I've emailed Lord Triesman as follows:
Dear Lord Triesman
I am writing to you to follow up some comments you made in a BBC news article from October 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7059881.stm
The article was about internet file sharing and included an interesting comment by the ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association)
Quote from article:
The Internet Service Providers Association has always maintained that it cannot be held responsible for illegal peer-to-peer traffic because it is "merely a conduit" of such material.
"ISPA does not support abuses of copyright and intellectual property theft," said an ISPA spokesman.
He said: "However, ISPs cannot monitor or record the type of information passed over their network. ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope."
"ISPs deal with many more packets of data each day than postal services and data protection legislation actually prevents ISPs from looking at the content of the packets sent," he added.
End of quote from article
You indicated in that article that " intellectual property theft would not be tolerated."
You may be aware of a new tracking and interception technology called Webwise, being promoted by a company called Phorm.Inc (formerly spyware and rootkit producers 121Media), CEO Kent Ertugrul.
Kent Ertugrul is claiming "we can see the whole internet" and his technology actually employs Deep Packet Inspection, to intercept and profile ALL packets in the data stream between ISP customers and the network and the websites they visit.
So the claim by ISP's that they "cannot inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network" is now no longer true. There is a technology, marketed by Phorm for exactly this process, being considered by the three largest ISP's in the UK, covering at least 75% of the consumer ISP market - the companies are BT (who have already secretly and illegally trialled this technology without customer (or website owner) informed consent, in fact without any consent at all), and Virgin Media and TalkTalk (owned by Carphone Warehouse).
You can see Phorm's own claims for this product at their website,
www.phorm.com and
www.webwise.net
You can see BT's own explanations of this technology at
http://webwise.bt.com/webwise/index.html
This involves, according to privacy watchdog FIPR, a number of illegalities, regarding the interception and redirection of internet traffic at the most basic level of the internet, known as Layer 7, as well as the abuse of the intellectual content rights of webmasters who are going to find that when a Webwise linked customer visits their site, the entire unique personal data exchange between the site and the visitor will be profiled by Phorm/Webwise, to enable Phorm/Webwise to target ads at the site visitor based on their analysis of content of the website and the site visitors overall browsing habits. Phorm will be reading (without the informed consent of the webmaster, and without the webmaster being given a way of selectively excluding or blocking the Webwise profiling) and profiling the content of the website, for their own financial advantage.
ICO have clearly indicated that such technology requires consumer opt-IN.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/about_us/news_...e_and_oie.aspx
In the secret BT trials of 2006 and 2007 (initially denied by BT in response to customer and even press enquiries) there was NO customer or content provider consent. In the systems currently being promoted by Phorm/Webwise, the marketing model preferred by Kent Ertugrul is opt-OUT, clearly contrary to the ICO statement.
In the light of your comments on the issue of file sharing, I thought you might be interested in pursuing this matter and in particular urging the government to respond to the questions being asked (21st April) about this technology by Lord Northesk of the Science and Technology Committee
http://www.publications.parliament.u..._2140_wad.html
and to the Early Day Motion in the Commons, promoted by Don Foster MP
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDe...52&SESSION=891
Further concern is caused by the fact that BT carried out secret trials of this technology and so far no action has been taken against what appears to be several breaches of Data Protection legislation, Fraud Act, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and Protection of Electronic Communications regulations. Attempts by affected BT customers who suffered actual harm as a result of the 2006 and 2007 secret BT Webwise trials to report this matter to their local police and also to central regulators such as the ICO, have resulted in complainants being referred to the Home Office who have insisted that is not their remit, and to this date, NO action has been taken by any regulatory authority about these alleged breaches of legislation by BT.
It appears that while teenage file sharers are quickly arrested and prosecuted or subject to civil action, a large corporation like BT can break the law with impunity.
Further research on Phorm and Webwise may be done by entering "phorm" into the search box at
www.theregister.co.uk or at the BBC news site. The current search list is here
Register -
http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=phorm
BBC -
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/sear...oolbar&q=phorm
There are a number of useful links here
FIPR legal analysis of this technology -
http://www.fipr.org/080423phormlegal.pdf
Legal analysis of BT secret trials in 2006 and 2007 -
http://www.paladine.org.uk/phorm_paper.pdf
Technical analysis of the webwise technology by Dr Richard Clayton of Cambridge University
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/080404phorm.pdf
General link farm on Phorm/Webwise
http://www.inphormationdesk.org/attributions.htm
Thank you very much for your attention in this matter.
I will be publishing this email on internet forums and hope to publish your reply unless you indicate to the contrary.
If anyone else wants to do likewise? Remember Lord Triesman is a member of the government.
Join CF
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for R Jones. Good work there. I will be emailing Lord Triesman this afternoon.
