Nice timing
Given phorm's recent "biggin' it up"statement on deployment. Should shave a few pennies off the share price.
I think we're stuffed though. Ofcom's chief industry apologist has recently pronounced his (really really unsurprising) love for such technology, which is about as near to a statement of approval as we've had from uk.gov, although Carter's pathetic report also seems to give phorm a nod as a getout from the government stumping up any cash for fibre. The runes ain't looking too crisp.
The government are currently in the process of re-mangling RIPA to criminalise us all a little bit more, and my money is firmly on a very NuLab synergistic fix for the phorm problem. Simply make it totally and unambiguously legal for businesses to turn our private activities into hard cash, with no ifs ands or buts except the usual token unenforceable caveats - Ofcon is a perfect model for how this bit will work, and may well be the so-called regulators.
Apart from the obvious cash benefits, I just wonder if they won't include every paranoiacs worst nightmare and stipulate that the system has to provide the gov with the 'net data they need to populate their great database of tittle tattle and inuendo. That really would be the NULab miracle at work - we pay to get spied on and investigated while generating cash for the capitalists. I reckon they'll find it hard to resist.
I consider myself slightly left of Karl Marx, but after much soul searching I've decided I will be voting Tory at the next election. They won't do any better, but it's the only revenge possible on this shower that has any meaning at all.