Will Knott

In Ireland we end up with the politicians we elect. That sounds perfectly logical and democratic; suggesting anything else would be, well, non-democratic.

However this means 3 things, firstly a TD needs to make a lot of people happy to be elected and re-elected. All politics is local, but a large amount of a local TDs work is giving their constituents the things they are already entitled to. National politics can be scuppered due to local pressures.

Secondly a TD tends to be a certain type. The talking professions such as teachers and lawyers (and one or two professional PR types) account for most of the Dail. The corporate types (who understand standard expenses claims systems) or small business people tend to not run as they don’t have the time. That and family ties. If their mother/father/close relation was a TD, there is a high chance that they will give it a shot too. Of course there are the party lines being followed.

And thirdly, a TD usually wants to be re-elected. Which means caution and conservatism.

So why not try something out. Dail reform is being talked about so lets add a radical element. A National Lottery. We already have the “millionaire raffle” so why not offer a more desirable prize; a job. Also having the National Lottery run this makes sense as they have all the infrastructure in place.

I know it sounds dumb, but how many people have said “I could do better”, so lets let them. Its one way to get a random person in there. The seat would have to be non-local, as its a national lottery, anywhere could have a winner. There should be some criteria for eligibility, I assume that the standard types for a TD would apply (age limit, Irish citizen and not in prison etc) but with a few additional catches. Current public servants would be ineligible as would currently sitting TDs and Senators. This is important; the winner cannot win next round.

Why, well its a random element. One person who is (at the start anyway) whip-less. He or she need not follow a party. This person will, statistically, not have the standard background of a TD. Could be a Moore Street trader, or a Cavan farmer or a new citizen in Mullingar. And as he or she is not incumbent to a constituency, then they can think a little more nationally. Naturally he or she will have a local focus, but those strict constituency lines may not apply. And there is nothing to stop this person trying to run as a standard TD, and declaring his or her constituency (probably local for them) next election. But they cannot try to enter again next time. And the next person to get the job will also be a random (self) selection.

Anyway, it would be an experiment. And could shake up the ruling class.

Does it make sense?

I’m not going to write a lot on picturegate.

Partially because Dr Eoin O’Dell a Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin has a much better (but a snap shot of a moving target) list of all the Picturegate coverage from which you can find out about the reactions online as well as a legal analysis of the likely court actions.

And partially because around the time that the caricaturist, artist and t-shirt maker Allan Cavanagh was being interviewed by George Hook on Newstalk about the reaction to the Cowen/Casby scandal, I was being interviewed by Fianna Fáil (*waves at the appointment panel monitoring this blog*). I actually brought up the painting/apology and the reaction (seconds later) on Twitter and in the Irish blogging political sphere in the interview.

They were aware of it. This was 20 hours in to the anger.

Since then there has been front page coverage in the Irish newspapers, and coverage across the UK, European and American news. Anger at the apparent change in Garda resources to investigate the hanging of the paintings. Cried of state censorship and stifling of free speech. Questions attempted to in the Dáil.

It’s gone from being a (admittedly distasteful if you are in the Cowen family but) mildly amusing “And Finally…” style story to a major news story which its unlikely that RTÉ will want to touch with a bargepole.

The reaction, well I did a bit of Twitter trending and here are the results from Stream Graphs

If I could access this graph for an earlier time the graph would be scary around 21:30h on March 25th when the apology was read out. Twitter exploded for a little while then. It hasn’t stopped yet.  It looks like its easing down a bit, not going to completely die down.

The internet changes things.

Once, if this happened you would have a number of very upset people. Maybe they would ring each other. One to one. And agree in their anger. Now, they can communicate many to many. Pass the latest news to each other behind the mainstream media. React, repeat, retweet the latest information until everyone knows. Dig a story left along by the mainstream media back in to the harsh light of international news coverage.

So if you are going to react, you had better monitor and react quickly.

Things have changed. Its good to talk/type/tweet. Communication behind the scenes will ensure information gets out there, in the same way that the internet treats attempts at censorship (be it a blocked site or bad news) as damage that it routes around. This isn’t always an automatic thing. Often people keep that which they deem important alive.

