Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

[AlexanderHanff]

Originally Posted by SelfProtection

Remove the "Prince of Darkness" quote, maybe put the box in a slightly different colour, discrimination of any kind I hope is precisely what this Group is about!

I presume you meant "is NOT about"?

Alexander Hanff

[phormwatch]

>You might want to include that chap in Korea, since it is evidence of Phorm expanding their market (or attempting to) into South Korea.

Point.

>Remove the "Prince of Darkness" quote,

Aww... do I have to? :P

[SelfProtection]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

I presume you meant "is NOT about"?

Alexander Hanff

Precisely, it's so easy to misquote when using a Keyboard.

[madslug]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHanff

You might want to include that chap in Korea, since it is evidence of Phorm expanding their market (or attempting to) into South Korea.

Alexander Hanff

Rather than the chap in Korea (isn't he an innocent in all this?) the names of the 2 marketing chaps who are looking for new markets in Korea - and, if anyone still has the info, the name of the telecom company that was being approached.

[warescouse]

Originally Posted by BadPhormula

cut...
Who opened the doors to the actual equipment rooms and who showed him which wires to tap into, surely Stratis Scleparis the CTO of BT Retail must have authorised a BT engineer to help Roman do the dirty deads?
...cut

When you work for BT you sign the official secrets act. It is not unusual to see complete strangers from time to time ( albeit infrequently ) coming into a building doing authorised work on equipment and you do not ask questions. If you are not privy to who is coming, you may even suspect they are not your normal BT engineer but you generally do not interfere. You assume they are some sort of 'specialist' unit acting legally. In really it would not be hard for someone to get away with a large black box on the floor once they are given access by somebody in authority. Nowadays most BT buildings are uninhabited and are only visited by floating engineers

I am not sure about all the JavaScript and the DNS request logs though. Perhaps at that point certain people were told not to ask any questions and to look away.

Are you sure about them signing the Official Secrets Act? To the best of my knowledge this was ended when BT was privatised.

I am covered by the OSA having worked in various government departments in the past and the act does not cover evey aspect of my work. External agencies are only required to sign the act in the event of performing duties in certain areas which come directly into contact with certain government business.

Originally Posted by phormwatch

>You might want to include that chap in Korea, since it is evidence of Phorm expanding their market (or attempting to) into South Korea.

Point.

>Remove the "Prince of Darkness" quote,

Aww... do I have to? :P

Kent actually said:

"I am not the Prince of Darkness"

Which was stating the bleedin obvious because there can only be the one:

Ossie Osbourne

Who has far more talent and shed loads more money than kent



EDIT: Ossie Osbourne Quote: "What d'you mean you've got bubble machines either side of the stage - I'm the fookin Prince of Darkness y'know!"

[warescouse]

Originally Posted by Peter N

Are you sure about them signing the Official Secrets Act? To the best of my knowledge this was ended when BT was privatised.

I am covered by the OSA having worked in various government departments in the past and the act does not cover evey aspect of my work. External agencies are only required to sign the act in the event of performing duties in certain areas which come directly into contact with certain government business.

Perhaps nowadays not all have to sign it. To be honest I am not too sure if everyone does. I was rightly or wrongly under the impression they did. I can only speak from my experience.

[centralmarketing]

Networking issues have keep me away from this thread all weekend.

No Simon Davies bashing please The man is in a hideous position. He is probably contractually obliged to deliver the PIA despite what his principles would have him do.

As far as ISPs go, it is your own responsibility to make sure they are behaving in an acceptable way.

Anyhow will try and post reasonably frequently but I am off to LA for a trip.

[Rchivist]

Originally Posted by warescouse

He doesn't seem to reply to emails about Phorm/Webwise .

Bruce Schneier -- Chief Security Technology Officer, BT, and an internationally-renowned author and founder of Counterpane Internet Security; also designer of the popular Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms.

Anybody else had replies to correspondence?

Incidental, I have read quite a few papers, articles, quotes and comments from this guy lately and unless his views have changed considerably over the last few months, my opinion is that this Phorm/WebWise relationship with BT may not be sitting comfortably with his beliefs.

