The Department of Health has been Katie Davisless for some time now. That, and GDS's fantasy strategy

Does Sir David still provide mental health services in England?

12 October 2011, Less for more:

First Katie worked for James and Ian. Then Ian left and so did Katie. When James left as well, Katie stopped working for Ian and went to work for James. Then James left and Sarah took over. There was no room for Katie so she went back to working for Ian. Until Christine left and now Katie finds herself working for David. Or is it the other way around? ... In 2007 she moved to the Identity & Passport Service (IPS), where she was appointed Executive Director of Strategy. After three years of her strategy, IPS imploded ... Had Ian Watmore at last managed to assert his authority over the Department of Health? Who knows. But one way and another, Christine Connelly was replaced by Katie Davis ...

Last seen, Katie Davis was the Cabinet Office's representative at the heart of the Department of Health. Her task? To stop money pouring down the NHS's National Programme for IT (NPfIT, £12 billion) and to get Sir David Nicholson under control.

Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE is Chief Executive of the English National Health Service and Chief Executive of the NHS Commissioning Board. "Nicholson joined the NHS on graduation, and then the Communist Party of Great Britain. He remained a member of the party until 1983". That's what it says in his Wikipedia entry and presumably it's there to be quoted.

DMossEsq must confess to a certain horrified admiration for Sir David. Never met him but he comes across as an old bruiser, a survivor, a winner, he's taken on all comers including the Prime Minister and he remains the undefeated commie, the Lonsdale Belt-holder of Whitehall.

How did Katie get on?

Don't be silly. Magic doesn't happen. Her LinkedIn entry reads:

Katie Davis Retired September 2012 – Present (3 months) Director General and Managing Director NHS Informatics UK Department of Health Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry July 2011 – August 2012 (1 year 2 months) London, United Kingdom ...

Gone. Like James Hall. And Ian Watmore, "the Vicar's Husband", as he calls himself. And Christine Connelly. All gone.

They're gone and Sir David's still there. And still nobody's dupe.

The government are trying to get their Electoral Registration and Administration Bill through parliament. In the vain hope of achieving computerised identity assurance they want to cross-match DWP's hopeless National Insurance number database with other central government files. HMRC have fallen in with it. And the Department for Education. But you won't see any NHS records being used. You won't see Sir David associating himself with this illegal activity. Or with losers.

And now the Government Digital Service (GDS) have published their Government Digital Strategy. This strategy covers all of central government and GDS are in charge. They say. But what's this we read on p.4?

The strategy does not cover local government services, the NHS, or ways to increase the digital capability of UK citizens. It also does not deal with the expansion of the broadband network which is being led by Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Once again, clean hands, the wily Sir David is leaving the losers to lose all by themselves.

Government Digital Strategy is Volume 2 of Martha Lane Fox's October 2010 Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution. Here's a taste of what it said in Volume 1:

Directgov should own the citizen experience of digital public services and be tasked with driving a 'service culture' across government which could, for example, challenge any policy and practice that undermines good service design ... It seems to me that the time is now to use the Internet to shift the lead in the design of services from the policy and legal teams to the end users ... Directgov SWAT teams ... should be given a remit to support and challenge departments and agencies ... We must give these SWAT teams the necessary support to challenge any policy and legal barriers which stop services being designed around user needs ... I recommend that all digital teams in the Cabinet Office - including Digital Delivery, Digital Engagement and Directgov - are brought together under a new CEO for Digital. This person should have the controls and powers to gain absolute authority over the user experience across all government online services ... and the power to direct all government online spend. The CEO for Digital should also have the controls and powers to direct set and enforce standards across government departments ...

It's all a bit Machiavellian. Or just plain batty. You wouldn't think Ms Lane Fox's ideas would get through to government policy.

