Posts by Alexander Hanff 1
115 posts • joined Wednesday 1st July 2009 19:50 GMT
Re: Right.
Which they could have done through a RIPA warrant, which are very easy to obtain.
As stated, the police do not need additional powers - RIPA gives them the ability to intercept communications - the reason they want extra powers is because they want powers that do not require judicial oversight. All this crap about them needing Communications Data Bill to look at communications is a red herring - they want sweeping powers to look at -all- communications -all- the time - they want to silo everything. They hate the fact that there is oversight in place to (in theory) prevent the total erosion of privacy and turn the UK into a police state.
Phase IV
Amazing movie about evil, intelligent Ants. If you haven't seen it, it is a must.
Gait Recognition
Brown Paper Bag is irrelevant given so many different ways to identify someone. Gait Recognition, Ear Recognition, Full Body Biometrics to name just 3.
Actually...
Actually MS -did- get to tablets first, just a long time before the public wanted them...
Re: We moved our hosts outside the UK
hehe I have been a regular reader here since oooo '97ish and I have seen a lot of trolls come and go in the comments but rarely see genuinely dumb responses like the fool above.
Re: Oxymorons
The Facebook group was set up because Olswang wanted a medium people are familiar with - the issues with this have been pointed out and an independent web site will be available towards the end of the week.
Re: We moved our hosts outside the UK
That is the dumbest reply to a post I have ever seen on ElReg - you realise that Dutch regulations on Cookies are actually more strict than UK and require EXPLICIT consent (opt-in) whereas ICO in the UK is allowing implied consent (opt-out).
Bloody fool.
Re: Did they sabotage their own vote?
And there you go wrongfully assuming I have multiple accounts. I said I tested this several times, I didn't say I have multiple accounts. I had plenty of volunteers willing to participate in this test.
Did they sabotage their own vote?
Facebook had a checkbox at the bottom of the vote page to share your vote with your friends - however, I ran several tests of this checkbox with several accounts and it didn't work. Seems clear to me that Facebook didn't want people to know the vote existed or that friends had voted against the changes.
See: https://twitter.com/alexanderhanff/status/278441426168188928/photo/1
Re: States!
Never heard of Bylaws then?
Biggest load of bollocks I have read in a long time
Title says it all...
Re: WP7
First, I have GPS disabled on my phone. Second if it was a hardware thing it would have continued, it didn't - it stopped doing it at some point after I installed an update, which would suggest it was a WP7 thing not a hardware thing.
Just because your Trophy never had the problem doesn't mean it wasn't an OS issue - just as some of the WP8 devices are not suffering from the issues discussed in this article.
Thanks anyway.
WP7
WP7 had the same problem - my Lumia 900 used to do the same thing but then it just stopped doing it - so it was probably fixed in one of the 2 software updates I have received.
It is probably the Detica DPI kit they installed to make sure none of you are evil pirates, fucking with your streaming content to make sure it is "legal"...
Re: I'm sorry
Oh and I forgot NFC - something the 900 was missing which is a pain in the ass when you are syncing up the Nokia Play 360 Speakers... (I don't mention NFC payments because I know entirely too much about the security issues but the non payment related NFC benefits are quite nice)
Re: I'm sorry
ok I will bite...
920 has...
twice as many cores running at higher clock speed
bigger and better display IPS 768 x 1280 pixels, 4.5 inches (~332 ppi pixel density) vs 480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches (~217 ppi pixel density) AMOLED
2x as much RAM
2x as much storage (very welcomed)
2nd Generation Gorilla Glass
WP8
Wireless Charging
Dual Antenna
Bluetooth 3.1 vs Bluetooth 2.1
Better GPU
Full HD Video recording
Bigger battery giving upto 10h extra talk time and upto 100 hours extra standby time
Those are just a few of the differences - all of which are beneficial to the consumer in real terms instead of just being nice to have frills.
Some questions for the author
I was lucky enough to be gifted with a Lumia 900 from Nokia for free and would very much like to upgrade to the 920 purely because the 900 will not be getting WP8.
