Sunday 30 December 2012

The gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills want all consumers to store their personal data on the web so that they will be empowered.

The Department for Work and Pensions want 21 million claimants to store all their personal data on the web so that they can register for and claim Universal Credit.

The Government Digital Service want everyone to store their personal data on the web so that public services can become digital-by-default.

HMRC want to store all their local office records on the web so that they can save money.

Good idea?

You be the judge:
Britain 'losing the war on cyber crime' as costs hit £205 million

Britain is losing the war on internet crime, a leading police officer has admitted, after it emerged that cyber crime cost UK businesses around £205 million in lost revenue last year.

Commissioner Adrian Leppard, head of City of London police, said online fraud is rising “exponentially”, with the largest number of attacks originating from Eastern Europe and Russia.

In a stark warning to MPs earlier this month, he said police are struggling to keep up with increasingly sophisticated internet criminals.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the commons Home Affairs select committee, suggested to Mr Leppard that internet criminals “keep running rings around some of the best police officers in the country”, adding: “Are we winning this battle?”

Mr Leppard responded: “We are not winning. I do not think we are winning globally, and I think this nature of crime is rising exponentially.”

The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau has identified some 300 internet fraud gangs worldwide, Mr Leppard told MPs. Groups in 25 countries have chosen Britain as their main target ...

The gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills want all consumers to store their personal data on the web so that they will be empowered.

The Department for Work and Pensions want 21 million claimants to store all their personal data on the web so that they can register for and claim Universal Credit.

The Government Digital Service want everyone to store their personal data on the web so that public services can become digital-by-default.

HMRC want to store all their local office records on the web so that they can save money.

Good idea?

midata – dumb marketing

Do you feel resentful? Permanently? About everything?

Are you susceptible to blatant mercenary manipulation?

Are you a helpless consumer? You see it and you have to buy it?

Then midata is the scheme for you. Here's the Daily Mirror on 17 November 2012 trying to sell the scheme to you in its Money • Personal finance • Shopping section:
Quids in: How new Midata scheme will create your own personal data bank

Imagine always getting the cheapest deal on anything you buy, from clothes to energy bills and mobile phone contracts.

Imagine never having to worry about keeping receipts or warranty documents when you buy something new for your home.

And imagine being able to check that you are always buying the healthiest and cheapest food.

That is what the future may hold under a new Government scheme to make firms give you the data they keep on your spending habits.

At the moment firms can gather information about a customer and use it for themselves – without sharing it with the person whose details they have stored.

The scheme would allow people to access this information and download it on to their “midata” web account.

They could then key the data into consumer websites to find money-saving deals on everything from bank accounts to a big night out.

It is hoped the scheme will eventually include supermarkets to help customers eat more healthily by showing the fat and salt content as well as all the best food deals.

Consumer affairs minister Jo Swinson said that the “midata” scheme is about turning the tables on big retailers and putting power into the hands of consumers.

“Many businesses reap huge commercial benefits from the information they gather from consumers’ daily spending patterns,” she said.

“Why shouldn’t consumers also benefit from this by having access to their own data to enable them to make better choices?”
Perhaps when Lord Leveson's recommendations are implemented all journalism will be like this – from Whitehall PR handout to printed page/iNewspaper app with nary an intervening intellectual delay.

Until that day, remember that with midata the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) are luring you into a dangerous place, putting all your personal data on the web, in the cloud, with a trusted third party you've never met and have no reason to trust. You know that. You know that the web is a dangerous place. There's no reason to believe that midata will save you money or help the UK economy to grow. BIS know that. They're just doing GDS's dirty work for them. (GDS is the Government Digital Service.)

You may have some residual doubts. Perhaps the banks and the major retailers really do know so much about you that they can predict your every whim and take advantage of you? There are mooncalves who believe that. But do you?

You shouldn't.