And kicking.

Repeatedly.

take care,
Will Knott

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• Shouldda left well enough alone… (sluggerotoole.com)

Free speech = Net neutrality?

As a principle many people would say that the freedom to disseminate information is a requirement of a democracy. After all an informed populace can make better decisions.

Except of course information about things we don’t want to know about. Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Bulimia forums are a controversial example. Its freedom of speech, its an informed choice, and women (mostly, men tend to have image issues with not being muscular enough) on these sites that promote being (too?) thin get positive reinforcement to get thinner. After all, this information isn’t a criminal action.

What has this got to do with Blackout Ireland?

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Well imagine if various food and health industry bodies got a legal settlement with Eircom to enforce a “three strikes and your out” policy against readers of these forums, without a chance to appeal? (Let’s ignore the fact that much of our lives are now done through the internet and that the German courts thought that it was to harsh a punishment; a death sentence to a virtual world). Would there be an outcry? “We’ve doing this to help you”. Then the lobby groups arrange to get Eircom to block certain pro-ana (after all Eircom have said that they wouldn’t fight the court orders). Then go after other Irish ISPs demanding similar action.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

So of course, these sites go underground; accessible by proxy, or new different ones spring up in its place. So the information is out there. Illegal. Hidden. Cherished by a knowing few. Shared with a wider knowing few.

Would there be mistakes and false positives? Of course. Every “not caught in the act” action has the potential for mistaken identity. And with wireless networks, connecting via your neighbour (or war driving to an open location) is going to ensure the wrong people are caught. Or a printer is blamed for having image issues.

But why stop at image issues! There is too much violence on the streets, lets ban all forms of internet violence. No more over the internet first person shooters.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Cyberbullying is too much. Lets block social network sites where such a situation can take place!

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.

We can’t have our children accessing information and images about gay life. Block these sites!

Ban.

Block.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

Its the start of a slope.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

The initial logical, maybe apparently sensible first step leads to a worse situation.

So, back to the point of all of this. IRMA wants Eircom to block certain file sharing sites, starting with the Pirate’s Bay.

Interestingly the international version of IRMA is trying to get the Pirate’s bay shut down. And based on the reports of the trial in Sweden, the prosecution are not doing a good job in persuading the courts that the Pirate’s Bay are any different than Google (in fact, it seems that much of the same information can be found using Google). File sharing isn’t a criminal offence. Depending on the outcome of the trial, using Pirate’s Bay may not even be viewed as a civil offence.

So block Google? It’s an option, but too many companies use their cloud computing services for the Irish economy to survive such a block.

So back to net neutrality. Actually it isn’t exactly entirely related to speech. Its closer to a deep packet inspection; what type of packet is this. Is it a web (or encrypted html) packet? A packet form an email? Or a bit torrent packet?

Which is how some software updates itself, for example Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Which is how millions (if not billions) around the globe saw the inauguration of President Obama on CNN’s software.

For something purely illegal, those are very odd companies to be using it. Content companies too.

So join in the week long protest against this. Shout, not whisper about the chilling effects on internet free speech.

Join with the other voices around Ireland speak out on this issue.

Darken your avatar.

Write to your local TD about it.

Write to Minister Ryan about it.

While you still can, speak out.

Will Knott

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• Irish Internet firm to shut off illegal music users (canada.com)
• I have Joined Blackout Ireland #blackoutirl (stephenspillane.blogspot.com)
• Pirate Bay rejects law-breaking claims (theregister.co.uk)
• Pirate Bay awaits court verdict (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Luck ran out: Irish ISP agrees to music industry demands to selectively block access to Web sites (crunchgear.com)
• Record industry talks Irish ISP into blocking P2P sites (arstechnica.com)
• Music industry’s Irish ISP shakedown letter (theregister.co.uk)
• Eircom to block Pirate Bay (theregister.co.uk)
• Maybe It’s Time To Cross Ireland Off “Places I’d Like To Live” [Bad Idea Jeans] (idolator.com)
• Irish Internet Users Blocked From The Pirate Bay (beatcrave.com)
• IRMA Threatens Irish ISPs (blacknight.com)
• Irish ISP agrees to disconnect repeat P2P users (arstechnica.com)
• Irish ISP will disconnect Internet users after three unsubstantiated copyright claims (boingboing.net)
• Irish ISP Eircom in ‘three strike’ filesharer crackdown (theregister.co.uk)
• About Defending Blasphemy (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

