http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18090118 - even though most sites won't comply one year on, the ico has made it clear he STILL won't be enforcing the law. He gave them a year of grace - (with no statutury justification) - now the year is up - and they are still ignoring him - and he is STILL doing nothing.

Vinod Bange, a lawyer for Taylor Wessing who has spent time consulting companies who are cautious of the changes, said the small number of businesses who have invested in meeting the guideline deadline could be left feeling frustrated. The ICO's website has implemented its own consent mechanism on its site. "There will be some companies out there wondering why they've gone to the expense, and committed a lot of resource, into trying to tackle a problem which is not going to be enforced," he said. In the interview with E-Consultancy, the ICO's Mr Evans said there would not be a team of investigators seeking out infringing sites, but would act on complaints.

Yet more regulatory failure in the United Kingdom.How much do we spend on the ico?

It seems that phorm have set-up a company in Turkey using the name PT Advertising Solutions - the first time I'm aware of that they've actually avoided calling one of their companies "phorm".

It's tempting to suggest that they are hoping to bury their past.  It's also possible that this is the first step towards yet another re-branding following the move from 121media to phorm shortly before the UK ISP tie-ins.

http://www.sektorelrehber.com.tr/firma/ptreklamcozumleriticaretveservisanonimsirketi

Google translation of the site at...

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=tr&u=http://www.sektorelrehber.com.tr/firma/ptreklamcozumleriticaretveservisanonimsirketi&ei=3c6wT7C0LsSz8QPvu4nOCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCwQ7gEwAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3DPT%2BReklam%2B%25C3%2587%25C3%25B6z%25C3%25BCmleri%2BTicaret%2Bve%2BServis%2BAnonim%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26prmd%3Dimvns


(note - there's a video overlay you'll need to close.   In the translated version, the overlay shows an error message - it only applies to the video so close that and the page underneath will be visible)

Also worth noting that the company appears to have been set-up in late november 2011 - suggesting it was funded by and maybe even a major reason for the last flotatation.

A dismal 32% turnout in the local elections flowed from a sense that all politicians are the same. That belief is often wrong, but in respect of civil liberties it was vindicated a few days after the vote. The Queen's speech proposed secret justice and a licence for electronic snooping. Both wheezes came from a coalition whose founding agreement had said "the British state has become too authoritarian" under New Labour. But both trace back to the fag-end of the Brown era: the surveillance was first proposed in 2009, while securocrats had got to work on secret justice the moment the master of the rolls had shown the audacity to damn the security services' "dubious record" on torture in early 2010. So far as these two freedom-sapping schemes are concerned, the general election might as well never have happened.

C4's Dispatches records private investigator selling bank details and criminal and medical records to reporters

The ease with which private investigators can access highly personal and sensitive information stored in secure government databases has been exposed by a report that will intensify calls to regulate the industry.

An investigation by Channel 4's Dispatches programme reveals how a London firm of private detectives sold personal data on individuals, including details of bank accounts, benefit claims and even a national insurance number.

Undercover reporters also recorded Stephen Anderson, director of private investigators Crown Intelligence, disclosing medical details including the name of one of the volunteers' doctors, recent appointments with a GP and, in one instance, confirmation of a medical condition. On several occasions, the investigator provided information for payment that appears to be covered by the Data Protection Act, which makes it an offence to "obtain or disclose data without permission or procure the disclosure to another person".

Private investigators are selling access to financial and criminal records

How private investigators get access to personal data - video

The threads discussing nodpi's disappearence have vanished.  

Can someone from badphorm - preferably someone not involved with running or paying for nodpi - please post a price-list - just so I know how much I have to pay to get the same special treatment. 

Seriously - name one other site or organisation that has ever been protected by badphorm?   Has badphorm EVER pulled two threads discussing any one organisation - and if not, why is nodpi "off topic"?

DNSCrypt, as its name suggests, encrypts DNS traffic between your computer and OpenDNS, in the same way SSL turns HTTP traffic into HTTPS encrypted traffic.

