You are here: Home / Archives for The digital age

GP staff remove patient from books because he tweeted about them

March 15, 2013 By 3 Comments

Another victim of the inability of organisations to cope with the things people say on social media.

This tweet…


Resulted in this letter.
gp discharge letter

Note that the tweet was not actually directed at any twitter account, so the surgery staff would have to have gone looking for it or been tipped off.

The surgery’s patient charter says

With staff

We aim to treat all of our patients courteously at all times and we expect our patients to treat our staff in a similarly respectful way. We take seriously any threatening, abusive, or violent behaviour against any of our staff or other patients. If any of our patients should behave in such a manner they will be warned that if they do not stop they may exercise our right to take action to have them removed, immediately if necessary, from our list of patients.

There’s no indication that any warning was given in this case. When even the prime minister can get away with calling people who use twitter “twats” it seems a bit harsh for someone to be refused medical treatment for using the same word.

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age

What I want in a wheelchair is… a Raspberry Pi

March 14, 2013 By 3 Comments

I’ve been thinking for a while about adding a few improvements to an electric wheelchair. Electric wheelchairs are bulky, expensive, run on heavy and dangerous lead acid batteries, and are decidedly behind the times. I want a high-tech wheelchair. I want a hackable wheelchair. In short, what I want is a Raspberry Pi-powered wheelchair.

A Raspberry Pi in an open case

A Raspberry Pi, if you don’t know, is a small, low power, cheap (£20 – £28) computer that runs Linux and is perfect for embedding in projects. I want to add a Raspberry Pi to allow me to add all sorts of functions. Reversing sensors with an audible alarm. Proximity sensors used to actively steer around obstacles. A light sensor that can turn on the headlights. A WiFi or Bluetooth link to a smartphone to report status. Tires that report when they need air, and batteries that report when there is a problem and when they have finished charging or desperately need to be plugged in. Remote control to bring the chair to you. Pre-programmed routes so that the wheelchair can be told with one button on a smartphone to go to the bathroom / kitchen / bedroom.

Once there’s a computer in the wheelchair the possibilities are endless.

It’s unlikely that a Raspberry Pi could interface with the electronics which control the high currents that the motors need so the standard control unit would have to be swapped for control electronics from the robotics world and the equivalent joystick to replace the standard one.  Of course once a computer is in charge the joystick could equally be replaced by voice recognition or an Xbox controller.

My ideal electric wheelchair would have, in no particular order:

Me in my wheelchair

Yes I know the arms are misaligned. That’s what you get second-hand.

  • Lightweight narrow frame
  • Large wheels
  • Lithium batteries
  • Bright LED headlights (Automatic lights on!)
  • Battery sensors – voltage/charge/temperature/cycles
  • Motor temperature sensors
  • Reversing Sensors
  • Tyre pressure sensors
  • Robotics controller
  • CPU (Raspberry Pi!)
  • Smartphone status app connected via WiFi (Is my battery charged yet?)
  • Swappable controls that fit in a socket on either arm without endless bolts and cables to move.
  • Smartphone holder/charger attachment

I’m convinced that this is all possible, and probably not too expensive although any budget at all for this is out of my reach at the moment. There are people out there attempting to improve their wheelchairs, such as the engineer who has written up his attempts at www.wheelchairdriver.com and various attempts based on the Segway. I might just have to make a shopping list and try to find someone willing to fund it.

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age Tagged With: , ,

Scripted, automated troll posts via botnets – welfare opponents running scared

March 9, 2013 By 25 Comments

My blog has been attracting trolls recently. Or more likely, I suspect, one troll. They comment most days on my latest blog post under various different names, using a different email address and from a different IP address each time.

