Never mind the privicy aspects, the communication’s bill is worrying because it shows the government has no idea at all about how communications on the Internet work. They seem to thing that passing a law allowing agencies to record the fact of, and possibly intercept, Internet communications will make it technically possible for them to do so. It will not. It’s as daft as passing a law to ban “recreational” drug use and then expecting the problem to disappear.
Steve Missham and the BBC – stranger than fiction
Whilst I smelled a rat in the Steve Missham affair and subsequent events have proved me justified, I’m not feeling that smug because I can’t actually claim I saw the latest developments coming. They’re just too incredible.
What Missham has done is announce to the world that his alleged abuser didn’t look like, and therefore wasn’t, the politician he’s been accusing to all and sundry for days. The news media appears to accept this, and has gone on a frenzy of blame culminating in the “resignation” of George Entwistle this evening. The one person not apparently in the firing line is Missham, who’s fantastic story is the cause of it. The idea that he didn’t know what the person he was accusing looked like before his recent publicity spree stretches credibility beyond my limit.
Okay, the BBC clearly didn’t check its facts either but then again this is hardly uncommon. As I said last week, they’re always on the lookout for anything negative they an say about the Conservative Party, and I’d assume they’re even less likely to check facts in such a case.
This morning I heard George Entwistle being savaged by John Humpharies on Today. After several minutes I couldn’t take it, but they were still on when the snooze button had timed out. Entwistle was protesting that no one had told him anything. Sadly, I have to say I believe him. This evening he “resigned”, but received a year’s inflated salary as a pay-off. That’s a neat trick. Who else can choose to resign and have their employer’s pay him a year’s salary? Some mistake, surely.
Apart from the peer who’s been accused of the most horrendous crimes for no reason whatsoever, the other victims in this affair are children who have been abused, and those who will be in the future. We’re always hearing the mantra that children don’t lie about such things and should always believed. This was Missham’s main theme too. It goes along with the notion that no women would falsely claim to be raped. Privately, people who work with children and alleged rape victims will contradict this – some people will claim all sorts of things if they think it will get them what they want. Having such a high-profile abuse victim who was clearly not telling the truth is not going to encourage genuine victims of such crimes to come forward.
As to the crisis at the BBC, it’s long been the case that some of their journalists have exhibited bias and inaccuracy in reporting, especially at the local and national level. They’re now engaged in reporting, 24/7 on their favourite subject (themselves). When Entwistle resigned it was blamed on “shoddy journalism”, but what of the shoddy journalists? They’re still there.
I’ve just been watching speculation as to who’s going to take over as Director General of the BBC. The journalists are complaining that Tim Davie, the caretaker DG, has no editorial experience, and is also an outsider. Other candidates have been criticised for being non-editorial and non-BBC types. Entwistle was from a 23-year BBC Editorial background (as previous DGs) but has failed spectacularly, cut and run (or was he really pushed?)
Of course the BBC hacks want one of their own, but that’s the last thing the BBC needs.
Tory Minister in child abuse scandal: A welsh rat
I’ve been listening on the BBC and reading in the tabloids about Steve Messham, a child abuse victim from a Welsh children’s home going on about how a senior Conservative politician was the centre of a peadophile ring. I smell a rat. He’s popping up every where, and in his latest interview he’s complained that the abuse took place under a “Tory” government and he’s now not getting his enquiry under another “Tory” government. He said nothing under the “Labour” government, and people using that kind of language have, in my experience, had a party political axe to grind.
It turns out he hasn’t actually complained to the police, or given any specifics of these allagations to anyone. Yet the BBC can’t get enough of him. In normal circumstances, someone like this would be ignored. Put up or shut up. However, to the BBC he’s a lifeline to take attention away from their own child abuse scandal. The icing on the cake for them is the “Tory politician” bit; music to the ears of certain BBC journalists.
