Quote:
Originally Posted by Green Disease
First time poster long time lurker. I have followed this issue for several months, after first reading about it on El reg. I have had Virgin Media broadband for several years. In the whole it has been pretty good, although the past 6 months I have seen a downturn in the service. Connection issues such as DNS, DHCP problems, blank pages loading. The other day I had a blank browser page suddenly pop-up with an URL I had looked at earlier in the day. Had me paranoid, so did virus scan etc..
Virgin Media have been a little too quiet for my liking in regard to how deep they are in with Phorm. From Virgins own site "we have run a small technical lab test on a private internal network, not connected to the internet". Interesting how they add the last 5 words. Not sure how much they would glean from such a test.
If they were to introduce Webwise, they would lose all 4 services we have with them, even though it would cost a small fortune to move to other suppliers. I would make sure the whole estate knows about the scumware.
Clearly BT have jumped in with both feet, and are tied into a least doing a large scale trial. They probably have already purchased the servers required, and are currently gathering dust somewhere. I have read I few comments about whether Phorm kit is still sat on the Kingston RAS. Has anyone asked them that question?
I have been looking at the illegal downloads issue and found a link to the consultation paper that BERR have produced:-http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file47139.pdf
Alternative regulatory options considered:
Option A4: Requiring that ISPs allow the installation of filtering equipment
that will block infringing content (to reduce the level of copyright infringement taking
place over the internet) or requiring ISPs themselves to install filtering equipment that
will block infringing content.
I take it Phorms system could quite easily do this.
Hmmm interesting conversation between ISP's and government departments.
ISP: You want us to crack down on illegal activity, we have been in touch with a company called Phorm that have the technology called webwise which can see everything users visit on the internet, and there fore allows us to block infringing content. We gain revenue from the targeted ads we provide to our customers, but it also allows us to do the biding of your paymasters so its in both our interests.
Government: Sounds good to me, we cant see anything wrong with this, you'll be providing a valuable service to your customers......and to the government.
I find it rather unnerving that the government seems to be turning a blind eye to Webwise/Phorm, there's something bigger afoot. I will continue following this issue, as I believe that Webwise and other similar projects will break the WWW.
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Welcome and great find. I'll study that document today. I think it opens up a new route for some focussed FOI requests to DBERR and also for informing MP's. I'll certainly be telling mine.
---------- Post added at 08:59 ---------- Previous post was at 08:37 ----------
It occurs to me - is anyone in touch with the security services? I know it sounds daft - but it seems to me that although this "sounds" like it might have the security services at the back of it (snoop on the internet- great idea) the reality might be that it is all a politicians idea, (think of a conversation between Jim Hacker PM and Arnold - the retired cabinet secretary, publicly heading up the Freedom of Information campaign but secretly representing an entirely different agenda - Hacker in favour of DPI, and Arnold explaining gently to him that introducing DPI would be a very BAD idea) - maybe the real spooks are aghast - because of the massive level of public distrust it generates, and because it will lead to a rise in encrypted communication which they simply can't deal with.
Anyone got experience in talking to the spooks?
Counter terrorism - Special Branch - MI5 and MI6 "SIS" etc.
I think the sort of letter needed would be a clear summary of the situation so far (including the DBERR documents about filesharing), a very simple explanation of the kit and what it does, and an explanation of the likely outcome in terms of loss of trust in the internet and the rise in encrypted communication (which would become cheaper and more widely available if Phorm is introduced widely) with the implications of that, for the costs and feasibility of legitimate "routine" surveillance activity.
Any thoughts?