Home Office "colluded with Phorm"

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8021661.stm

Quote:

The Home Office has been accused of colluding with online ad firm Phorm on "informal guidance" to the public on whether the company's service is legal. E-mails between the ministry and Phorm show the department asking if the firm would be "comforted" by its position. The messages show Phorm making changes to the guidance sought by the ministry.

Lib Dem Home Affairs spokeswoman Baroness Sue Miller, who has questioned the Home Office about Phorm, said the e-mails were "jaw dropping". A Home Office spokesperson said the suggestion of "collusion" was totally unfounded. "We have repeatedly said since these documents were released a year ago that the Government has not endorsed Phorm or its technology. "We are committed to protecting the privacy of UK consumers and will ensure any new technology of this sort is applied in an appropriate and transparent manner, in full accordance with the law and with proper regulation from the appropriate authority."

The e-mail exchanges were released under a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request made by a member of the public and sent to the BBC.

There is a lot more of this stuff: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8021661.stm

Dimrill · **Posted:** Wed Apr 29, 2009 19:21

Speaking of Phorm, anyone else read this http://www.bitterwallet.com/bad-phorm-a ... tics/10681 ?

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Did none of you tinfoil hat wearing privacy activists want to do anything with this, then? I'm surprised.

Curiosity · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 13:18

I kept on reading it as colluding with porn, and I'd rather not think of our Jacqui getting undressed.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Did none of you tinfoil hat wearing privacy activists want to do anything with this, then? I'm surprised.

I'm really busy at the moment and reading about that will probably make me incredibly angry. Which I haven't time to be.

That and I'm using all my tinfoil to make masks to keep the Swin Flu out.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Dr Lave wrote:

I'm really busy at the moment and reading about that will probably make me incredibly angry. Which I haven't time to be.

Yes, it will. It really, really will.

KovacsC · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 13:22

Curiosity wrote:

I kept on reading it as colluding with porn, and I'd rather not think of our Jacqui getting undressed.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Dr Lave wrote:

I'm really busy at the moment and reading about that will probably make me incredibly angry. Which I haven't time to be.

Yes, it will. It really, really will.

It worries me that most people over say 39 can't see anything wrong with mass spying on the internet because they don't understand it properly.

And young people are just assuming this Is How Things Are.

Which if true means there is only a small age range of people that are young enough to understand the culture of computers and old enough to understand the outrage of the plans.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10185

And we'll all be dead from heart attacks and exploding brains with a year or two of this shit.

KovacsC · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 14:19

Quote:

The company has also stressed it believes consumers will benefit because they would receive more relevant adverts.

I don't want adverts as it is, and I don't want my surfing snooping.

How will it help them to know I surf Youporn.com ???

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

I've been following the whole Phorm/BT/HO thing on The Register for, oooooh, the last year or so. The Home Office and BT are all cunts.

myp · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 14:22

Kovacs Caprios wrote:

I don't want adverts as it is, and I don't want my surfing snooping.

How will it help them to know I surf Youporn.com ???

How do you know if you don't want adverts? They might send you adverts of stuff you really like. If the Government are involved, it has to be kosher, surely?

KovacsC · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 14:26

Not the Government.. I would not trust them...

And BT are shit, they are a pain the arse to deal with..

They want 100 days to process an order from us... 100 days!!

KovacsC · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 14:28

Quote:

Jim Killock, executive director of privacy campaigners, the Open Rights Group, said: "The Home Office's job is to uphold the law: not to reinterpret it for commercial interests.

"It's extraordinary, when you think of the blatant disregard Phorm showed towards UK laws in its secret trials, that this sort of lax attitude should be shown."

myp · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 14:34

To do good work for this country, sometimes you have to do things in secret.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49252

myp wrote:

Kovacs Caprios wrote:

I don't want adverts as it is, and I don't want my surfing snooping.

How will it help them to know I surf Youporn.com ???

How do you know if you don't want adverts? They might send you adverts of stuff you really like. If the Government are involved, it has to be kosher, surely?

Presumably if you have adblock, you can just opt out, right?

Right?

MaliA · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 14:46

I'm rather ambivalent over this.

myp · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 15:02

MaliA wrote:

I'm rather ambivalent over this.

An impassioned struggle between protecting your civil liberties and finding out where you can get 3 for 2 on hair products?

KovacsC · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 15:03

myp wrote:

To do good work for this country, sometimes you have to do things in secret.

I agree..

