Robin Wilton's esoterica

The Labour Party appears to have a double-barrelled weapon at its disposal. After scoring a PR own goal yesterday by having an 82-year old heckler man-handled out of the hall and detained ("but not arrested or searched" --- oh, well that's all right then) under the Terrorism Act, today saw the confiscation of a camera and the deletion of photographs of... delegates queueing to get into the conference. The owner of the camera is Austin Mitchell, a high-profile MP and (at least in the past) a regular and funny contributor to BBC Radio 4. He apparently shares former Labour Chancellor Denis (now Lord) Healey's enthusiasm for photography. I bet Denis never had his camera nicked and wiped at a Labour conference. Apart from the absurdity of confiscating and deleting the photos of a conference attendee and elected MP, there's also, of course, the irony (delicious, infuriating or possibly both) that all those queueing were doubtless on several CCTV cameras at the time. That's the thing about watchers, though: they don't like sousveillance.

These days, one would expect a certain amount of stage-management at a political party conference, but this episode today reveals an ugly side of this year's Labour event. 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang, a Labour party member since 1948, heckled Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and was then bustled physically out of the conference by five stewards. Steve Forrest, sitting next to Mr Wolfgang, complained at the stewards' conduct and was promptly manhandled out of the centre himself. This being a party conference, it's not that improbable that Mr Forrest is actually the chairman of a Labour constituency party... so he started trying to phone his MP, John Austin, who (naturally) was also at the conference. Mr Forrest made three attempts to call, and was then threatened by the stewards with confiscation of his phone. Mr Forrest and Mr Wolfgang subsequently had their conference passes taken away; when Mr Wolfgang tried to get back into the conference, a policeman detained him, citing Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. Section 44 provides a blanket authority for a police officer to stop and search a person and their belongings "in an area or at a place specified in the authorisation". In other words, like one of the "10 most secret cases" (the suffragette petition) I mentioned in my previous blog entry, it is not based on the conduct of the person involved, and there is no burden on the police officer to produce evidence of reasonable suspicion: it can be invoked purely on the basis of where you are. That might sound like a law ripe for abuse, and indeed instances have been reported where the police have made deliberate use of Section 44 to inhibit and obstruct protests, where there was no reason to connect the protest to terrorism. Whatever the intent of the Act, a shameful episode like this reveals the danger of framing legislation in ways which make such abuses possible. The Terrorism Act is five years old, but there's plenty of new legislation (both actual and proposed) which is equally open to abuse. Laws on exclusion, deportation, identification, prevention of 'anti-social behaviour', 90-day detention without trial, laws which outlaw incitement to terrorism and incitement to hatred. The list is extensive and growing. The politicians assure us that these laws are well-intentioned, and that they won't be abusively enforced. I am not inclined to take their word for it.

At the beginning of this year, a Freedom of Information Act came into force in the UK. One of the things it did was rescind a provision called a "Lord Chancellor's Instrument". It was probably also the first time most people had been aware that such a thing existed. The Lord Chancellor's Instrument was a mechanism for extending the secrecy of particularly sensitive documents beyond 30 years. Naturally, the BBC wanted to find out what could possibly be so secret that it should not be revealed for 100 years. Early in February they published the list. Looking through it, I was struck by two thoughts. First, several of the themes in question are just as topical now as they evidently were all those years ago: the rules and process for deportation of foreign nationals (two cases); the question of whether someone should be arrested just because 'she wishes to walk up a certain street' (in this case, handing a petition in at 10 Downing Street); law enforcement access to personal communications (interception of telegrams); the governance and accountability of monopoly utilities (the Post Office); trades union unease about the transparency and fairness of public sector procurement practices. Second, why on earth were some of these documents so classified? The BBC report doesn't go into a lot of detail about any of the cases, but here's the 10th one in full, as an example: "10. POACHER'S SENTENCE CONFUSION A minor wrangle over the way a sentence was handed down to a poacher has been a closed file since 1909. Thomas Joy, from Shrewsbury, convicted for carrying a gun without a licence and "night poaching", lost out on prison privileges and potential early release because the judge gave no direction on whether his sentences should run consecutively." Now, if you can tell me what about that is so sensitive that it should be buried for a century, I'd love to know! I wish I could believe that, now we have a Freedom of Information Act, this sort of apparent absurdity just couldn't happen any more. The Act, though, contains quite enough exemptions to ensure that anyone with a strong enough incentive can bury information as before. Am I being paranoid? I don't think so. After all, our government is on record as having reversed the burden of proof, proposed detention without trial for 3 months, and deported people to countries with a record of human rights abuse. Stacked up against those, what's the big deal about 'losing' a few documents? Especially if it's something really critical... like a decision on concurrent jail terms for a night-time poacher.

