Foolish Phorm

Earlier this year, I had some problems with a statement from the Open Solution Alliance's Anthony Gold. Here are my comments from the time...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Home Office Utterly Clueless on Pornography

What a bunch of incompetent, arrogant fools:

The Home Office has admitted that it has been trying to force ISPs to subscribe to the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) blacklist, even though it doesn't know what the organisation does.

Speaking exclusively to Computer Shopper, a Home Office spokesman thought the IWF deletes illegal websites and doesn't look at the content they rate.

He also revealed that the government's measures to ensure that the IWF is blocking illegal content only consist of "meeting with the IWF fairly regularly for updates on how they're doing."

Against the background of countries like Australia secretly blocking Wikileaks, this use of unappointed censors that are never questioned or even checked by any kind of review body is really getting dire. When will these politicians come to their senses?

Security Vendors Will Log the Police Keyloggers

Kudos to Kaspersky Labs and Sophos: they understand that once you compromise a computer's security, there *is* no security:

The Home Office on Friday said it was working with the European Parliament on plans to extend police powers to conduct remote searches of computers. UK police already have the power to hack into suspect systems without a warrant, due to an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act, which came into force in 1995.

However, security vendors Kaspersky Labs and Sophos told ZDNet UK that they would not make any concession in their protective software for the police hack.

...

Em said that while police could provide details of the software it used so Kaspersky could avoid blocking it, the police software could also be used by cybercriminals. "While we wouldn't want to scupper police attempts to catch bad guys, police [hacking] software could end up in the wrong hands," Em said.

Kaspersky would not put a backdoor in its software to enable the police to bypass its protections, Em added. "If we provided a backdoor, it could be used by malware authors," Em said. "People would be able to drive a coach and horses through our security."

Once again, the experts have spoken: will the politicians listen? (Will they, heck....)

ID Card Support Shrinking, Says UK Government

The latest Home Office poll on public attitudes to the planned National ID card indicates that support for the scheme has eroded slightly, with the proportion of those in favour down from 60 to 55 per cent.

The survey, carried out among 2,098 randomly selected Brits from 31 October to 4 November, showed opposition to the Card remaining steady. Seventeen per cent of respondents disagreed strongly with the plans and 9 per cent slightly, up from August by a single percentage point each.

The top reason given for disagreeing with the card stayed the same - that it would interfere with personal freedom. Other common objections were that the scheme was unnecessary, wouldn't work, and would be a waste of money.

Twenty-three per cent of those disagreeing also said that the government could not be trusted to keep personal data secure, up from 19 per cent in August. Before August's survey this concern wasn't cited often enough to figure in the results, reflecting the rash of data-loss scandals suffered this year.

Come on, put this beast out of its agony.

PA Consulting? Pah!

Since we now know this:

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has blamed a private contractor for losing the details of thousands of criminals, held on a computer memory stick.

Ms Smith said the government had held the data securely but PA Consulting appeared to have downloaded it, contrary to the rules of its contract.

...it's clear they don't have the foggiest idea about security or managing personal information, giving us yet another reason to scrap the doomed ID card project which they have played a major part in driving.

Data Snooping Mission Creep

Oh, look, what a surprise: it's not just for anti-terrorism:

Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday.

And, look, they still haven't learned about the dangers of centralised databases:

The government has already indicated that it intends to go one step further this autumn by introducing a draft communications bill which would require all the telecommunications companies to hand over this data to one central "super" database so that the police and other public authorities will be able to access it directly without having to make a request each time to the individual company holding the records.

Well, at least that will make it easier to steal....

An Unintended Act of Open Government

Although unintentional in this case, here's a good example of why we need open government:

"Big Brother" plans to automatically hand the police details of the daily journeys of millions of motorists tracked by road pricing cameras across the country were inadvertently disclosed by the Home Office last night.

Leaked Whitehall background papers reveal that Home Office and transport ministers have clashed over plans for legislation this autumn enabling the police to get automatic "real-time" access to the bulk data from the traffic cameras now going into operation. The Home Office says the police need the data from the cameras, which can read and store every passing numberplate, "for all crime fighting purposes".

Thank goodness there won't be any function creep.

DNA Database Delirium

Talking of DNA databases:

Civil liberties groups are warning that the details of every Briton could soon be on the national DNA database, raising fresh concerns of a 'surveillance society'. Controversial plans being studied by the government would see the DNA of people convicted of even the most minor, non-imprisonable offences, such as dropping litter, entered on the national database.
Madness.

But there's one tiny ray of hope:

Privately, the Home Office anticipates a public backlash against the proposals. 'This is a completely open exercise,' one Home Office source said. 'If there is overwhelming opposition against this we will not go there.'

So we know what we must do.

Blogs and Open Government

The indispensable John Lettice (don't miss his repeated skewering of the UK's idiotic ID card plans) makes a nice connection between blogging - in particular the extraordinary sight of UK Home Office Minister Hazel Blears' blogging - and a more open form of government. Well, potentially, at least....