Posts by David Pollard

UK.gov £12bn comms überdatabase 'wouldn't spot terrorists'

Why £12 billion?

Where does the £12 billion figure come from? Is it just coincidence that it's the same as the (present estimated) cost of the centralised NHS database, or a sign of 'me too' interdepartmental rivalry?

Home Office defends retaining comms data

Obscure questions?

"Does the Organisation have adequate governance in place to support the current and evolving Information Governance agenda?"

This translates quite simply:

Can you employ more bureaucrats, bean counters and gauleiters? Have you overlooked any opportunities for surveillance?

Tories plan streamlined children's database

@ Alan Fisher @ Ash

The idea of using database technology to predict potential criminality from behavioural records (e.g. being late for appointments with doctors or dentists, playing truant, being in a single parent or poor family, living in a 'bad' area etc..) has been around for quite some while.

Tim Loughton said, "The most recent concern is over the police having access in their enquiries. That was never considered when the legislation was passed."

This must mean that the Tories did a rather poor job of scrutiny in opposition when the Children Act was passed to let this aspect go unchallenged. Or that they are themselves engaged in the duplicity of purpose of child surveillance.

Phorm mulls incentives for ad targeting wiretaps

Incentive? Power to the people with Web 3.0?

If there was a deal between the government and Phorm it's probably that Phorm should take the flak over the civil liberties aspects while the government's somewhat more intrusive surveillance plans continue as far as possible under the usual cover of 'nothing to hide...' etc..

But why can't the datalogging, surveillance and analysis be made available to the people themselves? They are the owners of the data they provide after all; not to mention paying for the kit.

This would be a real incentive. Besides helping with tasks such as finding lost 'phone numbers, emails, receipts ... and remembering that the car tax is due, it could provide a supersluth personal search machine, working an aide-mémoire and personal inference engine.

It's time for a true Luddite movement - but check the history carefully for what this means. The Luddites didn't actually oppose technology. Rather than being dispossessed of their livelihoods they simply wanted a fair share of something that their labour had enabled.

Now, where did I leave my spectacles?

Royal Navy won't fight pirates 'in case they claim asylum'

Human rights excuses

Though I agree that the navy shouldn't be forced to be limp-wristed, there is another dimension to the situation. As a comment on the Times article, which Lewis references, points out:

"Many Somalis see the pirates almost as heroes protecting their waters from pillaging by EU and Asian fishing fleets and the dumping of toxic waste."

Had you been a fisherman and seen most of your potential catch sold off by a bunch of politicians and businessmen who then grew rich and fat on the proceeds, while destroying your livelihood, what would you do? Is it wrong to fight back? Quite often when people are ripped off they see little option but to redress the balance by conducting a rip-off themselves.

Whether or not piracy can be condoned, the question does arise of who is doing the plundering. It can't be much fun to be an officer in situations where the 'dissent' you are called on to put down may seem to have more justification than some of the unjustness in which your country has co-operated.

What's the tradition here? Might is right or British fair play for all?

Net Suicide Bill would breathe life into government censorship

Control or compassion?

Was Tim Berners-Lee's comment the other day, that something has to be done about disinformation on the internet, part of a PR pincer movement?

'Many' would agree with his suggestion of labelling 'trustworthy' sites, even though, as Reg readers pointed out, mostly this is impossible to achieve. 'Many' would also go along with Jacqui's ideas for policing the net in areas that they personally find despicable, even if this means restriction of freedom.

How long will it be before an announcement is made about use of combined data from the NHS, schools and the social services (and monitoring of browsing habits) to generate predictions of those who are at risk; and those who present a risk?

It needs people to solve social problems, not rules.

Labour minister says 14 year olds should get ID cards

It's an easy fix, allegedly

It's a good deal easier to implement ID cards than to teach young people about alcohol and tobacco. Provided no one notices the flaws in the argument, if misuse decreases they can take the credit and conclude that similar measures will benefit other areas, while if misuse gets worse they can say how difficult the problem is and how even more draconian measures are needed.

No uranium for Russia, say Oz MPs

Would this embargo have any bite?

Other than for a mild and temporary commercial disadvantage, it's hard to see how this would hurt Russia.

Although Russia's stocks of uranium are limited, like the USA, and the UK come to that, she has more than enough plutonium to destroy the world several times over. Russia also has significant reserves of thorium, which could supply her energy needs for a good many years. In addition, Gen-IV reactors, projected to be running within a decade or so, will be able to utilise a far greater proportion of uranium fuel than present-day reactors.

