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Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

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Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#121

Post by Nextgrid »

wopian wrote: post #51
dijksterhuis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting these additional requests. They're being blocked, so result in a warning message in the console. Didn't see anything in network requests for them. - https://static.hotjar.com/c/hotjar-1043047.js?sv=5 - https://cse.google.com/adsense/search/async-ads.js - https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js Also, the site is setting a cookie even though I've not consented. EDIT: Also, one of the lambeth.gov js s…

Is the cookie used for the site to function (or a component of it) or for tracking/ads. Only the latter needs consent.

According to the GDPR even an IP address needs consent, and those are inherently transmitted when loading a third-party library regardless of cookies. Given that social media sharing isn’t a necessary function of the website, they should be asking for consent before loading the libraries, or just using a locally-hosted icon pointing to a sharing link, so that the target social network gets the data only when the button is actually clicked.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#122

Post by Nextgrid »

Animats wrote: post #100

Here's the service promoting advertising on Government web sites in the UK.[1] From their FAQ: Q: "Could the data collected be used to exploit individual circumstances?" A: "There is no intention to do this. In all forms of advertising, companies want to appear in front of the people most likely to buy their products or services." "Just as an advertiser will choose an ad space in a publication because of its readersh…

Seems like they aren’t aware of the law or explicitly violating it and hoping to get away with it (which unfortunately isn’t a bad strategy considering Google and Facebook are still around).

The thing with the law (the GDPR in this case) is that it applies to everyone equally. It doesn’t matter whether your intentions are good, if the law says you can’t collect certain data without explicit user consent then you shouldn’t be doing it regardless of how good your intentions are.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#123

Post by licebmi__at__ »

alharith wrote: post #93
shadowgovt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source for the story clearly has a specific political bias regarding its interpretation of privacy. That political bias doesn't impinge on the facts of the report though (merely that Brave believes it's worth surfacing loudly).

So the right to privacy is a political agenda item now? I don't get what you are saying, can you please clarify?

Yes, anything related to the life on society and how we regulate it or not is "politics" and a particular political subject is pushed by any individual or group is a "political agenda item". If we act like politics is a dirty word, only the worst of us will involve in politics.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#125

Post by shermozle »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #5

So I have read this report, but it would be good if there were some example URLs of where this is happening. Take for instance Lambeth's website ( https://www.lambeth.gov.uk ). I've browsed through a few public facing pages and the council tax payment pages. The report says Lambeth shows 1 real time bidding, 1 social and 5 Google "trackers". From my network requests I see: -> Google Translate and its resources (CSS e…

One of the examples, Enfield, gives me 44 trackers according to Tag Explorer: https://imgur.com/a/NoOjoev

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#126

Post by toyg »

adwww wrote: post #116
Scoundreller wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of fiscal « downloading » is also a way to keep wealth within your council, and poor areas can just get bent because they’ll have more needs, but the least ability to get revenue. (If council’s primary revenue source is council tax within their own council).

That would be nice... but councils can only increase tax by <2% per year, and most of their revenue comes from a 'grant' by central government, which has been cut ~40% in the last decade.

Yep - "egoistic firewalling" is basically how Tory HQ sold the strategy to the local authorities they controlled (peppered with rebalancing some formulas so that they would get more than in the past, taken from more deprived areas they didn't control); then turned around and slashed so hard, the first towns to declare bankruptcy were their own [1][2][3]. And what do they do in London? Blame councils, of course! [4]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/02/tory-run-cou...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/18/tory-council...

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/local-council...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/11/cameron-hyp...

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#128

Post by vertex-four »

mattlondon wrote: post #120
toyg wrote: post #69

Council are the victims here. They are forced to debase themselves because central government, in the Tory era since 2010, simply offloads competencies to local authorities, without allocating extra funds or even slashing existing ones. So the priority has become to keep the lights on and find every way possible to monetize anything remotely monetizable, from parking to this (as well as cutting tons of jobs, closing…

The tax burden is high. They could certainly do with reducing it in my personal opinion. A leaflet comes through the door every year or so telling me how much they spend in the local council. Usually the highest amount is not on schools, not on libraries, not on health, not on sweeping the streets or maintaining parks and playgrounds etc, but on "adult social care" (1) which as far as I know is a euphemism for benefi…

Adult social care covers a few things, but most of it is literally paying care workers to look after old and vulnerable people.

This isn’t what most people would consider a benefit, but a basic dignity.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#129

Post by ddalex »

rtb wrote: post #55
mpeg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative here? Should Enfield spend tax payer money creating an alternative tool to show banner ad cross-promotions and re-training their teams? Where do you stop? Is Google Analytics evil too? What about Twitter feeds?

The alternative is to not show ads. Yes, Google Analytics has many of the same problems. The alternative to that is to analyze the server logs or to simply not track your users' behaviour in detail.

> to simply not track your users' behaviour in detail

that's unpossible

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#130

Post by ddalex »

gowld wrote: post #98
eclipxe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave's business model is fear mongering.

What's the difference betwen fear mongering and educating about risks?

educating is "this works like this and that, mind yourself"

fear mongering is "you're in danger, buy this for us to save yourself"

not exactly a thin line

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