Despite the different names, email addresses and IP addresses each time there are consistencies that betray a connection. The domain name of the email addresses are always either that of a throwaway email address provider or a large website. Mostly not an major email provider.) The first part of the email address is often five characters starting with “n”. The name is usually a short form of a male name such as bob, dan, matt, fred, and often has a number like dan 50. They always post the same kind of message – that people won’t work because they’re better off on benefits, that Britain is broke, that British people are lazy and that’s why foreigners have taken all the jobs, that I’m a scrounger. Sometimes they post a link to the daily mail.

You can probably agree that I have reason to suspect this is all the same person. But more than that, I wonder if this person is using an online persona management service like that known to have been requested by various US government agencies, and produced by HBGary among others and sold to governments and corporates. This kind of service and software allows one operator to handle dozens of identities which are used to leave comments anywhere their employer wants a message promoted. It is used to give the impression that there is a lot of disagreement with an idea, or to try to discredit someone by pretending to prove them wrong or just calling their ideas into question. This software is known to exist because one of the companies that make it was hacked in 2011 and had their communications published. A request for this kind of service by a US government agency was also published openly, possibly accidentally on a website for suppliers of services to governments.

Daily Kos writes:

“According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HBGary emails, it involvescreating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated “persona management” software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.”

Who would use this kind of service? And why would they bother with me? I think there are a fair few interested parties who would want to discredit my message about welfare and benefits. Big insurance companies, for one, and companies involved in administering benefits now and in the future. Various think tanks too. We know that insurance company UNUM has been “advising” government for years, and has actually boasted in writing that they influenced welfare policy. Atos has an interest in taking a cut for assessing people. I’m not claiming that any organisation has done this, but these are exactly the kind of customer that persona management services are marketed to.

I don’t think this is paranoia on my part, it’s just an idea I’m pondering. I’m still not sure if my troll is a lone person or several. I’m not claiming to be stalked by the military, I’m talking about software that is sold to military, government agencies, and corporates alike. I’m not talking about being targeted by spy agencies, I’m talking about being on a list of blogs and social network users that have ideas that are vaguely troublesome to the customer for this software. I’m not talking about anyone spending time on me, I’m talking about a person who has dozens of targets and a short brief about what kind of message to post there every so often under a new identity each time. Commenting on my blog is a tiny fraction of their time.

The troll on my blog doesn’t usually read the blog posts, they just scan for keywords like “benefits” and then post their message. They don’t see messages like “your comment is awaiting moderation”, they just try to post four times over a couple of hours. When I block their IP address they don’t come back immediately, they appear the next day on a new address – as though they waited for software to move on. They reply to people who reply to them but they just say more of the same without addressing questions. They are repetitive, saying much the same thing each time but written slightly differently, like someone has a brief to convey a certain idea but has no awareness of context.

I’m probably way off the mark here, but it’s an interesting idea that we could be seeing the work of persona management software in the wild. The messages left on my blog could have been left by people using this kind of system. But they’re probably the work of a particularly witless nasty troll. Thanks for the inspiration for a blog post, dan / fred / wes / dave / ozzy / mark / jane!

UPDATE 2013-03-10

I’ve been checking the troll’s IP addresses at BotScout.com and all but two that I have checked have been known sources of automated comment scripts. It appears that the system being used might not be as sophisticated as the persona management that I talked about, but is instead pre-written comments posted automatically by bots on blogs with welfare-related keywords.

Further reading

The Register: HBGary ‘puppets’ FAIL to convince

The Guardian: Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media

Daily Kos: The HB Gary Email That Should Concern Us All

Daily Kos: HB Gary Federal CEO a Daily Kos Member?

Pastebin: An archive of the troll comments left on this blog - with email and IP addresses

Pastebin: IP addresses used to post troll comments

 

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age

Effective campaigning on twitter: how to avoid spamming

February 21, 2013 By 5 Comments

Campaigning on twitter can be frustratingly difficult. You want to persuade people to read your article or sign your petition but they want to look at cat pictures and moan about their lives. You have to grab their attention without annoying them so much that they unfollow you or report you for spam. Read on to see my guidelines for campaigning on twitter.

