Posts by David Pollard 1321 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007
Maybe this is a hint of things to come. It's clear that a national internet blocklist and a £12 billion datacentre isn't going to do much of anything to stop terrorists, so why is the Home Office so keen on them? Are they planning to generate a new revenue stream by taxing access to pr0n?
Over a year ago, BT apparently saw passive taps on internet traffic as an unremarkable feature (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_documents/). The spooks have had access to this sort of surveillance for quite some while.
Vernon Croaker, in 2003, had explained away system creep in RIPA saying, "Clearly, if an assurance has been given you like to try and ensure that that assurance is maintained, but ... sometimes there are things that happen two, three, four, five, six years later ... despite the assurance that was made there is a need to change." It is thus clear that Labour's assurances are not to be taken as binding.
Lord Bach's (non-) answer to Baroness Neville-Jones seems to imply that is is already too late to prevent the introduction of spook-style surveillance at a civilian level.
Some of the Tories at least, and Lib/Dems, must have a fairly accurate idea of the increase in scope and implementation of communications surveillance. Presumably they want to be able, at some future stage, to say that they didn't.
"Name 1 product that does not use on average 5 times the resources to be made green."
As James Lovelock has pointed out, biochar from pyrolysis of domestic and agricultural waste looks very promising. Besides doing the carbon capture bit, it can be used to improve depleted soils. Because it also reduces waste of fertiliser it would be cost -effective and energy-efficient in its own right.
Ben Pile notes correctly that, "it might be more sensible to invest in sectors that are capable of producing wealth, rather than merely absorbing it."
A Keynesian boost - government spending to get the economy going in the expectation of generating larger tax revenues later - may well be an appropriate measure to counter the current depression. But any medium- and long-term benefits depend very much on how and how well the money is spent.
The report assures us that the vital contribution from bureaucrats and gauleiters will not be overlooked in efforts to engineer this greenwashed bonaza.
"It will be particularly important to address the leadership and management issues that will deliver the culture changes required.in all sectors of the economy."
The point is not so much whether the underlying science is valid, it is the way that it comes to be used in practice.
The case of Shirley McKie illustrates quite clearly the "obdurate and arrogant stance" that had developed in the Scottish fingerprint service. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4967160.stm)
The case of Barry George illustrates how forensic tests can be over-rated or possibly misused.
The 'one in 73 million headline' in the case of Sally Clark illustrates how statistics can be misapplied.
In each of these cases it was "quite obvious something ha[d] gone wrong" once the evidence was more properly examined, yet innocent people's lives were seriously damaged. The so-called 'prosecutor's fallacy', which you dismiss with your sketch, remains a significant feature of the criminal justice system and shortcomings in the use of DNA profiling do little to remedy it.
Like the mistake last year in Australia (which, commendably, the authorities addressed quite rapidly and openly) this may help provide perspective to the claims of infallibility that have been made of this technology.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/australia-police-reopen-7-000-cases-after-dna-error
The mind boggles as to what a compulsory 10-hour re-education program dreamed up by a 50-year old prudish bigot would entail. Don't they normally arrest people who are caught trying to discuss bad conduct and "what it means to be a girl" with minors in chatrooms?
But power to the three mum's elbows. It's good to see that some of our Merkin cousins will stand up against bullying by the state.
If tasks are denatured with overlays of procedure and mechanisation then it's fairly obvious that mistakes like this will happen. Computers are a useful servant but a hideous master, as the saying goes.
The teaching staff are probably so busy with league table assessments, duty of care assessments and other assorted paperwork introduced by political meddlers that posting of the now mandatory attendance record has been delegated to someone who doesn't actually know the children.
There has been human error as well as a software one. The human error was the assumption that procedure is more important than process; that rules, regulations, check-sheets and computers are a substitute for personal interaction.
But wait for clarification and reassurance from Westminster: once the national child database is up and running and connected to all the other databases, errors such as this will become much less frequent.
Reg readers wishing to conduct further research into issues of cultural stereotyping may be interested to note that Cosmopolitan's latest competition, with an opportunity to win one of eight copies of 'Essential Astrology for Women', doesn't close for another week or so.
http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/chatroom/topic/69037
The name ONSET is a new one on me too, but the government's idea of using behavioural profile databases to identify offenders before they offend is not new.
