Sim-O

Fred Goodwins’ superinjunction has been, at least, partially lifted. We can all now know, legally, that Fred ‘The Shred’ has been bonking a colleague. Don’t we all feel better and more informed now?

The issue of superinjunctions is a hot one at the moment. Freedom of speech (or expression as some are saying) versus someones’ right to privacy. The press are scared that they won’t be able to report on vital establishment-shaking issues and people are worried that anything goes and will have to spend a fortune in the courts when their shit hits the fan, or newstand.

One of the arguements the press use is that with these injuctions they won’t be able to expose all these celebrities and public figures for the hypocrits they are. Fair enough, but who is a celebrity? What makes a public figure?

Sometimes it’s easy to say. An MP is a public figure, the leader of a campaign is open to scrutiny, the sportstar that uses his/her image to advertise stuff. They are all trying to influence the public to behave in a certain way. If they are not true to their word then fair enough, a charge of hypocrasy should be called and they shoudl have to defend themselves. They have, though, put themselves forward. They decided to enter the public concience in a certain way.

But what of the likes of Fred Goodwin. He was just a banker. Fred didn’t put himself in the public domain, he was thrust into it due to circumstance. Fred didn’t shout that we shouldn’t be doing drugs or being faithful to our spouses while snorting a barrel full of cocaine out the anus of a prostitute while his good little wife waited at home, sat at the table looking at an empty chair while dinner their plated up dinner slowly went cold. He ran a bank. No one, outside a very small circle, before the banking crises had heard of him.

So while the hoo-ha about his running of the bank or his massive pension agreement could be a fair target why should his choice of sexual partner be up for all and sundry to know about?

Fred was apparently shagging a colleague. How does that change things? Lots of people fuck someone they work with. It might cause a bit of concern if it’s the government defence secretary having secret liasons, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the liason is a honeytrap, but a banker? Does it really have any bearing on anything?

Fred Goodwin may be a national bogeyman, but the fact that he is not a public figure of his own making means he shouldn’t have needed an injunction to supress this little bit of his life that is of no consequence of anybody except those close to him, such as his wife and family.

It is entirely possible for this affair to have had some bearing of the massive losses RBS suffered, making it in need of govenrment help, in which case the press would be legitimate in it’s publication. There is nothing wrong with the press investigating this stuff, that is what they need to do to expose hypocracy and shadowy dealings that are of genuine public interest, but when there is no connection between his affair and (his part in) the collapse of the UK banking industry then there is no need to run it.

This obsession of the printed Press with who is shagging who is what is causing this, what seems to be, sudden flurry of injunctions. If the press stuck to what was important and relevant, there wouldn’t be any need for these people to try and gag the editors freedom of speech.

Footnote:
I understand that an MP might want to use Parliamentary privilege to smash an injunction, in the case of Trafigura for instance, but why the hell did the LibDem MP John Hemming think it’s anyones business who the fuck is fucking who?

MPs’ need to stop buggering about with this and either leave superinjuctions alone unless there is serious public interest being censured or debate it and sort out a proper privacy law.

From 21st Century Fix…

This, via Dave Winer, came my way this evening:

US subpoenas Twitter, seeking information on WikiLeaks’ 635,561 followers. http://r2.ly/6ixh

The article he links to can be found here:

A Dutch investigative journalist blasted the US Department of Justice for requesting information on everyone following WikiLeaks’ Twitter account and everyone they follow.

So this doesn’t only mean that I now potentially form part of a US government criminal investigation. It also means – if I’ve understood the slightly ambiguous phrase correctly – that if by any chance I decided to follow you on Twitter, you, as the recipient of the attentions of someone who also follows WikiLeaks, may just as easily find yourself the object of the attentions of some random US National Security official who – at some time in the future – will end up sticking his or her legalistic nose in your electronic communications, bank details, personal associations and cloud data.

But not because you yourself followed WikiLeaks. Simply because someone else who followed you also followed WikiLeaks.

