[AlexanderHanff]

I have gone out on a bit of a limb here, but hey you never know unless you ask

Dear Mr Gates,

I am writing to you from the UK to bring to your attention a very high profile issue regarding privacy.

I am not sure if you aware, but over the past 3 months plans by the top 3 UK ISPs (BT, Virgin Media and Car Phone Warehouse) to deploy Deep Packet Inspection technology by Phorm Inc. have caused a storm with leading academics, privacy advocates, press, media, MPs, MEPs, European Commission, Peers in the House of Lords and the general public as a whole. The plan is to use the technology to intercept all web communications sent over port 80 using the HTTP protocol, in order to build profiles of their customers and then sell these details to advertisers via Phorm for behavioural advertising.

This technology (used for this purpose) has been stated as illegal by legal experts and politicians and breaches the public's fundamental human rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 7 and 8) and as a result of the negative publicity over the past 3 months, Phorm Inc's share price has plummeted by 70% reducing their market capital by some $600 million USD. But this is not enough and plans are still ongoing to deploy this technology across 70% of the UK broadband market.

I have personally been leading the campaign against Phorm and have made numerous appearances in the press and media as well as attending a Privacy Impact Assessment public meeting at the London School of Economics in April as a guest speaker. I am now in the process of organising a public protest rally at the BT annual shareholder's meeting in London on July 16th. I recently published my dissertation on the legal issues surrounding covert trials BT carried out on as many as 138 000 customers during 2006/2007 (which you can find linked to at the end of this email) and this protest will address not only the future plans to deploy Phorm but also these covert trials.

I am just one person and I have very little money (I am about to graduate from university and have a child and mortgage) so I am seeking corporate sponsorship for the event to help publicise it in the national press, print material for the event and hire equipment to allow us to have guest speakers at the event; this is the purpose of my email to you.

I feel this would be a very good publicity move for Microsoft or yourself personally if you choose to sponsor the event in your own name as opposed to Microsoft. I have already managed to achieve significant press interest and if I were to announce a major sponsor it would undoubtedly make news headlines across the country and probably Europe and the US as well.

If you have any question or would like to discuss this further with me, please do not hesitate to email me on this address. I have included a number of links below to give you some further information.

My Dissertation - http://www.paladine.org.uk/phorm_paper.pdf
Comprehensive list of articles by Chris Williams at The Register - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/
Video of my speech at London School of Economics - http://www.tobymeres.net/ (bottom video in the list)
Foundation for Information Policy Research papers - http://www.fipr.org/press/080423phorm.html
Event Web Site - http://nodpi.org
News article on the event - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...phorm_protest/

Quote from Kim Cameron - Chief Architect of Identity in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft

"I have to admit to a sense of horror when I realized the system rewards ISPs for abusing their trusted role in the Internet by improperly posing as other peoples’ domains in order to create fraudulent cookies and place them on users machines."
source: http://www.identityblog.com/?p=951

I thank you for your time on this matter and look forward to hearing your response. Of course if you do choose to sponsor the event, full credit will be given on the web site and printed material, furthermore, if Microsoft would like to send a representative to speak out against this intrusive technology at the event, I would be honoured to add them to the confirmed speakers list.

Sincerely,

Alexander Hanff
University of Cumbria

Alexander Hanff