I did get a couple of replies, no permission to post, and they were one liners. Impossible to decide what his attitude was or what action he would be taking but the replies were courteous.

[pseudonym]

Originally Posted by Paul Delaney

Kent actually said:

"I am not the Prince of Darkness"

He's not the Prince of Darkness, He's a very naughty boy.

Pat Hewitt's arrow should point to BT Group should it not?

Originally Posted by centralmarketing

No Simon Davies bashing please The man is in a hideous position. He is probably contractually obliged to deliver the PIA despite what his principles would have him do.

If we start deciding who are the good and bad guys based on the "I was only following orders" defence then we are becoming totally subjective.

I'm sure that there are people who would tell us what a nice guy Kent is and point to some charitable work that he's also done in his time but it's irrelevent to this issue.

If I question the behaviour of Phorm's staff, BT's staff, the ICO, ministers and MPs or anyone else who has been in any way involved in this no-one complains so there is no way that I can accept that it's right to exempt anyone including Simon Davies from criticism on the basis that it's "bashing".

Once we start making excuses or applying our own justification for some people but not others then we are guilty of discrimination and we will be guilty of bullying certain people because we chose to.

The role of Simon Davies in 80/20Thinking and Privacy International raises serious and relevent issues and needs to be open to discussion without prejudice from any quarter or from either side of the debate.

[HaveToBeAnon]

Originally Posted by BadPhormula

That is quite astonishing! How did Roman Gaufman (aka Hackeron, The Phorm Malware Hacker) managed to sneak into a BT network centre with a 19" rack full of electronic snooping equipment and leave it there like an Elephant in the room during the 2006 and 2007 spying trials?

Who opened the doors to the actual equipment rooms and who showed him which wires to tap into, surely Stratis Scleparis the CTO of BT Retail must have authorised a BT engineer to help Roman do the dirty deads? How come JR hasn't come across the details of at least 6 weeks of someone sneaking around inside the network and no one at BT control saw millions of rogue javascript injection traffic coming from one network section?

Its clear that a small number of BT people were involved, but a single extra server, who would notice? If you walked into a server room, could you tell what every box did? Maybe they were told it was a simple traffic monitoring server for a test project, but I'm guessing now. And especially if the server was designed right, appearing as just another conduit, who would question it?

Its easier to answer why the javascript injections weren't noticed - the network people monitor don't monitor page contents.

[centralmarketing]

Originally Posted by Peter N

If we start deciding who are the good and bad guys based on the "I was only following orders" defence then we are becoming totally subjective.

I'm sure that there are people who would tell us what a nice guy Kent is and point to some charitable work that he's also done in his time but it's irrelevent to this issue.

If I question the behaviour of Phorm's staff, BT's staff, the ICO, ministers and MPs or anyone else who has been in any way involved in this no-one complains so there is no way that I can accept that it's right to exempt anyone including Simon Davies from criticism on the basis that it's "bashing".

Once we start making excuses or applying our own justification for some people but not others then we are guilty of discrimination and we will be guilty of bullying certain people because we chose to.

The role of Simon Davies in 80/20Thinking and Privacy International raises serious and relevent issues and needs to be open to discussion without prejudice from any quarter or from either side of the debate.

To clarify my previous post. no ad hominem attacks on Simon Davies

To question the sense of 80/20 thinking entering into a commercial arrangement with Phorm is reasonable. Whether that then informs any future dealings a person might have with him is a different topic.

[Dephormation]

Originally Posted by JohnHorb

OK, how about a company box for 80/20, showing this outfit as having the PIA contract, then a 'person' box for Simon, connected to 80/20 on one side and PI on the other (or remove the PI reference altogether, if that helps avoid any arguments)

I vote for keeping them on there... because PI are never short of words to damn Google (and hurrah for that)... but not one cotton picking word to say about Phorm.

I find that very 'hard to comprehend' personally, for want of a different word.

And there's only one word I would expect to see in a PIA for mass surveillance. "Never".