Quote:
Originally Posted by phormwatch
I keep saying, this is why we need to have a press conference.
We only need a few select 'representatives' - say five - and an audience. We can make clear our aims to the wider press as well as Parliament.
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The risk of having a press conference is it makes the opposition to ISP level DPI look like the opposition comes from a single organisation which plays right into Kent's hands.
You also have to face the fact that a press conference requires the press to attend and that is unlikely to happen. The UK general press stays well away from technical issues because it makes poor copy for the papers and their almost total lack of interest in the privacy debate is not about to change.
The only way that this subject is going to get greater attention is to put the technical discussions onto the back-boiler and go straight for the single most basic question for the average person - "Do you want someone reading through ever single thing you do on the internet?"
Very few people would want the government to do that even if it was for supposed security reasons and yet they are not getting fired up about a company doing it for profit.
Instead of aiming for some big National coverage and talking about DPI, e-mail headers and cookies it would be better to go for grass-roots support. Write to local papers and contact local radio stations with the simple message that these huge ISPs are going to read internet usage. Get ordinary people to ask themselves if they would accept this from the Royal Mail and if not why should ISPs be any different.
Go back to all of the questions and point that appeared on these forums back in February and March when the whole subject came to light and you'll realise that it was these simple points that got all of us involved. It is these points that will fire the debate for the average Joe & Josephine who will only be put off by all of the techy stuff. Avoid the use of buzz words and phrases and stick to plain English - "reading" rather than "intercepting" for example.
Go for local or national radio phone-ins rather than trying to get straight on to the BBC tea-time news. Most of all thry to get the 15,000 people who signed the Downing St petition involved and let the press and politicians see this as a subject that actually does concern the general public rather than being an intellectual debate amongst a group of geeks and stop Phorm from twisting the core issue away from basic privacy and towards the information being anonymously used.