The USA put an embargo on sales of gas turbines to Russia some years ago, assuming that this would hinder the development of Siberian oilfields. The result was that Russia rapidly discovered how to make them and joined world leaders in turbine technology.

Similarly, an Australian embargo on uranium might actually do Russia a favour if it were to encourage her to put more emphasis on the new and more effective thorium powered nuclear technologies and thus take a lead in a large emerging world market.

French bid for Brit nuclear sector back on

Where did we lose the plot?

In the 1950s and '60s the UK was up with the leaders in nuclear science, although the over-hasty weapons programme left a costly legacy. We are left with Trident and heaps of radioactive waste. We also have a shortage of nuclear scientists and a looming energy crisis.

Fourth generation reactors, 'Gen-IV', can be developed and built within ten or twenty years. They can fission all the isotopes of uranium, plus thorium, so make effective use of finite resources. They can be used to denature existing waste by transmuting the long-lived transuranic elements, thus greatly reducing their half-life. They could also safely turn existing stocks of weapons-grade materials into energy.

Yet while funds were recently made available available to recruit scientists to re-engineer Trident, and presumably to co-operate on the development of bunker-busting mini-nukes, peaceful use of the technology has apparently been ignored.

The policy of keeping the so-called nuclear deterrent while largely ignoring the peaceful development of civil nuclear energy, with its potential both to provide secure energy generation and to deal with the hazardous waste legacy, seems to have been somewhat absurd.

Tiny tots trial touchscreen tech

This should dumb them down well enough

Yeah, get them into virtual reality early. Teach them reading and writing by the age of seven and keep them occupied with simulations. They'll never notice what they missed.

Experience of the real world may lead them to think and develop independently: a dangerous tendency that needs to be conditioned out at the earliest possible age.

Microsoft makes another play for UK schools

A third way?

Whether OO is functionally better or worse than MS is not the point. Both are over-complex.

What seems to be needed for educational use (and for many other folk's needs too) is a word processor and a spreadsheet that are: inexpensive or free, easy to use, robust, don't have too many bells and whistles, and which use formats that allow interchange and are future-proof.

Were appropriate open-source tools available this would level the playing field between families with different incomes. And appropriately minimal functionality would mean that those who don't get on well with computers wouldn't be as disadvantaged as they are presently.

Why can't appropriate open source software be developed and maintained as part of higher education courses? Or have the computer science departments all been outsourced too?

(Yes, I know a bit about the way that government works. But aside from that?)

The EU is out to get you, after all

@ Graham Dawson

"What gets me is that this didn't seem to become an issue until the US was involved."

At least some of us had been aware of and had tried to point out the potential for totalitarianism and the lack of accountability in the EU a good few years ago. Perhaps because of clever manipulation of public opinion, opposition to its growth was at that time unfashionable.

@AC - thanks "[Statewatch] is run by raving paranoiacs."

When I used to read Statewatch's journal regularly, although their political perspective didn't exactly match my own it seemed to be mostly written by genuine people who oppose injustice. That's quite different from being paranoid.

Berners-Lee backs web truthiness labelling scheme

To name but four

Barbara McClintock, Lynn Margulis, Tracy Sonneborn, Hannes Alfvén. How would their web sites have been labeled in the early stages of their careers? The scientific hegemony rejected them and few members of the public knew of them or the implications of their work. Would labeling of their sites have helped or hindered their work?

Which government sites will be labeled 'trustworthy'?

It's not much of a solution to use popular opinion or 'People Like Us' lists instead of expert opinion. If I ask friends' opinions, hopefully they vary somewhat. Otherwise I'm likely to be getting confirmation of prejudice rather than opinions.

The only solution to Tim Berners-Lee's problem seems to be to encourage people to think more and to think more critically; not an easy task.

UK launches major road signage review

@John - Maybe El-Reg icons could be used

Oh noes. I'd be happy if Ms Stob were to be employed to rewrite the Highway Code, or if the Moderatrix were to moonlight proofing governmental press releases. But El Reg's new icons as road signs?

'Water bears' survive in outer space

Red rain again?

Given the rapid increase in references that Google shows for [tardigrade] in the last day or so, it seems that someone is pumping the twelve month old research paper by the ESA.

