It’s not just government agencies which manage to lose important data.

Kablenet reports that a laptop containing client information has been stolen from the car of an employee of Citizens Advice in Northern Ireland, with up to 60,000 client records. However, the data is protected by three levels of security, including a high level of encryption.

Please note that the kablenet site was too busy when we went to double check the link (which can disappear after a few weeks).

Charities and other voluntary organisations are to get the chance to use Ordnance Survey maps in web applications for non-commercial purposes. Technology Guardian reports:

Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace product is a “slippy map” interface, a piece of software that allows users to place any kind of information with a geographic reference over a map displayed on the web. Maps available through the service range from the 1:1m outline of Great Britain, up to street level (1:10,000). “It provides you with all the necessary functionality to interact with a map such as panning, zooming and adding markers and polygons,” the agency says. Users will need no special knowledge of geographic information system software.

It is currently at ‘closed alpha test’ stage but should open up early 2008. OS OpenSpace.

And while we’re on human rights, a posting on judging Best Use of the Social Web by a Nonprofit comes up with some innovative uses in the field - the use of Twitter by activists to let people know whether they’ve been arrested or disappeared and “the courageous use of YouTube by award winning blogger Wael Abbas , whose videos captured the torture of victims at the hands of police”.

From internet.artizans , via Nick Booth.

Amnesty International has a “new, completely re-architected, W3C Web Content Accessibility-compliant, data protection law and privacy legislation-compliant, multi-lingual and totally open source Drupal, CiviCRM and Alfresco-based website”. That’s according to Important Projects consultancy, who had something to do with it.

Not everyone will like the bright yellow backing to headlines, but then that’s part of the brand image.