Twitter is full of people praising Messham for his courage, and naming the politician he must be referring to (although somewhat unlikely).
The BBC is terrible about checking its facts, and this looks horribly like one of those cases of not letting facts get in the way of a good story, especially one with such perfect timing for them.
As to Mr Missham, I wonder what he’s thinking. After nearly a week of no substance, I’m wondering if this wasn’t a wheeze to jump on a rolling bandwaggon that’s now heading down hill with no brakes. He’s clearly enyoying the media spotlight but unless he delivers the goods (i.e. goes to the police), even the media pack is going to get bored, and when they do they’ll turn on him. I don’t suppose he has an exit stratergy. If he finally names someone, they’d better be long-dead or he’s going to be sued to kingdom come. Unless he’s right, but if he was, he’d have gone to the police already.
Don’t use your real birthday on web sites
You’d have to be completely crazy to enter your name, address and date-of-birth when registering on a web site if you had any inkling of the security implications. Put simply, these are security questions commonly used by your bank and you really don’t want such information falling in to the wrong hands. So, security-savvy people use a fake DOB on different web sites. If you want to play fair with a site that’s asking this for demographic research, use approximately the correct year by all means, but don’t give them you mother’s real maiden name or anything else used by banks or government agencies to verify your identity, or the criminals will end up using it for their own purposes (i.e. emptying your bank account).
That banks, or anyone else, use personal details that can be uncovered with a bit of research at the public record office is a worry in itself. It’s only a minor hindrance to fraudulent criminals unless you provide random strings and insist to your bank that your father married a Miss Iyklandhqys. The bank might get uppity about it, but they should be more interested in security than genealogy.
This common knowledge, and common sense advice was repeated by civil servant from the Cabinet Office called Andy Smith at the Parliament and the Internet Conference at Portcullis House a few days ago. I’ve never met him, but he seems to have a better grasp of security than most of the government and civil service.
Enter Ms Goodman – Labour MP for Bishop Auckland. She heard this and declared his advice as “totally outrageous”, and went on to say that “I was genuinely shocked that a public official could say such a thing.”
I wish I was genuinely shocked at the dangerous ignorance of many MPs, but I can’t say that I am. Her political masters (New Labour) haven’t acted nearly quickly enough to suppress this foolish person. In her defence, she used the context that people used anonymous account to bully others. This doesn’t bear any scrutiny at all.
When are we going to find a politician with the faintest clue about how cyber security works? The fact that this ignoramus hasn’t disappeared under a barrage of criticism suggests that this isn’t an isolated problem – they’re all as culpable. Her biography shows just how qualified she is to talk about cyber security (or life outside of the Westminster bubble). I’ve no idea what she’s like as a person or MP, but a security expert she isn’t.
I do hope they listen to Andy Smith.
Police vs. Andrew Mitchell
Apparently, according to Andrew Mitchell himself, he swore at a copper who refused to open the vehicle gate to Downing Street for him. Sections of the left-wing news media describe this as an “attack on the police” at a sensitive time. The notion is clearly nonsense; it’s was an attack on one particular police officer who was, apparently, asking for it. Whether swearing at him was the best response is debatable. Perhaps formal disciplinary proceedings would have been more appropriate, but the PC’s views on it aren’t known. I suspect that in the final analysis, being sworn at for being out-of-order is preferable to being hauled in front of a disciplinary panel. The former course is more direct and achieves the same effect with the minimum of fuss. Least said, soonest mended. Except not in this case.
By all accounts the PC and the politician have apologised and made up, and this should have been the end of it. The fact that the “row” continues suggests political motivation. Trade unions (such as the Police Federation) are calling for his resignation. Well they would, wouldn’t they. This is clearly a case of “rank and file” police officers protecting their interests by pushing the government about, shamelessly exploiting public sympathy after the shocking murders of PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes in Manchester to characterise a row about right-of-way as an attack on the police.
