Lord Harris of Haringey Labour Peer. Joined the Lords in 1998. Hon Treasurer of the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee, PITCOM. Member of the select committee on science and technology. Treasurer of the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/lduncorr/s&tii170107.pdf Asked Microsoft why two and a half years ago the firewall default was switched off.

Open Source

Written question Software 17 July 2006

What representation there is from the free software movement on the steering committee of the Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network which is sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry.

Written question Software Expenditure 15 June 2005

What steps are being taken by the central sponsor for information assurance to ensure that open source software is approved by government as having a recognised level of security efficiency; and, as this software is free or low-cost, how this will be funded.

Written question Schools: Open Source Software 14 June 2005

What action is being taken in response to the report from the British Educational Communications and Technology Directorate which has concluded that primary schools could cut computer costs by nearly half if they stopped buying, operating and supporting products from software vendors such as Microsoft.

Written question Open Source Software 14 June 2005

What proportion of desktop computers and workstations in each government department:

(a) exclusively use open source software;

(b) use some open source software; and

(c) use no open source software.

Data Breach Law

Fresh calls for data-breach law 14 Sep 2007 Lord Harris of Haringey said

"I support the recommendation the [Lords Science and Technology] Committee made that there should be a data-breach notification law. Manufacturers of equipment, producers of software, holders of data, and internet service providers should all be much more security conscious than is currently the case. In some cases [of data breaches] the financial penalties are not strong enough."

Links

News

2007-09-14 - ZDNet - Fresh calls for data-breach law: Author: Tom Espiner; Summary: A member of a prominent House of Lords committee has repeated calls for a data-breach notification law. Speaking at an event organised by Intellect on Thursday, Lord Harris of Haringey said: "I support the recommendation the [Lords Science and Technology] Committee made that there should be a data-breach notification law. Manufacturers of equipment, producers of software, holders of data, and internet service providers should all be much more security conscious than is currently the case. In some cases [of data breaches] the financial penalties are not strong enough." A data-breach notification law would "concentrate the minds" of companies holding data, because loss of data would have an impact on that organisation's reputation, said Harris. He added that all board-level executives should be legally liable for data loss.