However, a few questions remain unanswered.
1. Does WP8 support OpenVPN?
2. Does WP8 support opening password protected MS Office documents?
3. Does WP8 support full "file" encryption (I say file but obviously I am referring to the user space/files)?
4. Does WP8 support NTP (the Lumia 900 and 800 both suffer from terrible "time loss" issues).
I know this is a Lumia 920 review and not a WP8 review, but I would really like to know if these issues have been addressed. If they haven't then I don't see how WP8 devices can ever make serious waves in the business sector as these are fundamental issues.
Finally...
I loved the original I still rank it as the best game ever written. I know someone who works for Frontier and they have mentioned Braben has been "working" on a sequel in the background, a number of times.
I was even lucky enough to acquire a very limited edition anniversary t-shirt from 2009 which Braben had made for his staff at Frontier (there were a couple spare).
Mine is the one with the golden Elite logo printed on the front...
Re: References to GW2
Actually I log in daily praying they have fixed it and your reply is completely false:
1. The game is still littered with bots.
2. The WvW invisibility issue has not been fixed and the last official response I saw about it was that this was by design to remove the advantage people with high end gaming rigs had over every one else.
3. The Halloween Event was terrible, thousands of people got duped into spending $100s each to buy keys they thought would give them nice new weapon skins out of chests - the reality was people were finding that even after spending such a colossal amount of money they never got any skins because of the RNG nature of the game. I saw reports of people opening hundreds of chests and never getting a single skin.
4. Known exploiters have been permitted to keep "legendary precursor" items and take joint control of the game's market (joint control with the gold sellers) seeing precursor weapons rise in price by over 2000% in the last 6 week whilst the chance of obtaining them through other means (mystic forge) has dropped and dropped -people reporting throwing thousands of weapons into Mystic Forge and getting no precursor at a real world cost of $6000+ dollars if you were to look at the Gems to Gold conversion rate.
As someone who waited for years for GW2, pre-purchased, played the beta weekends and the early starter promo, I am disgusted at the way the game is going. ANet have lost -all- credibility and the game is just PTW now.
And again, I don't have a WoW account nor do I play any other MMOs (I don't have time). Everything that was promised by ANet with GW2 was a le. The events are not dynamic, the world is not persistent and it doesn't remove the need to grind - it is not a genre changer at all, it is merely a very pretty representation of forgotten promises and RNG.
References to GW2
I note you make a couple of references to GW2 but you shold make readers aware that GW2 is a freaking nightmare. The bot problem is severe and completely fucking with the economy. The end game material is severely lacking. There are no raids and the pvp could be a lot better (they recently implemented a "fix" for WvW PVP which makes players invisible to try and simulate lag!?!?!?!?)
Most of GW2 is based entirely around RNG and whilst they allow exploiters to keep the gains of their exploit whilst continuously nerfing honest players ability to do things, the community is getting very pissed off.
And to pour salt on the wounds, if you dare to mention any of these things on the forums the mods issue infractions like they are a fashion item. Meanwhile the bots and exploiters are ignored...
GW2 may look very pretty, but the reality is, it is a terribly boring game with a huge amount of problems. (And no I don't play WoW)
Maybe our Education Secretaries/Ministers should study cognitive/developmental pyschology
Am I the only one who finds it seriously dodgy that our education ministers are trying to tell us what type of teachers we need when they have zero grasp of cognitive/developmental or educational psychology? Do you suppose Gove even knows who people like Donaldson and Piaget are or does he think they invented the toilet seat?
As someone who studied computer science a loooong time ago and also as a recent (ish) graduate in Information Systems (posh name for ICT) I recognise that both subjects are completely different and both are just as necessary as each other.
99.99999% of computer users (whether for pleasure or work) need to know absolutely nothing about computer science but they do need to know how to use computers for things like spreadsheets, presentations, email, MIS, workflow, CRM, accounts, POs etc etc etc.
As someone who has taught thousands of people in an industrial environment who were forced to go from paper systems to workflows fully managed by software, I can say from experience that Gove is an ass.