Well, following on from the last blog entry, and mindful of the families who have just gone to court against the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania, no prizes at all for guessing which side of the Intelligent Design argument I come down on. I'm aware that a post like this risks crossing some boundaries --- so if you find 'anti-creationist' arguments offensive, please don't read on. I don't wish to offend, but neither am I comfortable with the thought that children are being told, by their teachers, to suspend their critical faculties. Arthur C Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". That doesn't mean it is magic, though. But that's pretty much the level of the ID argument, it seems to me. "Any sufficiently advanced function is indistinguishable from magic and therefore that's just what it is". The human eye is so fantastic it must literally have been created by magic. Or a divine creator. There's no other way. I guess I don't win the unpredictability prize for citing Richard Dawkins, either, but he wrote a book called "Climbing Mount Improbable", in which he gives examples of complex end results which are produced by very simple incremental steps. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who had a Spirograph as a kid. Or, come to that, anyone who has studied fractals. They are produced by very simple mathematical functions, yet the results are unimaginably complex. The argument from complexity is not compelling. Not only is it undermined by examples of 'simple steps, complex outcomes', but it is also too dependent on the idea of our inability, at a given moment in our evolution, to understand the complexity in question. That's only a couple of rungs down the ladder from saying "the indisputable proof of God's existence is that I am stupid." Which is strange, given that I would bet you the majority of ID-ers believe that humans are created in the image of said creator. Better people than me have advanced the argument that the ID people and the geneticists are just not answering the same question. To say "these are the things which happen observably in the natural world, and here's my hypothesis as to how it works" is a testable proposition susceptible to rational proof over time. To say "these are the observed natural processes and here's my view as to why this all happens" is another matter. Ultimately that's a question of asserted belief. Of faith. If the existence of God could be scientifically proved, religion would necessarily be something other than what it is. Are there any atheist proponents of the Intelligent Design argument?

Superpat and Rohan have already been brave enough to post their results from the OKCupid Politics test, so here goes. It should not come as a surprise to those who regularly frequent this blog, but apparently I am quite squarely in the 'Mahatma' quadrant, somewhere (graphically, at least) between Billary Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev. I think the Libertarian tendencies of my youth are gradually being tempered by some kind of empathy. Ah well.

You are a Social Liberal (66% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (21% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Superpat (Pat Patterson) has just had a blog dialogue (blogalogue? ;^) with fellow Identity blogger Rohan Pinto which really merits a few minutes of study. Pat has successfully combined his extensive knowledge of current federation systems and Sun products to give a really good analysis of the practicalities. Pat's blog entry includes a description of how Liberty and Shibboleth relate to each other and the relevance of SAML 2.0; also, the Liberty concept of one-time federation, which deserves to be more widely appreciated and implemented. Oh, and he manages to correct some of the misconceptions currently in Wikipedia about federation. All in all, a tour de force... nice one, Pat.

Is this morally better or morally worse? "Israeli forces plan to resume targeted killings of militants and seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the officials added." BBC News article It felt as though something would change, with the cessation of Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip and its return to some form of nominal self-determination, if not independence. In the event, it seems that the problem is this: from the Israeli perspective, the withdrawal was itself a sufficient condition for the Gaza Palestinians to cease to be a problem. From the Palestinian perspective, it's one of a necessary but insufficient set of conditions. Trouble is, causality and morality are very different beasts. I'm sure there is some moral difference between extra-judicial assassinations in an occupied territory and extra-judicial assassinations in someone else's territory. I'm not sure I can see it yet, though.