Brief details had surfaced on Radio 4 several years ago. As I recall, the research was being conducted by groups at the universities of Warwick and Brighton; together with Kingston Social Services. (As this is from hearing about it just once, I may have mis-remembered.)
A large variety of recordable aspects of behaviour had been used in multi-factorial analysis, such as being late for a doctor or dentist's appointment, being cheeky to teachers, being in a single parent family, living in a particular area... A major part of the research at that time had been to trim the number of categories down from well over 100 in order to make the data more manageable. Early results suggested that the analysis could be used quite well to predict which youngsters would later engage in criminal behaviour.
Though I spent some while searching at intervals using a range of keywords, I haven't been able to discover more details. It goes without saying that I see this as a gross and intrusive use of technology. Equally it's clear that data from a variety of apparently innocuous sources could be combined to feed such a profiling system.
Perhaps El Reg could be persuaded to use its connections to discover what plans there may be in this area, what systems have been mooted and what progress has been made? Or perhaps a researcher involved with this hotbed of control freakery who still has ownership of his/her soul might be encouraged accidentally to copy details to a USB stick and post it in the direction of Wikileaks, or whatever it is that one does these days.
The Ministry of Justice guidelines on Freedom of Information are that summaries and conclusions of Gateway Reviews should, as a rule, be withheld.
http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/foi-assumptions-gateway-reviews.htm
"There is a clear public interest in public authorities being robustly audited..."
"There is an overriding public interest in the continued robust assessment of major procurement projects..."
"There is a wider public interest in the transparency of the assessment of major projects, and knowing that this function is robustly performed."
"... significant disclosure of the detail of the processes could work against the strong public interest..."
So, in order that the public can be provided with transparent and thorough reviews they should not, as a rule, have access to the conclusions of these reviews.
As time goes by, this might wear bit thin:
"For information over two years old the public interest in withholding is likely to have changed, meaning that a more careful argument is needed when refusing to release the information. In these circumstances, such cases should be referred."
Presumably that nice Mr Straw or one of his colleagues may be available to help think up another excuse.
Spot on.
It seems that, as with the National DNA Database, 'deletion' of records for those who opt out means that access to the data is modified rather than their records are actually deleted. (Clearly it has to be so if the audit trail is to be preserved.)
See, e.g., http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?t=26586
A year or three ago, when I was musing about the dumbing down of science, I posed a question to a small number of youngsters:
"Given that the diameter of the Earth is approximately 8,000 miles, if you plot the position at which the sun is directly overhead at the equator, roughly how fast does this move?" (A: 3 x 8 ./ 24 => 1,000 miles per hour)
What was troubling was not that they didn't know, but that they didn't seem to have the means to begin to conceptualise the question.
"Lack of basic scientific knowledge" isn't the problem. To the contrary, it is the idea that science is about facts that is at the root of the problem.
Science is increasingly being taught as a series of facts, where possible those that can be assessed on the basis of multliple choice questions. In the process the spirit of enquiry and scientific curiosity is being neutered.
Sorry if you were confused by my comment. My chemistry is good enough to have noted that pyrolysis is an endothermic process, and I am reasonably schooled in the fallacy of the free lunch. In case anyone else misunderstood, and ignoring the chemical feedstocks that it produces for brevity...
The products from pyrolysis of refuse appear to be more valuable than the energy that can be obtained by simply burning it continuously to generate electricity.
Assuming that carbon sequestration is appropriate action, pyrolysis can do this effectively and probably at lower cost than other methods that have been proposed but not yet implemented. In addition to fixing carbon, the charcoal that is produced can also provide long-term energy and financial savings by making soil more fertile and reducing waste of fertilizer. Should other methods of sequestration or soil conditioning turn out to be better, or should carbon controls be shown to be unnecessary, the charcoal would provide a convenient and easily stored fuel. Either would be a more valuable way to use of this portion of the energy in the refuse than as heat to make electricity all year round.