Posted in Kiwi three strikes piracy case collapses
Re: Why they withdrew the case? Easy.
You have to have "fame" in order to bring a defamation case to court. In this situation the case is more likely to have caused "fame" than damaged it. since it is likely the person in question would never have become known to the general public at large had the case not been brought to court (she was just a regular person leading a regular life).
Re: ICO will just roll over
Sadly one of the biggest problems we face here in Europe (particularly in the UK) is enforcement. We do have pretty robust laws, but trying to have them enforced is incredibly difficult when the regulators and law enforcement are captured by very industries committing these crimes.
Re: Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 s48?
I included WTA in the original complaint to the Met back in 2010 and still feel this would be relevant.
Already sent Open Letter to ICO
I sent an Open Letter to ICO in the early hours of this morning asking them to re-open their casein light of the FCC report:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/92027489/ico-2012-05-02
I am in the process of writing a second Open Letter to the officer in the Met who handled the original criminal complaint under RIPA that I was involved with when I worked for Privacy International.
The Met originally closed their investigation because they felt that Google's defence at the time (it was just an accident and the work of a lone engineer) would make it difficult to prove mens rea and thus be unlikely to secure a conviction - the FCC report illustrates intent making it much easier to establish mens rea so the Met's previous arguments for closing their investigation no longer holds water.
As stated in the this article it is widely believed that prior to last year RIPA permitted "unintentional" interception (I would actually argue that it didn't) and I was part of the Home Office consultation that made changes to RIPA last year - so again given certain interpretations of RIPA at the time the Street View scandal took place it could be argued that RIPA permitted Google to "unintentionally" intercept. Of course, in light of the FCC report, we now know that notonly was this by design and intentional but the data was even considered for further business use processing, including consideration of use to establish how often people used the Google Search Engine.
Even under the OLD RIPA, this type of activity is not permissable and would constitutea criminal offence.
So there are clear grounds for the Met to now re-open their case and for the CPS to seek prosecution - I will be forwarding a complaint to the Director of Public Prosecutions as well.
I won't hold my breath for the apologies
Mabe those who so vigorously attacked me after I wrote this article for El Reg at the time http://tinyurl.com/39u3ets will now apologise because it turns out that actually I was completely correct?
I won't hold my breath though.
Seems to be FUD
As stated by both Microsoft and the researcher in the piece, credit card data is not stored locally on the XBox. Furthermore, after I raised an issue of PCI/DSS compliance with Microsoft XBox team last December, they have implemented CVV requirements (which never existed previously) before any purchase can be made on stored credit cards.
So I think on this occassion, the "research" appears to be somewhat misleading.
My blog piece on this last night
If anyone is interested I wrote about this last night:
http://users.livejournal.com/_paladine_/12435.html
Alexander Hanff
Privacy Issues?
This gives the Council a unique opportunity to correlate real names with otherwise "anonymous" PAYG customers which does raise some serious privacy concerns. Given the economics of social housing, it stands to reason that many of the Council's tennants are likely to have PAYG phones due to credit issues preventing them from obtaining monthly contracts and with the abuse of RIPA in the past by local authorities, I am concerned this data will be used for purposes unrelated to those published by the Council.
Thanks
Hi Alistair and thanks for your comment. Unfortunately I don't have access to your email through this forum, however, I think I have found you online and have sent an email. Please do get in touch, I would like to discuss this with you further.
Thanks,
Alexander Hanff
re:
I won't disagree with you there, it is a ridiculous situation.
re:
There is no such thing as a class action in the UK and RIPA cannot be used in a Civil Action as far as I am aware. For a Civil Action we would have to go for something under PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) and then we have to prove "damage".
Civil Actions are incredibly difficult in the UK especially around privacy issues.
No such process
There is no such thing as a class action in the UK and I suspect a "group action" would be seen as unsuitable for this situation, but am no expert on group actions.
No they didn't
The Home Office said it might be legal if they obtained consent; no consent was sought or obtained. Home Office never committed and in fact explicitly stated on the record that their opinion did NOT constitute legal advice or a qualified legal opinion.