Tomorrow I’m heading in to a Collision Course between PR and marketing people and bloggers. I have the odd feeling that this will be the first time that some people in the PR world meet a real live blogger. Now some people thing that this is going to be a fight. Personally I think its going to be a repetition of common sense.

The event is being organised by Damien Mulley, a blogger turning in to game maker. After all, he’s giving away his marketing advice. All of it sensible, none of it shocking. Except for the shock of the “new”. It’s not rocket sience, its people.

You do know how to talk to people, right?

Sometimes I wonder. I’m interested in listening to the PR and marketing folk (know your enemy and all that). I’ve learned that badly done cold pitching is frequently badly done. E-mailing out all the information with a “oh, this is embargoed” tag at the end. Blindly following the “tags” in the contact database, rather than making their own in a targeted area (blame the list makers if you will).

PR and marketing is changing. Social media (and I’ll include blogging in this pile) is about conversation. Two way communication. Think about a journalist forming contacts in particular areas. A go-to gal on tech issues. An agony uncle on relationship issues. Making contacts who can help. Thats where PR is heading. Its going to be hard work, but bloggers aren’t scary most bloggers aren’t scary.

We will bite. But only when provoked.

take care,

Will Knott

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Dear photobloggers. I want you to do something. Raise cash for the Irish Cancer Society!

Most of you are at least aware of the internet phenomena that is Pink for October. This is a breast cancer awareness programme, where websites and blogs go pink for the month, and photobloggers show pink photos for the month.

However, it occurred to me that the one thing this internet outreach does not do is actually help cancer charities. So lets fix this.

Last time I was in Cork city I called in here…

my local Irish Cancer Society shop. I’m not sure if the Castle Street shop in cork city is unusual, but they tend to have big window displays. So I chatted with the manager (nice lady) about making a window display using pink photos for October. In Cork, the Jazz festival will have its own display, but since she hadn’t planned anything from the start of the month until the festival, she is willing to display the photos.

However it might be worth going one better… donate the photos to the charity not just for display, but to be sold and raise money for the charity.

And while photos of pink objects might sell, portraits will sell, to the subject at least.

My plan is to go to the streets of Cork with model release forms and approach people wearing pink (anything pink from a splash of pink lipstick, to a pink bow in the hair or a pink tie). Explain to the subject why I’m taking the photos and if they would be willing to pose and (under no obligation) buy the photo (I’m thinking €5 at most) from the Cancer charity shop and have the photo displayed online. With a bit of publicity I suspect there would be volunteers lined up on the streets.

Personally I would like to perform a selective colourisation on the photograph so that its a black and white photo with only the pink coloured, but that isn’t a requirement.

Then in the middle of September, present the collection of A4 printouts to the charity shop for display and sale.

So what am I asking you to do?

1. Go to your nearest Cancer Charity shop (In Ireland it’s the Irish Cancer Society, I’m not sure what it is in Northern Ireland let alone the rest of the world)
2. Ask the manager of that shop if he or she would be willing to accept the donation of photographs as part of the “Pink for October Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign“, display and sell the photos. You might have to explain the Pink for October story and that model release forms will be produced.
3. Take the photographs. Print the photographs. Yes some time and expense will be involved. Anything worth doing involves a bit of an outlay.
4. If you wish, do put some identifying marks (like a web address to the online version of the photo) on the printouts. A Pink for October logo and link should also be included.
5. Present the photographs (and at least offer the release forms) on (or around) Friday September 19 2008 to the charity shop so that the manager has time to display the photographs. (I can see Kilkenny photoblogers being a little later if they want to include a Podcamp Ireland photowalk)

So, is this a dumb idea?

