Brussels to sue UK over Phorm failures The European Commission has revealed plans to sue the UK government over its failure to take any action against BT and Phorm for their secret broadband interception and profiling trials. Last year The Register revealed the pair had run covert wiretaps on tens of thousands of broadband lines in two trials in 2006 and 2007, to …
Re: AC@15:02 and Where's the tinfoil... [AC Posted Tuesday 14th April 2009 16:50 GMT]
""If you want privacy....... stay the fuck of the internet !!!"
Good day Mr Ertugrul. So glad you could join us. I'm sure the level of debate about your company's product will now rise substantially. Never send a stooge to do the CEO's bidding I say.
And I see you've made your first statement. What a finely crafted piece of prose it is. Marred only by the minor detail that I think you mean "off." Spell check <> proof read.
I'll be hanging on every one of your future utterances. TTFN." .... By John Smith Posted Tuesday 14th April 2009 19:04 GMT
Notwithstanding the typo, it is nevertheless, sound sterling advice, John, and delivered in appropriately unambiguous terms should tinfoil hats' suspicions be cruising/patrolling/provisioning aka Servering the Novel Environment of Virtually IntelAIgent Sources ...... which would then be QuITe Typically and TopIQally, Black Watch Territory v2.0.
Although the Absurd Failure to make any Definitive Constructive Mark in a Catastrophically Dire Economic Climate is an Interesting Stealth Facility. with such an Ambiguity as to Defeat any Regular Intelligence Logic and thus Render the Real Possibility and Virtual Probability that such tinfoil hat suspicions are unfounded and unworthy and MI5/MI6 are both Definitely Lacking and/or Missing/Missing in Action/Captured and/or Petrified in Inaction in the Field. But such Speculations are always Part and Parcel of SUch Stupid Stock in Trade Intelligence Games lacking Clear Goals and Valiant Leadership .... NeuReal Ideas.
However, No 10 are on the Ball with those .... Apparently. Well, that is what we are being told anyway by Mainstream Media and Government Ministerial Puppets, are we not. Given their most recent Web Offering/Special Advisor Sacrifice, it doesn't bode well, does it ?
"You cannot have "implied consent", there is no such thing"
There is no law allowing clamping of vehicles on private property. However if you park there and its clearly signposted "any anauthorised vehicles will be clamped. Release fee: £100"
your consent to the terms and conditions is implied (ie, that they can clamp you). Hence implied consent.
With the Phorm trails, there was no implied consent.
as I told Mr I.D. of BT at the start of all this:
"I would step away from this it'll ether make someone else very rich or land people in prison for the largest breach of privacy ever recorded"
and:
"the concept of a third party manipulating your internet feed goes against what the Internet is about, the thought of someone "editing" my web browsing is not a good one, have you ever tried to watch Sky? too many adverts"
and I asked:
"what about this part (RIPA) where BT has a right to monitor the communications of its customers to provide a service, could that be deemed consent?"
he replied:
"no that is purely there for the engineers on the street to test the lines, otherwise they'd need gov permission to tap into every phone line on the exchange just to find one fault, BT used to be a gov department and although we still have very close ties we can't be seen to abuse that"
Interestingly a couple of months ago I tracked down my old colleague Mr I.D. and tried to talk to him about this, lets just say he was "a bit busy".
All of the above is true, I've no reason to lie, I was asked to give an honest assumption of what is now BT's biggest hot potato, I gave it. Just a shame they didn't listen eh?
seems there was no such thing as a "smart place" in BT after all.
Nevermind as it looks like chichens are all coming home to roost now.
"You could also encourage everyone you meet to move to a non-phorm isp. Come on Zen, how about a a short tv campaign about how you don't snoop on your customers!"
When Tiscali defaulted recently, I moved ISP. I considered Zen, based on the positive comments here, but whilst their customer service chap was polite and helpful, it appears that Zen don't actually have a position on Phorm. They haven't, for example, signed up to the anti-phorm league's "never" declaration (http://www.antiphormleague.com/isp.php). I went with one that had.
... on page 7. The paper edition.
That means that ordinary non-geek London commuters whose regular internet experience may go no further than Facebook, MySpace and pictures of the Pope shagging the Queen with David Brent's face pasted on to it forwarded to them by work colleagues, are now aware of what Phorm is and what it has been trying to get away with.
The free papers don't usually bother with stories like this. They have this time. This is is very good news.
"The ICO accepted BT's argument that it would have been hard to explain Phorm's interception and profiling system to internet users whose communications it was being tested on."
Just like it's okay to steal someones car if they cannot explain the workings of the internal combustion engine.
We already have an ECHR judgement on DNA retention thats being ignored does anyone really think the nu labour stasi are going to roll over and give up the biggest free source of internet profiling data it will be able to get its hands on?
Old Wacky J thinks Phorm will help the fight on terrorism as it will be able to offer up "targeted advertising" based on your browsing so when Mr Jihadist starts browsing extreme websites he will get targetted ads for Fertiliser, diesel, nails, peas, wire, sheet steel and glass jars and much like in Wallace and Gromit big red lights will flash at the home office and they will rush out and arrest him/her or offer them a brazilian.
I wonder if she will be so happy when she's browsing at home and gets offered but plugs, adult nappies, leather trousers and a moustache clipper on her "targeted ads" ?
