Author: Patrick

Posted on

Almost 100 times longer than the average

According to statistics the CPS currently takes an average of 8.6 days to come to a decision as to whether to prosecute. The CPS has had a case open on Phorm for 848 days now. If it takes much longer they will have taken as long as they would have on one hundred other cases. Of course the CPS claim that there has been no political interference, but this is very difficult to believe when these sorts of delays are involved.

And don’t expect an answer any time soon. They had previously promised to come to a decision by the end of last year, but at the last minute decided that this was no longer going to be the case.

No political interference? After 848 days spent doing virtually nothing? Do they honestly expect us to believe that?

Posted on

Trying to have their cake and eat it

Senior judges are to review the Digital Economy Act following a complaint from BT and TalkTalk that it was rushed through Parliament before the election.

[…]

In particular, they claim measures in the new legislation designed to reduce copyright infringement via filesharing networks violate European rules including those on privacy and an ISP’s role as “mere conduit”.

[…]

The Register article

The hypocrisy here is simply astounding. On one hand they want to be treated as ‘mere conduits’, yet on the other they want to be able to ‘monetise’ their customers (gods I hate that term) by spying on their web traffic so that they can be served with targeted advertising. BT have Phorm, TalkTalk have Huawei and Virgin Media have CView.

They don’t deserve to be treated as mere conduits when they behave in such a deplorable way towards their customers.

Has anybody also noticed that big business always seem to get more attention than the general public? The privacy of tens of thousands of BT customers gets sacrificed to help BT’s bottom line. The ICO reaction to that? Nothing. The police’s reaction to that? Indifference. The home office’s reaction to Phorm? They tried to make sure that Phorm were ‘comforted’ by the advice they were giving out, rather than do their job.

Yet when the poor ISPs face losing being forced to hand over details and interfere with the service they provide they quickly manage to get a judicial review of the law.