Consider four cases:
  1. Three months ago DMossEsq booked a stay at a hotel in Madrid. He made the booking on the hotel's website. Then he opened the Guardian newspaper website. And there, alongside the article he wanted to read, was an advertisement for that very same hotel. Spooky? A bit. Maybe. Clearly Google was keeping track of his web browsing and serving up ads accordingly. But never mind spooky, it was just stupid. DMossEsq had already booked the hotel. The ad was too late. And useless.
  2. That's Google. How about a brilliant retailer like Amazon? Maybe they're better at this marketing lark? Not obviously. Some years ago, DMossEsq bought a TV through Amazon. Then Amazon started sending him emails trying to inveigle him into buying a TV. Too late. He'd already bought one. As Amazon should have known.
  3. OK, if not the retailers, how about the banks? They know just about everything DMossEsq spends his money on. Are they more effective? No. One of DMossEsq's bank accounts went dormant a few months ago, there had been no movement for several years. The bank informed him that they were going to close the account. We agreed where the balance should be transferred to, an active account, the money was duly transferred, the old account was duly closed – everything tickety-boo. Then a glossy sheet of marketing turned up in the post identifying the closed account and saying "you have been pre-selected for a Barclaycard Cashback Business credit card". Brilliant. A credit card on a closed account that the bank knew was closed because they'd just closed it.
  4. Do you know anyone who has ever bought anything from an ad-server? Goods? Services? Anything? Ever?
Do you still feel resentful at the power these suppliers have over you in virtue of their knowledge of your spending habits? That's what GDS and BIS want you to feel. They think you're stupid.

Or do you just feel sorry about all us schmuks paying higher retail prices because hotels, shops and banks are wasting their budget on useless marketing services from search engine companies, on-line retailers and whoever Barclays have outsourced their direct marketing to?

midata – dumb marketing

Do you feel resentful? Permanently? About everything?

Are you susceptible to blatant mercenary manipulation?

Are you a helpless consumer? You see it and you have to buy it?

Friday 28 December 2012

Jo Swinson and Randi Zuckerberg – accelerating towards a digital meltdown

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook. His sister Randi works in the marketing department. She used Facebook to circulate a family photograph to her friends. She was shocked to discover that the photograph was promptly published for all and sundry to see. The story is covered by Forbes magazine, 26 December 2012 @ 8:52 a.m., 904,546 views at the time of writing:
Oops. Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Has A Private Facebook Photo Go Public.

Being a member of the Facebook founder’s family won’t protect you from having your privacy breached on the social network. On Tuesday night, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister to Facebook’s CEO — posted a photo from a family gathering to Facebook (of course), showing her sisters using Facebook’s new Snapchat-esque ’Poke’ app on their phones, with Mark Zuckerberg watching with a confused look on his face. It popped up on the Facebook newsfeed of mediaite Callie Schweitzer who subscribes to Zuckerberg. Assuming the photo was a public one, Schweitzer tweeted it to her nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. Zuckerberg was not pleased.
Mr Zuckerberg may not be the only one with a confused look on his face – what does it all mean? Forbes explain the unfortunate incident thus:
The Facebook Privacy Setting That Tripped Up Randi Zuckerberg

... Callie Schweitzer ... thought the photo was a public one when she spotted it in her newsfeed. In fact, she saw it because she was friends with a person tagged in the photo, one of the Zuckerberg sisters. She was able to see the photo because of a privacy setting that you may or may not realize exists. When you post a photo, you have a range of options as to who gets to see it, from the generic ones — Public, Friends, Fill-In-Your-Schoo-Here, Fill-In-Your-Work-Here — to any lists you may have created — Creepers, Ex-Boyfriends, People I barely remember, Family, People I secretly hate, etc. You may choose “Friends,” as Randi Zuckerberg did, and think your photos can then only be seen by your friends… but you’d be wrong.
It looks as though Ms Zuckerberg made a mistake. As though she got her privacy settings wrong. That wouldn't be surprising. Designing the protocol even for fairly primitive social intercourse is hard work and it can take years of negotiation before the experts involved agree. Then you've got to educate people how to use the protocol. That takes time, too.

Facebook doesn't have years. More like months or even weeks. The company publishes dozens of pages of information about Facebook's privacy settings. People may or may not read them and/or understand them. Mistakes are bound to be made.