Could this be connected with the latest relaunch of Godfrey Louis's 'spores from space' story that purportedly explained the red rain that fell in Kerala for six or seven weeks during 2001, and which echoed into New Scientist, the Observer, Horizon etc.?

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/080908_redrain.htm

(Earlier 'world exclusive', January 2006, http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/060104_specksfrm1.htm)

The 'official' line is that the red rain was caused by Trentepohlia spores. Louis, supported by Chandra Wickramasinghe and others, maintains that it was cometary spores from space. The most probable cause is chemical pollution from the Eloor industrial estate though no one wants to say this.

Academic wants to 'free up' English spelling

@ Liam

In Sweden they don't start to teach reading and writing until children are six or seven, and this approach seems to work rather well. When they start they can learn quickly; and rapidly attain or exceed that standards of those who started earlier.

Perhaps the repeated calls for simplified English are tied into the UK's misguided educational policies. To expect all children to be reading books at the age of three or four does not prepare them for life. Infancy is too precious to waste it on being adult.

Ah me, I suppose that as well as 'educational' DVDs for toddlers we should soon expect to see computers specially designed for the under-fives.

UK's top boffin: Renewables targets were 'a mistake'

If anyone can be bothered

The government consultation on Renewable Energy Strategy closes on the 26th September.

Details from:

http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page46797.html

Or call them on 020 7215 5000 and they'll send you a 280 page book. UK readers did pay for this after all.

Alternatively, read David MacKay's book, which is unusual in that it comes complete with numbers and sums.

http://www.withouthotair.com/

Scientists unravel galactic spaghetti monster

@ Ian Tresman - Hannes Alfvén

I wouldn't want to stem the flow of pasta and pirate jokes, but here's a paper by David Tsiklauri that suggests magnetism may hold galaxies together without the need for dark matter.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.1513v1

It's not impossible that the pirates of orthodoxy have been plundering the riches of research funding for some years, leading many on flights of fancy in the search for the mythical hidden treasure of dark matter and dark energy,

Why was Hannes Alfven thrown overboard? That's the the crucial question.

UK.gov to spend hundreds of millions on snooping silo

"It is a cross-government programme, led by the Home Office"

Er, wasn't the 1933 Enabling Act a cross-government programme?

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history etc.etc..

Apple faithful snared in phishing scam targeting Mac.com users

Reg readers are very intelligent

Occasionally, though, they seem to forget that there are people who don't actually have much in they way of intellectual acumen. Merely to denigrate them for their stupidity doesn't do much to help.

It's difficult to teach people who aren't terribly bright how to cope in an increasingly technical and rather mean world, but that's what's needed.

Phorm papers reveal BT's backwards approach to wiretap law

If you live outside the law you must at least be honest

In the late 1970s I used to enjoy an occasional pint with three telecomms engineers from the local exchange (which I visited when they had an open day). One of them was apparently authorised to set up phone taps, a process which in those days involved a yellow twisted pair wire clipped to the line. In the main he did the same sort of work as his mates, though his pay came via the Home Office; and he had presumably signed up to the Official Secrets Act.

What happened after privatisation and the introduction of System X and Zircon I don't know. But authorised snoop channels are still required, to deal with both wiretaps for which a warrant has been issued and in addition the hundreds of thousands of requests for data that are made annually under RIPA.

The equipment which was installed for the behavioural marketing tests allowed, in principle at least, wholesale access to tens of thousands of subscribers' data. This wasn't a botnet with keyloggers or whatever installed on the machines of hapless people who didn't protect themselves. It had the potential to intercept large amounts of data wholesale with little chance of detection because it took place at provider level. It involved the installation of equipment in exchanges. And this was a very different matter than, say, the Perl scripts used by Gary McKinnon to access supposedly unauthorised information. It was interception at a level not much different from the government's passive taps.

(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/09/mckinnon_ufo_cyberterror_analysis/)

It could have been expected that the Home Office would know about these tests as a result of their overall programme to monitor communications. Alternatively, if they really didn't know, then there is a strong argument that a culpable failure of national security measures occurred.

Fringe organisers launch inquiry into ticketing fiasco

Was EU funding involved?

Not so long after the Maastricht Treaty came about, there were suggestions that a significant amount of the EU funding which was being provided to promote integration was being creamed off.by organised criminals via grants to promote Scottish Tourism. The word 'Mafia' was mentioned by some, although this can be used with a variety of different meanings.

