Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

[mark777]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

OK I have finished my analysis of RIPA you can read the updated PDF at http://www.paladine.org.uk/phorm_paper.pdf

It is gonna be a long article by time it is finished, currently over 4000 words and I still haven't completed even 20% of the final article.

I would appreciate some feedback on the article so far if possible please.

Alexander Hanff

Alexander, unfortunately the link does not seem to work.

[Cobbydaler]

Originally Posted by mark777

Alexander, unfortunately the link does not seem to work.

Works for me...

Have you got noscript or some other blocking software running?

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by mark777

Alexander, unfortunately the link does not seem to work.

Damn you must have been quick, the link was incorrect for about 25 seconds before I noticed and edited the post to correct it lol.

Alexander Hanff

[CaptJamieHunter]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

Damn you must have been quick, the link was incorrect for about 25 seconds before I noticed and edited the post to correct it lol.

Alexander Hanff

Got it ok here. *makes cup of tea and settles down to read*

[amateria]

Apologies if it has already been posted, but it is worth bearing in mind Art 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights:

"Article 8: Right to Respect for Private and Family Life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."

Liberty comments, on its website: Article 8 guarantees respect for four things: a person’s private life, family life, home and correspondence.

Although the Convention does not in itself give rise to legal rights, as I understand it the courts have to interpret legislation (such as RIPA) so as to be consistent with the Human Rights Act (which gives effect to the Convention). So the courts should not interpret RIPA in such a way as to permit surveillance of people's electronic correspondence (including web traffic - posting to this forum is surely correspondence).

But I'm going to look at Alexander's article now, before I display my ignorance of (this part of) the law further,

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by amateria

Apologies if it has already been posted, but it is worth bearing in mind Art 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights:

"Article 8: Right to Respect for Private and Family Life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."

Liberty comments, on its website: Article 8 guarantees respect for four things: a person’s private life, family life, home and correspondence.

Although the Convention does not in itself give rise to legal rights, as I understand it the courts have to interpret legislation (such as RIPA) so as to be consistent with the Human Rights Act (which gives effect to the Convention). So the courts should not interpret RIPA in such a way as to permit surveillance of people's electronic correspondence (including web traffic - posting to this forum is surely correspondence).

But I'm going to look at Alexander's article now, before I display my ignorance of (this part of) the law further,

Hehehe you basically just covered the first section of the article lol.

Alexander Hanff

[mark777]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

Damn you must have been quick, the link was incorrect for about 25 seconds before I noticed and edited the post to correct it lol.

Alexander Hanff

Nooo - not quick, just hadn't refreshed the page!

[Barkotron]

Just a quickie as I go - I'd amend "deliberately deceived" on page 4. It's perfectly possible that it's a case of left hand not knowing what the right is doing rather than a deliberate attempt to lie. From what I remember haven't they already stated that customer services didn't know about it? Personally I'd give them the benefit of the doubt over this one: having worked in tandem with a lot of large corporations, I'm firmly of the cock-up rather than conspiracy school.

Back to the paper...

[manxminx]

Just a couple of small points Alexander, embedded links 11 and 17 (the FIPR ones) don't work, and you appear to have your spell check language set to US English.

As for the content, I'll leave it for more intelligent people than myself to comment!

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by Barkotron

Just a quickie as I go - I'd amend "deliberately deceived" on page 4. It's perfectly possible that it's a case of left hand not knowing what the right is doing rather than a deliberate attempt to lie. From what I remember haven't they already stated that customer services didn't know about it? Personally I'd give them the benefit of the doubt over this one: having worked in tandem with a lot of large corporations, I'm firmly of the cock-up rather than conspiracy school.

Back to the paper...

I umm'd and arrr'd over that one myself. I decided to leave it as is simply because if it is a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, they have still indirectly deceived their customers because they have deliberately not told customer services. Customer services should have been informed and someone must have made a decision not to inform them.

I will change it though if people think it is the better option.

Alexander Hanff

---------- Post added at 14:55 ---------- Previous post was at 14:53 ----------

Originally Posted by manxminx

Just a couple of small points Alexander, embedded links 11 and 17 (the FIPR ones) don't work, and you appear to have your spell check language set to US English.

As for the content, I'll leave it for more intelligent people than myself to comment!

I don't have embedded links in my pdf reader so I am unable to test/fix that. Cut and Paste should work though.

Alexander Hanff

[amateria]

Hehehe you basically just covered the first section of the article lol.

So I did! I agree with the rest of the article, too!

[CaptJamieHunter]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

I umm'd and arrr'd over that one myself. I decided to leave it as is simply because if it is a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, they have still indirectly deceived their customers because they have deliberately not told customer services. Customer services should have been informed and someone must have made a decision not to inform them.

I will change it though if people think it is the better option.

How about "I contend that BT deliberately deceived"?

[Barkotron]

I think that "deceived" is fair enough, but I'd remove "deliberately", or replace it with "deliberately or inadvertently". Maybe something like "decieved, whether deliberately or inadvertently". I really think it's best not to put in anything that can't be really solidly backed up.

Sorry, back to reading.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Moh Kohn

Hi Alex,

I was going through these last night and my reading of that section was that data volumes and/or data types could be examined - but not the data itself... This is implicitly linked with the traffic management section although, I suspect, it is therefore not limited to it, and so the inference i'm getting is that this is to enable to do packet type profiling and say "oh - you've received 823MB of x-binary data today" rather than examine the packet contents.

It does not seem to me to be allowing examination, storage or manipulation of the data sent between me and another party... however IANAL

Any knowledgable insight into the Ts & Cs would be well received by all here I suspect.

Cheers
Tim

Totally different. Going back to the post office analagy, the post office might write to you or discuss that you would need to become a commercial customer if you constantly recieve huge volumes of post to your address. They can do that by monitoring the number of letters (packets) and size and shape (contents of these packets). They still don't need to read them to come to that conclusion.

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by amateria

Hehehe you basically just covered the first section of the article lol.

So I did! I agree with the rest of the article, too!

There is a lot more to come yet. The next section on Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations will be quite tricky because so far I haven't seen anyone but myself raise any issues under the regulations, so my analysis will be entirely my own. I covered the main points on this in one of my posts here yesterday so that should give some indication as to the sort of information that will appear in the article.

I am taking a break for now as I need a nap (been up all night again) but I will start on the next section when I get up this evening.

Please keep the comments coming, I know there were one or two minor typos which I have fixed in the local version but not uploaded yet, so don't worry about those.

My spell checker is being weird, I actually have it set to English (UK) but for some reason the dictionary is throwing Z instead of S in several words (errors in the dictionary it would seem, I will look into it later.) I will change them back to their correct English spelling before the article is complete.

Alexander Hanff