Some readers will remember 36 years ago when IBM came up with Resource Access Control Facility, RACF – a system to make sure that only properly authorised users could access any given network resources. It was hard work getting it right then. It still is. The difficulty is unavoidable. Wherever access control is required, wherever there are privacy settings to be made, wherever you need to grant or withhold permission, expect problems.

Wherever. That includes midata, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) initiative which is meant to "empower" consumers.

BIS want us all to maintain Personal Data Stores (PDSs) on the web. They claim that we shall have control over the data in our PDSs. We shall be able, they say, to grant access to our data to some suppliers and withhold it from others. Some apps will have permission to use our data. Others won't.

BIS's favoured PDS supplier seems to be Mydex and according to their website:
Mydex gives individuals back control over their personal data
Really? Like Facebook? Storing all our data on the web with an unknown third party gives us control over it? How? What is there to stop us all ending up in the embarrassing situation of Randi Zuckerberg with all our personal data published for all to see?

If we agree to use PDSs, nothing.

These questions were put to Ed Davey a year ago when he was the first minister in charge of midata. How will midata put consumers in control? He didn't answer. Neither did his officials. The same questions have been recently put to Jo Swinson*, the latest minister in charge. Same response. And they have been put to Mydex several times over the past 18 months. Still no answer.

It's not just BIS promising to give us control over our own data. The UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) are doing the same, Digital public services: putting the citizen in charge, not the state. Seven so-called "identity providers" have been appointed to put us citizens in charge, Mydex being one of them.

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken is the chief executive of GDS and the senior responsible officer owner for the UK government's Identity Assurance Programme. The idea is to create a platform involving these identity providers from which we can all access public services. As Bracken says:
Accelerating towards a digital future

... We will look to improve user journeys across the platform, add more transactional services and offer richer functionality, especially social features ... Our design and creative teams will ensure a simple, consistent and beautiful experience for all users ...
No reason has ever been advanced to believe GDS's claim that accessing public services can be just as easy and fun as using Facebook and Google and Amazon and eBay – the rigours of RACF persist, however jauntily GDS pretend that we can all be put in charge. And as Randi Zuckerberg's experience makes clear, it isn't always easy and fun using Facebook.

----------

* Jo Swinson has now kindly promised to respond:

Jo Swinson and Randi Zuckerberg – accelerating towards a digital meltdown

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook. His sister Randi works in the marketing department. She used Facebook to circulate a family photograph to her friends. She was shocked to discover that the photograph was promptly published for all and sundry to see. The story is covered by Forbes magazine, 26 December 2012 @ 8:52 a.m., 904,546 views at the time of writing:
Oops. Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Has A Private Facebook Photo Go Public.

Being a member of the Facebook founder’s family won’t protect you from having your privacy breached on the social network. On Tuesday night, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister to Facebook’s CEO — posted a photo from a family gathering to Facebook (of course), showing her sisters using Facebook’s new Snapchat-esque ’Poke’ app on their phones, with Mark Zuckerberg watching with a confused look on his face. It popped up on the Facebook newsfeed of mediaite Callie Schweitzer who subscribes to Zuckerberg. Assuming the photo was a public one, Schweitzer tweeted it to her nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. Zuckerberg was not pleased.

Wednesday 19 December 2012

Cloud computing supplier raises doubts about cloud computing suppliers – "suicidal mission with no exit"

It should be made clear that Mr Peter Dawes-Huish, the chief executive officer of LinuxIT, is in favour of cloud computing. "G-Cloud is a great opportunity for government", he is quoted as saying in computing.co.uk.

This has provoked fury in the Twittersphere where Chris Haslam has re-Tweeted Mark_Anthony's scorn: "RT @Mark_Antony: Worst article on the @G_Cloud_UK I have ever had the misfortune to read: http://bit.ly/XzwKw0  - shameful drivel...”".

The shameful drivel Mr Dawes-Huish is guilty of uttering is presumably where he described G-Cloud as a military mission "with an entry route and no exit route" that is "not just dangerous, but suicide".

G-Cloud, of course, is the government cloud, a military mission in the safe hands of the Cabinet Office and the Government Procurement Service (GPS). GPS, if you remember, are the people whose procurement service broke down because it didn't have enough space to store the tenders submitted by prospective suppliers in response to GPS's invitation.