Unfortunately many campaigners are engaging in spamming. It is common for campaigners to spread links to petitions and articles by @ mentioning dozens or even hundreds of people with the same text and link in each tweet. Not only is this very annoying for people who follow that person who may see the tweet many times, it also fits twitter’s definition of spam and is likely to lead to the account being suspended. I myself have unfollowed quite a few people who I otherwise agree with so as to avoid seeing their stream of identical tweets to other people that I follow.

What defines spam? Here are the relevant rules from twitter.

Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be spamming are:

  • If you send large numbers of duplicate @replies or mentions;
  • If you send large numbers of unsolicited @replies or mentions in an attempt to spam a service or link;
  • If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;
  • If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account;
  • If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #;
  • If you post multiple unrelated updates to a trending or popular topic;

I appreciate that this makes it difficult to campaign, but it is possible without breaking the rules and annoying people. Here are my tips.

  • Post your links on your own timeline where people can choose to follow you or not.
  • Time your main tweets for the peak times that your followers are on twitter.
  • Make tweets interesting so that people will retweet them.
  • Put an attention grabbing summary in the tweet.
  • Remember: Links on their own are useless.
  • State what you actually want people to do, eg sign a petition, pass on the story, write to an MP.
  • Post variations of your tweet every few minutes or hours to get attention from people on twitter at different times.
  • Seed links to articles and petitions with just a few mentions to key people that you know are likely to retweet them. Do not do this more than a few times.
  • Tweet your link directly to people who you know are interested or who are waiting for it.
  • If you must mention someone use a new mention not a reply. Do not reply to unrelated tweets with your campaign and do not reply to all other disinterested parties in unrelated tweets.

If you have other guidelines please share them in the comments.

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age

Why government plans to censor internet connections are a bad idea (Updated)

December 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This blog post is a bit late, because government plans to turn on censorship on all home internet connections have just been scrapped. [Edit: not so - see update at the end.] However I know people who are disappointed about this and so I want to give my reasons why I think it is a very bad idea.

A censored connection is already available for those that want it. Mobile phone companies for the most part block access to sites that may contain content unsuitable for children on all new connections. They do this censoring at their end of the connection, before the web page in question ever reaches the mobile phone handset or computer. They will turn off the censoring when given proof of age.

Large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) mostly offer censoring of some kind too. Some such as TalkTalk will block unwanted web pages at their end of the connection in the same way that mobile providers do. Others such as BT, Sky and Virgin provide software to be installed on home computers that will block inappropriate pages within the home but before the end user sees them.

The original plan by government and campaigners was to require all ISPs to censor web pages at their end of the connection such that every device in the home would be censored. The justification is that children would not be exposed to unsuitable material, even in households where the parents have not made that choice. The filtering would happen unless the customer asked for an uncensored connection. However, despite the fact that censorship is an additional feature, I notice the campaigners for the filter have twisted the language. They refer to opting in to pornography but you don’t opt-in to pornography, it’s the filter that is the addition and they really mean that you opt out of that. I think it is important to keep this language the right way around.

Censorship of this kind is fraught with problems. There are several methods of blocking inappropriate content: whitelists, blacklists, keywords, and automatic recognition of pornographic material.

The ideal would be for a computer to be able to look at any given web page and recognise pornography or inappropriate text however computers are actually pretty useless at this. They tend to either allow the inappropriate content to slip through, or block completely innocent content. Most filters end up doing both. Whether recognising the amount of skin on show in images or picking out keywords from the text computers are unable to tell whether what they are looking at is actually sexual / violent etc, or perhaps is a support forum or an educational web site that should be allowed.