Although some of the syngas that is made is likely to be used to drive the pyrolysis (unless, e.g., off-peak electricity is cheaper or there is a handy source of waste heat from another industrial process) the remainder can be stored without great expense and burned in gas turbines to match peak electricity demand or used for heating. This flexibility greatly increases its value in comparison with energy from continuous (near) renewable sources, such as 'round the coast' tidal or nuclear fission which can't be swiftly modulated and with which continuous burning of the refuse would have to compete; or intermittent sources such as wind or solar voltaic which often aren't available when needed and from which energy presently has an artificially inflated value.
Unlike some of the current crop of green technologies, such as domestic wind turbines, pyrolysis seems to have few disadvantages and a positive balance sheet. Unusually in the green field, it comes with double benefits. It sequesters carbon and makes soil more fertile. If provides not just a source of renewable energy but energy that can be stored inexpensively and is available when needed.
Although it might generate no more energy from the refuse than direct burning, the value of the energy available through pyrolysis could be considerably greater. It looks to be a promising technology and it seems a shame that it's apparently being ignored in the rush to comply with diktats from the bureaucrats..
Given the difficulty of extracting dioxins and other nasties from combustion products, it's hardly surprising that people don't want incinerators. Though presently more expensive and less well-developed, pyrolysis looks to be a better solution.
The great advantage when reforming domestic refuse, and waste wood, in this way is that the products are charcoal, syngas and a range of chemical feedstocks. The charcoal is a soil improver and enables reduced use of fertilizers. The gas can be stored and used to generate electricity when the wind turbines run out of wind. The yield is thus more valuable than that from simply burning the waste and carbon is captured directly in an economically useful form.
Unfortunately a quick fix is needed to meet EU regulations on waste as well as to find an alternative now that many convenient holes in the ground have been filled. Whatever strengths the planners may have, foresight and long-term strategy do not appear to be among them.
The idea of tuning reactors so that it is difficult to extract weapons grade Pu from their by-products isn't exactly new; nor is that of similarly denaturing existing weapons stocks. Comparisons of different reactor types have often included a section on proliferation resistance: either they don't make much Pu, or it's difficult to extract the appropriate isotope or remove contaminants that are highly radioactive and are chemically very similar.
The underlying problem remains the same as it has been for several decades: how to explain to hawk politicians that if we continue to hold nuclear weapons then sooner or later this will lead to mutually assured destruction.
Perhaps world stability would be increased rather more if Israel were to own up to the extent of its own nuclear programme and allow international inspection of its weapons facilities. This might set an appropriate example to those nations that find themselves threatened by the asymmetric advantage that possession of these weapons presently confers and who do not have the option to launch a similar 'last ditch' defence.
"What are they playing at, those jokers?"
If 'jokers' refers to the central cabal, they seem to be engineering another step towards totalitarianism. As with the recent changes to legislation regulating the use of DNA profiles, for example, they are using executive powers whenever that can get away with it rather than allowing parliamentary debate. They are reducing the opportunities for our elected representatives to subject their actions to scrutiny.
If 'jokers' refers to the great majority of the people, who seem to have either failed to notice or, if they have, don't care, then I really don't know what they are playing at.
Given that "recent polls .. show[ed] just 5 percent and 4 percent respectively believe that internet filtering should be in the hands of ISPs or Government," this bandwaggon went a surprisingly long way.
@ Sarah Bee
Though it's appropriate to point out that by no means are all women exploitative, it might have been better had extreme factions of the feminist movement concentrated more on liberating from their preconceptions men who had been conditioned into chauvinist behaviour patterns rather than seeking to emulate them with calls to empower women.
The reply my MP received (5th January) from Ms Smith's department included this paragraph:
"The government is considering the impact of the [ECHR] Judgement... and will agree with the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers on implementing the findings of the European Court. At this stage, the existing law on the taking and retention of DNA and fingerprints remains in place. This will continue to be the case until we are able to amend existing law. The matter of discretion is an operational one for the police force involved."
Though it would be interesting to see a judicial review, the next move from the Home Office is due this month.