So what’s really at the heart of it? Well anyone who rides a bicycle on a regular basis will have encountered a jobsworth copper (or more often, a PCSO) telling them they can’t do this or that. Had Andrew Mitchell swept in to Downing Street in a ministerial Jag, of course they’d have opened the gate, but some sections of the police treat cyclists as second-class road users. They’re not all like that; a lot of my local police are out on bicycles themselves and have a very good understanding of the issues. But others drive around in panda cars and have the belief that cyclists have less right to use the road than they do. Actually, cyclists use the road by right and motor cars are there under license.
The police (although notably, not the PC concerned) have claimed that Andrew Mitchell called him a pleb. He denies this, and from what I can understand of his character, I’m inclined to believe him. If anything, it was the PC refusing to open the vehicle gate for a “mere” cyclist treating him with disrespect, and he retaliated by telling them to “…just open the f*ing gate!” or words to that effect. Normally, I’d stop and remonstrate politely with any anti-bicycle copper I encounter, pointing out the relevant parts of the Road Traffic Act, what counts as a right-of-way and what a court might regard as reasonable, but I’m not a government whip on a tight schedule.
The real issue here is the police, and wider society’s attitude to cyclists. The BBC journalists, trade unionists and Labour politicians quick to criticise Andrew Mitchell’s outburst at a copper with a bad attitude are doubtless used to driving around the place in cars. Andrew Mitchell isn’t the one who’s stuck up – he rides a bike. They are.
I dare say that the news media will force Andrew Mitchell out eventually unless the lid is blown on the murky back-room operation perpetuating this “row”. The people should be electing our politicians, not the police federation.
Nominet announces consultation on new .uk domains
Nominet is starting a three-month consultation on issuing domain names directly under the .uk TLD. According to Eleanor Bradley, Nominet’s Director of Operations, this development will allow new companies to purchase domain names (presumably because the .co.uk is in the hands of cyber squatters), and also be more secure by checking that the registrant has a UK address and providing daily monitoring for malicious software on the domain (presumably they mean associated web site here).
Nominet is justifying this because they say their new domain space will help to guard the UK against cyber crime, which costs the UK £27B per year.
Nominet is supposed to ensure that UK registrants are okay in any case – although it’s currently based on public complains when an anomaly is found. Their claim about ensuring that such web sites will be monitored and malware free is just about the craziest promise Nominet could be making. Whoever dreamt this up clearly has no idea about the risks and mechanisms that are used to pervert web sites for malware delivery – there is no way Nominet can check.
What I’ve heard so far is just another scheme for Nominet and cyber squatters (or domainers as they prefer to be called) to make more money. Nominet should be concentrating on the interests of Internet users in the UK, not “vibrant domain name spaces”, which basically means people trading in domain names as a commodity.
Government “boosts” broadband at everyone’s expense
The government has moved to further line the pockets of telecommunications companies by relaxing planning laws requiring council approval before installing communications cabinets on public land. According to the new Culture Secretary, Maria Miller this sweeps away the red tape holding the country back. Ms Miller’s background as a advertising executive has obviously primed her well for a proper understanding of the issues involved in the telecommunications business.
The government’s aim, inherited from the previous lot it has to be said, is to wire up the country for “superfast broadband”, whatever that means. They reckon domestic users need at least 24Mbps for the UK to extract itself from the dark ages, and 80Mbps would be better. But does the Culture Secretary, or anyone else in government, know what 80Mbps means? Well in real terms, if you’re going to abuse the internet by streaming live high-definition video across it, you might use up 2Mbps of data rate. that’s 1/40th of an 80Mbps line. Okay – if you reckon that celebrity TV shows to people’s homes over the net is important to the country’s future this is still massive overkill. Video calls will use up about 1Mbps at worst and nothing much else comes close apart from downloading entertainment media.
