Digital Policy


Recent Posts

What the Letzgo Hunting vigilantes can teach the Home Office

Police should consider using the internet via the front door instead of this obsessive focus on blanket surveillance

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One of my many criticisms of this and recent governments' obsession with online snooping is that it diverts resources away from other policing methods.Governments are obsessed with creating (or restoring, depending on who you talk to) a power imbalance they...

April 25, 2013 11:43 AM Read Full Post

Keith Vaz is wrong, the O'Dwyer case is not at all like Gary McKinnon's

The US claim of sovereignty is far weaker

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Last week the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Keith Vaz wrote to the Home Secretary over the case of Sheffield student Richard O'Dwyer, currently facing extradition to the US on copyright charges relating to a website he ran...

October 19, 2012 12:36 PM Read Full Post

The Huawei risk should be managable

Pwning portions of our network is a one hit wonder of limited value

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Last week the US House Intelligence Committee declared Huawei a "national security threat".  The damning indictment came in a year the Chinese telco equipment manufacturer was banned from tendering on a large national broadband contract in Australia and prompted a very...

October 15, 2012 10:45 AM Read Full Post

Chancellor's Shares for Employee Rights Swap is not as mad as it sounds...

... But is ripe for abuse

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A pretty contentious policy was announced today by the Chancellor.  Employees will be able to forfeit some employment rights in exchange for a stake in the firm they work for. The BBC's Robert Peston was quick to point out:Note that...

October 8, 2012 3:06 PM Read Full Post

The big 4G win for UK Ltd

A year after publishing a report on the economic benefits of 4G, James Firth praises a speedier timetable for fast mobile data in the UK

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Almost exactly a year ago I pressed a short paper I co-authored into the hands of my MP and then Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt at a meeting in the constituency about rural broadband.Estimating the cost to UK businesses of slow mobile broadband...

October 3, 2012 10:42 AM Read Full Post

MP confirms government to repeal website blocking provisions of DEA

There are plenty of reasons to cheer this small but positive step in the right direction

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To be brutally frank I was contemplating a hatchet job on LiCambridge MP Julian Huppert (Photo credit: Wikipedia)b Dem MP Julian Huppert's announcement today that the government was pressing ahead with its plans to repeal the website blocking provisions [ss17...

September 25, 2012 3:27 PM Read Full Post

Megaupload/Dotcom case gets even weirder as NZ PM calls for inquiry into use of NZ security services and wiretaps

Mission creep: copyright protection = cyber-security = national security?

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Overnight, a freaky press release that, if it wasn't hosted on the official government website (named after the 'Beehive' government building in Wellington) I would have immediately dismissed as fake:Prime Minister John Key today announced he has requested an inquiry...

September 24, 2012 9:42 AM Read Full Post

Now Facebook wants YOU to grass-up friends not using their real name

Freedom to go under a pseudonym is, miraculously, one freedom to survive the security lock-down of the previous decade. Now Facebook wants to change this.

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My friend and IT, IP and Media Law researcher specialising in privacy and autonomy Paul Bernal has a very good blog on what seems at first glance to be a crazy move from Facebook in their ongoing war on pseudonyms.Facebook has,...

September 21, 2012 12:29 PM Read Full Post

UK.gov NOT squatting on £1bn unused IPv4 addresses

Twitter provides likely answer before the ink sets on MP's Parliamentary question tabled on the subject

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The Register today ran an interesting article highlighting emerging evidence that the UK government may be sitting on an unused block of over 16 million (IPv4) IP addresses in the 51.0.0.0/8 address block.The block was noticed by blogger and programmer John Graham-Cumming...

September 18, 2012 4:28 PM Read Full Post

The missed opportunity in the closure of torrent tracker UK Nova

The closure of yet another website providing access to copyrighted TV content is no longer news, but the unwillingness of copyright owners to work with an "ethical" tracker site could be a massive own goal

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The closure of UK Nova comes in the same month that former TV links site owner Anton Vickerman was sentenced to 4 years in jail by Newcastle Crown Court. Facing the stick of lengthy jail terms it's not surprising the owners of...

August 29, 2012 3:28 PM Read Full Post

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