Strangely, most people I ask these days have not heard the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. That might be an English thing... I wasn't brought up in England. It's a shame, though, because it's not only a great story and fable, it's also a fabulous metaphor - especially in this age of blogs, trolls, flame wars and the like. So at the risk that this will turn out to be a swing at a tar baby... I think I may have found an antidote to Ann Coulter. There is a somewhat 'theist' notion that different religions can be thought of as separate paths up the same mountain. It's one I have found congenial in the past. However, in this thought provoking piece, A.C. Grayling, Birkbeck College Professor of Philosophy, succinctly argues that this view can only logically be held by someone who is not a follower of any of those particular paths, which is obvious once it's pointed out, but still profound. He extrapolates this into the social and, more tellingly, the political context. If there's an argument against the public sector expression of religious views, this is it, not the clammy hind-brain rantings of la Coulter.

From October 4th 2005 there's a change to the API (Advanced Passenger Information) which passengers have to provide under US immigration rules. API already includes passport number and expiry date. From Oct. 4th it also has to include the traveller's country of residence, and an address for his or her first night's stay. British Airways have said that collecting this data at check-in may cause delays, so is recommending that passengers enter the additional details via its website. Here's their web page on what details are required for which countries. If you've already got a flight booking, you can enter your API data via this page. I'm not sure if that works for non-BA bookings; if you're not flying BA I'd recommend contacting your carrier.

A couple of weeks ago, I commented on the story of the terrorist socks . As the trial has now ended with a guilty verdict and a 15-year sentence, it's time to look at what lay behind the extraordinary 'socks of terror' allegation. (Incidentally, the jury apparently could't reach a conclusion on the matter of the socks...). "The court heard that a pair of socks with traces of explosive on them --- rolled into a ball with a cord attached --- were found in Rowe's luggage when he was stopped at the tunnel. Rowe said he used the socks for martial arts kicks and that traces of explosives were from when he used them as gloves to unload ammunition, after carrying out humanitarian work in Bosnia in 1995. "BBC news site He was arrested in 2003. So the threat was clearly a bio-hazard one. I'm sorry: 8 years is too long to go without washing your socks!

In the course of a round of analyst briefing calls yesterday, the following topic came up, and raised some interesting questions. I understand that the latest version of Windows XP integrates some DRM-type functions, so for example it's possible to forward a document to someone on the basis that it can only be read (not modified) and cannot be forwarded to anyone else. I don't have the means to investigate this, so I'm relying on someone else's experience here... The problem appears to come when you set those options and then send the document to someone on a 'current but not latest' XP release. They can't open the document. Likewise, I don't know what happens if the receiving client is a webmail or non-Windows platform. It seems to me that practically speaking this leaves us in one of two states: 1 : senders turn off these access control functions on the basis that it defeats the object of sending the doc in the first place; 2 : it becomes a lock-in to that version of Windows XP. I can see the benefit of giving users the option of applying such access control measures, but in my view it needs to be done in a way which is open enough to overcome these apparent shortcomings.

The Liberal Democrats are having their annual conference, and their Home Affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, has taken the opportunity to distance his party from some aspects of the Government's current approach. Specifically, he cites proposals introduced this August (i.e. after the initial measures proposed in the wake of the 7/7 bombings), such as the extension to 3 months' detention without trial, and the problematic definition of an offence of "glorifying terrorism". I almost wonder if he reads my blog ;^) I was about to say he must be a man after my own heart... but in the nick of time I remembered that he is still a politician. Close call.