I’m not saying that the people of the UK should be denied the chance to download music and video content at high speed if they want to it. I do question the government’s imperative for those who don’t want it to share in the cost of paying for it. If some people want high speed file downloads, those people can decide whether the cost is worth it and stump up the cash. If there’s a subsidy going it should be to promote 100% availability of a reliable 2Mbps service to rural areas – the data rate needed for business. We want to make it easier for rural business to do work, not city dwellers to watch TV all day.
Relaxing the planning laws is undoubtedly going to make it cheaper for the telecoms companies to install infrastructure but it’s also going to make it impossible for local residents to object to unsightly and badly placed street furniture. You may feel this isn’t a big problem now, but this is simply because they’re going to think through the idea properly before submitting it to the local council in order to avoid delays if the council objects.
According to BT, it takes currently takes between four and eight weeks for councils to approve new boxes. this is not unreasonable. Are telecoms company planners turning up for work on a Monday morning, deciding to install a new cable somewhere and then having to sit around for a month while waiting for approval? I hardly think so; these things need to be planned well ahead of time and thought through properly. There’d be something very funny going on if the planning application was on the critical path.
In May this year, Kensington and Chelsea council did deny BT”s request to install most of the 108 new cabinets it applied for. The council’s reason was that the new cabinets were unsightly and that BT had made no effort to re-use existing locations or place them in inconspicuous locations (a move which would probably have cost BT money). The council cited the historic character of the proposed sights; BT’s bullying response was to declare that the residents of the borough would therefore have to put up with “historic” broadband speeds – it then packed up its little vans and announced it was going to install fibre in other boroughs until the Council came around to their way of thinking. Other cable operators have been able to install high-speed internet lines in the borough, so BT’s argument is very thin indeed.
Our new culture secretary’s first act appears to be putting the interests of bullying big business ahead of local democracy.
Universities have bogus students shock
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in [this casino]! (Captain Renault, Casablanca, 1942)
The UK Border Agency has finally acted to revoke London Metropolitan University’s “Highly Trusted Sponsor” status, which allowed them to grant student visas.
This is very tough luck on the genuine foreign students that happened to be doing a course there when the music stopped, and my sympathies are with them. But this system has been living on borrowed time for far too long. As far as I can make out, London Met is no better or worse than any others, and according to staff there who I’d tend to trust, has actually tightened up considerably after the first complaints and is probably less deserving of a foreclosure than most. There but for the grace of God go all the others.
Back in the late 1990’s the then New Labour government decided that everyone should have the chance to get a university education, so created a lot more university places by creating a lot more universities (and introduced student loans and tuition fees to pay for it). The snag is that tuition fees don’t cover the cost and the new universities don’t have their own income, so the only way to expand and prosper is to attract foreign students, whom you can charge what you like. Other than academic integrity, commercially:
- There is no incentive to ensure that the students are pre-qualified (or even speak enough English to cope).
- There is no incentive to ensure that students would benefit from the course.
- There is no incentive to ensure standards are maintained (if you fail too many, they’ll go elsewhere).
- There is no incentive to ensure that student’s paperwork is genuine.
- There is no incentive to ensure that students actually attend the course.
- There is an incentive to keep quiet, because there are academic jobs are on the line.
With a system where every incentive is to create abuses such as this, who can be surprised when they happen. Don’t forget, these universities are run as businesses with business managers – they’re not run by the academic staff.
I’d be very surprised if London Met was the only university to receive this attention in due course. It’s not that anyone deliberately set out to pull a fast one, but if the incentives are stacked the way they are then you’re going to get a culture of looking the other way.
The Border’s Agency investigation found that in a sample of 250 students at London Met, 25% had no valid visa, 56% had “attendance problems”, and 40% couldn’t speak English well enough to do such a course. But the same system also encourages universities to sign up domestic students and not fail too many, as this is the basis on which they’re funded. They’re paid for each student who completes the course (a lesser amount if they drop out), and students make a terrible fuss if they fail to pass and tell all their friends to avoid the place, reducing intake. If standards are ever questioned, you’ll find plenty of academics willing to appear on camera to say otherwise, and what else could they do if they want to maintain the status quo (i.e. their jobs). But the incentive is to push standards lower.
