All action on the Phorm phront today. Hot on the heels of the EC press release revealing they are taking action against the UK over Phorm comes the news that 80/20 Thinking will no longer undertake advisory work for companies (BBC News - Privacy firm drops advisory work). This follows accusations that one of the firms founders, Simon Davies, also works for the privacy lobby group Privacy International. The conflict of interest revolves around Davies association with Phorm - many commentators have remarked how lukewarm PI's response to the many issues of privacy that have been raised by Phorm's ISP level deep packet inspection system.
The Open Rights Group have set up a spiffy site, Statebook, to illustrate the dangers of the burgeoning Database State in the UK.
It's an effectve illustration of how the UK's intrusive data collection habits threaten our liberties and freedom, and how the future looks to be mapped out. The recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust revealed that not only is our government remarkably keen to get their dibs on considerable quantities of data on us and our movements, but that it's equally inept in obeying data protection regulations.
More about statebook from the Open Rights Group site.
Lord Carter is the author of a report for the UK Government, Digital Britain. The UK Government, its Departments and other agencies have been remarkably ineffective over the fracas about Phorm's deep packet inspection technology, its covert testing by BT in 2006 and 2007, and its more open testing by BT on 2008.
Well, what's this in a Guardian report (Government's broadband-for-all pledge in jeopardy)?
Carter's internet adviser Kip Meek [my emphasis], leading talks with the mobile phone industry, is understood to want to open up the airwaves so that mobile phone companies can get broadband into rural areas.
Judging from a Google search, Kip Meek has a track record in IT work. He's also a Phorm Board Member!
(hat tip - nodpi forum)
A year or so on after Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, coauthor of Dungeons & Dragons has died (Ars Technica: Between battles, the story: Dave Arneson has passed on). Dungeons and Dragons (and subsequently several other roleplaying games) played a hugeand very important part in my life from my teens into my late 20s.
Arneson had some sort of falling out with Gary Gygax and left TSR (the publishers of D&D) in 1975, but apparently he was at least partially back in the fold for the third edition of the game. The Ars Technica review says it better than I can.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has a website of essays related to the internet and privacy, and many feature discussions of Phorm's vile and intrusive technology, tested in the UK as "Webwise".
You can view the essays here. There are contributions from individuals on both sides of the fence (but mostly it seems anti-dpi).
Phorm's own Brooks Dobbs has a revealing essay (Phorm: A New Paradigm in Internet Advertising) advocating the use of dpi in trageting advertising as some sort of saviour of the internet. Interestingly the real and intrusive nature of the technology does not appear in Dobbs' essay. In fact, on privacy he says:
This system has been audited by Ernst and Young, and leading privacy consultancy 80/20 Thinking has completed a full Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) on Phorm's technology (copies available at privacy.phorm.com)
In fact, according to what I've read on the web, the Ernst & Young report focussed on the USA (where DPI practises have come under serious fire and have largely foundered), while th 80/20 thinking report is not a"full" assessment. When I looked, some particularly cogent comments had been left.
Much more considered views are presented by Dr Richard Clayton (Objecting to Phorm), who's introductory paragraph illustrates just what's wrong with Phorm:
Imagine the postal service steaming open your letters so that they could scan the content, work out your interests, and then deliver a better class of junk mail. Most people would be horrified, yet some of the UK's largest ISPs are planning to do something even more intrusive. They will capture the details of all the online searches you make, all of the web pages you visit - solely to serve up targeted online adverts. This isn't happening for some altruistic aim of making adverts more relevant, but because the ISPs will get a cut from the advertising revenue, and Phorm, the technology vendor involved, will charge advertisers extra for delivering up an especially receptive audience.
There's a whole lot wrong with Phorm and its intrusive system. It's why I ditched British Telecom as an ISP after many years good service, and why I would recommend other BT users to do likewise.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's website is encouraging in that well-formed articles can only help the debate, and in fact reveal the duplicity of the former spyware merchants Phorm. Oon the other hand it's really quite depressing in comparison with the complete and utter failure of the UK Government to take the matter seriously, through its Departments and/or quangos, and properly investigate the really quite murky legal position.
But where, I wonder, is the surprise in the pathetic stance of the UK Government? After all this is the most data-intrusive Government we have had. And also the most slap-dash in terms of data security.