I have to think about this some more, but in the meantime... This story on the BBC site raises the topic of the relationship between physical/facial appearance and identity. All kinds of fiction exploits the rich potential of this theme: off the top of my head... The Mask (with Jim Carrey), several books by Richard Morgan (starting with Altered Carbon), Face Off of course, Desmond Bagley's "The Tightrope Man", and many others, I'm sure. I put 'The Mask' first, because for all its slapstick, it's the one in which a change of appearance is so directly linked with a change of character and self-perception. In the Richard Morgan books, where a 'personality' can effectively be backed up into a physical storage medium, the characters have to cope with what he calls being 're-sleeved', in other words, having their memories and personality decanted into a completely new body. So, of course, do their friends, acquaintances, lovers and families, which would take some getting used to. How do you react to someone who looks utterly unfamiliar, but who claims to be an old friend of yours and knows all those details of your shared history? And some or all of our current assumptions about biometric authentication would go right out of the window. Then there's the question of what being 're-sleeved' would do to your own perception of your identity. For instance, people who have cosmetic surgery often report that they feel like 'a new person', whether because of the change in their appearance, because they feel better about themselves, because they perceive a change in the way people relate to them, or combinations of all three. In authentication terms, how would we cope with someone whose biometrics have changed?

It's interesting that the Home Office 'biometrics roadshow' is showcasing face recognition (though apparently there is "ultimately the possibility of iris-scanning and fingerprinting"). Today the television news reports have also been full of CCTV footage of the London 7/7 bombers on the public transport system, apparently doing a reconnaissance for their subsequent, ultimate journey. I think what makes me uneasy about face recognition as an authentication mechanism in this context, as opposed to a forensic technique, is that its operation does not necessarily require any consent from the subject. That's not to say every implementation is covert; there are instances (such as the US Immigration/Visa Waiver process) where it's perfectly obvious what's going on. But there's potential for much more inconspicuous implementation, and that concerns me, because the more pervasive the technology becomes, the more critical I think notions of informed consent become. Here's a previous blog entry on biometrics in the UK ID card scheme (it's the second entry for the date in question).

How remiss of me. It appears that the UK government has just spent a whole week convincing us how wonderful ID cards are, and I had no idea. Thanks goodness for the Register. Now all I need to do is find how what Home Office minister Andy Burnham means when he asserts (no, it's a claim) that: "It may sound like a bold claim but our ID card system will protect personal data and privacy." Hmmm. They can't tell us how much it will cost yet, but they already it will do some pretty tricky stuff. Nifty.

The Beeb's News Site has several stories about the growing number of e-democracy initiatives. One phrase which really caught my eye was this one: "Debate will be less likely to be dominated by professional lobbyists or single issue zealots, he believes." (Tom Steinberg, architect of the FaxYourMP site). I've been tangentially involved with local politics on a couple of occasions, always in addition to my day job, and I was struck by two things: 1 - the motivation of local politicians seemed to me to be sometimes obscure and frequently strange; 2 - it takes a lot of time and effort to apply even slight influence to their deliberations, let alone successful influence. As a consequence, the motivation of the small band of regular lobbyers seemed even weirder. My own experience leads me to agree with Mr Steinberg that anything which lowers the barrier to broader participation is a good thing, in that it extends the input beyond those two small groups mentioned above. However, it's also worth bearing in mind that many of these e-democracy initatives are in their infancy. Whenever I have wanted to contact my MP, I have felt it to be in my interest to give a name and a return address (my own, even!). However, traditional petitioning is not that strong on authenticating the people who sign up. If e-petitioning can also be anonymous, there's potential for the system to be easily abused in some volume. These are the early days of e-petitioning, and my bet is that we're currently in the 'idealistic' phase, where the novelty is enough to outweigh a few shortcomings in areas like authentication. I'd also bet that it will mature pretty quickly, though, giving rise to some major authentication and entitlements requirements on a mass scale. The trick will be to ensure that, in enforcing stronger authentication, we don't inadvertently re-introduce the kind of barrier which reduces participation. To my mind, that has been one of the failings of online e-government projects in the UK to date: for example, by overly resctricting the number of acceptable certificate authorities, the UK Government Gateway failed to capitalise on large numbers of already-issued credentials of adequate quality. At the time when I wanted to enrol, I was a Thawte 'Web of Trust' notary with a healthy number of Trust Points, having registered by presenting myself in person with my passport. There was no mechanism for the Government Gateway to recognise that level of trust, though, which was inconvenient and tended to discourage use of the Gateway.