It’s very frustrating for those working in higher education for fight against this tide, and ultimately it’s doing the country no good. It’s described as a great export earner – do we really want to be exporters of dodgy degrees? The UK Border Agency’s move is a good first step to stop the rot, but it seems to me that London Met is the scapegoat and what’s really needed is a good long look at the whole system starting at the top. This correct course of action isn’t likely to be a vote-winner with the students.
eBay are now worse than whores – ask any business seller
“eBay are whores”. That’s was the verdict of an American friend and regular eBay business seller.
“How so?”, I asked. He went on to explain that eBay and PayPal would do anything for money, and everything imaginable had price attached which you had to pay if you sold through them. My friend was a typical right-leaning free market American, and I had to smile at his complaints about big business doing what it does best. If he wanted to sell his collectable items in an on-line auction it had to be through eBay, because eBay has an effective monopoly on buyers. eBay was simply obeying the laws of supply and demand; charging the customer (that’s the seller) the maximum they were willing and able to pay without scaring too many away. With an effective monopoly it’s hard to scare them that much.
Since then eBay’s use of its monopoly power has taken a very dark turn indeed, in response to one of their biggest problems: Criminals use eBay. Most of us have bought something through eBay and discovered the seller was less than honest, and eBay feels that this situation is going to adversely affect their revenue in to the future. Recently they’ve declared war on rogue traders, but it such a clumsy manner their actions are immoral and possibly bordering on the illegal.
A few years ago I started hearing complaints from eBay sellers who’d given up moaning about high commission rates in favour of how eBay was making it very easy for buyer’s to defraud them. This started with PayPal, the no-longer-so-optional money transfer system now owned by eBay that sellers are pressured in to using. If a criminal orders something, pays using PayPal and once they’ve got the goods decides to complain (or claim the goods never arrived), PayPal takes the money back from the seller, with no effective mechanism for appealing. As I understand it, the seller has to prove that the buyer received the goods before they get their money, and this just isn’t realistically possible in many circumstances.
PayPal and eBay hardly invented mail order fraud, but they’ve made it very easy for the criminals. Banks would investigate in the case of such a dispute, but by all accounts, eBay does not. All the seller could do was leave negative feedback against the buyer, so future sellers were forewarned and could make up their own minds about dealing with someone.
In the latest twist, sellers can no longer leave negative feedback about buyers, effectively allowing buyers to lie and cheat as much as they wish with no risk of exposure or other consequences. Sellers have to quietly absorb the loss while the criminal selects his next victim.
You may think this is as bad as it could get, but now eBay has implemented what it calls “Detailed seller ratings”, aka DSR. Basically buyers can (anonymously) rate sellers out of five for things like accurate description and delivery time. If a seller gets, on average, less that 4.6 out of 5 then they encounter difficulties with eBay. Sellers have told me that they receive letters saying that they “need to improve”, followed shortly afterwards with having their accounts suspended indefinitely “to protect buyers”. Does everyone apart from eBay see the problems here?
Firstly, there are some very strange people out there. If they don’t like what they bought they’re going to give the seller a bad rating for everything.
Secondly, many people are unlikely to give anyone 5/5. At one time, my job was reviewing things. I did it every day, and I’d never give anything 100% unless it was incapable of improvement. With eBay the next step down is 80%, which by normal standards is very good indeed. However, on eBay’s DSR system, if someone gets to many 80% ratings their account gets suspended! At one time I didn’t know that, so I’d routinely give everyone a score of 4 unless there was something extra-special about the service. Most people writing a review would do the same.
