u.k

The police cannot deal with the amount of information generated by surveillance cameras, according to the U.K.'s Association of Chief Police Officers.

Ian Readhead, director of information for the ACPO Criminal Records Office, said this week that police are overwhelmed by the volume of such data and that one of his major concerns is that police don't have the capability to track a car in real time using the Automatic Number Plate Recognition System, which is part of the surveillance cameras' functions.

"The problem is the amount of data," said Readhead, speaking at a data … Read more

This story has been updated. See below for details.

Watchdog group Privacy International has filed a formal complaint with the U.K. government over the recent introduction of Google's Street View in Britain.

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, argues that Street View has caused "clear embarrassment and damage" to many residents of the U.K., according to a BBC News report. The street-level feature of Google Maps, which debuted in the U.K. last week, provides a driver's-eye photographic record of urban landscapes, including storefronts and pedestrians.

The complaint was filed with the Information Commissioner's Office, … Read more

Google has brought its driver's-eye view of the world to more parts of Europe, releasing Street View imagery for the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

As with the United States and other countries that have Street View, not all areas are photographed, but major cities have some coverage. Google Blogoscoped had this list of cities: Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, and York in England; Belfast in Northern Ireland; Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland; and Cardiff and Swansea in Wales.

For the virtual tourist, Google Maps Mania … Read more

The U.K. government is considering the mass surveillance and retention of all user communications on social-networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo.

Vernon Coaker the U.K. Home Office security minister, on Monday said the EU Data Retention Directive, under which Internet service providers must store communications data for 12 months, does not go far enough. Communications such as those on social-networking sites and via instant-messaging services could also be monitored, he said.

"Social-networking sites such as MySpace or Bebo are not covered by the directive," said Coaker, speaking at a meeting of the House of Commons … Read more

Updated at 1:25 p.m. PDT.

Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube is silencing music videos in the U.K. after negotiations with the country's Performing Right Society (PRS for Music), which collects licensing fees for artists and labels, failed.

"Our previous license from PRS for Music has expired, and we've been unable so far to come to an agreement to renew it on terms that are economically sustainable for us," a statement from YouTube read. "There are two obstacles in these negotiations: prohibitive licensing fees and lack of transparency. We value the creativity of musicians … Read more

A British man, suspected of brutally killing a former girlfriend, was found hanged in Manchester, various U.K. newspapers reported.

The body of George Appleton, 40, who was dubbed the "Facebook fugitive" among other nicknames by the British press, was discovered Thursday. The nickname is related to police warnings regarding his use of social-networking sites, including Facebook, to meet women.

Police had been searching for Appleton since his former girlfriend, Clare Wood, was found strangled and burned on February 6, according to the Manchester Evening News. She had recently accused him of sexual assault. He was out on … Read more

I'm not exactly a monarchist, but I must admit getting just a little excited about all the pomp and tradition of the royal family.

This week, Queen Elizabeth is launching an update to the official site of the British monarchy.

The site, which was first launched in 1997, is the place for all things British royal, including pictures of Her Majesty and the rest of the family, art from her various palaces, and historical information about the royals.

New to the site are embedded videos from the official royal YouTube channel, including one from 1940 that has the sound … Read more

New powers are needed to combat a culture of "pervasive" surveillance that has seen the U.K. become the most spied-upon country in the world, the Lords said Friday.

The U.K. is now watched by more about 4 million CCTV cameras and details of 7 percent of the population is held in the National DNA Database (NDNAD)--more than any other country, according to chairman of the House of Lords Constitution Committee, Lord Goodlad.

At the same time national databases designed to hold personal information on nearly every U.K. citizen are being set up across Whitehall, … Read more

Now here's a recipe for success: Take a brand that your parent company's been on the verge of abandoning for the last four years. Slap it on a new music download store for mobile phones. Encrust all the tracks with DRM, even though the rest of the music download industry is finally moving away from DRM. Make sure that the downloads are tethered to the user's handset, so they can't keep them when they upgrade phones in a year or two. Charge more than the competition. Then, when questioned what the heck you could possibly have … Read more