get straight through to a real person. I find this really quite funny. http://paulenglish.com/ivr/ . It can only be a matter of time before this idea crosses the Atlantic.