Because of this most filters rely on blacklists containing the addresses of web sites that are to be blocked. The problem here is that the internet is vast and always changing and so no-one can list every inappropriate page. Blacklists work to some extent but frequently fail to block pages that appear on a new server and they are easily bypassed using a proxy server (Which is not itself blocked and relays the pages desired) or a VPN. (Virtual Private Network – an encrypted “tunnel” which web pages pass through without being checked.) Blacklists also have something of an all or nothing approach. For example most block whole websites like YouTube and Facebook because some things contained within are more adult. They can’t tell and so they block the whole lot. They also tend to block Google Image Search and even Google Search because Google can show image and text previews from inappropriate websites. Google does have a “Safesearch” option and some filters only allow Google to be accessed if Safesearch is turned on but Safesearch is itself a filter with all of the related problems which that brings.

The harshest method is a whitelist containing just the web pages to which someone has been granted access. This is an extremely restrictive method and involves a lot of frustration when resources cannot be accessed and a lot of work for the person maintaining the whitelist in checking and adding necessary websites.

In practice most filters contain a combination of all of these methods – blacklists, whitelists, keywords and image recognition. The proposed national filter imposed by law would have been just a blacklist, but with government ultimately in control of what websites were put on it. In fact there is already such a list, which blocks child pornography and is run by the Internet Watch Foundation – an unaccountable and privately-run group – and implemented by all the large ISPs. Even this small amount of blocking which few would argue against is flawed and open to abuse. For example in 2008 the IWF blacklisted an image on Wikipedia, a 1976 album cover which depicted a naked child, despite the album cover never having been subject to any censorship or prosecution. As a result of this blocking and the method used by the ISPs to implement the filter many people in the UK were no longer able to edit Wikipedia until the block was reversed.

The IWF blacklist is also subjective and dependent on the personal opinions of a few people who are employed by the IWF to classify images. We are not allowed to see the list or the images and so we must trust that they are only blocking illegal images but there are claims that many images that are not illegal have been blocked too.

This blocking already in place at big ISPs has also been subject to a slow creep into other areas. Courts have ordered the main ISPs to block torrent website The Pirate Bay and file sharing site Newzbin and so these have been added to the system too. Some ISPs like Sky don’t even tell the end user that the site has been blocked, it just never appears on screen. (Try clicking those links to see f your ISP blocks them.) Again, they are easily circumvented and there is even a proxy server dedicated to allowing access to The Pirate Bay.

As an IT manager I once was made to set up a filter at the company where I worked. The filter used a combination of blacklists, whitelists, image recognition and keywords as described above. In addition to pornography it also blocked social networking, games and a few other things which the management felt were being abused by staff. The result was constant stress and frustration both on my part and the part of all the staff at the company. For a month I had multiple requests every day for websites to be unblocked because they were necessary for work. Staff still used social networks, only on their mobile phones instead of the company computers. I was often unable to find important information about computer maintenance and support because it was blocked by Google SafeSearch, which the filter forced to be switched on. After a month management conceded that the filter did far more damage than good and instructed me to turn it off.

A few years ago I was at a conference in the middle of rural Hereford with no transport available. I needed to access twitter on my Orange mobile to send a message to someone but I was horrified to find that it was blocked. I phoned Orange to get the filter turned off but was given only two ways to prove my age to them (Despite it being a contract phone which you must be over 18 to sign up to) – to provide a credit card number or to go into an Orange shop with a passport or birth certificate. I was unable to do the latter since I was stranded far from civilisation, and I was unable to do the former because I did not have a credit card. Orange’s view was “tough luck”. Fortunately for me I remembered that a web browser called Opera Mini happens to have a proxy server on tap, not to bypass censorship, but to compress web pages before sending them to a mobile phone to speed things up and reduce the phone bill. I installed Opera Mini and connected to twitter through that straight away. I hope it is clear from this that the filter was a huge inconvenience in preventing a legitimate use, and was easily bypassed with a little thought.

