After the Home Secretary announced that the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) was not going to be included in the Queen's Speech, but that it was to be the subject of a public consultation, the Home Office has replied to the Open Rights Group's August 2008 FOI request  for information about the proposed scheme for spying into all our communications. 

Well, unsurprisingly, they have clammed up almost entirely.  The pdf response is here; the ORG article is here; one of the documents supplied is here.  Of course, any political moves with any kind of claim to be associated with national security can probably claim to be exempt from the FOI act.  It's to be hoped that the ORG will continue chasing the information in the run upto the publict consultation exercise our increasingly authoritarian Home Secretary will actually emark on in the New Year.

The IWF, those self-appointed and unregulated guardians of our morality have backed down over listing the Wikipedia page on the Scorpions album Virgin Killer.  You can read their statement here, and how ungracious and unapolgetic they are too.

I imagine they are a bit upset that their surreptitious filtering activities got thrust suddenly into the public view (including a major item on Channel 4 news).   From the notes appended to the statment:

 Here's a demo film from 1968 showing one of the first computer mice...I love the peculiar combined keyboard/mouse pad that resembles an airline meal tray.

[video:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1MPJZ6M52dI&feature=related 425x344] 

So, who watches the Internet Watch Foundation watchmen?  Wikipedia entry "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?".

A ZDnet article says "Wind up the Internet Watch Foundation"...

Very sad news- Oliver Postgate, the man responsible for many remarkably excellent childrens' TV shows has died.  There's a concise biography at wikipedia.

My particular favorite show was Noggin the Nog, but I expect many of us of a certain age will feel nostalgic over one or more of his TV shows.  He'll be missed.

The Open Rights Group has a well written article on the IWF fracas on banning the Scorpions LP sleeve image.  However, despite a report on the ORG site saying that the IWF is reconsidering it's listing of that Wikipedia URL, the Guardian reports that the IWF are thinking of extending its attempt to stop us seeing this ancient LP sleeve image via amazon.com.  Hitherto, some commentators had reckoned the IWF wouldn't go after websites with serious legal muscle, such as Amazon.

Interesting things:

• While we know the IWF membership, it's not any kind of body accountable to us or the Government.
• This issue has highlighted the existence of the IWF, which I guess many internet users didn't know if before.
• The list of banned URLs doesn't seem readily available.
  
• URLs containing dodgy material are submitted by members of the public.
• Apparently the decision to list a URL for banning is made by four indivuduals whose job it is to sift through submitted URLs.
• The criterion is "potentially" illegal, as defined by some training these four received from the police.
  
• ISPs blocking the wikipedia page via the IWF list inapprpriately serve up a 404 notice - from Wikipedia: "The 404 or Not Found error message is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server but either the server could not find what was requested, or it was configured not to fulfill the request and did not reveal the reason why. 404 errors should not be confused with "server not found" or similar errors, in which a connection to the destination server could not be made at all."

The IWF seem entirely unrepentant, and the spread of the LP sleeve image has probably spread round the internet as a consequence.  Try this Google Image search.  But don't click the link if you're likely to be upset!

The Sunday Times reports that our authoritarian Home Secretary's plans to prevent leaks from the companies working on implemented the expensive and unnecessary ID card scheme has itself been leaked.

What's particularly draconian is that it seems the desire is to implement a system whereby workers at these companies may have their homes searched without needing  a search warrant.

The Y chromosome in Drosophila is a strange thing, and it has several unique features.  While, just as in humans, male flies are XY and females XX, flies differ in the the Y chomosome doesn't determine "maleness".  Rather the sex of the fly is determined by the ratio of X chromosomes to the number of sets of autosomes (the X:A ratio).  If the X:A ratio is 1, then the fly is female, if it is 0.5, the fly is male.  So an X0 fly (i.e. one with a single X chromosome with no Y chromosome) develops as a male.  [This can be quite useful in the laboratory] What then is the Y chromosome for?  It is required for male fertility but not viability.  This means that XY flies are fertile males, XX fies are fertile females, XXY flies are fertile females and X0 flies are sterile males.

One might expect then that whatever genes are located on the Y chromosome are related mainly to fertility, or are genetically redundant.  In fact there are very few known genes on the Drosophila melanogaster Y chromosome - 12, in fact, and many if not all are related to fertility in males.  12 genes is really not many for a chromosome, and it turns out that the Y chromosome is pretty much composed of genetically inert heterochromatin and largely comprises simple sequence repetitive DNA.  

The nannys at the Internet Watch Foundation, the people who generate lists of websites it doesn't think we should see, have decided that customers of Virgin Media, Be/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon and Opal should be unable to view the Wikipedia page about the 1976 album Virgin Killer by German metal band The Scorpions (if you've been blocked, you won't be able to see that link).  OK, it's tasteless (and I never particularly cared for the Scorpions' music), but should it have been blocked?

The blacklisting of this Wikipedia page has had consequences on the ability of those UK webusers to edit Wikipedia articles.

Hot on the heels of the good news that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that DNA fingerprint records of individuals that were not convicted may not be retained in police (or other) databases, comes less welcome news of the developing Surveillance State.

The Independent reports that the Government is to push through legislation to permit a variety of public bodies to share and exchange sensitive data they hold on us.