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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 11 declined, 7 accepted (18 total, 38.89% accepted)

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Businesses

Submission + - UK consumers to pay for "online piracy"

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: An article in The Times states that UK consumers will be hit with an estimated of £500m ($800m US) bill to tackle online "piracy". The dinosaur record and film industries have managed to convince the government to bypass all laws, and get consumers to pay for the record and film industries perceived losses. Meanwhile the record and film industries have refused to move with the times, and change their business models. Other businesses have adapted and been successful in changing their businesses, but the film and record industries refuse to do so, taking the easy way out of protecting their cartels.

Surely the record and film industries should be the ones paying to chase up their perceived losses, not adding another stealth tax to all consumers.
Privacy

Submission + - UK state surveillance costs rocket

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: Whilst the public sector spending in the UK continues to run out of control with monthly record breaking deficits, there are no funding worries for state surveillance of the masses. An article in the Daily Mail, states that £380 a minute (about $630US) will be spent on surveillance in a massive expansion of the Big Brother state.

The £200million-a-year sum ( $331million US) will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen — on top of the email and telephone records already available. It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime.

State bodies including councils are already making one request every minute to spy on the phone records and email accounts of members of the public. The number of snooping missions carried out by police, town halls and other government departments has rocketed by 44 per cent in two years to a rate of 1,381 new cases every day.

Ministers say the five-year cost of the existing regime is £55.61million ($93m US), an average of £11million ($18m US) a year. This is paid to phone companies and service providers to meet the cost of keeping and providing private information about customers. The cost of the new system emerged in a series of Parliamentary answers.
Privacy

Submission + - Google / Microsoft to handle UK patient data?

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: The Conservative Party, widely seen in the UK as the political 'party in waiting' whenever there will be an election, have proposals for patients medical data to be handled by Google or Microsoft, in some sort of competition to the failed £16bn (US $26bn) National Health Computer system. Nowhere are there proposals to keep your private medical details with your local doctor and out of everyone else's hands.

Patients will be given the option of moving their medical notes to private companies after the Conservatives said that they would replace Labour's "centrally determined and unresponsive national IT system".

The Tories hope that users will be able to choose from a range of private sector websites, possibly including those operated by Bupa, the healthcare provider. This has raised issues of privacy and security, with MPs and health professionals warning it could hamper doctors' ability to access medical records quickly in an emergency.

Mr Cameron [Conservative party leader] has repeatedly promised to abolish large IT databases. The National Audit Office has said that Connecting for Health, the electronic patient records programme, will not be completed until 2014, four years late, and is expected to cost £12.4 billion. The recent termination of contracts with key software suppliers could add further to the cost.

The Shadow Health Secretary, has also raised questions over whether it is safe for a central database to store sensitive medical records and has asked the British Computer Society to review the NHS IT programme. It is due to report later in the summer.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6644919.ece

Privacy

Submission + - Phorm strikes back at 'privacy' critics

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: As reported in the The Telegraph newspaper.

The Phorm company that intercepts and amends web pages users request (for now just adverts) is hitting back at critics, with Phorm's chief executive setting up a website stopphoulplay.com against two leading critics of Phorm whom he describes as "privacy pirates". Both men deny allegations including the claim that they could be supported by Phorm's rivals.

The Chief Exec. thinks Phorm's potential competitors are spreading lies about the content manipulation system. The reality is, people value their privacy, and can see the system as dangerous to full blown government system amending content of web pages on-the-fly for their advantage.
The Internet

Submission + - UK propose broadband expansion + music / film tax 1

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: First the tech illiterates in the UK government want to extend broadband internet connections to every home, whether it makes sense or not, then at the same time they propose a £20 per year (approx $29US) broadband tax which they claim will pay the record and film industries for their failed business models. Coincidence the two proposals are linked? And why should people be forced to pay for the failed film and music industries?
Censorship

Submission + - UK government attempts grab of UK domain names

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: In an exclusive article from The Register, it is stated that the UK government is attempting to grab the private company that controls the UK domain names. Most worrying is that if the takeover occurred, it could lead to the government cutting people off who run websites that do not adhere to that party's line, snuffing out freedom of speech.