Many teachers find that the resources they wish to use in schools are blocked by the school’s filters. It is common for teachers to want to use video from YouTube (Such as the excellent Periodic Table of Videos) but be unable to show them in class. I helped my wife to download videos from YouTube (unofficially) on several occasions so that she could make use of them with her class. School connections are usually filtered by RM Education and so there are no exceptions to the filter and sites cannot be whitelisted. School children are not stopped for long by these filters either, swapping addresses for proxy servers as a matter of course.

I hope I have explained why website blocking of this nature does more harm than good. Filters do not work well at all, blocking desired sites and failing to block unwanted sites. They are easily bypassed with a little knowledge (or knowledgeable friends) and in any case don’t apply to other methods of swapping data such as encrypted emails or disks physically handed over or posted. Filters applied to the whole connection affect parents as well as children, and also to people who don’t have children, at least until they get the filters turned off. Last but not least, censorship is available to anyone that wants it simply by asking their internet provider, or even installing free software from Microsoft or turning on the filters that are built in to Macs. Parents are free to use these methods to protect their children although I would never advise trusting such software with your children’s internet access without supervision. I should also point out that smarter children (and those with smart friends) can work out how to bypass the software installed on their own computers.

For all of these reasons I believe that the plan to turn on website blocking on all internet connections until asked not to was a mistake and I am happy to see it go.

UPDATE
Writing in the Daily Mail, David Cameron says [Tech week link] he has hired Claire Perry MP to force computer manufacturers to pre-install software that will ask if there are children in the house and turn on porn blocking software on the computer itself. This is an even worse idea than blocking at the ISP end.

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age Tagged With: , , ,

Undead ID cards

November 13, 2012 By 1 Comment

ID cards aren’t dead, they’ve just been privatised.

The main feature of welfare reform is replacing a host of benefits with Universal Credit. Not only will those on out-of-work benefits have to switch, but also those on in-work benefits like Housing Benefit and Tax Credits. The DWP want everyone to apply for and update Universal Credit over the internet and part of that is proving your identity through a third party service.

“The identity registration service will enable benefit claimants to choose who will validate their identity by automatically checking their authenticity with the provider before processing online benefit claims.”

The DWP have today announced their choice of commercial providers of this identity service. You get to choose from The Post Office, Cassidian, Digidentity, Experian, Ingeus, Mydex, and Verizon but if you want Universal Credit then you have to do it.

Even more worryingly, the DWP press release states

“The online Identity Assurance model will be incorporated into Universal Credit as it’s developed and rolled-out. Over time Identity Assurance will become available to all UK citizens who need to access online public services.”

The intention is obvious; when all government services require Identity Assurance everyone in the country will have to sign up. A cynical view would be that by starting with benefit claimants who have no choice the scheme gains momentum before other people can object. The “ID card” may be virtual only, but the lack of a physical card doesn’t change the problems inherent in an identity database.

13 November 2012 – Providers announced for online identity scheme [DWP press release]

National ‘virtual ID card’ scheme set for launch (Is there anything that could possibly go wrong?) [The Independent]

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age, Welfare Tagged With: , , , , ,

Public Communications Networks and Menacing Messages

July 27, 2012 By 3 Comments

This morning Paul Chambers won his #TwitterJokeTrial appeal and was acquitted of sending a menacing tweet under the communications act 2003. Paul had been found guilty of sending by a public electronic communication network a message of a “menacing character” contrary to s.127(1)(a) and (3) of the Communications Act 2003. The tweet in question read as follows:

“Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

For those who haven’t been following the case, Paul’s solicitor, David Allen Green, has written the background for New Statesman.

The High Court overturned the conviction on the basis that the tweet was not menacing, however the judge found that twitter IS a public communications network and is therefore subject to the communications act 2003. While I celebrate the decision of the court I disagree in part with their reasoning.

