Wow - amazing software!

How did it know they were Sun readers?

(thought|pre)crime?

I'd like to believe that Mr Sutherland bases his opinions on a rather idealised view of civil liberties.

Under his proposals, I would be a terrorist suspect if I am seen to behave like a terrorist (by which I mean shopping in the same places, accessing the same websites - rather than more blatant terrorist behaviour like blowing things up).

I shouldn't be too bothered about being a terrorist suspect since surely our criminal investigation bodies would never tamper with evidence, the courts would never convict someone wrongly, and I wouldn't be disadvantaged indirectly by, say getting the sack from my place of work due to investigation as a terrorist suspect?

Except there are lots of documented cases where exactly that has happened.

At least I am innocent until proven guilty, and can't be jailed without a public trial? Wait a minute....no, that's not the case any more.

While we do have to put up with people pimping there warez regardless of their effectiveness, I think its sad and pathetic that in the past 15 years we have replaced a legal enforcement structure deigned to protect the innocent with one designed for punishing the guilty (with little regard to the collateral impact on the innocent).

Civil liberties have intrinsic value for protecting the innocent.

C.

Follow the money.

+ instead of either acting itself or providing incentives for the private sector

+ the government insists that users are ultimately responsible for their own security

...but apparrently not *liable* for their failures. If someone runs an open SMTP relay, or fails to install patches or does not have an adequate firewall they will become the unwitting accomplices of the black-hats. While establishing a basic standard of culpability is nearly impossible (although IIRC the London Stock Exchange require listed companies to demonstrate compliance with at least part of BS7799) without accountability in such cases there is little hope of decreasing the amount of abuse and the authorities have little opportunity to track back to the origin of the problem.

It is not simply a problem of jurisdiction which prevents states from implementing effective controls - the biggest barrier is that the problem has already got totally out of control.

I'd like to believe that the newer generation will pressure service providers to provide good and effective security which works both ways (other than its SSL certificate - how does your bank/betting site/ISP... demonstrate that it truly is the organisation you have chosen to place your trust in?) but am far from impressed by the quality nor the independence of IT education in schools.

+ In the case of phishing sites, surely the first defence should be that the ISP

+ running the phishing site has an 24 hours per day instant take-down

+ obligation

Please! This would open the flood gates to a whole new denial of service vector - one which is already being exploited, but fortunately only in a few cases. I can see this would be attractive to the state because it moves the problem out of their domain into that of private litigation. This would automatically favour those who would abuse the system and disadvantages the ISP, the site owner and the end user.

I don't have the answer to these problems (unless its to install Linux!). Certainly as far as the vendor is concerned it seems to demonstrate how a market for lemons evolves and the problems inherent in monopolies.

C.

yes, the money - but whose opinion is this?

"Chaired by Microsoft with the DTI and several key industry representatives..."

Forget the long spoons - looks who's hosting the party.

While I couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed in "I've said it before and I'll say it again" I worry that there are other agendas at work here. Should we allow corporate bodies (particulary foreign and multi-nationals) to have a controlling hand in steering education policy?

I'm sure every experienced IT professional has at least one story about the industry certified programmer/operator/administrator who demonstrating a complete lack of knowledge outside the approved curriculum. But at the moment, the primary and secondary education systems only seem able to provide ICT facilities by jumping in to bed with a single vendor.

Education, at least within schools, should equip our children with lifetime skills and a basis for making value judgements. I would rather my children were denied access to ICT than exposed to a corporate driven regime.