Paris, what would her targeted ads be?
The writing is on the wall for Phorm -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7999635.stm
due to finiancial pressures brought about by public mistrust and hatred of the whole snooping idea, Phorm WILL die on its' arse.
I've been putting this theory forward in a couple of places around el reg - I hope to see it come to fruition.
I'm sure the investors are clearing out even as we speak. Encourage them to do so!!!!
Phorm:
"This has been confirmed by BERR and by the UK regulatory authorities and we note that there is no suggestion to the contrary in the Commission's statement today."
Oh I get it, the fact the EU commission hasn't remarked on it means they support it!
Great logic. A desparate attempt to convince people there's nothing wrong with what they are doing.
Perhaps they haven't commented on it because it's outside the scope of the statement!
Phorm say it complies with uk law, well it does - brussels wants to change it.
Its hard not to post an obscene answer to that.
Firstly I would not want any isp to send my details to a third party, I would not want any visitors to my website making money from my work and not giving me a share of it.
Phorm say its secure - if it was legal i would show you a 0 day exploit, of such a nature you would think your on your bank but realise it wasnt as you were seeing "the register" (without breaking another stupid law) it takes advantage of the system because bt and phorm are not the website, and it has to pass data as if it was, its that passing data that can with the aid of nothing more than 5 lines of php be used for nefarious purposes. IE phishing.
If you want to prove it, read how phorm works, read how your browser works, and read how data arrives at your pc, then work out what would happen if say your isp aided the data a little. then you will know instantly which 5 lines of php code do that!
Clue: (what session am i?) (what other cookies do you have) set_ini..... oh no now thats a problem.
"This story in Wednesday's London 'Metro'"
Not just London, I just peeked at one in Sheffield, and the article's here too. Hopefully some of the people whose normal interest in the internet is to google images "porn" for a quick hand shandy will start to pay attention....
Amazon are, I'm sure, the first of many.
Why would any online retailer want Phorm to scan it's pages? You go to the trouble of attracting people to your site to buy things and then Phorm scans the pages they are browsing and hits them with adverts for the competition. Webwise is totally incompatible with online commerce. Imagine Asda putting up adverts inside your local Morrisons and not even paying for the privilege.
As far as I can see Phorm do not plan to pay anything to the owners of the pages it scans, so why would any website owner want them scanning their pages?
It seems the only people who will benefit from Phorm's business model are Phorm themselves, the ISPs using the service and the paying advertisers. So there is no reason why any website owner would want Phorm to scan it's pages, and this would include the advertisers since they wouldn't want Phorm advertising the competition.
It's a totally unworkable business model and for that reason I'm out.
"Score 1 for democracy, finally."
Out of interest where does democracy come into this?
The EC are the ones taking action against our government, our government are democratically elected the EC are not. So I'm affraid it's Score 1 AGAINST parliamentary democracy.
Gordo has an interesting attitude to politicians appointed rather than elected to posts. He likes the EC when it's on his side and thinks he can ignore it when it isn't. He doesn't like the control the house of lords has, but OTOH like to stuff his cabinet with unelected lords.
As more and more elected members fall out with the PM he will appoint more and more labour appointed lords to his cabinet until we have a postion where the only elected member in the cabinet is the prime minister and nobody elected him to that position. I'm so glad this is a democratic nation. Oh... hang on.
"It seems the only people who will benefit from Phorm's business model are Phorm themselves, the ISPs using the service and the paying advertisers."
Correct.
AFAIK Phorm's target customers are all the *other* online book stores who would want a slice of Amazon's business. Amazon seems to have a pretty big slice of the on-line buying business, not just in books.
Phorm *can* be sold (with my Marketing hat on) as a tool to level the internet playing field with the big boys in e-commerce. NB Do *not* read that last sentence as approval.
The impression I get of Phorm is they think "Year, we'll steal their business and they cannot retaliate. Besides, it's not us, it's the ISP's we license to." They seem to forget that big players can hire big lawyers and good techs. If Amazon feel threatened they will find a way to make being one of the Phorm gang a very expensive proposition.
A word to any AC's who might protest my use of the word "gang." Lets see Russian offices (sited in the capital for malware authorship and phishing and CP site hosting ?), history of malware as 121 media, forged ID cookies, claims of code inserted into pages returned from non affiliated websites (is that for real?). A number of people working together to carry out organised criminal activity. That's a conspiracy is it not? I don't think we have a UK version of the RICO statutes but we can recover assets acquired as the result of criminal activity.
I'm off to take a long hot shower now. Just that superficial defending of Phorm's business model has made me feel quite dirty.
Phorm are trying to fight back but apparently their stroppy-sounding site is not winning them any plaudits -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/apr/28/phorm-startups
"The decision to publish this site feels to me like a sign that Phorm is dying, and this is one of its final throes." (quote from the guardian article)
This is truly a victory for people power. Let's keep it up and "smear" these bastards into a greasy stain - and any others who seek to try to use the same technology. It's not smearing; if the public does not want something then they DO NOT WANT IT - and you cannot blind them with science in an attempt to foist the tech on them.
Recent revelations through FOI regarding Phorm's collusion with the home office over the legislation for behavioural advertising show the government simply can't be trusted to know what this technology is about - we, the tech-literati people MUST keep dogging Phorm and their ilk out of existence.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