Finally, this is a recipe for scamming. Supposing you and a competitor were both selling the same thing into a niche market. eBay was excellent at niche market products, once. Unfortunately, in this cut-throat online market place, if you’re not the cheapest you’ll lose the business, but if you sell at rock bottom you make no profit. So what can you do? eBay has the answer – simply ask a few of your friends to buy items from your competitor and then give them consistently bad DSR scores. eBay will shut them down for you, with no right of appeal, and the way is now clear for you return to your full profitable prices. In the good old days you had to hire a bunch of thugs to beat up your competitors and burn down their premises now you can get the same effect with a few clicks of a mouse. If someone else appears selling the same thing, they’ll have a “unknown” rating anyway, so a couple of bogus purchases and they’re out of business. This works; I’ve seen the victims and I’ve seen eBay’s attitude to doing anything about it.
Sellers are in a very difficult place. If eBay closes their account, they’re out of business. It’s high time eBay was taken to court over this matter, that of putting British companies out of business for no reason. Unfortunately eBay is hiding behind a flag of convenience. Although it says “ebay.co.uk” on the web site, they’re operating through Luxembourg (and challening the profits through Switzerland to avoid UK corporation tax). Taking them to court isn’t going to be easy.
In the USA, where the jurisdictional is less murky, there have been several class actions against eBay In response, eBay has altered it’s user terms and conditions such that everyone has to agree not do this any more.
I think it’s high time that eBay developed a sense of responsibility towards the countries that are allowing it to operate. It enjoys a effective monopoly position, yet companies needing to use it are ruined at the whim of a some faceless functionary within eBay, who might be in any part of the world. Power without responsibility is always a bad thing. If that’s not enough to make our government take action, they should consider industrial-scale tax avoidance scheme eBay is employing.
Panicky public gets scammer’s charter for cookie law
Are you worried about websites you visit using cookies? If so, you’re completely wrong; probably swept up in a tide of hysteria whipped up by concerned but technically ignorant campaigners. The Internet is full of such people, and the EU politicians have been pandering to them because politicians are a technically illiterate bunch too.
A cookie is a note that is stored by your web browser to recall some information you’ve entered in to a web site. For example, it might contain (effectively) a list of things you’ve added to your shopping cart while browsing, or the login name you entered. Web sites need them to interact, otherwise they can’t track who you are from one page to another. (Well there are alternatives, but they’re cumbersome).
So what’s the big deal? Why is there a law coming in to force requiring you to give informed consent before using a web site that needs cookies? Complete pig-ignorance and hysteria from the politicians, that’s why.
There is actually a privacy issue with cookies – some advertisers that embed parts of their website in another can update their cookies on your machine to follow you from one web site to another. This is a bit sneaky, but the practice doesn’t require cookies specifically, although they do make it a lot easier. These are known as tracking cookies. However, this practice is not what the new law is about.
So, pretty much every small business with a web site created more than 12 months ago (when this was announced) or written by a “web developer” that probably didn’t even realise how their CMS used cookies, is illegal as from today. Probably including this one (which uses WordPress). Nonetheless, head of the ICO’s project on cookies, Dave Evans, is still “planning to use formal undertakings or enforcement notices to make sites take action”.
What’s actually going to happen is that scamming “web developers” will be contacting everyone offering to fix their illegal web sites for an exorbitant fee.
The ICO has realised the stupidity of its initial position and now allows “implied consent” – in other words if you continue to use a web site that uses cookies you will be considered to have consented to it. Again, this is a nonsense as the only possible problem cookies are tracking cookies, and these come from sources other than the web site you’re apparently looking at – e.g. from embedded adverts.
So – if you want to continue reading articles on this blog you must be educated enough to know what a cookie is and not mind about them. As an extra level of informed concent you must presumably agree that Dave Evans of the ICO and his whole department is an outrageous waste of tax-payers money. (In fareness to Dave Evans, he’s defending a daft EU law because that’s his job – its the system and not him, but he’s also paid to take the flack).