So. DuckDuckGo. A hybrid search engine. This one though, doesn’t collect personal data. Which many people would say is A Good Thing.

What DuckDuckGo also does is prevent what they call ‘search leakage‘…

At other search engines, when you do a search and then click on a link, your search terms are sent to that site you clicked on (in the HTTP referrer header). We call this sharing of personal information “search leakage.”

For example, when you search for something private, you are sharing that private search not only with your search engine, but also with all the sites that you clicked on (for that search).

In addition, when you visit any site, your computer automatically sends information about it to that site (including your User agent and IP address). This information can often be used to identify you directly.

So when you do that private search, not only can those other sites know your search terms, but they can also know that you searched it. It is this combination of available information about you that raises privacy concerns.

Because DuckDuckGo prevents ‘search leakage’, by redirecting your click on a result in a way…

…that it does not send your search terms to other sites. The other sites will still know that you visited them, but they will not know what search you entered beforehand.

No information about your computer is sent to the site you click on via a DuckDuckGo search. Not even the search terms. The very thing that tells you in your analytics package what someone was looking for.

This could present a problem for Search Engine Optimisers/Marketers if this type of ethos gains traction*. Not being able to tell what operating system someone was using when they landed on your site is one thing, but not knowing what someone was looking for when they got there is another.

*I don’t think it will as the money to be made from this information is too great an opportunity to pass up for some people.
**Discovered via Tygerland.

Here is the main stories on the front of the online editions of the papers at a bout 9 o’clock this morning:

The Mail goes with Prescott calls for police probe into claims Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper bugged his phone down at the very bottom of the page..

The FT has Murdoch reporters accused of phone hacking.

At the top of the shop in the Independent is Commons to study phone tap claims and a couple of small links to related stories underneath.

The Guardian has at the top of it’s page Murdoch papers paid £1m to phone-hacking victims, with a picture of a rather fed-up looking Rup and another story under that, Met pressed to investigate hacking. Both have links to related stories under them too.

On the pile of internet vomit that is the Express frontpage, that is in apparently still in beta according to the URL, has nothing.

The Times, the Sun, unsurpisingly, also have nothing to say on the subject.

Update:
Arse! I knew I’d forgotten one. I needn’t have worried, the Telegraph has bugger all about it as well.

Update II (I am trying to work as well, you know):
And then there’s the Mirror, too. They’re a bit quiet and all.

While I’m here, the Star is not just missing this news of the phone hacking, but just news in general really. Nothing new there then.

What the fuck is all the hoo-haa about with this mobile phone directory, then? Eh?

Several times this week I ‘ve had people email me with a rather urgent tone telling me I have up until this week to opt-out…

This has come from our legal department, please see below!

Early next week all UK mobiles will be on a directory which will mean that anyone will be able to access your numbers. It’s easy to unsubscribe but it must be done before the beginning of next week to make sure that you are ex-directory. You may want to suggest it to all your friends and family who have UK mobiles or they could be swamped by unsolicited messages and calls. Removal is recommended by the BBC – see link below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/8091621.stm

(That particular quote was from a friend, I don’t know if that was his ‘telephone voice’ or not but it doesn’t sound like he’d written it. Too alarmist.)

First , lets just deal with the email message then, the directory itself.

The email says anyone will be able to access our numbers. Anyone can at the moment. You’ve seen the little boxes in the small print that you’ve either got to tick or leave blank? Well, that ticking or leaving blank gives the company you’re dealing with permission to take your phone number (or postal address or emaill address, depending on what the form/company/product) and pass it onto ‘partner companies’ or ‘companies we think you may be interested in’. To translate, they can sell your numbers. Your number is in the public domain. It can be bought and sold. You are no longer Ex-Directory as far as direct marketing is concerned.

