For some months now the campaigners at nodpi who are working to prevent widespread adoption of deep packet inspection such as that implemented by Phorm have been seeking clrification of why the BBC use cookies to send of records of your IP address, your Post Code*, and what parts of their website (e.g. iPlayer videos) you've been viewing off to a third party company in the USA. This third party is Omniture, formerly known as Visual Sciences. The BBC say this is in order to monitor usage of their website. Response is here; the whole thread can be viewed here. Interestingly, such transfer of personal data seems to be legal under EU legislation, as indicated in this quotation from the FOI response Dephormation finally received:

To the extent that the bbc.co.uk homepage is capturing IP addresses and post code data for anonymous statistical reporting purposes, the BBC confirms that the BBC treats both IP addresses and post code data as “personal data” within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 1998, despite the currently uncertain legal position around IP addresses in particular. Given its position, the BBC does not permit the transfer of IP addresses and user post code data to countries outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”) unless those countries have “adequate data protection standards” and/or there are strong contractual data protection provisions in place with the data processor. It is correct that Omniture is a USA company and therefore operates outside the EEA. However, Omniture do satisfy the European Union's Directive on Data Protection’s requirements by demonstrating “adequate data protection standards” by registering with the US Department of Commerce’s safe harbour framework.

I blogged the other day about Andy Burnam's campaign for cinema-style rating of web content.  Burnham is apparently the UK Government's Culture Secretary, has small children, and does not appear to believe that parental responsibility includes informing children about what they should or should not do.  He has proposed that a system of rating websites analogous to that used for motion pictures  (and we all know how that stops kids from watching DVDs) be used to rate web sites.  The ISPs would then offer the ability to screen out offensive web content.

It's amusing that this story surfaced shortly after the Internet Watch Foundation's action against a 1970s LP sleeve thrust the IWF somewhat unwillingly into the media spotlight.  Most internet users were probably unaware that a blacklist of websites was maintained in this way.

The Guardian has a front page report updating the status of the Government's proposals to monitor all UK communications (the "Interception Modernisation Programme" or IMP).  This the proposal to record the names and addresses of all communications, but not (at this stage) the contents of the communications.  This execrable plan is estimated to run in at about £12 billion, a sum which you would think the Government would quail at, in the present financial circumstances.

Bizarrely, considering the database is supposed to be vital for  national security, one proposal is that it be run by private industry.  Apparently this is under the illusion that privatised work will be more cost-effective than that run by Govenment.  Ho hum.

Just picked this up via the Open Rights Group website.  Tom Watson MP has a blog and has solicited opinions on his colleague Andy Burhnam's Big Idea - that voluntary age rating of internet sites is a practical solution to the perceived problem of nasty websites being inflicted on unsuspecting kiddies.

A quick squizz through his blog suggests this blog posting has generated a larger number of comments than any others - mind you, even his worst-commented articles do better than most of mine in that regard :-( 

Thisismoney.co.uk announce that Money Mail have awarded their 2008 Wooden Spoon award to British Telecom.  This is from an online customer survey.  One notable quote from the article is:

There were two areas you felt most aggrieved about. The first was dealing with overseas call centres. You complained that you are forced to spend a substantial amount of time pressing buttons in the automated system before you can reach a human being.