At the moment I’m looking for a little help with this. Could you help me with…

• Commitment to join in. You have over two months to do something this year
• The wording for the model release form. I’m not sure how it should be worded and what details are required.
• Would I (or anyone else doing the street portraits) need a licence of some kind? If so where and how would I go about getting one?
• While I’m willing to print out my photos myself, does anyone know of a willing printer?
• Anything else I should know about?

Happy snapping,
Will Knott

update September 3 2008. The 2008 Pink for October Ireland portraits won’t be happening. Details in this post.

Dear Ms. Marianne Mikko Member of the European Parliment,

I’ve been reading reports that you have called for a registration of bloggers.

Given the importance of the Internet in Estonia, I suspect that you would get a lot of, er, assistance in answering an explanation of what you mean.
Or at least a high level of details on what you are actually requesting.

Most blog posts are highly personal by nature, be it personal observation, on the ground reporting of a war in their local neighbourhood, on the antics of their cat (depressing there are a lot of these) or the rote by which a blogger investigated the dealings of a disgraced public official.
They are closer to opinion pieces than investigative reporting.

There are also blogs which by their very nature need to be anonymous. Those detailing illegal activities by officials for instance. A registration of such a blogger is likely to lead to intimidation or death.

Do you wish to clarify your wording.
Say in a blog of your own for instance?

Yours sincerely,
Will Knott

http://WillKnott.ie

When a books comes out with 27 pages of source references, you know someone is trying to prove that he is correct.

Image via Wikipedia

And when the 532-page ebook is free, I suspect that the author is trying to be very correct and get his point across. Partly to stop himself being sued by George Lucas no doubt. The book is question is The Secret History of Star Wars which skews from the Lucasfilm version of history.

According to the “Frequently Asked Questions” part of the book’s site, Michael Kaminski wrote the book to fill the perceived knowledge gap (or at least lore gap) between the observed history from the fan’s perspective, and the official history according the Lucasfilm.

To be honest, I don’t care enough about the politics of the Star Wars movies (or the Jedi religion) to be worried, about the book’s content. But the existence of the book is interesting.

Essentially this book is a compiled collection of sources to create a history of the creation of six highly influential movies; a series which continues to generate controversy. And is of course unauthorised.

When an unauthorised biography is compiled, the person at the heart of it can sue for liable, as long as the accusations (if any) in the book are false). This book is not about George Lucas, but about the creation of a series of products. Which means that is possible to sue for copyright violations in much the same way that a lawsuit was perused against the creators of a printed Harry Potter Lexicon (which was settled out of court). Its not just reputation at stake here, but a multimillion empire. By being a free download, the author manages to avoid at least part of the consequences (financial gain) and given that this 3rd edition of the book came after the above settlement, it is possible that a few discrete alternations may have been made to prevent the “too much of my work” arguments.

There are of course two reasons as to why Lucasfilm has not sued.

1) Suing your fans is not a good idea; you need them

2) Lucas has a Pirates Dilemma problem. Yes its is a derived work, but its taken the history of the series in a direction which LucasFilm never would. While they are unlikely to support it, it would be a bad idea for them to try to destroy it. Because its something they can build on (or at least with).

Could someone who cares about the series and can confirm the truth of any of the books details contact me? Also in the unlikely possibility that someone from LucasFilm is reading this, is there an official response to the book? I can confirm that the author cares enough about copyright to disable copying and pasting from the PDF file.

Still behind the scenes shenanigans are always interesting.

take care,
Will Knott

p.s. I’m waiting for The Secret History of the Babylon 5 series (or at least the collected Hyperion archives). Have I missed them?

“Was given chocolate. That’s a far better freebie than bloomin’ memory sticks!” — Jemima Kiss via Twitter.