Clearly it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between the effects of nepotism, incompetence and organised crime. It would be interesting, though, to have more details about government funding for this debacle.

Personally I'm opposed to the growth of the EU bureaucracy and the centralisation of powers that it entails. But I think that even my opponents, those that are genuine about the project at least, agree that misuse of tax revenue undermines the implicit consent of the taxpayer who provides it.

CERN: LHC to fire first proton-smash ray next month

@ MolecularMonkey @ Steven Raith

"What will happen if we collide two sheep in this thing, especially near the upper limiting speed for a sheep in vacuo, as determined by reg scientists?" -- "you'd get a gooey red mess."

Though this is a typical consequence when using the Vauxhall and similar apparatus, the aim is that CERN's sheep will transmute into the HIggs Bison as a result of their special alchemy. The bison is a bit like a unicorn: everyone believes in them but no one has one as a pet.

Unlike unicorns, Higgs Bisons are very very big and come from the dark side of the universe; which is why some people are worried about releasing them. We must hope that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has gone on one of those 'skills for life' retraining courses that the government promotes.

Aussie cops reopen 7,000 DNA convictions

Power to their elbow

Myself I'm not much of a one for 'teaching someone a lesson'. Consensual activities within reasonable bounds aside (it is Friday after all, even if the Reg hasn't yet put up any salacious and provocative reconstructions), the process of punitive retribution often seems quite barbaric. In the case of criminal behaviour, as often as not it seems to harden antisocial attitudes rather than to change them for the better.

Some say that a repentant sinner is worth more than one who has never sinned. Pragmatically, they know the ropes (no pun intended) and presumably know at least some of the pitfalls of rehabilitation.

It's not impossible that our antipodean cousins have, for obvious historical reasons, worked through some of the problems rather more diligently and hence may have a more wholesome approach to policing.

In putative confirmation of this hypothesis, it is interesting to note in the 'letters of support' pages on the Shirley McKie site that there seems to have been more support from Australia than might have been expected on the basis of a random distribution.

http://www.shirleymckie.com/

Hmm, even crims sometimes have a measure of respect for a straight cop. If the cops aren't straight, why should anyone else choose to be?

Carbon Trust: Rooftop windmills are eco own-goal

It's rather sad really

So few can be bothered to do the sums.

"Professor David J C MacKay ... knows his numbers. And, as he points out, numbers are typically lacking in current discussion around carbon emissions and energy use."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/

http://www.withouthotair.com/

in case anyone missed it.

Top Jock cop calls for universal DNA database

Remember Shirley McKie

It would be interesting to know what has actually been done to correct the demonstrable flaws in the criminal justice system before introducing another supposedly foolproof indicator of guilt.

http://www.shirleymckie.com/index.htm

NASA: Mars is good habitat for Terry Pratchett dragons

@ Mike Richards - Not entirely unexpected

A small and dedicated band bas maintained for years that Viking detected life, even though the results could be well explained by the presence of oxidising agents. NASA seems to have had something like an arms-length alliance with this group, which feeds the minds of many with extravagant ideas.

Wild pseudoscience and speculation in part powers the PR operation that is needed to fund the race for space, and the nukes in space lobby that piggybacks on it. Water having been found on Mars, it can't but cause concern in some quarters that other aspects of its environment are shown to be distinctly inhospitable.

Watch out for 'yes, but there could still be life deeper underground' stories (possibly using radioactivity as an energy source).

American man too fat for execution

@ Sarah Bee

AC asked, @ Mike Street, "Someone rapes and murders your mother (or wife and daughter); what do you think his punishment [should] be?

If the perpetrator is capable, i.e. not irretrievably insane, psychopathic etc., it might not be a bad idea to have them spend some while first working out why they did whatever it was and then devising means, with the benefit of their insight, to encourage others not to do likewise. There is a possibility at least that some good might come from this, though it's difficult to see how to induce genuine co-operation. At a lower level of crime, anger management courses seem to work for some people, so it can't be impossible.

Opportunities for rehabilitation within the present-day penal system remain marginal. Containment is the major task, the prisons being over-filled. So other than by taking a proportion out of circulation, it doesn't do much to stop future crimes, either by those that have been caught or those that haven't.

As Reg readers amply demonstrate, the desire to inflict hurt and pain is by no means uncommon. Retribution in part glorifies and justifies this unfortunate human trait; as well as perpetuating in society at large the cycle of crime and punishment. Deterrence alone doesn't prevent crime. With rehabilitation there is at least a chance to reduce it.