Until yesterday I had never heard of Ann Coulter. How I yearn for that state of grace. This quotation seems to be as representative as any: "To put the Supreme Court's recent ban on the Ten Commandments display in perspective, here is a small sampling of other speech [sic] that has been funded in whole or in part by taxpayers: ... —- Korans distributed to aspiring terrorists at Guantanamo. —- U.S. military " (THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT RELIGION, June 29, 2005) My word. Imagine taking the cost of holding captives indefinitely without trial, and having the irresponsible profligacy to add to that the cost of providing them with the means to practice their religion. If they were acknowledged to be covered by the Geneva Conventions, it would be a must*. I'm not going to link to the full article; if you want more, I'm afraid you'll have to google it for yourself. Don't blame me if it puts you off your food.
*Religious Services Adequate premises must be provided to prisoners of war (Convention III, Art. 34) and internees (Convention IV, Art. 86) for religious services to be held.

Now here's an unusual sensation. This morning I heard a snippet of an interview with Bill Clinton; he was lucid, intelligent and persuasive. Some of his sentences had several linked clauses. He used words like "profound", "disproportionately" and "dislocation", and used them correctly. He coherently related the grim after-effects of Hurricane Katrina to the global geo-political issues of the day. Has it really only been five years? It's a shocking admission about my own memory (and perhaps also the pervasive power of the media) but I'm afraid I'd forgotten what it was like to hear a US president do that. Come to that, I've forgotten what it's like to hear a Prime Minister do that. Maybe if we asked him nicely, he'd come and be our president.

My blog-mate Mark Dixon is part-way through a short but comprehensive guide to customers' identity requirements. On the 16th, he covered common requirements which crop up in the customer RFPs he gets; on the 17th, he turned to the business objectives those customers cite for their identity projects. Coming next... the benefits they expect as a result. It's one thing for us, as a vendor, to say why we think customers ought to buy stuff from us, but it's far better to get the customer's version. Likewise, seeing one of those RFPs at a time is a good snapshot, but this aggregation by Mark is a great validation of what's important to identity management users. He should charge for this stuff... ;^)

Either the interviewers at BBC Radio 4 are having a particularly strong week, or the Government's current proposals on anti-terror legislation are so flawed that getting a good interview out of it is as easy as dynamiting fish in a barrel. Today it was James Naughtie's turn, interviewing Tony Blair. First he challenged the PM to define terrorism, given that it's hard to prosecute someone for glorifying something if you don't know what that something is. Mr Blair didn't even break sweat over that one: "Terrorism is killing innocent civilians deliberately". He repeated that formula, and came back to it again, word for word, later in the interview. Personally I think that definition is problematic. First, there are the cases such as Yitzhak Shamir's Stern Gang, Yasser Arafat's PLO, Nelson Mandela's ANC and others, where individuals would have to be classified as terrorists but later end up as democratically elected leaders representing their constituents. Second, there are the cases where military action is undertaken in the full knowledge that it will result in civilian casualties. Bloody Sunday, Bosnia, Iraq and many other instances suggest that under Mr Blair's definition, most modern military action would have to be classified as terrorism. What kind of propaganda ammunition (no pun intended) does that give to radical extremists? Second, Naughtie turned to the knotty problem of 'glorifying terrorism'. On this, Mr Blair's response was that this definition is not simply meant to catch those people who say 'I can understand the motivation of people who turn to terrorist acts', even if he would "profoundly disagree" with their view; it's aimed at those who say that kind of thing to an impressionable audience who will then conclude that they should undertake terrorist acts. So the 'offence' here doesn't arise out of what I say - it arises out of the extent to which people who hear (or read) what I say are impressionable. That seems to me both illogical and a very dubious basis for legislation. (And yes, I am aware of Schenck v. United States). The third telling comment came when Mr Blair fell back on the old mantra that "every right comes with a corresponding responsibility". Superficially attractive, but also well-accepted to fall short of a useful principle. After all, a mark of a civilised society is surely the extent to which it grants rights without responsibilities; for instance, babies, children, the sick and the mentally ill frequently are accorded rights without being expected to bear commensurate responsibilities. So what has this got to do with quantum mechanics? Well, it seems to me that there's something 'quantum' going on here. I know that politicians are constantly under pressure to reduce everything to a sound-bite, no matter how complex the subject. In a quantum system, you can never know everything about a subatomic particle... you can know two out of three things about it (energy state, position, momentum, if I remember right*). It seems to me that when you put a politician on the radio, you can similarly have two out of three things: logical, consistent, succinct. (Let's not be over-rigorous and try and factor truthfulness in as well...). What we got today was consistent and succinct, but not logical. *Turns out I don't remember right... so it's a good thing my degree wasn't in Physics. See comments for corrections from Paul Madsen and Richard Veryard. Thank you, gents.

