The BBC has this afternoon come under fire by influential MPs, condemning the organisation for giving a one sided advertising boost to a U.S. owned left-wing news website for an entire day. Former Digital Minister Ed Vaizy has thrown the BBC’s judgement into question: “It seems very odd for the BBC to be partnering with […]

The post DCMS Committee Member and Former Digital Minister Slam BBC Over Left Wing Takeover appeared first on Guido Fawkes.

Some of the oldest and most historically important Friends chapels in Britain now have protected status

For almost 350 years, Quakers have been opening a gate in a brick wall in Hertford, crossing a small, peaceful courtyard, and taking a seat on wooden benches in a simple, timber-panelled room to commune silently with God.

The Quaker Meeting House in the county town of Hertfordshire is the oldest in the world still in continuous use by the Religious Society of Friends, the proper name for Quakers. The town has grown around it, now with new-build developments housing young families pushed out of London and there’s a proposal for a chain hotel to be built opposite the meeting house.

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Alex Holmes, deputy director of cyber security at DCMS, joins Liam Maxwell at cloud giant

Exclusive Amazon Web Services has hired Alex Holmes, the deputy director of cyber security at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport - another senior IT Government figure to move to the cloud biz.…

The tech industry may rail against the DCMS’s document but it’s high time they were brought to book

On Monday last week, the government published its long-awaited white paper on online harms. It was launched at the British Library by the two cabinet ministers responsible for it – Jeremy Wright of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the home secretary, Sajid Javid. Wright was calm, modest and workmanlike in his introduction. Javid was, well, more macho. The social media companies had had their chances to put their houses in order. “They failed,” he declared. “I won’t let them fail again.” One couldn’t help feeling that he had one eye on the forthcoming hustings for the Tory leadership.

Nevertheless, this white paper is a significant document. It marks the first time that the government of a major country has decided to regulate the companies that now dominate the online world. Other countries (Singapore, Australia and Germany to name just three) have already had a go, but their efforts have been partial, reactive and sometimes half-arsed. The UK white paper tries to address the problem at a broader level.

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Online harms white paper fuses work of DCMS and Home Office, led by PM hopeful Sajid Javid

Sajid Javid’s warning social media companies face “serious consequences” if they don’t keep users safe marks one of the biggest incursions by the Home Office into the world of media regulation since the issue was hived off from the department in the 1990s.

The online harms white paper meshes together the work of officials at the Home Office, who have been pushing for a tough crackdown on tech companies from a law enforcement perspective, and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) staff who traditionally regulate the media.

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(Press Release) The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) today published its long-awaited White Paper on Online Harms.

(Blog) After months of waiting and speculation, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has finally published its White Paper on Online Harms - now appearing as a joint publication with the Home Office. The expected duty of care proposal is present, but substantive detail on what this actually means remains sparse: it would perhaps be more accurate to describe this paper as pasty green.

Changing Lives to receive £1m to help victims in Rotherham, Newcastle and elsewhere

Victims of sexual exploitation scandals in Rotherham and Newcastle are among those who will benefit from this year’s tampon tax disbursement.

The charity Changing Lives will receive £1m to support vulnerable women groomed by gangs for sexual exploitation in the north-east and Yorkshire, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Facebook employees were aware of concerns about "improper data-gathering practices" by Cambridge Analytica months before the Guardian first reported, in December 2015, that the political consultancy had obtained data on millions from an academic. The concerns appeared in a court filing by the attorney general for Washington DC and were subsequently confirmed by Facebook. The new information "could suggest that Facebook has consistently mislead [sic]" British lawmakers "about what it knew and when about Cambridge Analytica," tweeted Damian Collins, the chair of the House of Commons digital culture media and sport select committee (DCMS) in response to the court filing. In a statement, a company spokesperson said: "Facebook absolutely did not mislead anyone about this timeline." After publication of this article, the spokesperson acknowledged that Facebook employees heard rumors of data scraping by Cambridge Analytica in September 2015. The spokesperson said that this was a "different incident" from Cambridge Analytica's acquisition of a trove of data about as many as 87 million users that has been widely reported on for the past year. "In September 2015 employees heard speculation that Cambridge Analytica was scraping data, something that is unfortunately common for any internet service," the spokesperson said. "In December 2015, we first learned through media reports that Kogan sold data to Cambridge Analytica, and we took action. Those were two different things." The filing raised questions about when Facebook first learned about the misuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, the now defunct political consultancy.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DC attorney general says email exchange shows Facebook knew of data harvesting prior to Guardian report

Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica’s “improper data-gathering practices” months before the Guardian first reported on them in December 2015, according to a court filing by the attorney general for Washington DC.

The new information “could suggest that Facebook has consistently mislead [sic]” British lawmakers “about what it knew and when about Cambridge Analytica”, tweeted Damian Collins, the chair of the House of Commons digital culture media and sport select committee (DCMS) in response to the filing.

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