Long-term imprisonment may be the only practicable option for some miscreants. It is hard to see that the long-term solution for those close to victims can be anything other than forgiveness. This may not be easy but it's a good deal better than being caught up in the unremitting cycle of retributive justice.

BTW, to forgive someone it's not necessary to condone their actions.

Home wireless without the power trip

@ Kevin - through their routers?

"A light switch that needs to go through the internet, through some Acme routers, back to the house and to the plug/socket."

It's forward planning: so that they'll be able to check over the net and locate terrists and similar miscreants who haven't installed CFL lamps as instructed, or who leave their phone charger switched on.

UK.gov dishes out £19m for comms snoop data silos

And the rest?

As I recall, around £20 million was paid out in 2000-2001 to the telecoms industry to facilitate data logging of customers' use of their systems; additional equipment was required when RIPA was introduced. Mention of this is omitted in the recent figures in Hansard, thus casting a false impression of the scope and scale of monitoring. Perhaps El Reg could dig out and publish these pertinent details, please?

It's hard not to imagine that there are some who envisage that costs of surveillance could be at least partly covered with a slice of income from licences for behavioural marketing which would also use this personal data.

Blighty's nuke-power push stalled as EDF buy falls through

"Further delays at the very least"

Perhaps the nuclear scientists recruited to work on Trident could be redeployed to research on 'fourth generation' thorium based reactors. There's a strong argument that our security would be better were we developing this sort of technology, with the potential to denature waste and consume plutonium stocks while providing low-carbon energy, rather than (allegedly) designing bunker-buster nukes.

Click here to save Bletchley Park

Your heritage needs you !

So how about a few Reg readers get together to 'write' some anti-profiling anti-spyware secure anonymising software, which would indeed be a tribute to the work that was done there to ensure our freedoms, then leak the news that it's to be donated to Bletchley Park as a fund raiser? As in all psy-ops it only needs to be moderately credible.

A response from HMG/Phorm/Nebuadd... might be expected in short order.

Now what was it that was needed? Five million? Shut up for a while and disappear and we'll make it seven.

So come on Reg readers. We can't let Germany win this one - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/30/german_interior_minister_fingerprint_appropriated/

Joke Alert 'cos I don't like it when the black helicopters come over.

Plods say it's OK for them give out your DNA

@ Graham Marsden +others

'"It also said that the police, many of whose officers have added themselves to the database voluntarily, rejected a request for their DNA samples to be used in a research project". ... so what do they have to fear...?'

At a presentation at the Dana Centre a couple of years ago it was explained that police profiles are held on an entirely separate database. The reason given was that this is in order to reduce irrelevant matches when the crime scene had been accidentally contaminated.

Prior to the setting up of this separate database an ACPO chief had maintained that to take profiles from police would be "an infringement of civil liberties".

Citizens's panel demands policing for DNA database

@ Dunstan Vavasour @ Ferry Boat

"Here's a suggestion: how about nobody? Why don't we go back to taking DNA samples from suspects for a specific crime, checking for a match and then destroying them? ... I'd like to think I would still feel this way even if I were the rape victim."

"I heard that Mr Larrington. I really like how they ask the opinion of someone who had their daughter murdered by someone who was caught via DNA."

I'm not a victim, but my partner was. DNA profiling won't bring her back even were it to identify a perpetrator.with acceptable certainty. Deterrence alone does not solve the problem that crime presents. For the record and for what it's worth, my best appraisal after several years of cogitation is that the DNA database actually makes matters worse.

See also:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/05/dna_database_oversold/

Public debate or public involvement?

DNA profiling does not provide a silver bullet solution, except perhaps with the less able members of the underclass which it helps to enforce who don't learn ways to circumvent it when they go on their government training course.

For example, in serious crimes against the person such as rape and murder, in which its use as a deterrent has been acclaimed, the effect is likely to be that perpetrators will dispose of victims' bodies more carefully. Those who commit such crimes who are insane apparently don't think they will get caught in any event.

What is so unfortunate about the huge promotion of the DNA database is that an increasingly large proportion of the public will, as comments on El Reg show, become disinclined to co-operate with police enquiries or volunteer information about crimes. And public co-operation is the major weapon in the fight against crime.

