I've just the read an article in the New York Times, and felt compelled to post about it. It outlines how blogs and wikis are now seen as a vital tool in intelligence gathering agencies in the US. It outlines how until recently the different agencies in the USA, CIA, NSA, FBI etc had closed information networks. They had no easy means of interaction between the agencies. Each even had its own chat systems that could not interconnect, and its own search engines.
However, since then there has been an embrace of the power of blogs and wiki to provide quick and instant information on unfolding events and also for interdepartmental information sharing. The self-publishing revolution has in effect changed the way intelligence works. For example, one analysts commented about how on the day of the London bombings he visited Wikipedia and within minutes the bombings had an entry. Over the next few hours the article was updated as news changed, the analyst pointed out that “you could just sit there and hit refresh, refresh, refresh, and get a sort of ticker-tape experience,”
The full article is available here
Monday, December 04, 2006
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Obligatory gloat....
On Thursday night after 18 Doughty Street went off air I hung around to say the following to Iain Dale. 2-0. And so it was. The good news is I made a tenner out of Croydonian.
Who owns your medical records?
According to the Government they do. Your private medical information is in fact not yours, it is theirs. According to a report in this morning's Telegraph the Government plans to reject any patients requests not to have their information uploaded to the centralised database system that forms the backbone on Connecting for Health.
Sadly, this Government is so utterly obsessed with the centralisation of information in single point of failure IT systems we really shouldn't be surprised by this latest move. I've no doubt that anyone who objects to such information uploads on grounds of information security concerns and civil liberties will be labeled as being on the fringe.
However, this move goes much deeper than just simple civil liberties. It actually brings into question the relationship between the state and the individual at a core philosophical level. If we are the owners of our own bodies then we ought to be the owners of information relating to ourselves. This move by the Government shifts that concept of ownership away from the individual and towards the state.
What's more, when Connecting for Health is placed in context as yet another discreet element that forms part of a wider information network making up the surveillance society, it becomes far more sinister. After all, whilst the Government may hide behind claims of having "safeguards", it has also simultaneously promoted, quite openly, its intention to share our information with virtually anyone working within the state apparatus from national to local council officer level. At the same time it accepts that it may have information leak issues with our data it already holds.
Sadly, this Government is so utterly obsessed with the centralisation of information in single point of failure IT systems we really shouldn't be surprised by this latest move. I've no doubt that anyone who objects to such information uploads on grounds of information security concerns and civil liberties will be labeled as being on the fringe.
However, this move goes much deeper than just simple civil liberties. It actually brings into question the relationship between the state and the individual at a core philosophical level. If we are the owners of our own bodies then we ought to be the owners of information relating to ourselves. This move by the Government shifts that concept of ownership away from the individual and towards the state.
What's more, when Connecting for Health is placed in context as yet another discreet element that forms part of a wider information network making up the surveillance society, it becomes far more sinister. After all, whilst the Government may hide behind claims of having "safeguards", it has also simultaneously promoted, quite openly, its intention to share our information with virtually anyone working within the state apparatus from national to local council officer level. At the same time it accepts that it may have information leak issues with our data it already holds.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
A candidate for expulsion
Have just spotted a rather worrying comment in a thread over at Iain Dale's blog. In his post about about the new candidate being selected for North Norfolk (the seat previously fought by Iain in 2005), someone posted a comment stating:
Update: Amusingly, some people out there have taken this post to be indicative of a growing acceptance of political correctness in the Conservative Party. My objection to this incident (which I am still assuming to be true) is not about political correctness. My objection is that I do not believe such opinions are compatible with the meritocratic fundamentals conservatism.
I was at Trevor's selection meeting last night. I voted for him. But at the beginning of the meeting a man stood up and asked the chairman the following question:Frankly I agree with the poster's sentiments regarding kicking this person, whoever it was (and assuming it's true) out of the Party. Whether someone is gay or not shouldn't really make any difference to their suitability to stand for Parliament. In fact someone who is so vehmently anti-gay probably has something to hide.
"Could we be assured that neither of the candidates is a homosexual".
I now know what you had to put up with. My resignation from the Party is in the post unless I have an assurance that this man, who I had never seen before, is chucked out of the Party. Is there a mechanism to achieve this?
Update: Amusingly, some people out there have taken this post to be indicative of a growing acceptance of political correctness in the Conservative Party. My objection to this incident (which I am still assuming to be true) is not about political correctness. My objection is that I do not believe such opinions are compatible with the meritocratic fundamentals conservatism.
The multi-million dollar webpage?