ICO never cleared Phorm either, they admitted (again on the record) that Phorm probably breached PECR and re-iterated the Home Office on consent requirement.
Alex
Re
That is not the case with RIPA, this CPS decision was the result of the private prosecution process. RIPA is treated as a special law where only the Director of Public Prosecutions can grant permission for a private prosecution under RIPA and if granted only the CPS are allowed to prosecute the case.
This is the route I took when the City of London Police refused to press charges; I wrote to the DPP seeking permission for private prosecution, he formally passed it to CPS to assess and any prosecution was completely dependent on CPS assessment, their assessment is not to prosecute, so no private prosecution is possible now.
Alex
Costs
I have no idea how much this is going to cost yet. First I need to get back in touch with the CPS to find out if there is any process for appeal (they conveniently failed to provide any procedural information of this nature).
If there is no procedure for appeal, then Judicial Review is the next step at which point I will have to obtain a quote from a Barrister to determine costs.
re
It would be irresponsible of me to start a donation fund until I have had a chance to review all the options available. As stated in a comment above, I need to contact the CPS again next week and see if there is a procedure for appeal, if not I then need to speak to a Barrister to determine the cost of a Judicial Review.
At that point I will be in a position to setup a donation fund for people to help support the Judicial Review.
Hopefully, given The Register's interest in this issue and their amazing coverage and work on Phorm, they can be pursuaded to post a new article once I get to that point, or allow me to do another Op Ed for them as I did on Street View.
It is going to take a week to get all this sorted out, so I respectfully ask people to be patient and sincerely thank everyone for their eagerness to support the process.
Rest assured, I am not giving up on this issue and I will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to see justice, even if that means going all the way to Strasbourg.
Regards,
Alexander Hanff
typos
apologies for all the typos, as you can probably guess I am getting hit from all sides today.
re:
I stepped down from the running of NoDPI in November 2009 as my work at Privacy International meant I no longer had time to run the site. But the NoDPI group still exists and they are doing some great work exposing other companies on these issues.
Any money donated to NoDPI will be well received for their ongoing work and i encourage people to support them, but i should make it clear that it would not be going to me for my ongoing work.
Thanks for the support
Thanks to everyone for their support on this issue. I am going to try and get this issue raised in the House of Commons in the near future and i am considering several other options such as:
1. Complaint to the SRA against the solicitors who advised Phorm/BT this was legal (ondue dilligence grounds)
2. Court Action against the CPS under the Human Rights Act
3. Judicial Review of the CPS process on the grounds that DS Barry Murray managed the investigation (the same officer who refused to investigate when i handed the complaiunt to the City of London Police).
So I m not done with this yet. The CPS decision today is an incredibly dangerous one as it clears the way for big business to break the law so long as they first obtain a legal opinion which supports their goals
Aain, my thanks for all the support over the past 3 years and I hope it continues for as long as there are options available.
Regards,
Alexander Hanff
Which?
The flaw was actually mentioned on my blog over a month ago, but I am pleased Which? have now confirmed the issue in their labs.
Or you could stop talking shit
Re-offending rates for violent crime are far higher than 40% as you suggest. Last time I checked with the National Statistics Office re-offending rate of people convicted for violent crime was over 60%.
I will concede that the number of violent "re-offences" was a little lower but not significantly so - however, violent offenders rarely go on to lead a crime free life according to the official statistics.
erm..
Actually YES IT CAN - granted it may be infrequent, but it happens.
erm what?
I suggest you go an look at the statistics on how many people convicted of assault, murder, affray and other violent crimes go on to repeat offend before making blanket unqualified statements.
Furhermore, you state categorically that paedophilia is a "mental illness" more completely unqualified nonsense.
Try researching the issue you are commenting on instead of just typing utter tripe.
Re: Re: Why...
People need to remember that some of the things which can have you placed on the sex offenders register are completely inappropriate.
For example, it is my understanding that if you are convicted for indecent exposure it is required that you be added to the sex offenders register.
