Absolutely. If I was a suicide bomber, this is exactly where I'd explode my bomb. I reckon I could get a devastating quantity of explosive in a carry-on bag and detonate it in the snake-line. Also get an accomplice to do the same in a check-in line with a full-size suitcase packed with HE.

While it might not have the glamour of bringing down an aircraft, no matter where the TSA or local equivalent move the security line to (pre-security security, pre-security security security...), passengers are still vulnerable to this attack. I can't see a practical defence against it.

It's truly chilling that they could do this trivially, tomorrow.

The Guardian supported the Iraq war, which doesn't seem very hard-left or anti-American.

Perhaps the world is not black and white.

The new Paperwhite starts shipping on September 30th.

Says it right there on Amazon.com.

By the time the plane is out of the airport zone, it is too high for the phone to have any contact with cell towers - whose antenna don't point up in the sky.

How do you explain the many calls made from United Airlines Flight 93?

In the UK, there are legally sanctioned surveillance cameras (with a great deal of public support) in public places and on public transport -- where you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

In the US, the government illegally bug everyone as though the constitution doesn't apply to them.

And illegally holding David Miranda for nine hours and demanding that the Guardian smash a few laptops is hardly on the same level as what the US government is up to.

However he was _required_ to answer all questions, no matter how irrelevant to a case, asked by the police.

While this has been widely reported to be the case, it's not technically true.

From the statute:

2 (1) An examining officer may question a person to whom this paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40(1)(b).

40(1)(b) says:

40 Terrorist: interpretation.

(1) In this Part “terrorist” means a person who—
(a) has committed an offence under any of sections 11, 12, 15 to 18, 54 and 56 to 63, or
(b) is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

So the officer is allowed to ask any questions in order to determine if the detainee is a terrorist, and the detainee is compelled to answer those questions.

But the officer isn't given the power to ask any questions on any matter he likes, and the detainee is therefore not required to answer them.

Obviously, the schedule 7 powers are ripe for abuse, and have been abused in abused in this case. MIranda claims he wasn't asked any questions about terrorism at all.

Miranda says he's going to sue, and he has a good case.

Yeah, Scotland isn't known at all for having any nationalist pride.

It's not like they made a fucking movie about it or anything.....

Oh yeah! I've seen that one:

TOMMY: Doesn't it make you proud to be Scottish?

RENTON: I hate being Scottish. We're the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some people hate the English, but I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. We can't even pick a decent culture to be colonized by. We are ruled by effete arseholes. It's a shite state of affairs and all the fresh air in the world will not make any fucking difference.

;-)

Thanks, I must have glossed over the fact that they can't prove that they instructed the contractor to destroy the data.

But still the issue remains that verifying that the data has been destroyed is more work than destroying the data, so is the ICO really saying that responsibility for data security cannot be subcontracted?

Personally, I hope so. But like I say, it flies in the face of privatisation dogma.

I don't really get this. The NHS contracts out the disposal of the machines to a private contractor, who then royally screws up, and it's the fault of the NHS?

Surely the responsibility lies with the contractor?

FTA:

“Should they [the contractor] be accountable? Definitely not, because NHS Surrey have been entrusted with the welfare of their patients. Should the contractor be responsible? Absolutely, yes,” Jones added.

This seems to me an argument that the NHS cannot outsource or subcontract anything.

What is NHS Surrey supposed to do in this scenario? Use in-house people to analyse the machines to make sure there is no data remaining before disposing of them?

Or just keep data-disposal services in-house? Personally, I think this would be a great idea, but it goes against the dogmatic 'privatise absolutely everything possible' trend in the UK.

“We should not have to tell organisations to think twice, before outsourcing vital services to companies who offer to work for free.”

Except they didn't work for free: they worked for the salvage value. I can't really see how the low value of the contract proves fault.

when "civil unions rights" were offered in some places to homosexuals, that wasnt "good enough" for them, even though it gave them the exact same rights just under a different word. So its not just the religious who have an issue here.

The issue is that 'homosexuals' and their supporters want equality, the 'religious' want inequality and discrimination.

It's disingenuous to suggest that civil unions are the same as marriages. They are clearly a second-class union, otherwise the compromise of calling them 'civil unions' would never have been made to placate the 'religious'. It's "separate but equal" all over again.

You can't compromise on equality.

According to this paper, 3.5% of French people are currently taking antidepressants, and 42% have taken them at some point. And this article claims that 24% of Spanish women use antidepressants. I also know many friends and family members who take or have taken antidepressants in the UK.

I mean, why would a doctor tell you to drug yourself, even if you feel depressed.

This isn't about some vague feelings of 'feeling bad' or 'feeling depressed', this is for diagnosed clinical depression.

You're very lucky that you've evidently never suffered from depression, or you wouldn't say this.

Oops.

My national identity confusion (they/our) is because I'm British, but haven't lived in Britain since 2007.

Great OFT, but dreadful weather.

/shrug

You can look on it as government interference if you want, but in the UK people like the OFT: we look on their work as consumer protection.

The key word is 'Fair'. If a trade practice is 'unfair', the OFT are pretty effective at stopping it. If it really is just a case of your kid spending your money, then no, it's not the government's problem. But how will the OFT know if it's fair if they don't investigate?

I don't have any children, so I've no axe to grind, but I still think it's a good idea that they at least investigate the fairness of in-app purchases.

The OFT is one of the reasons that in the UK they have a variety of mobile phone providers with coverage everywhere, that they can move between with no penalty, and who will unlock our phones on demand. I don't think this is true of the US.

Good advice.

But really, there just shouldn't be a default username: you should have to enter your own. This has been standard practice for decades.

Though I have to concede it works pretty well, WP is truly awful: a tiny bit object-oriented here, a bit finite state machine there; no coherent design at all.

It's kind-of the PHP of PHP software: Crufty, inelegant, painful to develop with, yet also ubiquitous and loved by clients, who ask for it by name.

WordPress needs a 100% rewrite by someone who has read a book or two on programming.

Does seem a bit unlikely, even taking into account higher than average rates of diabetes in the US.