As Gandhi observed when he said that 'an eye for an eye leads to a country of blind men', retributive justice plus deterrence doesn't afford a solution. A real solution comes about only when people choose not to commit crimes because this isn't the best thing to do, rather than merely because they fear getting caught. Perhaps rather than holding debates about the usefulness of totalitarian measures it might be more useful to consider ways in which the wider public might to be engaged in this difficult task..

UK BOFHs face psychometric dissection

Be afraid, be very afraid

Reg readers who imagined that touchy-feely nuLabour was on the wane should think again.

When the undead come out in the open like this it's often a sign of a forthcoming pack hunt, and they can be very dangerous when threatened.

@Lester. A word of advice: garlic.

Paris is close to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Doctors: Third babies are the same as patio heaters

Accountants already meddle

"How would the doctors like it if ... accountants took to offering minor surgical operations?"

By all accounts many problems in the NHS come down to the management structure. The installation of supermarket managers and the limitations of their somewhat poorly conceived financial models, targets and league tables, waste of front-line talent in report generation, and frequently poor allocation of resources all seem to have had a negative impact on patient care.

The NHS database software too, as El Reg has reported, would apparently have been better had the implementation involved more prior consultation with the doctors and others who have to use it.

Accountants and other non-medical professions already have a great deal of influence in the way that medical services are provided and delivered; and their influence is by no means always useful. Agreed, GPs nowadays don't have the status of demi-gods, but politicians, and a proportion of patients, do expect them to comment on lifestyle choices so we shouldn't be surprised when they do.

Lewis reported at length on David Mackay's work not so long ago, in which he puts sensible numbers on environmental constraints of the real world:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/

http://www.withouthotair.com/

On the basis of the data it's difficult to deny that various anthropogenic factors present limitations to our finite world. Perhaps we should all take a look at the numbers, as Mackay has suggested, and see what sort of lifestyles are sustainable in the longer term.

Scientists decry Bletchley Park's decline

@ Simon - Exaggerated?

A couple of years ago I visited to donate a bit of mildly historic kit. Whether or not paint on the huts peels because of preservative in the wood, there were definite signs of rot. The sooner it's fixed the less expensive it will be. The house too is at the point where lack of maintenance is starting to cause increasingly rapid deterioration.

The cafeteria is a bit grim. Their income would be greater if they could fit it out in National Trust style (1940s version), but it would cost a few bob to set this up.

'All hands man the pumps' icon for obvious reasons.

Government kids website pays £6 for every visitor

Here's the version for the adults' playground

"The UK Government's Foresight programme, alongside the Horizon Scanning Centre, uses science based methods to provide visions of the future."

http://www.foresight.gov.uk/index.asp

A fine example on this site is the use of Future Arcs, a technique that has been used "to help London Underground assess strategic risk; to help a key Government Department test their strategic crisis response and disaster recovery planning; and to help Transport for London develop a new strategic vision for an internal team."

(towards the end of this page, at 'The Fan Club':

http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Horizon%20Scanning%20Centre/FanClubNews/Feb2008.asp)

"Thinking in arcs supports the development of non-linear and adaptive strategies that are robust across the broadest range of plausible futures; visualising the organisation on multiple arcs at the same time helps create the elusive ‘strategic agility’ that is often talked about but difficult for organisations to realise. Future Arcs includes tools for anticipating and creating future options, identifying decision windows and managing human cognitive and psychological tendencies such as confirmation bias."

Swedes call on Human Rights Court to review snoop law

Six million protest e-mails?

"Political representatives have received more than six million protest emails since the law was passed in mid-June."

In the UK there's said to be a problem if MPs receive more than four letters a day on the same topic.

Justice Ministry opens ICO consultation

The get out of jail free card?

Perhaps I fail to see this correctly, but the report says:

"Specifically we propose to:

"1. Introduce measures to allow data controllers to provide consent to a Good Practice Assessment (GPA) when they register with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

"2. Introduce an exemption from section 55A of the DPA, which, on commencement, will create a civil monetary penalty for breaches discovered in the process of a GPA where a data controller has provided prior consent to a GPA."

So, were there to be rumblings of discontent and a likelihood, for example, that a government department was about to get serious flak, provided a GPA is started then legal sanctions will be avoided.

As is noted later, the fine will not be imposed.:

"25. As an incentive for data controllers to provide prior consent for a GPA, Government proposes that those who provide such consent should be given protection from the civil monetary penalty under section 55A. We propose that the Commissioner should not be able to issue a civil monetary penalty in respect of any breaches of the DPA that are discovered in the process of a GPA."

