January 31, 2011

Even gossip queens have a right to privacy

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:47 am

The Court of Appeal in Den Bosch has recently ruled that the public prosecutor must start a case against broadcaster BNN reporters Sophie Hilbrand and Filemon Wesselink for spying on TV presenter Albert Verlinde and his husband, Onno Hoes.

Ironically, Albert Verlinde is one of the presenters of TV gossip programme RTL Boulevard, and Onno Hoes is the Mayor of Maastricht—between them they must have committed more privacy violations than all the hidden cameras in girls’ locker rooms the world over combined.

Volkskrant reports that reporters Sophie Hilbrand and Philemon Wesselink installed audio recording equipment in an award they presented to Verlinde, the ‘Golden Ear”, with which they successfully recorded a discussion Verlinde and Hoes had in the car on their way home. The public prosecutor had already fined the reporters, so that they now get punished for the same offence twice. For the record, double jeopardy—or ne bis in idem as it is called here—is illegal in the Netherlands.

(Photo of Albert Verlinde by Thomas van de Weerd, some rights reserved)

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December 11, 2010

Filming civil servants may cost you your welfare cheque

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 6:28 pm

The Hague residents who wish to go all Wikileaks on civil servants by filming their interrogators, risk losing their welfare benefits, Sargasso reports.

Blogger Dimitri Tokmetzis discovered this when he received the results of a freedom of information request about the so-called Haagse Pand Brigade, a unit of municipal civil servants that invades the homes of those vaguely suspected of such wrongdoings as welfare fraud, growing marijuana or illegal sub-letting.

A manual for the Brigade dictates:

Sometimes welfare recipients wish to make an audio or video recording of the visit. This recording could be against the will of team members, and could lead to publication that is against their will. This can have far-reaching personal consequences for the team members. This is not tolerable, and therefore we prescribe the following:

1) If a customer indicates that he wishes to record the visit, or if he is already in the process of recording the visit, the team members will indicate clearly that they do not give permission for the recording, and will stop the visit.

2) The team members will explain to the customer that their behaviour will be interpreted as refusing to cooperate in determining the right to welfare benefits (article 17 WWB), and that this can have consequences for their right to welfare. When the customer publishes his recordings, he will be reported to the police.

For the record, in the Netherlands you do generally not need permission to film someone, and so-called portrait rights (the limited right to object to publication of your portrait) are part of civil law, not of criminal law.

Tokmetzis adds that since the Brigade members are doing their work in public, they should expect and accept public scrutiny.

(Photo by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)

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February 19, 2010

Please Rob Me points fingers online privacy

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 11:22 am
window-cats

Not only have three Dutch guys (Barry Borsboom, Boy van Amstel and Frank Groeneveld) managed to make a point about privacy on the Internet, they have attracted the international blogosphere with their site Please Rob Me, “Listing all those empty homes out there”.

Please Rob Me basically shows you how much info you are giving out through social networks. You Twitter ‘Stuck in traffic’ or ‘I’m in Rome for a week’, you use Tripit to announce where you’re jet-setting off to next, Facebook to update your ‘friends’ on your whereabouts and Foursquare to tell people you are the ‘mayor’ of that noodle place downtown because you chow down there so often.

Boy van Amstel said on telly that he had no bone to pick with Foursquare, but did say it was the prime example of telling potential thieves when someone is not at home. Although other sites tell people where you are as I mentioned, Please Rob Me is aiming its guns at Foursquare with a Twitter account showing all the Foursquare tweets.

In a long blog posting, Foursquare tell us they are not happy campers and that they do respect privacy. It’s how people choose to give out information that is the problem. Two thirds of the Western world is not at home during the day and geo-location services like Foursquare will probably not lead to more robberies. However, on both Twitter and Facebook, you get to choose who follows you and therefore who reads your information. With Foursquare people tend (my Dutch friends do this) to push where they are to Twitter and Facebook, letting everybody read it.

But do we care? I don’t get why these guys felt the need to make this site or target Foursquare. Many Dutch houses don’t even have curtains (an old Dutch tradition!) and you can see the entire living room, flat screen TV and all. This site has the finger wagging ‘Dutch uncle’ (someone who always knows better) all over it.

So don’t overshare (most of us already do) and go easy on the drunken photos or photos of you drinking booze, it will damage your chances of getting a job (that’s me finger wagging now).

(Links: Please Rob Me, Foursquare, Photo of Living room window by Jimmy2000, some rights reserved.

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January 3, 2008

The Netherlands is sloppy at protecting privacy

Filed under: General,IT by Orangemaster @ 1:42 pm
privacy

The Netherlands scores a poor 21st place on the international list of countries that uphold citizens’ privacy, according to the 2007 International Privacy Ranking of Great Britain. The Netherlands is in the category labelled “systematic failure to uphold safeguards” when it comes to privacy. The Netherlands also scores poorly when it comes to ID cards and biometrics.

According to Privacy International, the Netherlands’ score is so bad because of its compulsory identification, the possibility of listening in on phone conversations (communication interception) and the obligation of storing Internet data (data sharing). If you read the section entitled ‘countries with the worse records’, the Netherlands gets nailed for its leadership, albeit along with half the EU and others.

Some highlights of the privacy problems specific to the Netherlands:

– Continued proposals to increase power of law enforcement agencies
– Plans to implement in 2008 a database of all children to record development from birth
– Compulsory identification for all persons from age of 14, where 5,300 individuals are fined every month for not carrying ID
– Courts have ruled that subscriber data can be disclosed to copyright industry, and anonymous website owners

(Link: Het Parool)

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May 16, 2007

No more rushing hands, roaming fingers

Filed under: Aviation,General by Orangemaster @ 10:29 am
airplane1.JPG

Yesterday Schiphol Airport began using new body-scanning machines at security checkpoints, becoming the first major airport to use the technology to find metals and explosives hidden under clothing.The “security scan” system, which uses harmless radio waves to display head-to-toe images of people, is also being used by other airports on a trial basis, but Schiphol is the only one to deploy the technology for regular use at its checkpoints. It takes three seconds to go through the scanner.

Schiphol is one of the world’s most modern airports, with flat-panel screens (as long as the info is somewhere), airport-wide Web access (totally overpriced BTW) and iris scanners already on offer to those who want to bypass passport lines (it’s the baggage check lines that are nasty).

(Link: News.com)

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