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

myp wrote:

MaliA wrote:

I'm rather ambivalent over this.

An impassioned struggle between protecting your civil liberties and finding out where you can get cheap box sets of Julia Stiles films?

FTFY.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

DEVIL'S ADVOCATE

Fuck, I normally enjoy doing this but I'm really struggling here.

Right, can we all agree advertising on the web is a necessary evil? Commercial websites can only fund themselves, pretty much, through advertising and whether you read them or not, the world is still enriched by their existence.

Also, advertising is one of those things where power tends to accumulate. It's the network effect. When you put an ad network together, the more sites you sell to, the more advertisers will want to use you; the more advertisers you have, the more relevent your ads can be, and the more sites will want to do business with you. So market share tends to accumulate in the hands of a small number of players.

So, Google are huge. Massive. They have, like, 90% of the only advertising market. And if you are going to go toe-to-toe to them, you have to bring something special to the party. You can't just do what they do, that isn't enough. Phorm was an attempt to do something new; to increase ad relevence, and hence click throughs, via MASSIVE ONLINE SNOOPING.

Shit, I was doing so well.

KovacsC · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 15:13

You did well up to the last sentance

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Kovacs Caprios wrote:

You did well up to the last sentance

Heh, yeah. It turns out understanding the genuine economics reasons Phorm came about is a long way from understanding the fuckwitted way they set up shop.

Grim... · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 15:20

Well, the upside of this is that ads will be targetted, so I should be seeing things I want. I'd like that. The downside, of course, is that it works via MASSIVE ONLINE SNOOPING.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10185

Craster wrote:

Presumably if you have adblock, you can just opt out, right?

Right?

The point isn't so much the resulting adverts as a third party, private company looking at EVERY SINGLE URL you visit and doing data mining on them. Forever. Without a contract. That you can't opt out of, because it's all done at the ISP side.

Possibly you could VPN/IPSEC to a proxy outside the ISP's realm, but it'd cost and if people started doing it your connections would "mysteriously" drop and/or go extremely slowly.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49252

Yeah, I know. My point is that they're saying that the targetted advertising is of benefit to the consumer. I'm saying I have adblock, so they're offering me no benefit, so I should be able to opt-out.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

BikNorton wrote:

That you can't opt out of, because it's all done at the ISP side.

Well, you could opt out, but mysteriously that just stopped the ads showing and didn't stop the logging and data mining because of "technical issues".

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Grim... wrote:

Well, the upside of this is that ads will be targetted, so I should be seeing things I want. I'd like that.

I think it's disingenuous of them to use that angle to sell it. I'm happier with what I feel is a truer story: you still won't give a rat's ass about the ad content, but the site showing you the ads will be receiving a bit of extra cash for showing you them, and hence can produce content with MOAR BETTERNESS to further entice you to read stuff.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10185

You couldn't opt out of the first trial because of the not telling anyone. Presumably they wouldn't have told anyone about the second tests and offered the opt-out if no-one had noticed. Likewise the inevitable final rollout.

Mr Dave · **Posted:** Thu Apr 30, 2009 16:28

Grim... wrote:

Well, the upside of this is that ads will be targetted, so I will be wondering why it's forcing jewelery on me, and Mrs Grim... will be wondering about the gimp mask ads. I'd like that. The downside, of course, is that it works via MASSIVE ONLINE SNOOPING.

FeeX

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

Craster wrote:

Yeah, I know. My point is that they're saying that the targetted advertising is of benefit to the consumer. I'm saying I have adblock, so they're offering me no benefit, so I should be able to opt-out.

If it really resulted in adverts that I want to see, then there would be no fucking adverts. I have never, ever clicked on a single advert, ever, and I never will. It's not because they don't advertise things I want, it's because FUCK OFF WITH YOUR FUCKING ADVERTS ON EVERY SPARE INCH OF THE PLANET YOU CUNTS.

So having some shitbag company or other spy on me to spam me with yet more adverts being passed off as a 'benefit' is deeply, personally insulting. I wish death and pestilence upon them all.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

I loathe adverts. But I never bother adblocking them because a) The sites I like need to make money and b) a site with too many ads has its priorities wrong, and it's a good way to find that out.

My issue here is the MASSIVE PRIVATE SNOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPING!

myp · **Posted:** Mon Jul 06, 2009 14:20

Huzzah!

It's been a good couple of weeks for civil liberties. Ish.

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Jul 07, 2009 17:39

Huzzah again!

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Home Office "colluded with Phorm"

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