I still don't think Max Mosley, President of the FIA, gets it. Over the weekend, he lashed out at Edouard Michelin, the head of the eponymous tyre manufacturer, for criticising plans to adopt a single-supplier strategy for Grand Prix racing in the future. "Mr Michelin should try to understand that no governing body, competitor or member of the paying public could be happy with a supplier which turned up with the wrong equipment and wrecked a major world championship event." BBC Sport website By golly, Mr Mosley. And do you think that the competitors and paying public are any more impressed with a governing body which has no contingency plans in the event that a critical component of their race weekend fails? Oh, I see... you've put a contingency plan in place now, and it is to switch from two tyre suppliers to one. That ought to do it. I know, I know, I said I'd abstain from F1 because I was so angry about the Indy fiasco. I was expecting the FIA to be 'sentencing' the offenders around now, so I've been trying to find out what they have in mind for the last act of the farce.

Carolyn Quinn's interviews on BBC radio's evening news programme ("PM") flushed out a couple of classic comments this evening. The first came from Ken Jones, Chief Constable of the Sussex Police Force. He said the new anti-terrorist measures, including the extension from 2 to 12 weeks for detention without charge, were needed because "existing measures were designed to cope with Serious and Organised Crime, and are not adequate to deal with the terrorist threat we face today". Perhaps he should talk to the Charlie Cunningham of the FBI, DCS Ken Farrow of the City of London Police, Jeffery Robinson, Ken Rijock and others with extensive experience of serious and organised crime. I have heard all of them describe it as a networked international enterprise, well camouflaged and well-funded, with no regard for borders, jurisdictions or law enforcers. Sounds familiar. Indeed, of course, we have all also recently been told that organised crime is closely interlinked with global terrorism, not least as a way of raising and laundering funds. The second was from Gwyn Prosser, MP, member of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He said, also in justification of the new legislative proposals, that the threat we face is "exceptional and unique". I'm not sure what's more worrying: - the idea that he's sees legislation as the appropriate way to address an "exceptional and unique" threat, or
- the idea that he doesn't see why that's a logically absurd thing to say.

Several media channels today (including BBC News Online, the FT, the Guardia and the Times) carry the story of seven alleged terrorist suspects who have just been detained and whose deportation is being sought. Over the past months, a lot of concern has been expressed about the ways in which the Government's proposals for new anti-terror legislation would curtail and infringe human rights. The head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, recently openly warned that civil liberties would have to be sacrificed in order to protect against the threats which now face our society. So it's interesting to analyse the reports of today's wave of arrests and pick out some of the practicalities of anti-terror enforcement. Let's look at some specifics: - The BBC reports that today's detainees include individuals who have already been arrested, tried and acquitted earlier this year on charges of plotting to mount a ricin poison attack. At trial, four men were found not guilty, and four were acquitted when the prosecution offered no evidence against them.
- The Home Secretary says that the current deportation warrants 'are not based on any specific threat assessment'.(FT)
- The arrests and deportations make use, not of any new legislation, but of the Immigration Act of 1971, under which deportation can be sought for those "whose presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good for reasons of national security" (The Times, The Guardian) Note that this wording doesn't imply that the suspects have done anything; only that their presence alone is enough to justify arrest and deportation.
- The Home Secretary can currently also apply to detain/deport someone on grounds of "unacceptable behaviour"; So UK legislation already appears to allow the summary detention and deportation of individuals the Home Office doesn't want in the country. What do the new proposals add? - The current limit on detention without charge is 14 days; law enforcers are pressing for that to be increased to 3 months, on the basis that reviewing digital evidence such as CCTV footage is very time consuming (by comparison with whatever they previously used to do in 14 days...);
- Deportation can take place even to countries known to have a poor Human Rights record (though a cynic might observe that the Government is actively taking steps to ensure that our own Human Rights profile approaches theirs as briskly as possible!);
- As well as "presence not conducive to the public good", "national security" and "unacceptable behaviour", which are already provided for, current proposals will add specific offences of "incitement to terrorism" and "acts preparatory to terrorism". It is very hard to see what these contribute which cannot already be achieved by the measures used in the recent arrests. Then there's the question of whether the new proposals will actually achieve a reduction in the terrorist threat. Again, it's hard to see how, given that they seem to add little or nothing new to the law enforcement kit-bag. In particular, I still don't understand how deportation prevents the offence of 'incitement to terrorism', deters it, or makes it any easier to mitigate. Indeed, it takes someone who the authorities clearly view as a 'clear and present' threat, and puts them beyond the reach of domestic intelligence and enforcement agencies, while giving them, presumably, another reason to despise the UK. Inspired. There must be a better way...