In the worst article ever, Messrs Haslam and Mark_Anthony had the further misfortune to read "if you move your applications and data to a cloud service in the proprietary model then you'll be held to ransom" and "some government departments indicate that using G-Cloud is illegal, or against government policy". Drivel. Shameful.

HMRC's decision to store local tax office data in the cloud is perfectly sensible. So is the Government Digital Service's decision to host GOV.UK in the cloud.

Let there be no doubt about that, both decisions have been made with the support of GPS. There is nothing untoward in the fact that the supplier concerned in each case, Skyscape Cloud Services Ltd, is owned 100% by just one individual (when last checked on Companies House) and provides a map on the web how to get to its data centre. That will not stay CESG's hand for a moment, they will be pleased to confirm that Skyscape meets all security requirements.

Cloud computing is the flavour of the month, Mr Dawes-Huish suggests. It is based on the attractions of the utility model, you only pay for the IT services you actually use. The utility model is in some disrepute in the gas and electricity world at the moment but it would be shameful drivel to suggest that the same fate awaits cloud computing – quasi-monopolists ramping prices, consumers helpless in the face of.

What happens, though, Mr Dawes-Huish asks, when there is a new flavour of the month round at GPS Towers? Will the Gadarene lemmings who have signed up with G-Cloud be able to escape and take advantage of the new flavour? Or will HMRC's records and the entire single government domain GOV.UK be locked in to/held hostage by last month's flavour?

Cloud computing supplier raises doubts about cloud computing suppliers – "suicidal mission with no exit"

It should be made clear that Mr Peter Dawes-Huish, the chief executive officer of LinuxIT, is in favour of cloud computing. "G-Cloud is a great opportunity for government", he is quoted as saying in computing.co.uk.

This has provoked fury in the Twittersphere where Chris Haslam has re-Tweeted Mark_Anthony's scorn: "RT @Mark_Antony: Worst article on the @G_Cloud_UK I have ever had the misfortune to read: http://bit.ly/XzwKw0  - shameful drivel...”".

The shameful drivel Mr Dawes-Huish is guilty of uttering is presumably where he described G-Cloud as a military mission "with an entry route and no exit route" that is "not just dangerous, but suicide".

G-Cloud, of course, is the government cloud, a military mission in the safe hands of the Cabinet Office and the Government Procurement Service (GPS). GPS, if you remember, are the people whose procurement service broke down because it didn't have enough space to store the tenders submitted by prospective suppliers in response to GPS's invitation.

Monday 17 December 2012

GDS deal death blow to midata

The Government Digital Service (GDS) are currently re-writing all central government websites and moving them to https://www.gov.uk (GOV.UK).

No-one knows why.

Just because the exercise is pointless doesn't mean that it has no effect.

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) is a recent victim. The content previously available at http://www.bis.gov.uk should now be available at GOV.UK and browsing old content should redirect you automatically to the new location.

That's the idea.

But it doesn't work with the famous BIS press release A midata future: 10 ways it could shape your choices. That used to be available at http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/consumer-issues/consumer-empowerment/personal-data/midata-future-10-ways-it-could-shape-your-choices. Click on that link now and, however hard you try, you're not going to find the press release, not on GOV.UK, nowhere.

Apart from DMossEsq.com. Luckily there's a copy there, at http://www.dmossesq.com/2012/11/identity-providers-electronic-mary.html So it is still possible to read about the great benefits of midata, BIS's grand plan to satisfy the pent-up demand among the public for a "contracts and warranties dashboard". But no thanks to the butterfingers at GDS.

midata is utterly footling anyway, you may say, depriving it of the oxygen of the BIS publicity machine is neither here nor there.

Quite right, as long as it's only that one press release that's gone missing during GDS's clumsy spring clean.

But is it? What else has gone missing? Maybe something important?

GDS deal death blow to midata

The Government Digital Service (GDS) are currently re-writing all central government websites and moving them to https://www.gov.uk (GOV.UK).

No-one knows why.

Just because the exercise is pointless doesn't mean that it has no effect.