Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
BT is off the hook over those secret spying trials it conducted without bothering to inform, or should that be inphorm, customers about them until it was caught red handed. It looks like a very bad day for privacy, and a very good one for the monitoring of online user activity without consent.
The official reason, it would seem, is that to
continue would be a waste of public money as BT customers had given
'implied consent' to the trials. Really? You try telling them that.
There is still, of course, some hope for justice here as the EU is
still waiting for an
official response from the UK Government to its questioning before
deciding if there is sufficient evidence to start proceedings for a
breach of European Data Protection laws.
Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Barry Murray of the City of London Police
has written to one of the leading anti-Phorm campaigners.
The email is quoted by El Reg and states that "it has been decided that
no Criminal Offence has been committed" and there was a "lack of
Criminal Intent on behalf of BT and Phorm Inc in relation to the tests."
The best bit, though, is the revelation that BT customers would have
given implied consent to being spied upon without their knowledge
because the aim of the tests was to enhance product quality.
So, and allowing for the fact that I am not a lawyer, does this mean
that any company can effectively flout the law as long as it does so in
the name of product development?
It does rather make you wonder why the UK has the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), part of which deals with the necessary
authority required for wiretapping, when it is apparently so easy to
skirt around it.
Then again, perhaps that's the point. After all, if the UK Government
can pick and choose when data protection and privacy can be sacrificed
for the greater good, then why not the corporate sector as well.
Let us hope that, for once, the European Commission has a little more sense, and a bit more bite, when it comes to dealing with Phorm.
David Frost
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