I noticed the other day that my previous link to this site was broken, so I have re-done my 'places visited' tally. It gave me the opportunity to add Jordan (although strictly speaking I could have claimed that beforehand, having been to Jerusalem in the early 60s before the borders got rather summarily re-drawn). As you'll see, ticking "Russia" credits me with visiting about half the globe, right across to Kamchatka, Sakhalin and other exciting places. That's not quite the case, though I have been to Moscow, and once spent a week in Irkutsk, which is so far East that it's roughly due North of Singapore.
create your own visited countries map

I think this comes under the heading of 'picking my own nits', or something similarly unsavoury. 'It has come to my attention' that I misremembered Orwell's 1984; he didn't actually use the term "Doublespeak". Correction duly appended to the entry in question.

I was up at Salford University yesterday for an Identity Management seminar hosted by their Information Services Division (ISD). The day started with a little excitement, as one of my co-presenters was fog-bound at Heathrow airport... so at very short notice the audience got a double dose of me instead. Ah well... into every life some rain must fall, and yesterday it was their turn ;^) That said, I must thank the ISD folks, especially Tony Lewis, Martine Carassik and Tom Gordon, for doing a great job of hosting us and putting on an event which I think all the attendees found useful. There was a good level of open discussion, which is always heartening. There were two things about ISD which left a particular impression: the first was the thoughtfulness which had gone into their project strategy for the Identity Management (IDM) initiative. All the signs were that they have done a great job of aligning the IDM project with the enterprise-level objectives of the University as a whole. That's something it's easy to spout as a mantra, but let's be honest... it's a recommendation more often flouted than followed. As a result, they share (with their board and finance people) a clear view of what benefits the project is expected to deliver over what period, and that gives them a lot of positive buy-in from their decision-makers. The second was the similarly thoughtful approach Tom Gordon brings to the principles of identity management as well as the practice. You can read some of Tom's thoughts here. It's well worth a look, because I think he articulates some principles which are only going to grow in relevance. Tom also pointed me at Stephen Downes' blog, particularly this piece on identity, which has just soaked up a good chunk of my morning (so thanks, Tom ;^). One last 'footnote' to the trip; as I was driving out of central Manchester I quite unexpectedly passed Strangeways prison (unexpectedly for me, that is... I didn't know it was there). It's surprisingly close to the city centre, and is quite large and grim. For those who like to make connections of this kind: Strangeways was designed as a set of radial 'spokes' spreading from a central round tower. The name given to this design at the time was "panoptical" (i.e. where all is visible) - Stefan Brands and others currently use that term to describe identity systems in which too much data about the individual is exposed whether they consent to it or not.

... or whatever the collective noun for blogs is. (Suggestions via the Comment button, please). Don't Panic - Trust blog Under the Don't Panic URL there are separate blogs on 'Trust', 'Knowledge and Uncertainty', 'System Design and Purpose', and 'Leadership and Change'. I can highly recommend a browse. The only thing I would say is don't go there if you're pressed for time, because you are sure to find things you want to spend a while reading and thinking about.