An underlying problem is that the combined efforts of the hang 'em an' flog 'em brigades have the created a mood in favour of tagging - always provided that it's someone else on the databases, of course.
It is a hard task to engage the public in serious consideration of civil liberties when it's easy to blame a minority for society's ills.
It would seem that widespread apathy will yet again lead to an opportunity for an increase in executive powers in government. Power will have gone from parliament to the executive, further eroding our ability to change the law or to have any real say in how it develops.
Does this explain one of the unusual quotas in the Border Agency's shopping list which surfaced last November?
(The links star from: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/11/visa_job_list/, if Friday afternoon is really that boring)
In their immigration quotas there was a perceived need for several thousand electricity distribution wiremen, which at the time was rather puzzling.
It still doesn't explain the anticipated role of another few thousand pipeline welders. Helping fill empty holes in the North Sea fields with CO2?.
Another unusual choice of preferred occupation, showing a predilection for ballet dancers, might have been nothing more than perks of the job.
Does this turn users into ISPs? If so, will they be required to install their own pr0n blocking and record details of their internet traffic too? Presumably, BT takes care of this aspect.
Maybe there is scope for a bit of "It ain't me guv, honest" insurance here. "It must have been a passing trrrst..." albeit at the cost of paying twice for the same data.
Alternatively, are there any secure wireless routers, or software equivalents, that will allow socially inclined members of the public to share a suitably limited portion of their (non-BT) bandwidth to passers-by using their own version of a BT hub and contribute to this bold experiment in universal connectivity?
Some years ago, when NASA was testing kit in the desert, an Indian and his son had watched the assembled machinery and men wearing space suits walking around. After a while they went over to inquire what was going on. Learning that this was preparation for the first journey to the moon, the son, translating for his father who didn't speak English, asked if they would take a brief message with them to give to anyone who lived there.
Officials went off to ponder and decided that this would be great PR. As the son said he didn't write, they procured a tape recorder. The son also said his father had specifically told him not to translate the message.
Slightly puzzled, the officials went off with the recording to find someone who would provide a translation to use in the press release Time and again, those they asked laughed and firmly refused.
Eventually, with the help of a largish bundle of dollars, they found someone who agreed to translate the message. "Well, what does it say?" they asked when the translator had regained his composure.
"Greetings to you who live here. Be warned. These people have come to steal your land."
"... over in the US the constitution is still holding its own, even if it's attacked on a regular basis. It was actually a pretty good idea, that constitution thing. You should try it some time."
Er, 'scuse ee, but in recent times recognition of fundamental principles such as Habeus Corpus (part of the British constitution since the 12th Century) seems to have become less than optimal on both sides of the pond.
It's not so much who has the better constitution or whether it should be entirely written down that matters, it's how best to stop the totalitarians and gauleiters from taking even more of our freedoms.
... but however well-meaning this coalition may be they have things arse about tit.
To the extent that child pr0n presents a problem then censorship probably makes it worse.
As an example, CB radio was initially hugely popular. Once the cachet of illegality was removed its use declined. Clearly child abuse isn't desirable in any way, but it's more important to reduce the frequency with which it occurs than to hide it away. The psychological denial that goes with prohibition doesn't help.
If the coalition wants to do something useful to reduce what they see as the effects of 'bad' pornography, perhaps their efforts would be better employed in setting up or assisting well-run adult contact sites so that more might engage in regular sexual relationships and fewer would have recourse to ersatz.
If they have a burning desire to change our perceptions, perhaps they could find a way to change the stereotype of women that many magazines present. No, not the racy ones, but fashion and women's magazines. Take a look at a row of the front covers of these on a newsagent's or supermarket shelf from time to time and think what this is conveying to a child. These arrays might often be better placed on the 'top shelf' than directly in the gaze of children.
Some while ago in the USA, the mother of a child who had been abused, with commendable insight, set up a confidential helpline for adults who found themselves becoming attracted to children. This worked fine. A few hundred potential abusers were helped and the idea was replicated in other states ... until the FBI caught wind of it and decided to tap the lines. How many cases of abuse have occurred as a result that would otherwise have been preventable?