Image via Wikipedia

By now everyone has heard the old story about people giving up their passwords for chocolate. Although Bruce Schneier has pointed out that he would gladly give a fake password for chocolate. Which is a little better than loosing a lot of information about your customers. Yes I’m typing about Bank Of Ireland.

This is an interesting problem for the Bank. In 2006 Bank Of Ireland agreed to refund phishing losses suffered by customers of their internet banking service. And later updated their terms of service to include

13 Indemnity

13.2 Without prejudice to the generality of Clause 13.1 above, the Bank shall have no liability whatsoever in respect of any loss suffered by the Customer as a result of their breach of Clause 4 [jm: Security/Authentication] by way of knowingly, negligently or recklessly disclosing the Security Devices or any of them.

– via Justin Mason.

Richard Burrows, Governor of the Bank of Ireland, has declared on a news report that

1. monies lost will be refunded and that
2. the laptops were secured with a password.

However I reply

1. What hoops do victims of this loss have to jump through? After all some of the stolen information was not from BOI customers, but also those who had approached the bank for a life assurance quote. Besides, the usual procedure is to create a new account somewhere or getting credit cards in their identity, not touching the victims bank accounts directly, but ruining their credit rating in the process.
2. This concerns data not the laptops. Its possible that the OS requires a password to be provided, however it is quite easy to remove a hard disk and attach it to a separate machine. Completely by-passing any password requirements of the OS. Either encrypting the customer data on the disk (as happened in the IBTS incident) or making the entire disk an encrypted file. The data was unencrypted.

The information on the four BOI laptops contained the names, addresses, financial details and some medial records of its life assurance customers. Gosh that is a goldmine of information for identity thieves, phishing operators and even the odd blackmailer (if the medical information reveals things). I’ve written about this before, and I don’t think things have gotten any better.

And it happened some time ago.

Bank of Ireland said the four laptops disappeared between June and October 2007 and contained the names, addresses, bank account details and medical histories of about 10,000 holders of the bank’s life insurance policies. Ireland’s second-largest bank made the admission after the chief regulator, Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes, told Irish broadcasters RTE he had been informed of the lost customers’ data only last Friday.

– via IHT

It’s the silence that is slightly worrying. The Irish Banking Federation hasn’t said anything. True that these were probably €900 laptops. But the information on them do open up the bank for potentially billions of damages; not that, given the statement by the Data Protection Commissioner, such punishment is likely to happen.

Now I’m hearing rumours that the banks are now encrypting customer data, but do you trust a bank with your data that can’t even link correctly to the page with the information about the incident on their own site? Hopefully someone will notice that correct things sooner than they noticed that the missing customer data might be important.

take care of your data,
Will

UPDATE – April 28 2008
Number affected by BoI laptop thefts trebles – “The technical investigation has identified that details relating to 31,500 policies, policy applications and a small number of mortgage customers were contained on the stolen laptops.” So the numbers are worse that previously announced, and the fact that not all of those at risk are customers of the BOI. If the Data Commissioner can’t deliver punishment via a 4×2 then his remit should be altered.

This morning the newspapers reported that an Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was celebrating this court battle win over evidence to be submitted to the Mahon Tribunal. This afternoon however…

…well. Mr Ahern announced his decision to step down on May 6 2008 is causing quite a stir on the Irish media. Only those in politics seem surprised, which shows just how much support he had inside the Fianna Fáil party. There seems to be less surprise amongst those outside the party.

take care,
Will

Source: FotoliaFrequently I become my Mums chauffeur, both in a car and for her wheelchair. And every so often I’m tempted to make this announcement across a PA system.

Bing-bong

Could the owner of the XXX car license place number YYY please move their car immediately as it is parked across the disabled parking spaces.

To repeat, the wakner who illegally parked their car, XXX car license place number YYY, across the wheelchair parking spaces has five minutes to move it before I start smashing every window and denting every car panel with wheelchair parts.

That the XXX car license place number YYY parked across the disabled parking spaces that will be an insurance write-off if they don’t move it.

Thank you

And thanks to Johnnypez who reminded me about this.take care,

Will