A sign of The Times

The Times is no longer available online for free. Murdoch's minions have decided to use the pay-as-you-read method. There is a free period but you still have to "register". Do I want Murdoch knowing my business? I think I'll give him a miss for now, but as they say, never say never. But the thought of helping this anti-British mogul is never appealing. "You British can be such...." and so on!

Internet woes!

I'm beginning to realise the internet is a mixed blessing, or rather a curate's egg. On Wednesday it was all down and out for me. Virgin Media were operating on the cables or something. I really think the system is overloaded. Some nights it's virtually impossible to get on. Traffic is the problem apparently. It's a bit like gridlock on a motorway. The M25 comes to mind.

I had a nice chat with Sanjay in India. He thought my wireless problems were down to the kind of weather we get in England. I'm not so convinced. Maybe it's the moon. I'll ask Lunar Jim to fix it. I'm off the wireless now, partly because I'm told my little office has a big radiator in it and this can affect the router. Are routers any better than transistor radios? I remember sticking a coathanger aerial into my transistor and attaching it to a radiator in order to hear Radio Caroline loud and clear. I got that tip from a know-it-all. I need a know-it-all now!

Is Sanjay right? Is the radiator reasoning right? Or is the system just not keeping up with demand? It seems OK now as I'm typing away, but what about tomorrow? Another day, I suppose.

Big Sister is watching you!

The government's wonderfully worded Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will make available our emails to any public body which makes a lawful request for them. From March all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year. On BBC Breakfast News this was discussed. Some naive emailer responded with the classic "if you haven't done anything illegal what have you to hide" line. But this is stupidy of the first degree.

As the Earl of Northesk, a Conservative peer on the House of Lords science and technology committee, says "This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life. People have to worry about the scale, the virtuality of your life being exposed to about 500 public authorities". He is very right. This is not about some avunculur schoolmaster looking out for his pupils, or a priest taking in information of a sensitive nature and not revealing it to third parties. This is about simple data with not a lot of clarity (no content will be revealed, yet!) being washed around Whitehall for transient ministers and contract staff in government agencies to wade through. What exactly they will make of it I do not know.

Emails can be sent to anybody. Are we to ask about the moral fibre of every recipient of the emails we send out? I'm waiting for the knock on the door because some person the police or security service is interviewing has me on their email list. It's absurd nonsense. This will tell them nothing. I suspect it is more about securing data for their own purposes. It will waste time weeding out all the people who "haven't done anything illegal so haven't anything to hide".

The Earl of Northesk also says "Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it, it's very difficult to recover." Hear, hear to that!

Birmingham bans unbelieving web browsing!

Birmingham City Council has got itself into a mess over website viewing by its staff. It's OK to view the antics of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the assembled bishops at the Lambeth Conference but not that of a group of druids or a coven of witches. The council has a Bluecoat Software computer system which allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

It doesn't mean anything at all. If a heathen is temporarily interested in Catholic doctrines is that any different from a Catholic glancing into a site about the paranormal? Not at all. This is just about a council that's been sold a computer system that sounded good when the rep blurted out the details. Probably no questions were asked, so they got no answers. It's par for the course in modern UK.

A city council statement said the authority had a "long-standing internet usage policy for staff". It added, "We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage. The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons." Does it need such a gobbledegook statement. No, it doesn't. Just a simple policy of no viewing sites which are deemed inappropriate.

Where has the notion of trust and responsibility gone? Surely not into the brains of a corporation-sponsored computer! We've seen what can happen to computers when in the hands of civil servants and local government officers.

If a child protection officer views an inappropriate site, is the software so sophiscated as to think "Umm, he's looking at that for his job and not his kicks"? I don't think so. Birmingham City Council is facing a possible lawsuit from the National Secular Society. I'd like to see them try, not because I support their views generally, but because they have a point here.

Birmingham should think again.