As some of you know, I've sent a couple of FoI requests to the ICO and Home Office to understand their relationship with Phorm, and the curious reluctance of regulators like Police, ICO, Home Office to prosecute BT.
I don't know whether this is significant or not; it may be one of life's curious but meaningless co-incidences.
In 2007 a terrorist attack occured at
Glasgow Airport, on 30 June 2007.
The best information I have to date is that BT conducted the second secret trials of Phorm systems between the dates 17 June to 7 July 2007 (which obviously overlaps the date on which that attack occurred). During this trial, supposedly, no advertising messages were served to the public.
After the attack, the UK was placed on a critical security alert level (where critical means an attack is expected imminently). The threat level was not reduced until July 4 2007, when it was lowered to severe where it remains today (where severe means an attack is highly likely).
During the 6 months that followed the trials, despite the critical/severe alert level, the Home Office Covert Investigation Policy Team and Office for Security and Counter Terrorism were engaged in providing legal advice to Phorm (a supplier of rootkits and advertising systems, developed in Moscow).
For the avoidance of doubt, let me make very clear I've certainly never seen nothing in the information released to me to date that suggests a link between intelligence gathering and Phorm. And the Home Office have been keen to emphasise to me there is no link.
But I can't make sense of what I know at present.
Don't get me wrong, fighting terrorists is a laudible goal, and one I wholly support. But what were the Home Office thinking, when the UK was and remains in a state of critical/severe threat level? And when Phorm presents such a severe security and privacy risk to the UK?
Office for Security and Counter Terrorism
www.security.homeoffice.gov.uk
The OCST is the product of the recent government shake-up
to streamline who does what in the British counter-terrorism
structure. It takes the lead in the government’s “CONTEST”
counter-terrorism strategy and oversees much of the work that
NaCTSO, CPNI, MI5, JTAC, and others do to help business mitigate
the home-grown terrorist threat.You will also be able to find on
their website the “proscribed terror list” which will provide
a complete listing of all the organisations considered “terrorist”
by the UK government