A key part of the original defence was that Twitter was not a public communications network, because a tweet read outside of the context of being a follower of the tweeter is content rather than a message.  I think this point was perhaps misunderstood by all sides. I would not argue that Twitter is not a public communications network, but that Twitter is both a public communications network and something more. Tweets that are not aimed at any one individual are a different usage which requires different treatment to that specified in the Communications Act 2003 and the original 1935 act that it was based on.

Paragraph 25 of the judgement says:

25. In our judgment, whether one reads the “tweet” at a time when it was read as “content” rather than “message”, at the time when it was posted it was indeed “a message” sent by an electronic communications service for the purposes of s.127(1). Accordingly “Twitter” falls within its ambit.

A tweet addressed to to one or more people with an @ mention is a message to those people. However, a tweet which is not addressed to anyone can be expected to be read by some or all followers of the person who makes the tweet. In general it would not be seen by those outside of this group unless either the tweet is “retweeted” – copied to the followers of one of the readers – or someone has searched through twitter for key words like “Robin Hood Airport” as happened in this case. The outsider had to make an effort to find it through search or by looking at the person’s profile. This is more like speaking in a group in a pub – what you say is meant for the group but others could stand nearby and listen too.

I believe that it is important that the difference in context between these types of tweets should be understood by the legal system. People frequently make jokey threats and statements, but there is a vast difference between making such a comment in the context of a group, and in aiming said comment as a message at the person or organisation who is the subject of those threats. Had Paul Chambers tweeted his statement directly to Robin Hood Airport then it would clearly have been a threat, but he did not do that. Instead he tweeted it to his followers who presumably would laugh or commiserate or both.

As to why it is important that people can joke around with ideas like bomb threats and suchlike, these tweets from Edwina Currie are a good demonstration. If Paul Chambers’ conviction had been upheld then Currie would be guilty of the same offence.


@ @” I’m blowing the airport sky high” is not a metaphor. Can be construed as a threat. He was a damn fool, paid dearly for it
June 28, 2012 9:13 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite
@Edwina_Currie
Edwina Currie


@ oh I’d shoot tax exiles! When they need high quality health care they’re back in the UK double quick. Never make connection
June 21, 2012 6:37 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite
@Edwina_Currie
Edwina Currie

For now the important thing to note from the case is that as of this ruling, anything that you type on social networks will be subject to the Communications Act 2003 and anything considered menacing could be a criminal offence.

Further Reading

The appeal judgement in full [PDF]

Twitter joke trial: Paul Chambers wins high court challenge to conviction [Guardian]

Edwina Currie’s Comedy Connections [Storify]

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age Tagged With: , , ,

Government plans to read your emails, IMs, txts, web browsing – not a joke

April 1, 2012 By 2 Comments

A lot of people were surprised to see a story from the BBC and from ITV claiming that the government plan to monitor and store details of electronic communications of everyone in the UK, including emails, web pages browsed, text messages and telephone calls. Many have decided that it cannot be true, especially as it appeared on the 1st of April.

Sadly, it is true and it is not a new idea. The plan was written about in The Telegraph last month but the plans are much older than that. The last Labour government, lover of all things authoritarian, came up with the Interception Modernisation Programme which in its original form would have had details of all electronic communications sent to a central government database. When the government eventually realised that this would be completely impractical they shifted the work to the service providers, who would all have to keep the details of the communications travelling through their networks and give the government access to their database at all times. The service providers realised just how much this would cost and so the government committed £2 billion to cover those costs over ten years. The plan was heavily criticised by the Conservatives, who published a paper titled Reversing the rise of the surveillance state. (Which is still on their website.) It was also criticised back then by the London School of Economics.  The plan was shelved in 2009 after opposition from communications service providers and a realisation that it would not be popular with the public.

After the election, though, the Conservatives decided to resurrect the plan, giving it a new name, the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. (CCDP) Questions were raised in 2010 by the Information Commissioner’s Office and it was mentioned in The New Statesman.  Now the government are pushing ahead with the CCDP and the queen’s speech will say that they intend to introduce legislation to implement the programme as soon as possible.