[The] Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has asked Nominet, which is in charge of the .co.uk registry, to justify its independence from Whitehall.
Privacy

Submission + - Chinese Skype users spied on

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: A report in The Times newspaper says that the Chinese version of Skype called TOM-Skype has been archiving certain keywords of users when they send text with each other using the software.

Skype, which prides itself on the security of its system, issued an apology and said the breach had now been fixed. Josh Silverman, president of the US online text message and voice service, issued a statement of concern. "It was our understanding that it was not TOM's protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords, and we are now inquiring with TOM to find out why the protocol changed."

One dissident, who declined to be identified, said he only ever communicated by voice and always used Skype rather than the Chinese-language TOM-Skype. "It's harder for me because I don't speak English, but I still write messages in Chinese. However, I have always warned my friends to be very careful when they create an account to make sure they go onto Skype and are not directed to TOM-Skype. I just always thought the US one should be safer."
The Internet

Submission + - Network Solutions target sub-domains for adverts

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: The register reports that customers have found that their defunct or forgotten about sub-domains have been taken over by Network Solutions to send users to advert pages. After going through a 59k word user agreement, you can find the following text:

You also agree that any domain name directory, sub-directory, file name or path (e.g.) that does not resolve to an active web page on your Web site being hosted by Network Solutions, may be used by Network Solutions to place a "parking" page, "under construction" page, or other temporary page that may include promotions and advertisements for, and links to, Network Solutions' Web site,
Privacy

Submission + - Top UK ISP's sell browsing habits to advertisers

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: An interesting story is covered in The Register which states that the top three UK internet providers have done a deal to be paid in exchange for giving up their customer's browsing habits to serve them targeted adverts.

What the customers of these providers feel about their online whereabouts being known to external companies is unknow. BT, Virgin Media, and Carphone Warehouse have agreed to feed data on their subscribers' web activities to Phorm.Data will be fed into the Open Internet Exchange, Phorm's advertising network, where advertisers will pay to target interest groups. Frequent visits to the BBC's Top Gear site might result in being served up more car ads, for example. In exchange, the ISP trio will get a cut of new revenue. Analysts estimate BT's cut will be £85m in 2010.
The Internet

Submission + - UK laws to cut-off copyright file downloaders?

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: An article in The Times newspaper discusses UK government attempts to regulate the internet. Internet providers are to cut off people that are trading in "copy written" material, the fact that everything is copy written escapes the politicians. Obviously the Internet providers that are expected to police this are jumping at the chance to spending vast amounts of money and time, and also for a dwindling user base if they are supposed to cut off subscribers as proposed. Such law is what you get from politicians who's only qualifications are in art, history, politics, English, Latin, law.
Security

Submission + - Tightening of flight security to the US

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: In an article in the UK Guardian newspaper, the article discusses increasing lengths the USA wants air passenger data. Does the US want to ruin it's business traveller and tourism earnings, especially when the economy is not doing well?

The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines. The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington's requirements. According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said. And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days.
Privacy

Submission + - FBI want access to UK's identity data register

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: Senior British police officials are talking to the FBI about an international database to hunt for major criminals and terrorists. The US-initiated programme, "Server in the Sky", would take cooperation between the police forces way beyond the current faxing of fingerprints across the Atlantic. Allies in the "war against terror" — the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand — have formed a working group, the International Information Consortium, to plan their strategy. Original article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,,2241005,00.html
Censorship

Submission + - Privacy in the UK, kiss it goodbye.

Submitted by Wowsers
Wowsers writes: The UK is about to have a new law in place that allows a vast number of public bodies to have access to a whole range of private data, most notably phone call information, finally completing the current UK governments project of making the country's population as spied upon and subjugated as the East German Stazi did on their population. It is of interest that the UK already has the most CCTV cameras in the world per population, and the largest criminal DNA database in the world (with over 1 million innocent people on it including 6 month olds).

Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow. The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos. The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will give police and security services a right they have long demanded: to delve at will into the phone records of British citizens and businesses.

By 2009 the Government plans to extend the rules to cover internet use: the websites we have visited, the people we have emailed and phone calls made over the net.
Full story here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=484752

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