But they have. There they all are in GDS's bossy little Government Digital Strategy, a self-important document that actually struts as you read it:

This strategy sets out how the government will become digital by default ... All departments will ensure that they have the right levels of digital capability in-house, including specialist skills. Cabinet Office will support improved digital capability across departments ... [not round at the Department of Health, they won't] Cabinet Office will help departments to recruit suitably skilled individuals. Newly appointed Service Managers will be supported by Cabinet Office through a specialist training programme run by the Government Digital Service. This will include the hands-on process of designing and prototyping a digital service ... Government digital services are inconsistent and often do not meet the standards that users expect. To ensure that users receive a consistently high-quality digital experience from government, Cabinet Office will develop a service standard for all digital services. No new or redesigned service will go live unless they meet this standard ... Cabinet Office will lead in the definition and delivery of a new suite of common technology platforms which will underpin the new generation of digital services ... Cabinet Office will lead in the definition and delivery of a range of common cross-government technology platforms, in consultation with departments to ensure they meet business needs. These will underpin the new generation of digital services. Departments will be expected to use these for new and redesigned services, unless a specific case for exemption is agreed ... Government Digital Service will: • offer specialist digital expertise to interpret existing legislation In a few areas, laws made before the digital age can severely constrain the development of simple, convenient digital services. For example, HMRC have to provide tax coding notifications on paper rather than by electronic channels. Cabinet Office will work with departments to identify these potential barriers and ways to remove them ... [name three Constitutional lawyers working at GDS] Transactional services and information are the primary focus of our digital by default approach ... [in that case it's a shame that GDS can't provide any identity assurance because without that they can't support any transactions] The guidance and tools supporting the [digital by default] standard will help service owners to design trusted, cost-effective government services that are embraced by users and meet their needs first time. Government Digital Service will ensure there is a common understanding across government of what outcomes are required to meet the standard. This understanding must be shared by everyone involved in the development and life of a new or redesigned digital service ... A new Digital Leaders Network was established in early 2012 to drive forward the digital agenda across government. The network is run by the Government Digital Service ...

This document of GDS's is the result of a class of computer-obsessed juveniles talking to themselves and making plans which presuppose powers that they simply don't possess. God knows what a psychiatrist would make of it. Does Sir David still provide mental health services in England?

The Department of Health has been Katie Davisless for some time now. That, and GDS's fantasy strategy

Does Sir David still provide mental health services in England?

12 October 2011, Less for more:

First Katie worked for James and Ian. Then Ian left and so did Katie. When James left as well, Katie stopped working for Ian and went to work for James. Then James left and Sarah took over. There was no room for Katie so she went back to working for Ian. Until Christine left and now Katie finds herself working for David. Or is it the other way around? ... In 2007 she moved to the Identity & Passport Service (IPS), where she was appointed Executive Director of Strategy. After three years of her strategy, IPS imploded ... Had Ian Watmore at last managed to assert his authority over the Department of Health? Who knows. But one way and another, Christine Connelly was replaced by Katie Davis ...

Last seen, Katie Davis was the Cabinet Office's representative at the heart of the Department of Health. Her task? To stop money pouring down the NHS's National Programme for IT (NPfIT, £12 billion) and to get Sir David Nicholson under control.

Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE is Chief Executive of the English National Health Service and Chief Executive of the NHS Commissioning Board. "Nicholson joined the NHS on graduation, and then the Communist Party of Great Britain. He remained a member of the party until 1983". That's what it says in his Wikipedia entry and presumably it's there to be quoted.

UC soon to be/already is Steve Doverless

The Department for Work and Pensions, DWP's Universal Credit project is in difficulties.

We know that.

The political problems are hard enough to solve.

Whitehall has created additional problems:

• Turf wars between DWP and GDS, the Government Digital Service – Universal Credit and the December putsch
• Dependence on a non-existent identity assurance service – GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet, but of the Internet
• Failure to develop an assisted digital scheme – The Government Digital Service, no time to fit in Universal Credit, too busy
• Adoption of a cloud computing strategy which will ensure that Whitehall loses control of our data – Cloud computing turns IT into a utility, and that's a good thing?

And the difficulties are increasing.