There are many things wrong with this programme of spying. It is impractical, expensive, a huge violation of our privacy, it places too much power in the hands of government, a government who we cannot trust. Making the full details of who talks to who available will allow security personnel to trawl through our data on fishing trips instead of requiring some basis for suspicion. Combined with the database for Universal Credit, which will be almost as comprehensive as the National Identity Register that was criticised so much by the Conservatives, and the centralisation of medical records, this provides private information about us all to the government on an unprecedented scale with huge scope for abuse and for life-destroying mistakes.

If these plans scare you, please write to your MP to tell them your objection to the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. You can use WriteToThem.com to send it if you don’t have their details. Please sign the Open Rights Group’s petition against government snooping and maybe consider joining the group too.

You should also look at ways of concealing your communications. This works best when you hide everything, innocent or not so that nothing is suspicious. I have written in the past about TOR from the point of view of helping other countries, but it is worth a read giving consideration to using it to protect your own privacy. The more technical might consider reading my thoughts on the concept of a paranoid computer.

Related stories

Here are news stories from before the 1st of April, for those who refuse to believe it.

Repost This Article
Filed Under: Politics, The digital age

Privacy Injunctions and holding the press to account

May 23, 2011 By 3 Comments

Believe it or not, I believe in personal privacy. I have more or less sacrificed mine by choice through my writing on this blog and through my use of twitter but for most of my life I tried very hard to keep most things about me private; certainly away from the internet. I explained in my blog post “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it” why I think that we are voluntarily giving up much of our right to keep our lives private but I still believe that we must have the option of privacy if we want it.

I also have much contempt for tabloid newspapers and celebrity gossip magazines that do all they can to expose the private lives of the rich and famous and the not-so-famous if they happen to have appeared in public life for a few minutes. While many desperate wannabe celebs may give their information out to be published voluntarily, many more do not and yet still find their image plastered all over the media and people everywhere discussing the intimate details of their sex lives or of their family. I find it particularly vile when tabloids discuss the private lives of ordinary people with the intention of destroying them or simply of making a titilating story. These stories often expose and condemn actions of ordinary civil servants, teachers and other underpaid hard-working people, destroying their lives just to create a tiny bit of outrage for their readers. (And that not even deserved – why shouldn’t civil servants and teachers enjoy the same right to go to the pub and drink that every other person enjoys?)

On the other hand, I do think it is right that the press expose relevant information when politicians and people with responsibility or power do something that compromises their job. That probably doesn’t include who they sleep with unless they committed a crime in doing so or endangered their impartiality.

How, then, do we call an end to this voyeuristic exposure of people’s lives in tabloids and gossip magazines while still allowing the proper reporting of things that actually affect us? Those who can afford it have turned to the courts and to injunctions. Injunctions have been used to order the media not to report on something that they have discovered such as a celebrity sex scandal. More recently we have had super injunctions which have prevented the press from even reporting that they are subject to an injunction. Then we have hyper-injunctions, where people subject to them are forbidden from talking to their own lawyer or even to their MP. John Hemming MP took great exception to this when he discovered it, and he used “Parliamentary Privilege” to expose an injunction by discussing it in parliament. Parliamentary privilege allows MPs to discuss anything they wish in a parliamentary debate without fear of prosecution. This of course is necessary for the law to function properly, however everything that is discussed in parliament is also recorded in Hansard and broadcast on BBC Parliament and therefore is in full public view. Once discussed in parliament the newspapers and tabloids felt free to discuss the injunction although judges have questioned whether that was legal or not.

In many cases the injunction has become the story and the injunction has fuelled the story and given publicity to the scandal behind it. I have heard from people over and over again that they had never heard of the people that were the subject of an injunction, but that now they had because of the injunction.

