Post Political Times

Two Cheers for the OGC

The UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has produced a report that is very positive about free software and Linux in particular. But there is still plenty of politics in technology as this story from Silicon.com reveals that the final report was “sexed down” from an even more positive early draft.

But the conclusions of the report are still very quotable by those in favour of more free software use by Government -

A number of findings are contained in the Report including:

· Open Source Software is now a viable Desktop alternative for the majority of government users

· Interoperability is not now a major issue

· Open Source Software can generate significant savings, particularly in conjunction with Server consolidation and by delaying hardware replacement

· Potential ‘green’ benefits through the prolonging of hardware life, with less resources consumed in producing new hardware and less waste/disposal/landfill of old machines

· Decisions should be based on a holistic assessment of future needs, taking into account total cost of ownership, with proper consideration of both proprietary and open source solutions

Find the full text and lots of UK Government stuff on “open source” on the OGC website.

More on Euro IT

The last entry was a little limited as I was sending it from a Handspring, or now palmOne, Treo 600 because I could not get to a PC (and to prove to myself that I could). The functionality of the device is good but long entries are hard work. I could not either figure out how to get to the special characters to put in links and formatting. More testing needed… and perhaps a bit of RTFM.

So, I should have added a link to EPRI, who organise the conference, as requested in a comment from MJR. And Francis who also commented may be pleased to know that TheyWorkForYou received an honourable mention in despatches as we discussed formatting Parliamentary information so that people can understand it.

I intend to follow this up as we work with the EPRI team to publish information on what is happening in each European country and try to share ideas. The other organisation that is relevant for information sharing between EU Parliaments is the European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation. They also have an interesting project called IPEX that aims to present information about how EU legislation is dealt with in each national Parliament. Not a trivial task…

IT Eurovision

I am at a conference today and tomorrow organised by an EU organisation called EPRI. This annual event brings together MPs of all European countries who are interested in technology. It is in part an IT “Eurovision song contest” as we compare systems in our parliaments. A nightmare idea for some but I find it fascinating.

For the sake of clarity…

Having read the debate about whether or not the Home Office itself counts as a “law enforcement agency” for the purposes of the replies to the Indymedia questions I tabled the following additional question yesterday -

Mr Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether prior notification was received by his Department concerning the seizure of the Indymedia servers on 7th October.

It may be that this presents some difficulty if there was a request to the MLAT section at the Home Office that is covered by a confidentiality agreement. I’m not sure how they would reply in those circumstances. Worth a try anyway…

Thanks for RIPA Advice

Many thanks to those who commented on my earlier post regarding the scope on interception of email under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). This raises again a potential inconsistency with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) powers that came out at committee.

RIPA is very strict in saying that interceptions of voice calls or internet traffic must be authorised by a Secretary of State warrant. PACE defines the ability of the Police to search for and seize material they need as evidence in a case. It has a much lower threshold for authorisation as it is for routine Police operational matters. Tony Hutchings has helpfully referred to the NTL case which precisely looks at the interaction of the two laws. And Clive Feather illustrates the implications of this.

As more material which is of evidential value is held online then we can expect to see PACE seizures increase. These will in many instances involve “collateral damage” as disks and servers are taken which contain information belonging to people who are not the direct subjects of the investigation. RIPA does not seem to provide any safeguards in these circumstances. It may be that cases can be taken under the Human Rights Act to try and demonstrate that invasions of privacy were not “necessary” or “proportionate” in the context of a specific investigation.

The other issue that I am reminded that we should return to in Parliament is that of residual powers to intercept. The intention with RIPA is that agencies should cease using any other interception powers they have and put everything through the RIPA framework. It may be timely to enquire as to whether or not this is happening.

Protect Innovation

I have been talking for some time to a group of people interested in preventing the spread of patents into the software arena (or rather the further spread as they are already sadly commonly granted in the US). I am very sympathetic to their core argument that patenting does more harm than good when applied to software.

Software patents stifle rather than promote innovation as coders find themselves prevented from using more and more methods and algorithms without paying license fees and needing complex legal machinery. And there is no evidence of a shortage of new ideas coming forward in software that would mean that the incentives of monopoly control that patenting offers are needed.

This means that the public interest, which is what I am interested in, is best served by a regime that does not grant patents on computer software. People who put their effort into creating software have all the protection of copyright law over their implementation of a particular idea or set of ideas. I cannot see how society is generally served by allowing anyone to have exclusive rights over the ideas themselves.