The overall import seems to be to ensure that government departments (and others) will become immune to sanction, while the assessments provide potential opportunities for 'joined up government' through cross-referencing of different data sources.

And by focusing on inspection and compliance, discussion of the underlying issue - public concern over the collection of greater quantities of data and its more widespread use - is conveniently sidestepped.

Phorm protestors picket BT AGM

@AC - The big lie

"...a company the size of BT wiretaps thousands of customers without their knowledge, and not one single arrest or court summons...." -- "I think it's the aura of once having been the GPO."

This may well be true. Around 1980, so I learned, it used to be that the techies who installed wiretaps were selected from regular employees. As well as signing up to the Official Secrets Act, their salaries came via the Home Office rather than from the GPO.

It would be interesting to know how this arrangement changed when BT was privatised. In the days before system-X and zircon or whatever they called it, a wiretap was just that: a yellow twisted-pair wire running across the exchange.

EU tells UK to deal with Phorm - or else

Don't count on it

Encouraging though it may be that a strongly worded letter has been sent, it would be a mistake to assume that EU officialdom is completely opposed to surveillance of browsing habits. It's perhaps more likely that control-freaks there are miffed because the Home Office have the option to access this technology rather than one of their departments.

Airshow Blighty hits town - 100 years of UK powered flight

@ Dodgy Geezer

"Britain has a host of home-grown and local achievements in this field ... [including that by] Sir George Cayley."

A replica of his heavier than air 'glider', the world's first airborne man carrier, was flown in 2003 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its initial flight. Why isn't the replica on display at Farnborough?

Intel stinks

'The ponds hold ... purified waste water'?

The ponds are actually used to evaporate the waste from a water purification system, not the purified water, and are said to contain heavy metals (presumably together with other nasties).

In Silicon Valley there are apparently long-standing problems with contamination of the aquifer from chlorinated solvents and suchlike process chemicals. Given the historically poor reputation of the electronics industry for waste management, it's not surprising that residents are concerned.

South African survives exploding fridge attack

@ Hilary Curtis

"When I was a graduate student in chemistry there was a compulsory "safety" training demonstration... Those were the days. Bet they don't do that kind of safety training now "

Yeah, and they wonder why fewer youngsters are choosing to study science these days.

Gadgets safe from global airport anti-piracy plan

@AC - Leaked paper

"Doesn't it bother anyone that a discussion that affects us all is discussed in secret? ... having been pro-EU for years, I ... now wouldn't mind if the EU just collapsed."

Though overall there is more than enough political posturing and so forth in the EU-sceptic camp, some of us have been rightly concerned about the secrecy, bureaucracy and erosion of freedom for quite some while.

US DoD arms cloud for military duty

@Ishkandar

"All we need is one Al-Qaeda operative to slip into that cloud..."

... or for a rogue psy-ops programme to go wild: the machine equivalent of a disease of the auto-immune system, with virtual terrists appearing on every disc and server.

The bones of J. Edgar Hoover await a kiss from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Lab tech supplier redefines corporate song paradigm

Crowbarring open the drinks cabinet?

Now calm down. If the drinks are in that glass-fronted mahogany-veneer cabinet it's only a 2-lever job, and this can be tickled with a couple of pairs of compasses; or maybe even stout paperclips. So ask Ms Stob to tell you a story while you get to work and let's hear no more of this talk of crowbars. (And if you get stuck, the back simply unscrews, though this would spoil the fun.)

Li-titanate storage balances Indianapolis power grid

Fast charge - Load balancing

"The vehicles of the numerous non-garage-owning classes, parked on the street overnight, would only ever be connected quite briefly at the forecourt - so denying the grid any serious chance to benefit from their existence"

This is the problem. You don't get *both* fast charge *and* load balancing.

If fast charge of cars is balanced through local storage, then efficiency drops. (E.g. Using a subsidiary forecourt battery with 15% losses on charge and discharge plus 5% loss in the control circuitry, electricity consumption is increased by 50%.)

If the car batteries are used to balance the grid, taking power when load falls and sometimes providing power when demand peaks, then charging times will be increased substantially and somewhat unpredictably, and there won't be the convenience of a top-up in minutes.

It will take a fair but of juggling to get a system like this working smoothly and to make the best use of the capital cost of the batteries.