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

Informed Consent when it comes to minors is a tricky bit of case law. Generally kids over the age of 12 are considered old enough to give informed consent unless it is in matters of medical decisions (including mental health). I wrote a paper (2 actually) which cited the relevant case law for informed consent from minors, I will dig them out and add the relevant case law to this post. The papers I wrote were on the Biometric Fingerprinting of School Children scandal and the Teen Screen scandal. Watch this space I will post the details shortly.

OK here we go I will cite directly from my paper on Teen Screen:

"Under British Law children are not deemed as legally competent to give consent unless they can be judged to 'understand' the research; this is known as 'Gillick competence' (also known as Fraser Competence)... In 1985 it was determined by the House of Lords that children could only give consent on matters of health care of medical treatment given the following conditions:

'Children under 16 can truly consent to treatment only if they understand its nature, purpose and hazards'
'To be able to consent, the child should also have an understanding and appreciation of the consequences of: (1) the treatment, (2) a failure of treatment, (3) alternative courses of action and (4) inaction' (Kings College London, 2004)"

To my knowledge this is the only current case law with regards to informed consent and minors, so whereas I am not saying informed consent doesn't count on non medical issues, to my knowledge it has never been tested in case law in the UK.

I have some better information with regards Informed Consent in my Biometric Fingerprinting of School Children paper but unfortunately my original paper was kept by my department for it's merits and the digital copy is on a drive which is not currently plugged in to anything so I can't reference it at this time. Informed Consent was a big issues when the biometric fingerprinting systems were introduced in UK schools because they were being used on children as young as 6. I will try to find some more info later today but I have to go to a meeting shortly.

Alexander Hanff

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

Thanks. Interesting, I only raised the point because it may have been another line of "attack" - don't spend more time on this unless you think it may help.

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

You remember that VM's "Internet Product Architect", Fergal Butler, asked for feedback about VM's Phorm webpage?
And then vanished? (He's off work for very good personal reasons.)

Well this morning saw this illuminating comment to the "virginmedia.feedback" newsgroup that made me chuckle:-
Now if *he* doesn't want to know...
:erm:

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

yet another companys selling its wares to corporations.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...social-network
"
Advertisers data mine social network sites

Watching the defectives

By Sylvie Barak: Wednesday, 26 March 2008, 5:08 PM



IN AN AGE where nothing is immune to analytics, market research firm, Network Insights, has jumped on the bandwagon by pimping its social network data tracking services to corporate clients.
...
CNET reports that on Wednesday, Networked Insights re-launched its previous Customer Intelligence Platform, which is an interface that big business use to spy on what social not-workers are saying about them.

They can happily use the interface to gather loads of customer feedback on their brands, directly from sites like MySpace and Twitter, without ever having to ask the actual customer what they thought of the products or those of their competitors.

The system can even purportedly measure the direct "influence" of a particular community member.

As if that form of data mining (or spying, rather) wasn’t enough, Network Insights is also building...
"

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

You were not alone - I also saw that comment. That was the second thing to bring a broad grin to my face today, the first being Phorms share price at what appears an all time low...

However, in my own experience, the views of engineering staff, no matter how senior, are seldom taken onboard by management.

---------- Post added at 13:01 ---------- Previous post was at 12:56 ----------

Did you hear that sound just then? - I think it may have been George Orwell turning in his grave...

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

Well Gillick competence is generally used as a test where children wish to make an informed decision independently of their legal guardians (parents mostly). Generally when it comes to minors it is considered that informed consent from their guardians is enough.

I don't agree with this as I stand by the Statement of Ethical Practice for the British Sociological Association (http://www.britsoc.co.uk/equality/St...l+Practice.htm). I don't agree that any decisions should be made for anyone by another person (unless they are not mentally competent) without an attempt to explain the implications of that consent to the person for whom the consent is being given.

It is easy to slide into a groove where we assume we know what our children want despite having never discussed the issue with them, which is dangerous given how many adults in the world rarely understand the implications of giving their consent in the first place. The danger of giving consent as a guardian is that we could potentially be making a decision which has a long term effect on our children that as an adult they might not have consented to in the first place.

Other issues surrounding normalisation of politically or socially dubious issues could lead to a situation where civil rights and liberties are automatically waved by the next generation simply because they have been raised in an environment where this is normal (such as clicking EULAs without reading, agreeing to credit contracts which don't conform with Consumer Credit Act without reading them, Privacy Issues (how many times have you heard the comment 'If you have nothing to hide what are you worried about' in response to privacy issues?)).

So yes informed consent is very important speaking as a sociologist (well hopefully given I graduate in 2 months) but unfortunately guardians are often seen as the legal authority with regards to consent in matters of law.

Alexander Hanff

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

It's a funny one that.

I haven't read the original article, but on the face of it I don't really have a massive problem with that one, as long as all of the data they're collecting is publicly available - it seems to be pretty much an automated equivalent of getting someone to surf myspace/facebook/forums/etc all day to find out what people are saying about your company.

The company creating the software might be on dodgy grounds with regards to copyright I suppose, but I don't have a big moral problem with companies wanting to find out what people are saying about them in public. It gets a bit sinister when they start talking about identifying the influence of individual people, mind.

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

How very very telling.

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

Just think, since this thread has been going, Phorm has lost 42% of it's share price!

:-)

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

They are still one spot off from the worst mover of the month, so we have work to do yet ;)

Alexander Hanff

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

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...ont-want-phorm

A very stern message to Virgin Media from us - its time they started taking heed and listening.

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

I looked at all the trades for the last 8 hours - there's a lot of selling going on.

http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/deta...&timeframe=480

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

No offence intended here but it needs to be better written and should be published as an Open Letter.

Just my opinion and I appreciate someone has worked hard on it but the grammar is not great (and no I am not claiming to be a grammar expert, mine is pretty appalling).

Maybe some english and grammar experts could add their input and maybe refine the article into an Open Letter?

Alexander Hanff

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

www.flyertalk.com

---------- Post added at 10:36 ---------- Previous post was at 10:29 ----------

Again this is quite interesting as Disney here in the US, not sure about in Paris / ROW use fingerprint technology to manage the risk that multiday passes, season passes and Florida resident discounts (which are pretty sweet) are not used by anyone but the first user of the card. When you pick the card up or go through the gates the first time a RH Index print is scanned and you then need to verify that on subsequent visits.

I consent to that because well instead of $75 a day to visit the parcs the price reduces to as low as $22 a day (part of that what you get in return for giving up private information) but interesting just the same.
http://www.discountthemeparkvacation...FQEGxwodtXc6Rg
2 day ticket $148 ($74/day) / 10 day ticket $218 ($22/day)

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

There is a very sinister side to that as well though. Say for example a child was abducted from the park; the police/FBI would be able to force Disney to give them access to their biometrics. If they can be matched to fingerprints found at the "scene" you are likely to find you are interrogated even if you had nothing to do with it, simply because at some point in the past (maybe not even the same day) you put your hand on a railing or something.

Once the FBI have those biometrics, they are not going to give them up easily.

In the UK it is even more sinister because you will then be "obliged" to give dna when you get questioned, which will then get added automatically to the national DNA register even if you are not charged and it is an absolute nightmare trying to get those dna records expunged.

I am 100% against biometric databases (and DNA database) because of the serious implications they have with regards civil liberties and human rights. People are often wrongly accused of a crime they did not commit, in the case of a child abduction the consequences of such an erroneous accusation could be catastrophic such as suicide or lynch mobbing (resulting in murder or severe physical harm), family breakdowns and divorce, loss of job, damage to your reputation etc.

Alexander Hanff