6 February 2012, Universal Credit, the Whitehall computer game in which real money is used to provide imaginary services to a virtual public:

Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, played it by the Lomax book and took his Universal Credit idea to his officials and let them work out the details. It's not a bad idea, Universal Credit. And what horse designed by a committee did his officials come up with? Let Steve Dover tell you himself, otherwise you won't believe it. Mr Dover is director of major programmes at DWP and he is quoted in the Guardian today as saying: The starting point, I said to our telephony collaboration teams based in Newcastle, was just think of a contact centre, but it has got no people in it and think of an operating model that has got no back office, and start from there.

Now we learn that Steve Dover is being replaced. And not just him. Up to five senior UC people are on the way out.

What's going on? Is good sense returning to UC under Terry Moran? Or is the chaos getting worse?

Several million people caught in the poverty trap created by our badly designed benefits systems in the UK deserve to know the answer.

----------

Philip Virgo, 6 November 2012, Has the sky fallen in on DWP's big bang implementation plans for Universal Credit?

UC soon to be/already is Steve Doverless

The Department for Work and Pensions, DWP's Universal Credit project is in difficulties.

We know that.

The political problems are hard enough to solve.

Whitehall has created additional problems:

• Turf wars between DWP and GDS, the Government Digital Service – Universal Credit and the December putsch
• Dependence on a non-existent identity assurance service – GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet, but of the Internet
• Failure to develop an assisted digital scheme – The Government Digital Service, no time to fit in Universal Credit, too busy
• Adoption of a cloud computing strategy which will ensure that Whitehall loses control of our data – Cloud computing turns IT into a utility, and that's a good thing?

And the difficulties are increasing.

Government Digital Service (GDS), your comment is awaiting moderation 1

GDS have published their digital strategy. Francis Maude says that digital by default will save between £1.7 billion p.a. and £1.8 billion p.a. How much longer are people going to fall for that gambit?

Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the home civil service and permanent secretary at DCLG, has penned a tribute to GDS, the strategy and digital by default.

At about 1 o'clock this afternoon, DMossEsq submitted a comment on Sir Bob's post. Unpublished on GDS's blog, it's still awaiting moderation. With GDS you can wait forever:

dmossesq # Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation. Dear Sir Bob Digital Strategy Re your paras.2 and 3, publishing a strategy does not of itself improve government digital services. Re your paras.4 and 5, it’s hardly a new idea that it’s best if the departments have someone on board who knows what they’re talking about or that you can’t run a business without accurate and up to date management information. Re your para.6, GOV.UK simply replaces Directgov and Business Link and, so far at least, marks no change in the 24-hour on-line convenience that those two websites have provided to the public for years. Re your para.7, the public have long experience of Whitehall promises being made that digitisation would save money and long experience of those promises being broken. Scepticism is the order of the day. Mr Maude promised that digital by default will bring savings of between £1.7 billion and £1.8 billion p.a. in his speech yesterday. How many public servants does that equate to? How far advanced are your negotiations with the public service unions to make these lay-offs? Will the savings be passed back to the public or does Whitehall plan to spend the money itself? Re your para.8, the medium is not the message, form is not content and in the same spirit of scepticism above I trust that you are not as impressed by a small change in format as perhaps some people are, who have retained from childhood the facility to be impressed by meretricious ornamentation. I would welcome your comments on the matters above. I propose to consider your para.1 and the need for Whitehall to maintain its values in a separate letter. Yours sincerely David Moss 07/11/2012

Government Digital Service (GDS), your comment is awaiting moderation 1

GDS have published their digital strategy. Francis Maude says that digital by default will save between £1.7 billion p.a. and £1.8 billion p.a. How much longer are people going to fall for that gambit?

Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the home civil service and permanent secretary at DCLG, has penned a tribute to GDS, the strategy and digital by default.

At about 1 o'clock this afternoon, DMossEsq submitted a comment on Sir Bob's post. Unpublished on GDS's blog, it's still awaiting moderation. With GDS you can wait forever:

Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?

For years now
the Cabinet Office have claimed
that they don't want to create a single, central national identity register.

Falsely, as it turns out.

They want to store a single, central identity-assured electoral roll
with the credit referencing agencies.