Many of you will no doubt remember the story of Alex Tew, the student who sold 1 million pixels of advertising space at $1 a pixel and made himself a million on his Million Dollar Web Page, well, rumour has it he is about to try the trick again. However, this time the project is a multi-million dollar one, with each pixel being sold for $2, in conjunction with some sort of lottery game here.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Nearly as important as a Donor Card...
Disproportionate to what exactly?
Following on from yesterday's post regarding the Treasury's seeming inability to keep accounting records for pretty mundane things, I've had a quick search through the written answers in Parliament for yesterday.
A total of 11 questions were not answered on the basis that it would be a "disproportionate cost" to do so. This has thus got me wondering what exactly is defined as disproportionate? It suggests there is a cost bar in place by the Government which they measure time taken to respond to question against.
This said, there were a couple of times when the questions asked were of such minute detail and nuance that whilst answering them may have been costly, the practicality of doing so was unlikely anyway. However, there were some which simply should've been answered.
For example, asking how much the Treasury paid to DHL between 1997 and 2006 for each financial year is something that ought to be known and be easily accessible. Also, the Treasury should be able to tell Parliament how much of the publics' money it used on staff expenses for special advisers in each of the last three financial years.
I wonder though if someone might ask how exactly an answer is deemed to cost a "disproportionate" amount to answer?
A total of 11 questions were not answered on the basis that it would be a "disproportionate cost" to do so. This has thus got me wondering what exactly is defined as disproportionate? It suggests there is a cost bar in place by the Government which they measure time taken to respond to question against.
This said, there were a couple of times when the questions asked were of such minute detail and nuance that whilst answering them may have been costly, the practicality of doing so was unlikely anyway. However, there were some which simply should've been answered.
For example, asking how much the Treasury paid to DHL between 1997 and 2006 for each financial year is something that ought to be known and be easily accessible. Also, the Treasury should be able to tell Parliament how much of the publics' money it used on staff expenses for special advisers in each of the last three financial years.
I wonder though if someone might ask how exactly an answer is deemed to cost a "disproportionate" amount to answer?
Lawrenson gives Iain Dale's team the Kiss of Death
Everton vs West Ham"Everton, without Andrew Johnson and Tim Cahill, do not look like scoring - and James Beattie has done nothing really for a long, long time. West Ham still have the feel-good factor under their new owner and after picking up the win last weekend."
Prediction: 1-2
BBC Sport
The problem with "buy to let" prisons
According to the front page of the Guardian the Home Office is planning to sell shares in any new prisons it build. The Guardian claims it will be a kind of "but to let" scheme where the public will get "a steady guaranteed dividend from the "rental income". The inspiration for the idea is, apparently, the fact that Gordon Brown will not spend the money to build extra prison capacity, thus opening up ownership to us, Joe Public, can raise a little extra cash.
When I read about this last night on 18 Doughty Street I couldn't help but ask whether it was a Friday joke. As was pointed out by Iain, what if you were a judge with a stake in a prison? Also, as someone else pointed out, what if you had a stake in a prison and you found yourself about to be sent down? Would the prisons have special shareholders quarters?
If the idea is genuine there is a more worrying aspect to it though. After all, it's being pitched as this being a recession proof constant revenue generate from rolling rental income. Does that not imply, tacitly at least, an acceptance on the part of Government that it cannot reduce crime? Surely, if crime is going down as we are so often told, then buying into this scheme would be a bad thing to do because it should have, if Government is successful at tackling crime, diminishing returns over time.
Personally I'm still minded that it's not a genuine policy, and the reason I say that is what appears to be the dig at the dour Scottish one at the Treasury from his potential leadership contender, or is equally Scottish, at the Home Office. When you read it, it's pretty clear the tone is "this is only happening because Gordon Brown is tight".
When I read about this last night on 18 Doughty Street I couldn't help but ask whether it was a Friday joke. As was pointed out by Iain, what if you were a judge with a stake in a prison? Also, as someone else pointed out, what if you had a stake in a prison and you found yourself about to be sent down? Would the prisons have special shareholders quarters?
If the idea is genuine there is a more worrying aspect to it though. After all, it's being pitched as this being a recession proof constant revenue generate from rolling rental income. Does that not imply, tacitly at least, an acceptance on the part of Government that it cannot reduce crime? Surely, if crime is going down as we are so often told, then buying into this scheme would be a bad thing to do because it should have, if Government is successful at tackling crime, diminishing returns over time.
Personally I'm still minded that it's not a genuine policy, and the reason I say that is what appears to be the dig at the dour Scottish one at the Treasury from his potential leadership contender, or is equally Scottish, at the Home Office. When you read it, it's pretty clear the tone is "this is only happening because Gordon Brown is tight".
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