By Robert Bateman

The U.K. government is developing a nationwide “digital identity” framework that would enable it to identify individuals across various public services.

Several news outlets have characterized the scheme as a plan to assign a so-called “digital ID card” to every citizen, a move that would concern many privacy advocates.

The U.K.’s proposals are still unclear, but they do not appear to involve a physical ID card. The government claims the framework would reduce fraud and check individual identities more easily.

By Robert Bateman

The U.K. government paid the artificial intelligence firm Faculty $524,000 to trawl and analyze the Twitter activity of the nation’s voters, according to an investigation by the campaign group Big Brother Watch.

The probe, disclosed by The Guardian on Aug. 10, revealed that Faculty was contracted to provide “topic analysis of social media” and gauge public response to the government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

By Robert Bateman

A landmark legal challenge to the use of facial-recognition technology has succeeded, with the U.K.’s Court of Appeal ruling this month that police in South Wales used automated facial recognition in violation of fundamental human rights.

Edward Bridges, a Cardiff resident supported by a human-rights group, Liberty, argued that the police had not adequately assessed how facial-recognition technology could violate individual “rights and freedoms” nor considered how the technology could be biased along racial and gender lines.

The Court of Appeal made its unanimous ruling Aug. 11. The South Wales Police has accepted the verdict and will not appeal to the Supreme Court.

By Robert Bateman

The world of digital privacy was shaken this month, when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the Privacy Shield framework, which allows certain businesses to freely transfer personal information from the E.U. to the U.S.

The E.U. court ruled July 16 in Luxembourg that U.S. surveillance laws violated the privacy of European citizens. International data transfers to the U.S. can still take place, however, subject to standard contractual clauses to protect personal information, written by the European Commission.

Experts on both sides of the Atlantic told Digital Privacy News that the U.K., which has similarly intrusive surveillance laws to the United States, could be disproportionately affected by the decision.

By Robert Bateman

Facebook Inc. is partnering with the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) to distribute 2,050 Facebook Portal devices among care-home residents.

Portal, Facebook’s “smart home” device, features “always listening” voice activation and video calling via Messenger and WhatsApp. The device’s “Smart Camera” recognizes human figures and automatically will track them around a room.