Lord Maxton: ... The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in particular, roused me to my feet as I have one simple point to make. The Bill is designed to stop fraud and ought to be designed to encourage people to vote, and there is one simple way to deal with that. Unfortunately this House and the other place both voted to get rid of that simple way of dealing with this matter, which was the introduction of an identity card-a general register of all people. It would have been a compulsory identity card for everyone. It would have ensured that everyone was on the central register and we would not be in this position. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, led the campaign, as much as anybody did, against ID cards, which was a major error on his part. By the way, the technology on ID cards, or smart cards, has moved on extensively even since we abolished the proposal less than two years ago. Now we could have a smart card that would ensure that people were on a central register and the register itself would divide and set up online registers for the whole of the country. Each constituency would have a register, not completed by a registration officer or by individual registration but automatically: by pressing a series of buttons on a computer it would come up with the right answers ...

The Electoral Registration and Administration Bill began its committee stage last Monday, 29 October 2012. Lord Maxton's contribution ignores the fact that the ID cards scheme failed despite enjoying eight years, 2002-10, of unstinting political support from the European Commission, Whitehall, two Prime Ministers and five Home Secretaries, and despite eight years of hosing unlimited public money at management consultants, software houses and biometrics experts. It's just not that easy, my lord.

One of the lessons of 2002-10 has not been lost on John Reid:

Lord Reid of Cardowan: I am very grateful to the noble Lord [Lord Rennard] for giving way. I am not in principle against what he is suggesting but, as someone who bears the scars on my back of false accusations when in government of an intention to mine data, match data and cross-match data, can he tell us when the Liberal party came to the conclusion that it was perfectly legitimate to mine and cross-match the data from DVLA, from pensions, from national insurance, which the noble Lord mentioned, and from transport? Once you have created this precedent there will be very good reasons for using it, presumably with data from HMRC and others, right across the spectrum so it is not something that should be entered upon lightly.

According to the explanatory notes on the Bill, the objective is to "reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration". Draft legislation for Individual Electoral Registration (IER) was published on 30 June 2011. In addition to the legislation, there was an impact assessment and a statutory instrument on the pilot schemes needed for the data-matching that Lord Reid was talking about.

The first day's debate in the committee stage of the Bill is a magnificent cornucopia of Constitutional issues:

• Their lordships debated cross-referencing the electoral roll with DWP's National Insurance number database (NINO), with the equivalent database at the Department for Social Development (Northern Ireland), with HMRC's tax credit and child benefit databases, with Royal Mail's redirection service and with several Department for Education and Department for Transport databases. This is unprecedented. Is that legal? No. According to the impact assessment (p.2), "Key assumptions/sensitivities/risks: Data matching – national rollout would require primary legislation.".
• Did the pilot schemes suggest that it's worth introducing new primary legislation? Don't know. Haven't seen the results. Don't know how the tests were carried out. What were the protocols? What would constitute success? Was failure possible?
• Given that IER is meant to be voluntary, why are their lordships mooting civil penalties for failing to register? (Where have we come across that before? ID cards. Supposed to be voluntary. But anyone applying for a passport would automatically be entered on the National Identity Register. So they're not voluntary. Yes they are, says Charles Clarke, Home Secretary at the time, March 2006, because you don't have to apply for a passport, do you?)
• Why isn't the Department of Health involved?
• Is it true that the Department for Transport has pulled out?
• ...

There's too much there for a single post. Too many nuggets to mine. Let's pick on just one:

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, before I address the amendments directly, I take up some of the broader issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Reid, which were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, in our first Committee session before dinner. They are extremely wide issues and I agree that they are important. It was for that precise reason that I went to be briefed by the head of the Government Digital Service last week. As the noble Lord, Lord Reid, pointed out, as we move towards cloud computing, the questions of where data are stored, to what uses they are put and how far they are shared become a very delicate and important area. I also flag up that the question of what is a public database and what is a private one becomes a little more difficult than it is now. There is a whole set of issues there that we need to return to in other contexts because this has the potential to transform the way in which society, the economy and government work as a whole. I was assured that the protocols that now govern what is called identity verification-the very limited use of data sharing to ask, "Is this person real?"-are strong and, as used by the credit agencies and others, provide firewalls which prevent too much information being shared. Some of us might differ on how far we would be happy for the DWP, HMRC and the National Health Service to share information on what people claim to be earning, claiming or whatever; those questions will also come into that debate. I strongly agree that this is an extremely important long-term issue. However, if I understand it correctly-and I am at the absolute outer limits of my knowledge of computers at this point-I am told that one does not need to amass new databases. That is the difference between what is now beginning to happen and the old ID debate ...

So we're all moving "towards cloud computing", are we? How carefully did ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, "the head of the Government Digital Service", explain to Lord Wallace, a man "at the absolute outer limits of [his] knowledge of computers", that cloud computing means losing control of your data?

Is it right for Lord Wallace to be "assured that the protocols that now govern what is called identity verification ... are strong"? No-one else believes that. Why does ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken believe it?

Did ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken take Lord Wallace through GPG45? That's the good practice guide, no.45, issued by CESG, on Validating and Verifying the Identity of an Individual in Support of HMG Online Services. Do Facebook and Twitter meet the criteria set out there? Or didn't the matter crop up in conversation?

52. In time other forms of verification may become available which means that a person may not be required to produce their NINO and DOB when making a new application to register – the legislation has been drafted with this in mind. On 18 May 2011 the Government announced plans for the development of a consistent, customer-centric approach to digital identity assurance across all public services. The intention is to create a market of certified identity assurance services delivered by a range of private sector and mutualised suppliers so that people will be able to use the service of their choice to prove their identity when accessing any public service. The draft legislation will allow digital identity assurance to be used in future to verify an application to be added to the electoral register. Additionally it may be possible for verification to take place at local authority level using similar local arrangements. We will monitor these developments with a view to improving the verification process if it helps to simplify the system and encourages more people to register.

That's what it says in the draft legislation. Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken was meant to announce who would be the UK's so-called "identity providers" by 30 September 2012. We're still waiting.

He'd better hurry up. He's promised to have an identity assurance service "operational" for 21 million Universal Credit claimants by Spring 2013.

Some of the proposed suppliers of identity assurance, the social networks like Facebook, the custodians of the strong protocols Lord Wallace is hoping for, have been irremediably debunked by Whitehall's own security experts who recommend lying to them if you don't want to suffer identity fraud.

And the others? The banks? And the mobile phone suppliers? Do they now see the wisdom of the Department of Health in not getting involved in the first place? Will they now follow the example of the Department for Transport and withdraw?

13. Maintaining a more accurate and complete register will deliver benefits beyond addressing the potential for fraud in elections. The full register is already made available under current legislation to a number of government organisations for official purposes, and the edited version of the full register is available to anyone for any purpose. In addition the full register is also supplied to credit reference agencies to assist financial institutions in the UK to verify a person’s identity when processing an application for credit or opening a bank account.

Damian Green MP feeding disk drives
from the failed UK ID card scheme
and the credibility of the Home Office
into an industrial shredder
Photograph: SA Mathieson/Guardian

For years now, the Cabinet Office have claimed that they've learnt the lesson, they don't want to create a single, central national identity register. Now look. Look at para.13 of the draft legislation. They just want to keep a full copy of the identity-assured electoral roll stored with the credit referencing agencies. Who, if they've got any sense, and they have, will extract themselves from this eye of newt goulash faster than a speeding ballot.

The debate in the Lords was intelligent and informed, elegant and patient, and tirelessly open. An example to us all.

Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?

For years now
the Cabinet Office have claimed
that they don't want to create a single, central national identity register.

Falsely, as it turns out.

They want to store a single, central identity-assured electoral roll
with the credit referencing agencies.

Lord Maxton: ... The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in particular, roused me to my feet as I have one simple point to make. The Bill is designed to stop fraud and ought to be designed to encourage people to vote, and there is one simple way to deal with that. Unfortunately this House and the other place both voted to get rid of that simple way of dealing with this matter, which was the introduction of an identity card-a general register of all people. It would have been a compulsory identity card for everyone. It would have ensured that everyone was on the central register and we would not be in this position. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, led the campaign, as much as anybody did, against ID cards, which was a major error on his part. By the way, the technology on ID cards, or smart cards, has moved on extensively even since we abolished the proposal less than two years ago. Now we could have a smart card that would ensure that people were on a central register and the register itself would divide and set up online registers for the whole of the country. Each constituency would have a register, not completed by a registration officer or by individual registration but automatically: by pressing a series of buttons on a computer it would come up with the right answers ...

The Electoral Registration and Administration Bill began its committee stage last Monday, 29 October 2012. Lord Maxton's contribution ignores the fact that the ID cards scheme failed despite enjoying eight years, 2002-10, of unstinting political support from the European Commission, Whitehall, two Prime Ministers and five Home Secretaries, and despite eight years of hosing unlimited public money at management consultants, software houses and biometrics experts. It's just not that easy, my lord.

Cloud computing – how to lose control of your data #94

It's Sunday. Give us a break
Cloud computing is supposed to be cheaper than the alternatives. How many times have we heard that some new management fashion will save us money? How many times can we fall for it? How many times has it turned out to be true? Exactly.

Cloud computing is meant to be more efficient, more reliable, more trusted, more flexible, more scalable, more resilient, more modern, more transformative, ... In each case, the claim is either false or, at best, unproven.

No need to keep banging on about it, the point has been made.

Sign up for cloud computing, like what Her Majesty's Government has in the UK, and you lose control of your data. You want to go out of business? Go ahead. Up to you. Stick your data in the cloud.

We know that. It's all a bit relentless. It's Sunday. Give us a break.

The gift that keeps on giving
Actually, there's another reason to avoid cloud computing, one that hasn't been mentioned so far on DMossEsq, a new answer to the question why is it foolish to store your data in the cloud.

Kim Dotcom, mega

Still very young, Mr Schmitz

or Dotcom

or Kimble (c.f. The Fugitive)

will be all of 39 years old

on 21 January 2013

6'6" tall and weighing 290lb, the only reason Kim Dotcom (né Schmitz) didn't go to prison after being found guilty on 11 counts of fraud was that ... he was under age at the time of the offences and the judge put it all down to youthful foolishness.

Like most teenagers, he had hacked into NASA. And Citibank. He had also found out how to make international phone calls for free and, unlike most teenagers, had a nice little sideline selling access to these free telecommunications facilities.

He got off the 11 fraud charges with a suspended sentence. And the 10 data espionage charges. But when the insider trading charges started to look a bit serious, he decamped to Thailand. The Thais extradited him back to Germany and he finally served a stretch there. Five months on remand. Quite right, too.

Mr Dotcom loves playing computer games, particularly Modern Warfare 3.

That is not a recognised sign of intellectual achievement, you say.

As you wish. But some people are better at problem-solving than others. How good are you? There are over 15 million players of Modern Warfare 3 worldwide and Mr D was ranked #1, only falling to #2 after a sojourn in a New Zealand prison, about which, more anon.

He also loves cars. Driving in Morocco one day, he became impatient with the car in front and rammed it off the road. These things happen. How was he to know it was being driven by the chief of police?

Kim next set up shop in Hong Kong, picked up a few fines for false declarations to the stock exchange and for marketing a hedge fund that had many fine qualities, like artificial intelligence, but didn't happen to exist and the good ship Dotcom next struck land in New Zealand.

Megaupload
But before that, while in Hong Kong, he had set up a real company, Megaupload. A cloud services company, with 150 staff and and revenues of $175 million p.a., Megaupload had 60 million users, or 180 million according to some reports, it was ranked #13 among all the websites in the world and accounted for 4% of web traffic. Worldwide.

If New Zealand had any qualms about Kim Dotcom's application for residence, the thought of uploading some his money into New Zealand seems to have allayed them. He rented the most expensive house in the country, he laid on a $600,000 fireworks display in Auckland and he donated $50,000 to the mayor's re-election campaign.

Mr Dotcom was rich.

There was a problem when the mayor later had trouble remembering this donation. What would you do, you who have never played Modern Warfare 3? Kim recorded a song called Amnesia. See? Problem-solving. Some people are good at it.

Megaupload was so big that it rented no less than 1,100 servers from another cloud services company, Carpathia, to store all the data people kept handing over.

Got it. You're going to lecture us about contracts. Users may have a contract with one cloud services supplier (e.g. Megaupload) but, if that company hands the users' data over to another cloud services supplier (e.g. Carpathia) with whom the users have no contract, then they have lost control of their data. Ha!

Wrong. Everyone knows that already. That's not a new reason to beware the perils of cloud computing. Think again ...

Hollywood loves a swashbuckler
Not this one they don't.

According to Hollywood, Megaupload has cost them $500 million. It was a seat of piracy, Hollywood's intellectual property rights were being stolen by felons illegally uploading films and TV programs to Megaupload.

That's just my point, you say, you shouldn't be making light of the activities of a seedy criminal.

No-one is making light of anything, least of all Mr Dotcom, who may be a criminal but he is entertaining as well, both, the one doesn't exclude the other.

And not so fast with the "criminal". His Megaupload crimes are alleged. He hasn't been found guilty of them. There's a law. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which protects the suppliers of a website from the illegal activities of the users of that website. Without that, Sergey Brin of Google would spend his whole time in prison because of all the porn on YouTube. So stick that in your pipe, Roundhead, smoke it and inhale.

DMCA and the evidence against Kim Dotcom were presumably considered by a grand jury and on 5 January 2012 he was indicted on charges of online piracy, racketeering, copyright infringement, and money laundering. That was in Virginia. In the US.
But Mr Dotcom was in New Zealand.

I know. You're going to hold forth on RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the law they said would only ever be used against suspected gangsters, when opponents of its introduction suggested that its powers were so useful that prosecutors would be unable to resist the temptation to charge everyone with offences under RICO. No, no, said the legislators, that will never happen. But of course it has.

You mean like the surveillance laws here in the UK? The ones they said would only ever be used against suspected terrorists and now local councils use them for fly-tipping offences and dogs fouling the pavement and parents lying about living in the catchment area for desirable schools? No. Completely wrong. Everyone already knows about that. The question is what new reason is there to believe that it's foolish to store your data in the cloud? If all else fails, as teachers used to tell their students, try reading the question.

Due process
The indictments are in Virginia and Dotcom's in Auckland. What would Clarice Sparrow Starling do?

She would probably have a quiet word with her opposite numbers in New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). Point out how much appreciated it would be if they could help in this matter. She might maybe exert a bit of pressure. US tariffs on New Zealand lamb imports could be lifted. Or they could be increased. Extraordinary rendition? That kind of thing.

Kim Dotcom appears in court in Auckland in January.
The US wants New Zealand to extradite him
to face internet piracy allegations.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Whatever the FBI said, GCSB went into action immediately. They put Dotcom under surveillance and two weeks later, on 19 January 2012, they got the assault rifles out, started up the helicopter and armed police invaded the Dotcom manor, impounded his possessions right, left and centre, arrested Kim, locked him in prison and froze his assets worldwide.

Which made it hard for him to pay his rent. Or his lawyers. When he was finally allowed access to a bit of his money, the lawyers argued successfully that it was against the law for GCSB to put New Zealand citizens under surveillance, including Kim Dotcom, and that the arrest warrant had been wrongly drafted – too non-specific.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand has subsequently apologised for these mistakes to Mr Dotcom personally and to New Zealanders in general and he has confirmed that GCSB officers mistakenly allowed FBI officers, who happened coincidentally to be present, to take copies of Mega Kim's impounded disk drives.

Prime Minister Key's re-election prospects are in doubt. So are President Obama's. Kim Dotcom blames him personally for his enforced stay in Mt Eden prison, Auckland.

At some point, Mrs Dotcom gave birth to their fourth and fifth children, girl twins, and Kim toyed with the idea of sending the placenta to the FBI to check for pirated DNA, another solution that would never have occurred to you, would it, but let's leave him there, he's clearly quite big enough to look after himself, and turn our attention instead to Kyle Goodwin.

OhioSportsNet
Back in January, the FBI took control of all Megaupload's domain names and their computers and they told Carpathia to keep the 1,100 servers Megaupload rented from them untouched.

The FBI also managed to freeze Megaupload's bank accounts.

Given that Megaupload is a Hong Kong company, how?

Bloomberg think it's something to do with one of Mr Dotcom's fellow defendants having a US address and being an "alter-ego" of the company. Any port in a storm.

Thing is, among the 60 million users of Megaupload, just a couple of them may not be copyright pirates or pornographers. Some of them, like Kyle Goodwin, may run their own legitimate business in Ohio, filming sports events for local high schools, and streaming the footage to sports coaches and the doting parents of the athletes. And Mr Goodwin would kind of like his footage back, please, he's got a business to run, Megaupload have no objection to the return of his data and neither have Carpathia but the courts have:

• Who says it's his data, the US government asks? Or as their lawyers put it: “Mr. Goodwin has yet to demonstrate whether he has an interest in any property seized by the government ... the mere fact that he may claim, for example, an initial copyright to a version of the files he uploaded is not sufficient to establish that he has an ownership interest in the property that is the subject of this motion”.
• Suppose we look at what is allegedly Mr Goodwin's data and find he's been infringing copyright? Then what? If he doesn't have "clean hands", we just might start doing a bit of indicting in Ohio.
• But look, we can't possibly entertain Mr Goodwin's request. It would take ages.
• And suppose everyone else started asking for their data back, too? Then where would we be?
• And Carpathia are moaning, too, claiming that it's costing them $9,000 a day to keep these pestilential 1,100 servers out of use. Far as we're concerned Carpathia can just delete all the data on them, all 25 petabytes of it (that's 25 million gigabytes), a course of action various fussy defence lawyers have asked Carpathia please to not pursue.

http://www.megaupload.com today

Your data

And there, ladies and gentlemen, we have the answer.

Mr Goodwin is being represented by lawyers from the Electonic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and they say that "the [US] government maintains that Mr. Goodwin lost his property rights in his data by storing it on a cloud computing service ... both the contract between Megaupload and Mr. Goodwin ... and the contract between Megaupload and the server host, Carpathia ..., likely limit any property interest he may have in his data".

Sign a cloud computing contract and you lose the rights to your property.

The question was, what new reason is there to believe that storing your data in the cloud is a mistake?

And the answer is that you're going to have the devil of a job getting your solicitor to nip over to Quantico to prove that it's yours at all. And as for actually getting it back, forget it. The courts don't have time for all that nonsense. Easier just to delete it.

They wouldn't do that to HMRC and all our tax data stored on Skyscape Cloud Services Ltd's servers. Would they? There are 60 million of us for goodness sake. That could never happen. Could it? And then there's GDS and all our state benefits data stored on ditto ...

Don't you worry about that. Whitehall aren't worried. Don't you worry.

----------

Updated 5.11.12

Philip Johnston, Daily Telegraph, 'Whitehall has its head stuck in the cloud'


Updated 21.2.17

Andrew Orlowski, ElReg, 'NZ High Court rules US can extradite Kim Dotcom after all'

Cloud computing – how to lose control of your data #94

It's Sunday. Give us a break
Cloud computing is supposed to be cheaper than the alternatives. How many times have we heard that some new management fashion will save us money? How many times can we fall for it? How many times has it turned out to be true? Exactly.

Cloud computing is meant to be more efficient, more reliable, more trusted, more flexible, more scalable, more resilient, more modern, more transformative, ... In each case, the claim is either false or, at best, unproven.

No need to keep banging on about it, the point has been made.

Sign up for cloud computing, like what Her Majesty's Government has in the UK, and you lose control of your data. You want to go out of business? Go ahead. Up to you. Stick your data in the cloud.

We know that. It's all a bit relentless. It's Sunday. Give us a break.

The gift that keeps on giving
Actually, there's another reason to avoid cloud computing, one that hasn't been mentioned so far on DMossEsq, a new answer to the question why is it foolish to store your data in the cloud.