[ This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , 12th May 2010]

It's a bright, sunny morning. Finally, we have a new government. I'm excited. I've a strong sense that a Conservative-Liberal coalition could be the best possible election outcome for the UK: a strong economic coupled with a commitment to overturn the inefficiencies and centralisation of 13 years of Labour, but tempered by the humility and introspection that will be forced upon the government by the Liberal Democrat influence. This could work really well if they commit to collaborating. But what should they now do about privacy, identity and consent?

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Toby Stevens' speech to the Public Service Events' Data Protection Conference on 10 December 2009 is reflected in the event report on their website:

"We're going to be asked to achieve more for less and that means we are going to be asked to share more personal data and put less protection on it. We've got to stop this now and get innovative about how we do this."

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Toby Stevens' article on location-based services, written in partnership with Olswang's Marc Dautlich and Daniel Penfold, has been published by Practical Law Company.

"The ability to accurately determine the position, speed and direction of travel of a mobile device over a period of time is opening up a host of innovative new applications over and above simple navigation systems. These approaches are being driven by users, industry and government. The explosive growth of geo-location data and associated services, powered by widespread integration of GPS technologies into mobile telephones, is driving privacy concerns that include problems of anonymisation, consent and data sharing. Is it possible for industry to self-regulate its use of location data, or is there a simple step that government could take to protect users from their handsets? This article takes a close look at the privacy implications of location-based services and considers two possible models which might be adopted in order to address some of the issues facing the industry.

The full article is available here.

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Note: This event is oversubscribed and we are unable to offer up any more places. We will publish details of next year's CPS workshops very soon.

The Centre for Policy Studies , in partnership with the Enterprise Privacy Group, is delighted to announce a series of workshops that will explore the nature of the privacy, security and identity problems in public-sector IT; consider the questions that need to be answered in the policy development process; and develop detailed recommendations to inform Conservative IT policy as part of CPS' broader work in this area.

Our meetings will be held at the Centre for Policy Studies, 55 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QL, as follows:
4th December 10:00am - 1:00pm - "The Privacy, Security and Identity Problems with Public-Sector IT"
14th December 2:00pm - 5:00pm - "Tough Questions: What Privacy, Security and Identity Decisions Must the Next Government Make?"

If you would like to join us for one or both of these events, then please contact us as soon as possible. We are very limited on space, and anticipate strong demand for seats. There is no fee for attending.

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