Mark Ballard, writing on his blog at Computer Weekly, notes that the Cabinet Office CIO and CTO councils meet more-or-less in secret, without published agendas or minutes:

Fancy that. Francis Maude’s open data revolution is being conducted in secret. That’s fine. Everyone knows power can be handed to the people only once the battle is won on their behalf.

The stakes are too high and all that. We trust in the meantime that the revolutionary council will work in our best and not their own vested interests.

There are in fact two revolutionary councils. The CIO Council and CTO Council. These are the Cabinet Office boards on which sit the overpaid nobbins who gave us such wonders as the NHS National Programme for IT, the Child Support Agency and the Identity Cards Scheme.

They’ll have plenty to cock up under the ConDem’s as well. Besides the open data revolution, we’ve got the promise of more gargantuan gaffs like the Universal Credit Scheme and Interception Modernisation Programme.

Don’t be deceived by their bad suits and Coldplay concert tickets. These CIOs call the shots. Thus your humble correspondent has on innumerable occasions over the last five years asked the Cabinet Office for a calendar, agendas and minutes of their meetings.

They don’t normally bother replying. But Maude has really got his staff swinging to his transparency number. So they sent a refusal instead of implying it. There’s a progressive government for you.

Alan Travis writes on the Guardian web site:

The information commissioner is to meet the Home Office to clarify his concerns over the potential privacy risks involved in a revived Whitehall project to track the email, internet and mobile phone use of everyone in Britain.

David Cameron promised at prime minister’s question time today that coalition ministers would work with the commissioner, Christopher Graham, on the details of the project.

A spokesperson for the commissioner’s office said: “The commissioner’s key concern is whether the case has been made for the project. On the face of it, the proposal seems disproportionate when any perceived benefits that might be gained from retaining this data are set against the risks to privacy involved.” Graham hopes to establish whether his concerns have been addressed when he meets Home Office officials.

The ICO’s official response to the last round of consultation on the project said the usefulness of communication data in prosecuting criminals was not enough justification “for mandating the collection of all possible communications data on all subscribers by all communication service providers”.

Chris Williams writes in The Register:

The coalition government has torn up figures that pegged the cost of plans by the intelligence services to store records of every online communication at £2bn.

A Home Office spokesman told The Register that the previous government’s estimate of the cost of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) has been abandoned.

He declined to provide a revised figure, saying new proposals for internet surveillance will be announced in November. This raises the possibility either that suggestions by industry sources that the original estimate was unrealistically low were correct, or that the scheme is being scaled back.

The spokesman flatly denied claims in The Guardian that access to IMP data would be restricted to “terror-related” investigations, however. Communications data is vital to all law enforcement, he said.

Andrew Denholm writes in The Herald:

New checks on Scottish parents who want to help out at school events are a form of identity card scheme, ministers will be warned today.

The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said, in an open letter to Children and Early Years Minister Adam Ingram, plans for new disclosure checks would amount to a “lifetime regime” where records are held on people.

Eileen Prior, executive director of the campaigning organisation for parents, also highlights some examples of extreme cases where local authorities have deemed it appropriate to conduct disclosure checks.

In one case, the father of a child with a disability was checked to allow him to board the school bus to help his own son fasten his seatbelt.

Enhanced disclosure checks have long been mooted for those unsupervised with children. They have to apply for an enhanced disclosure check which will contain both spent and unspent conviction data and other intelligence or information considered relevant by the local police force.

Disclosure Scotland also undertakes basic disclosure checks, which will not contain spent convictions, and standard checks which will contain all conviction data.

SPTC also published details of cases where parents who wanted to hire school premises outwith school hours – and would have no contact with children – were being asked to go through checks.

It states: “We have raised concerns about misuse of disclosure checks since the original scheme started some years ago.

“Now the legislation is about to change and we know many local authorities intend to continue pushing parents through disclosure in the same way.

“The difference is that the new legislation means disclosure is no longer a one-off check – people who go through the new regime will become life-long members of a scheme and records will be held on them in Government computers.

Matt Chorley interviewed the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, LibDem MP Danny Alexander, in the Independent on Sunday. John Rentoul has posted the whole transcript of the interview on the newspaper’s web site:

Q: Another key themes of the Lib Dem manifesto was the rolling back of the surveillance state but in the defence review the Interception Modernisation Programme still talks about collating emails and phone calls, which looks like another Lib Dem policy dropped. Civil liberties was a strong theme before the election, but now?

It is a very strong theme of the government. We have made a lot of steps. We have got rid of ID cards. We have got rid of the database that sits behind ID cards system too.

Q: But how does this fit with that?

Well, I’m not going to get into the deal of that programme because that will be something to be announced in due course but I think in terms of something which… er… I think that it… it sits within … I think it sits within and is consistent with the position that we have set out.

Q: So keeping emails and phone…

I’m sorry, I’m just not going to go into the details of the programme because that’s going to have to be something that’s announced in due course.

Q: But the details are in the defence review that was published.

Er… well there’s some detail there but the Home Secretary will have to set out more things in future. I think what’s in the defence review is consistent with the approach that Liberal Democrats have taken to these matters.