The important point is that once exposed, whether through discussion in parliament or through simple gossip and leaks, the internet and social media can get hold of the details and repeat them endlessly. Some of those repeating the information are not even in the UK and are not subject to UK courts so there is nothing that the courts can do to prevent this. In the most recent case twitter has been full of endless tweets and retweets about a certain footballer and Imogen Thomas, fuelled by outrage at his injunction. Some 30,000 people are estimated to have repeated this information. Clearly, in the age of social media, these injunctions are useless.

I think that injunctions have been misused. I believe they are supposed to protect innocent parties from damage caused by pointless publicity but they actually seem to be a tool of the rich. People like you and I cannot afford an injunction; a footballer or a media boss can. Being available only to the rich does not in itself make injunctions wrong, but being used simply to hide infidelity does seem to me to be wrong. If a footballer thought that his reputation would be damaged if people knew that he slept with a Z-list Big Brother contestant, he could have refrained from doing so.

What is the solution to irrelevant gossip destroying people’s lives then? I believe that we need much better oversight of the media industry. The Press Complaints Commission is a toothless, meaningless body that hardly ever rules against the newspapers. We need something much stronger, with much more power, and perhaps much more democratic. Newspapers need to be accountable for inaccurate or even fictional stories, and justice needs to be accessible to everyone and not just those that can afford a libel lawyer. We also must require corrections and apologies by newspapers to be of the same prominence as the original story. That means the an incorrect front page headline must be followed up by putting the correction in as a front page headline. A recent complaint about the Daily Mail making a factually incorrect claim that “Half of claimants are not asked to prove eligibility” has been “corrected” by simply publishing a letter of complaint at the bottom of the story on the website. While that may be seen by future viewers, nearly everyone has seen that story and moved on. No one is going to revisit the story just to see if there is a correction! The PCC considers this to have been “amicably resolved.”

Social media has made injunctions useless. Even the prime minister thinks so, so perhaps now we will see some change. We must have better regulation of the media while at the same time ensuring freedom of the press, which is absolutely necessary for a democratic society to function. We must reform the Press Complaints Commission, and we must stop this purchasing of the law by the rich.

 

Related Links

Forty Shades of Grey: Ryan Giggs Shagged Imogen Thomas

Telegraph: ‘Hyper-injunction’ stops you talking to MP

Guardian: Privacy law unsustainable in age of social media, says Cameron

Tentacles of Doom: You have zero privacy anyway, get over it

A True Story Of Daily Mail Lies

Baskers World: Sticks and Stones. Perhaps it’s time to go?

News Statesman: The weekend Twitter mocked the English Courts

 

 

 

Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age Tagged With: , ,

Technological Isolation

May 21, 2011 By 7 Comments

Overjoyed as I am at the fact that we have got a flat to go to and won’t be homeless at the end of the month, there is a problem. When we visited the new flat last week a quick check of all the mobile phones present showed that there was little or no mobile signal on 3, Orange, T-Mobile or O2. My dad did actually receive a call while we were there, but my identical phone on an identical network didn’t pick up a signal at all. Later I looked at coverage checkers at all those networks and Vodafone too. They all show that the signal strength there is “Outdoor only” which means that the signal is so poor that it can’t penetrate walls to allow reception inside the house. As for mobile internet or 3G and mobile broadband, forget it. Not gonna happen.

So having accepted that our mobile phones will probably only ever ring if left on the windowsill, I asked about the landline at the flat. Apparently there is a phone socket, but the current tenant doesn’t actually use it. It will therefore have to be re-connected by BT. Re-connection takes time, and broadband is likely to take ten days after that. In all likelihood, I will not have any telephone or internet for a couple of weeks after moving in. I will also be several miles from people that I know and in no fit state to walk or ride anywhere to see them. I’m going to be cut off.

No phone and no internet makes Steve go crazy.

Hi, I’m Steve, and I’m an internet addict!

Help me.
Repost This Article
Filed Under: The digital age
«Older Posts
%d bloggers like this: