Despite all the Government assurances on limiting the nosiness of our Councils, most Councils have gone one step further down the Big Brother road and are permitting private companies to trawl the details of vulnerable and other members of the public.
“Brave has uncovered widespread surveillance of UK citizens by private companies embedded on UK council websites. “Surveillance on UK council websites”, a new report from Brave, reveals the extent of private companies’ surveillance of UK citizens when they seek help for addiction, disability, and poverty from their local government authorities.
None of the data collecting companies recorded in this study had received consent from the website visitor to lawfully process data. ”
Details of the Brave report can be read at the link.
There there some quite shocking facts in the report. For example: Sheffield City Council allows 8 data brokers to access this information. These are companies whose business model is to profile people and sell data about them to other companies.
Now it may be some of these data collectors are benign, but site visitors never get the chance to make such a judgement. Only Anglesey is among a handful of Councils who pass no data to any outside companies.
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