What many people don't realise is that you can be charged with indecent exposure just for taking a leak up an alley - even if no-one actually sees your wedding tackle. If the police pass and see you up the alley or anywhere else taking a piss in public you are basically screwed.
It used to be that the police would give you a talking to and send you on your way, but with such an emphasis on performance statistics nowadays it is becoming more frequent that pissing in the street/up an alley results in being arrested and charges being filed (I have witnessed this myself several times in the past couple of years).
Then of course there are the multiple "false positive" convictions every year and of course the issue of strict liability offences.
I am not one to support paedophiles and spent many years working with abused kids and tracking down paedophiles online for law enforcement - so it is an area I have a great deal of experience in - but our current legal framework for criminal sexual acts is a complete mess.
Until such time as we can be sure our primary legislation is actually working properly (which it currently isn't) condemning people to the sex offenders registers for non sexual "crimes" or potentially innocent people, is clearly unacceptable.
People accused of sexual acts with minors for example, are pretty much guaranteed not to have a fair trial which means there are likely many miscarriages of justice in this particular area of law - it is a big issue and Theresa May needs to stop talking out of her arse and actually start looking at the problems we face instead of trying to build support for the Government kicking Human Rights into touch.
Posted in Ace Reg reporter in career suicide shock
Congratulations
Congratulations Chris, it has been a pleasure to know you and read your work; I wish you all the best in your new role.
Keep in touch :)
Alexander Hanff
Incorrect
There is case law in California (literally just this summer) which extends interception to cover communications in storage as well as in transit; if those communications have not yet been accessed by the intended recipient they are still legally defined as in transit even if they are being stored on a server.
So technically, using the US precedent system, this guy could have a chance with this.
I forget the name of the case, but I am pretty sure El Reg reported on it.
re: EU Investigation
That is true but if the Commission win their case in the European Court of Justice, the fines could amount to millions a week until such time as our laws are changed. These fines will be payable by UK Taxpayers.
re: Private Prosecution
This has already followed that path. The original criminal complaint I made to the City of London Police was, as you know, concluded with an assessment of "No criminal intent". As a result I wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions asking for permission to bring a private prosecution. The DPP agreed to this but RIPA is different to most other laws, all breaches are required to be prosecuted by the CPS - so even though consent for a private prosecution was granted it still went to the CPS.
This had a number of benefits:
1. I was not liable for the costs of the prosecution should the CPS decide to go forward with a prosecution.
2. It effectively allowed me to bypass the police completely and go straight to the CPS.
There were also some consequences too of course:
1. CPS commenced with an investigation instead of going directly to prosecution in order to determine if a conviction would be likely and whether or not it would be in the public interest.
2. CPS passed the case to DS Barry Murray to investigate - this is exactly the same DS Barry Murray who investigated the original criminal complaint - the same DS who claimed RIPA was only relevant to public authorities (despite the legislation explicitly stating otherwise) and admitted to being a technophobe - the same DS who concluded in the original investigation that there had been no criminal intent.
It has been very frustrating too - the CPS have taken an incredibly long time to carry out their "investigation" - 744 days at the time of writing this comment. In that 744 days they have only spent 74 hours working on this case. When you put that into context, the average time it takes the CPS to reach a decision on whether or not to prosecute is 9 days - it would seem that the CPS haven't taken the case very seriously.
That said, I am still not sure what their decision will be. A big part of me believes that they will decide not to prosecute - citing not in the public interest as their reason. If this happens I will be forced to apply for a judicial review, which is expensive.
Then there is the optimist in me that thinks they will decide to prosecute and with the ongoing action by the EU Commission against the UK on this issue in the EU Court of Justice - this could be a real possibility.
Andrew Hadik (from the CPS) has told me they hope to reach a decision by the end of November with the caveat that that is not a definite date - so we might know in the next couple of weeks.
Needless to say, if the CPS don't push forward with a prosecution there will be outrage and I will start the fund raiser for the Judicial Review and of course file yet another complaint with the European Commission.
So I guess we just have to wait and see.