Here's a strange one, which I fully admit I don't understand yet. The UK government is pursuing its policy of keeping undesirables (in this case, those it suspects are likely to incite terrorist violence) out of the country. Here's what I don't grasp: the terrorist threat seems to be one which transcends national borders; if someone is in your country, under your jurisdiction and committing an offence, you can do something about it; if that person is outside your country, in a jurisdiction which either cannot or will not stop them committing what you consider to be an offence, you can't do much about it... and the borderless nature of the threat means it is undiminished. It seems strange, in this day and age, to be behaving as though two people need to be in the same country in order for one to incite the other to a terrorist act. Don't they do all that kind of stuff via video-conference these days? "Help me understand.....""

Chris Gerhard has already spotted this and posted a link to it, so apologies to Chris for nicking it. If you liked the "Modern Major General" animation I posted about a couple of months ago, you might like this one - expecially if you're a Wizard of Oz fan. Nuff said. In "1984" George Orwell famously referred to "Doublespeak"* (the use of harmless or preferably benevolent-sounding terms to describe things you really don't want done to you, for instance), and it often seems to me that, intentionally or otherwise, successive governments have learned it all too fluently. With no visible shred of irony, we have a Criminal Justice System (is it the system which is criminal, or the justice it dispenses, one might be tempted to ask); we aren't going to have an Identity (i.e. enforcement) card, we're going to have an Entitlement (i.e. the State deperately trying to give you stuff) card; we don't do 'shooting people' wars, we do 'peacekeeping' missions; we don't do "invasions", we do "regime change" And so on. It might all sound like bitter rantings (and indeed it may be bitter rantings)... but I think we always need to be on our guard against Doublespeak, and call it out when we see it. For all that an ID Card is 'spun' as an Entitlement credential, there is an enforcement side to it, whose name deserves to be spoken. If the 'spin' says one thing and the law and policy say another, we don't get a true picture of what we are being invited to use and, more important, why. More perniciously, it opens the way (perish the thought) for specious arguments along these lines: Policy-maker: "Hey, Mr Public: do you want illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers to soak up your job and your benefits?" Mr Public: "No way" Policy-maker: "Oh, and do you want suicide bombers to make your commuting life a misery?" Mr.P: "Umm.... no, I don't reckon" Policy-maker: "OK - you'll want one of these 'keep me, my job and my benefits safe' cards, then" Mr.P: "Yes indeedy... sign me up." Policy-maker: "Oh, by the way, we're going to use this to index everything we know about you, and you'll have to pay for the card... but we can't tell you how much. Also, odds are we won't ask suicide bombers to show it to us, in case they blow themselves up." Mr.P: "?" Now, I'm not suggesting that's the argument that's taking place... but neither do I think we're getting a straight story about what ID Cards are intended to solve, how they will do so, and whether the cost of the problem outweighs the cost of the solution. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Updated on Sept.13th. Oops. According to wikipedia, 1984 does not actually contain the word 'doublespeak'; what it does mention are 'doublethink' and 'newspeak'. Whichever of those it is, the concept I'm alluding to is the one behind the use of "Minipax" for the Ministry of Peace (i.e. War) and "Miniluv" for the Ministry of Love (Secret Police). [Shudder]

OK, I know what some of you may be thinking... some socks should definitely be treated as a biohazard. However, the pair I am thinking about are surfacing as evidence in an anti-terrorist trial in the UK. How about this for forensics: "The prosecution said the socks had been modified to make them ideal for cleaning a mortar bomb." Wow. Militarily modified socks. Nasty. The prosecutor, Mark Ellison, offers this tantalising explanation in the BBC article: "Mr Ellison told the Old Bailey an army expert would be called to show 'the sock ball, modified in that way, would be ideal as a cleaner of [sic] bung to be put in the top of the mortar tube.'" I do usually ball up my socks when I'm packing. I'll certainly think twice before I do that next time. Tag: London 7/7