Initially, DNSCrypt was announced as being available for Mac only for now, but according to an OpenDNS article posted yesterday, the source code for DNSCrypt was published on GitHub when they've released the Mac preview and even though there's no user interface yet, Linux users can already install DNSCrypt.


Why use DNSCrypt?

DNSCrypt encrypts all DNS traffic between your computer and the OpenDNS servers (so you'll be using OpenDNS) and can protect you from man-in-the-middle attacks, spying, resolver impersonation, can prevent Internet service providers from blocking various websites and more.

The Queen has formally announced plans to greatly increase surveillance of the internet by intelligence agencies and the police, in plans that are being labelled a “snooper’s charter” by civil liberties groups.

She said the government would introduce “measures to maintain the ability of the law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access vital communications data under strict safeguards to protect the public”.

The plans were “subject to scrutiny of draft clauses”, the Queen added, caveat understood to have been inserted in her speech at the insistence of Libs Dems. They are concerned by the impact the Communications Data Bill will have on individual freedom and privacy, and feared detailed debate would be steamrollered in Parliament.

The Government did not reveal any technical details about its plans, which are designed to make it easier to discover who has contact whom, when and where, via internet services such as Facebook, Gmail and Skype. But a document released alongside the Queen’s Speech makes it clear that internet and mobile providers will be expected to intercept and store the relevant data for 12 months.

Big questions remain unanswered over the government's 'snooper's charter'

The coalition wants to monitor our emails, texts and web use – but hasn't explained why or how, or who it thinks it will catch

The coalition has pushed ahead with its plans to introduce monitoring of who is talking to whom over the internet, known as the "header" information of emails, web pages and text messages – although Nick Clegg is insistent that it will not be rammed through parliament and that it will get plenty of scrutiny.

That's a good thing. Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone operators, which will have to implement this, have been hoping that it wouldn't come. More to the point, nobody has yet answered why the government wants to be able to see our digital breadcrumb trail – telling it, in effect, only where we've been, but not necessarily what was said.

The problem is that such monitoring can be easily evaded by even slightly tech-savvy criminals or terrorists. (Who you talk to using an internet phone – or VoIP – service such as Skype, for example, will not show up on ISPs or phone network records, since it isn't an email or a web page, and is encrypted by default, though paranoid rumours abound of it being hacked by governments to eavesdrop.)

That leaves open the question of who the government – more precisely, the police and security services, since they are the ones who have been pushing for this measure – think they are going to catch with this scheme.

The Acta treaty that has been the subject of street protests around Europe is unlikely to be ratified by the European Union, according to Neelie Kroes, the powerful European commissioner for telecoms and technology. Speaking on Friday, Kroes said that "we are now likely to be in a world without Sopa" – the US's proposed Stop Online Piracy Act – "and Acta." Acta, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, has been signed by 22 of the EU's 27 countries, as well as the US and Japan. But even in some of the countries that have signed it, parliaments have declined to ratify it due to public pressure.

Ryan Heath, a spokesman for Kroes's office, said the European commission has not changed its position on the usefulness of Acta, and was continuing to work toward its ultimate ratification, but added that Kroes was "observing political reality".

It appears Virgin have become the first of the five ISP's ordered to block the Pirate Bay to actually do so.

The question is, why were they in a position to implement such a block quite so quickly?

To expand a little on what I'm saying, the Virgin block goes beyond simple DNS trickery that any ISP could implement in a matter of minutes. Simply changing DNS servers won't get round the ban, so their method isn't DNS based. Further, it doesn't seem to be domain dependent either, with .se, .org & .com all being blocked.

It COULD be IP based, since traceroutes to TPB's IP fail within VM but that doesn't easily explain the redirection of TPB HTTP requests to a VM page.

Now, I don't really make use of TPB but the block has been implemented so quickly that I can't help but wonder just what VM are atually doing - and what implications that technology has for the privacy of all VM users.

Jim.
(Posting personal thoughts, not BadPhorm Admin stuff!)