The email also states that you must unsubscribe (which is also wrong, you need to be ‘removed’ from the directory) by the end of next week to be sure of that you are ex-directory.
Well, the end of next week could be any time depending on when the email was sent. Considering the BBC article is date 9 June 2009 and in it, it states that the directory site is going live ‘next week’, I would say 9th July is a bit late and we’re all buggered.
It sounds like if you weren’t ex-directory by 16th-ish june that’s it, you’re in for life. But you’re not.

It may be a nice thing to do to make family and friends aware of this directory, but a month after it going live, I’m not drowning in window sales men, pollsters and heavy breathers. Are you?

I fucking hate these fucking circular emails that are just wrong in the first place and have an unneccesarily alarming tone to them.

Removal is recommended by the BBC – see link below

Um. No it’s not.

I doubt my buddy wrote that. I hope he didn’t.

Apart from the issues surrounding where 118800 got the 15 million or so numbers it claims to have, what is the problem with an opt-out directory? I’m normally of the opinion that opt-in is the best thing, but for some reason, I don’t have a problem with this. No more than the landline directory, and infact I’m a little surprised it’s taken so long to come about.

Where the numbers have come from, although not stated specifically which brokers and lists these numbers were on, somewhere there is a little box that signifies that the numbers can be used for commercial purposes. If there isn’t, there is a problem with the data controllers of a company somewhere and not with the idea of a directory.
Remember, this directory and the company behind it are no different to any other direct marketing organisation. If you have a problem with this directory then you should also have a problem with the whole way data is bought and sold.
This directory is probably more accurately reflects peoples’ wishes than the landline directory, which the phone companies have to give their numbers to.

The issue of privacy is also dealt with rather simply and admirably.
They directory contacts you and tells you someone is trying to get in touch. If you are contacted by phone, you tell them no, if you don’t want to accept the call. If you get sent a text, ignore it. That has to be better than just being listed in a book ready for anyone, including teenagers skyving off school and finding people with funny names to abuse down the phone. Again and again… and again…

The opt-out is also still there, with no time limit on it. Apparently, the first time the directory contact you, they also give you an option to become ex-directory. And of course you could got to 118800 and opt-out there. Anytime.
Four weeks to get off their list is a bit much though.

Whether this directory actually works in practice and are as ethical as they reckon they are will remain to be seen, but the idea itself a mobile phone number directory, should be a cause for concern and they way they are doing it to try and ally peoples’ privacy concerns, should be should be welcomed. It could’ve been so different.

Guardian…

Shares in Phorm, the Aim-listed technology firm, have plunged after it emerged that BT has quietly pulled plans to roll out its controversial advertising system, which tracks the internet habits of customers and has been attacked as online snooping by privacy campaigners.

BT was a key player in the development of Phorm’s Webwise system, which uses information about which sites an internet user visits to target them with relevant advertising on subsequent pages. News that BT has in effect mothballed the technology sent shares in Phorm down 40% by lunchtime today.

Via Manic

BBC…

Online advertising firm Phorm is pressing ahead with plans to launch more than a year after it first drew criticism from some privacy advocates.
…
“We have been supported or endorsed by all of the leading stakeholders,” Phorm chief executive Kent Ertugrul told BBC News.

“Ofcom, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Home Office, leading privacy advocates like Simon Davies, the advertising industry and publishers have all backed our service,” he said.

All the major stakeholders except the people who will be effected the most: the internet using public.

And who’s this Simon Davies bloke? Never heard of him. he might have got this award or done whatever, but he can’t be that much into privacy if he’s ok with Phorm.

Kent Etugrul of Phorm…

I am surprised by the fact, after it has been repeatedly explained how the technology works, they seem to be very keen on misunderstanding what it does

No, people know what it does, and even how it does it. And that is the problem. It is opt out. A fucking awkward shitty opt out that one will have to opt out of every time ones cookies are cleared.
Even when someone has opted out, their movements on the web still go through Phorms equipment, there is no way to bypass Phorm. The user is still dependent on Phorm and its’ technology doing the right thing and not recording their movements.

Phorm and privacy? My arse.