The original idea behind patents (from the Latin word to make open) was to persuade secretive inventors to share their ideas. They gain the exclusive rights in return for sharing with the public an idea that noone else would arrive at independently. In the wonderfully creative world of software with millions of people able to access the tools they need to program, there just isn’ t the need for this exclusivity in return for exposure trade-off. We are all hitting on the same ideas anyway.

What patents are doing is to grant exclusivity to the first to file, normally those with good lawyers, in return for a worthless exposure of something which a thousand others may arrive at simultaneously. This is simply a function of the size of pool of software writers which far exceeds the number of car engine designers or drug company biochemists who work in fields where patenting can have more applicability.

I am really pleased that the latest site explaining all this expresses the whole basis of the campaign in its title, calling itself Protect Innovation. Good luck to this site and all who sail in her…

Presidential Propaganda

With one week to go to the US Presidential election, it strikes me that in the UK we are missing all the action because we don’t get to see the television ads (lucky us, I’m sure many Americans would say). Occasionally, a clip of one is played on the TV or radio here and you can see just how powerful they are and understand why the polls move the way they do. But most of the time we are totally out of the loop of the most powerful medium in swaying voters in this election. Instead, we rely on newspapers (perhaps giving them undue influence because of our assumptions based on their being the main political propaganda tools in the UK) that do not give us a real idea of what most American voters are consuming by way of political news and views.

I hope someone will produce a DVD of the TV ads afterwards so that I can try to understand what actually happened in the campaign. Why the interest? Well, as a practising politician I am naturally curious. But I do also think we all have a close interest in the US elections as the outcome may have dramatic effects on all of us. And we will inevitably reach our own judgement about the preferred outcome based on our own personal political outlook. We do not get a vote in the election as non-US citizens but we are all entitled to engage in the debate about US foreign policy as global citizens.

Indymedia Roundup and Bits…

A quick roundup on this story during a day spent in my Sheffield constituency visiting a local school, discussing the siting of mobile phone base stations and seeing local people in my surgery.

Lots of helpful comment to previous posts which I will follow up when I can. I need to digest all the possible ways in which UK authorities could have been involved in spite of the denial of law enforcement agency involvement. And I am still waiting for a reply to my question about what discussions have been held between Ministers and the US on the issue generally which may have something in it.

The best way to now draw out more information would be for Indymedia to work with their lawyers to make complaints against Rackspace. These may be criminal complaints to the Police if they believe there is a case to allege theft or breach of other criminal law. Or they may be civil for damage to their business, breach of contract etc. In the context of any such action they would be asking the UK courts to require disclosure from Rackspace of documents relevant to the seizure. They would then have to test the relative strength of UK court orders to disclose against US gagging orders.

As I note I am getting a good readership on this issue, I will take the opportunity to drop in the other technology policy issue I am expecting to spend a lot of time on over coming months, software patents. There is going to be a renewed effort on this in Europe as highlighted in this Register story.

Indymedia Answers

The Home Office have now replied to my Parliamentary Question on Indymedia and a similar one from Jeremy Corbyn MP as follows:

Indymedia

Mr. Allan: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which UK law enforcement agencies were involved in the seizure of computer disks containing material published by Indymedia from the London offices of Rackspace. [192111]

Caroline Flint [holding answer 18 October 2004]: I can confirm that no UK law enforcement agencies were involved in the matter referred to in the question posed by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam.

Jeremy Corbyn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department under what powers, and acting under what information, officials of his Department seized web services belonging to Indymedia; and if he will make a statement. [192814]

Caroline Flint: I can confirm that no UK law enforcement agencies were involved in the matter referred to in the question posed by my hon. Friend. In the circumstances I do not therefore believe that it is necessary for me to make a statement.

I suspected that this would be the answer though the Home Office have obviously spent a few days checking with all agencies to ensure that they can accurately deny any involvement. What this means is that any action will have to be directed against Rackspace rather than the UK authorities. Indymedia may have both civil and criminal complaints to bring against them if they have acted illegally. The nature of any such action will depend on their legal advice. I will do what I can to press the UK authorities to assist where necessary.

Blogger Boris

Boris Johnson’s entry into the world of blogging has certainly been timely as he has hit the news for all the wrong reasons. He has used his site to publish his statement of (sort of) apology for what he said about Liverpool. This may get more readers on his site now than the printed version in the Spectator. I have certainly seen from my logs that a lot of my traffic is now coming from his direction. Every cloud…