ZD Net reported that Delaware-registered adware company Phorm (THUS passim) has lost its UK CEO, Hugo Drayton, who leaves the company ‘by mutual agreement’ at the end of December. Lyn Millar, Finance Director has also resigned. They have been replaced by London-based deputy chief executive officer Nan Richards, and UK managing director Nick Barnett. Richards was previously president of Turner Broadcasting System Europe, part of Time Warner, and Barnett is being promoted from his previous position as Phorm’s UK commercial director. Four board members resigned some weeks back.
Despite these apparently turbulent developments, BT is ploughing ahead with the implementation of its ‘Webwise’ tracking software which profiles user behaviour by tracking online viewing through ISP data. BT should think carefully about the effect this may have on its already-tarnished reputation, but it probably won’t.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Over 1000 people asked for ID cards – counted over TWO years
carving up the crime statistics
In a demonstration of the contempt for sensible interpretation of statistics which recently got the UK government into trouble for claiming that knife crime had fallen based on a sample of 78 incidents over three months, “Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said that 1,142 messages from the public to the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) between November 2006 and October 2008 were classified as ‘wants an ID card’. This made ID-card requests “by far the most common subject matter”, Smith said on Thursday, in response to a parliamentary question from Liberal Democrats’ Home Affairs spokesperson Chris Huhne.” In real terms, that’s around 1.5 ‘messages’ a day. By contrast, up to 2 million people actively protested against the Iraq War in one day, but the government ignored them. Worse yet, Ms Smith admitted that “the IPS received 3,073 items of correspondence on the scheme between 1 November, 2006, and 31 October, 2008 but admitted that the IPS did not sort the correspondence according to support for or opposition to the scheme. (Thanks to ZD Net). So the erosion of democracy and slide into banal authoritarianism continues apace. We already know the endgame. We’ll get ID cards, the system will fail and vastly exceed its budget. The data warehousing will be managed at great expense by US companies. There will be huge breaches of security and fraud. But the statistics hold out a glimmer of hope. At this rate of take-up, the government could save a huge amount by purchasing card-making kit and laminators from Woolworths and individually making up the identity cards. There are plenty of out-of-work folks who could help, taking photos of the 1100 people who definitely want an ID card and putting their names in a special ‘Loonytunes’ databank. Their psychological profiles identify them as prime targets to vote positively for any mad government initiative, volunteer for crazy scientific experiments, buy Jaguar cars and sign up for BT Broadband. So it’s not all doom and gloom.
Another victory for profiling.
Police went Crackers in Wimbledon, aided and abetted by the tabloids, they hounded the wrong man for 12 years
With the conviction of Robert Napper, the Metropolitan Police announced today that there was no need for an enquiry into the Colin Stagg fit-up, on the grounds that ‘lessons were learned.’ In other words, the Police know what they did wrong and it won’t happen again. So that’s alright then. Except it’s not. It has not been too widely reported that the female police officer who participated in a ‘honey trap’ to frame Colin Stagg received £125,000 compensation, early retirement and a pension, while Napper, the person responsible for the crime, who had been reported to the police by his own mother for rape, was arrested twice for carrying a loaded handgun within eight weeks of the murder on Wimbledon Common, had a history of copycat crimes, including rape and battery of a mother and child and was allowed to roam free to commit further horrible crimes while the police and tabloid media engaged in a vicious miscarriage of justice aimed at clearing up the case of a mother brutally murdered in front of her infant child. Their grotesque entrapment antics led to further crimes being committed. It has been claimed that using today’s technology, the same ‘mistakes’ could not happen, yet contrary to media reports, DNA samples from both Napper and Stagg were available and could have been used to at least eliminate Stagg from their ‘enquiries.’ This is doubtful: Stagg was ‘convicted’ by the police, egged on by the media, keen to find a perpetrator for a heinous crime, at an early stage. The ‘honey trap’ was sordid, illegal and reckless. There should be an enquiry, but there won’t be.
John Baker’s piece for THUS (below) summarises the details of this case better than I can. It is sad and remarkable that we are not taking this opportunity to re-examine the lack of police (and media) accountability which led to this gross miscarriage of justice. The victims were not just the family of the murdered woman, nor Colin Stagg and his family. Several other people raped and possibly murdered by Napper, certifiably criminally insane, might have been spared had the police not behaved like actors in a bad TV drama. As far as we know, nobody lost their job or has been called to account – at least not publicly.
John J Kelly
