Yeah well, it might be a long-standing practice in the US of A, where people have almost no privacy rights but here in the UK, we* actually respect people's right not to be watched, interfered with, data-mined, manipulated, pimped out and monetised.

This is a really fucking big deal - we only have Google's word that they won't use the data elswhere in their business and they are not a charity so we can't expect them *not* to monetise the insights that are derived from highly confidential data that was disclosed without asking - or even NOTIFYING - the people whose data it is.

We have the RIGHT to privacy - this means that we need to be given the option to CHOOSE to hand over our personal medical secrets to Google, not to have it done in secret by bureaucrats whose track record on confidentiality is pretty fucking terrible.

There are significant cultural differences in attitudes to privacy between the US and the UK and your dismissive attitude seems to indicate that you are either ignorant of these or are so parochial that you don't value cultural viewpoints that don't mirror your own.

*not our Government, obvs. Or our media. Or the idiots who believe what they read in the tabloid press. But still.....

...some amusing background on the cookie law https://silktide.com/the-stupi...

Aside from degrading the web experience for millions of users, costing companies money better spent on accessibiity or security improvements and trashing analytics, it was only a matter of time before someone caught on to the nefarious possibilities of a popup that the user has been conditioned to see (and accept without scrutiny).

This law was one of the bloody stupidest moves in the history of technology and serves only to reinforce the unfortunate attitude that clicking a box can equate to "informed consent". A classic case of confusing the success of a mechanism with the desired outcome.

Braaaaaaaaaaaans!!

I also agree that they probably won't hire you on as a consultant. No matter how indispensable you are, the graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Good thing I'm female then! ;-)

Kinda harsh - I don't think of myself as any kind of snowflake and we're not talking about technical IT knowledge here but understanding of privacy law and how it applies to a pretty unique non-profit health and social care organisation.

No doubt any other data protection expert can come in and suss it all out - just thought it might benefit the organisation if the learning curve for the new bod were a little less steep.....

This came up a while ago with another police service and was blogged on by one of the UK's foremost data protection experts. The campaign was slapped down by the UK's privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office.

In addition to the unfair implication of guilt; "personal data" (identifiable; relating to a living individual) which fits into the category of "sensitive" (in this case; pertaining to criminal offences, convicted or alleged) is subject to strict conditions for how it can be used. As the police cannot claim that tweeting is "necessary for the prevention or detection of crime"; their processing of this sensitive personal data is in breach of DPA, regardless of whether the allegation of drink driving is correct.

Didn't people used to be hanged for this kind of thing?

"'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good'"

(Read that here once, can't remember who posted it)

Filtering out comments which are impolite is a good start. No-one needs to call someone a mindless jizzgargling fucknugget to get their point across. A site which allows free discourse provided that rules of courtesy are observed sounds like a good start to me.