The recession must be really bad for the gubmint to have come out with this. But maybe there will (eventually) be a silver lining to the cloud? AC, above, is quite right about the need for open standards.
Meanwhile, it does look as though OS has been making some headway in the education sector, despite the munificence of the commercial market leader.
See, e.g: http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/softwareexamples.xml
"Remuneration is in the range of £80,000 to £160,000pa. "
"The successful candidate will have a CV that creates instant credibility and confidence"
'People can organise the business of governing themselves without needing intervention' er, mostly.
But look, it's a clear win for the Moderatrix to moonlight. 25% to her, for her esteemed benediction; 25% to El Reg's backers (can't really avoid that); and 50% divvied up to the readership for the suggestions that they presently make for free.
BTW, could the Moderatrix please have a word with whoever wrote this article about the use of a dictionary, regarding "bureucracy". It's bad enough without having it mis-spelled.
"I hope the EU Commissioner is reading this."
Make no mistake, the EU has its own agenda for establishing a network of Gauleiters.
Presumably there is something of a squabble going on as to who should have what sort of control over this data, between UK government departments, the UK police forces, departments of the EU, Europol, and various defence spook agencies.
With data farms being touted at £12 billon a pop, and with interdepartmental rivalries plus some genuine security concerns, it can't be that easy to find a working solution, let alone one that will be acceptable to the public as the impact of what is planned becomes more widely appreciated.
Sadly the apparent loophole, where ISPs with less than 10,000 subscribers were not required to store traffic data, seems to have been closed. Maybe, in cities at least, we will see local area wireless co-operative networks being set up. Maybe.
Although it's encouraging that the European Commission seems to be getting closer to enforcement action through the European Court of Justice, this may be more a sign of a squabble over who has control over interception, both state and commercial, than a desire to protect internet users.
Does anyone know the process for taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights?
The ECHR verdict on retention of DNA samples and profiles last December was strongly opposed to intrusive invasion of privacy. Perhaps because it is largely outside the internecine politics of the EU this might be an appropriate avenue through which to mount a challenge to behavioural profiling by ISPs.
See, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echr, http://www.out-law.com/page-9639
Given that it was Georges Lemaitre who came up with the Big Bang hypothesis, which fits rather well with the idea that the universe was created, the Catholic Church could be said to have things pretty well covered.
Perhaps we can look forward to investigations into the workings of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', which supposedly optimises free markets, and joint research with NASA into similarities between alien abductions and visiting angels.
These might also be reasonably described as 'cultural phenomena'.
"Peers recommended judicial oversight of surveillance by public bodies and even that the targets of such investigations should be told about them once they are over if no charges are going to be brought."
When the police ran a re-investigation of the murder of my girlfriend, I realised that my 'phone was being tapped. How much further the surveillance went I don't know. But it's a disconcerting experience, to say the least, to be on the wrong side of such an investigation in all innocence. It would have helped to have had even a partial explanation afterwards.
All credit is due to the Constitution Committee for recognising that contemporary practice could be improved here.
If memory serves, Autonomy won one of Privacy International's Big Brother Awards about a decade ago. Their winning product was AI software that deduced social networks from the pattern of calls logged by telephone companies.
Could it be that Ms Smith has been talking with them, and that a slice of the mooted £12 billion is scheduled to head their way? Surveillance certainly seems to be one of the few remaining growth areas.
Paranoia over used drives seems such a waste.
Neighbours called on me a while ago, holding a shiny silver disc and asking to borrow a hacksaw to cut it up. They had upgraded their Mac and destroyed a fully-functional drive that was only a few months old.
Perhaps the computing museum at Bletchley Park could be persuaded to host a small range of security software and advice on their website. This ought to be be one of the better places to provide public education.
Though this apparently shows gross technical incompetence, there will be enough public support behind the sentiment to cover it. Meanwhile, researchers and colleagues will be collating the adverse responses in readiness for the next onslaught and making friends with tech savvy supporters.
See, e.g., Tom Watson's blog, 27th December:
http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/
(One of the comments offers a day's worth of consultancy free.)
The process seems to be a bit like trolling in a forum but on a large scale.
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