Phucking Up Phorm

Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk, three of the UK's largest ISPs are planning to implement a thing called Phorm. Phorm is a very bad thing. It allows the ISPs to track everything you do online - even 'read' (or to be correct 'parse') the contents of most online webmail systems and then sell your browsing history to third parties so that they can ensure you see personally targetted adverts.

This breaks several laws including the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (commonly called 'RIPA'), the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998. There's bunch called BadPhorm who have written extensively on the subject. They say it better than me.

What I wanted to write about, since it's what I do for a living, is some ways in which you can use the law to protect yourself against this crap.

Here's two things everyone should know about how to stop it.

Section 10 Notice

Everyone with an ISP that is going to implement Phorm needs to lodge a Section 10 notice with the ISP. Section 10 of the Data Protection Act 1998 says that an individual has the "Right to prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress".

To write a S10 notice, you need to write to the ISP stating that the processing of your data by Phorm consititues a breach of Article 8 of The Human Rights Act 1998 "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence" and that such processing will cause you unwarranted and distress by violating your right to privacy.

Within 21 days the Data Controller - the ISP - must respond to say how they intend to respond. The S10 notification DOES NOT oblige the data controller to comply, but if they do not comply, they must state why they are not complying.

Please see suggested wording below:

Dear [ISP or contact name],

I am [insert name]. My customer number is [insert customer number or other relevant identification here]

Under Section 10 of the Data Protection Act 1998, I hereby serve notice upon you as Data Controller to cease immediately processing of my personal data by means of Phorm.

My browsing habits will reveal information about me falling into some or all of the following categories deem to be 'sensitive personal data' under Section 2 of the Data Protection Act 1998:

(a) the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject,
(b) his political opinions,
(c) his religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature,
(d) whether he is a member of a trade union (within the meaning of the [1992 c. 52.] Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992),
(e) his physical or mental health or condition,
(f) his sexual life,
(g) the commission or alleged commission by him of any offence, or
(h) any proceedings for any offence committed or alleged to have been committed by him, the disposal of such proceedings or the sentence of any court in such proceedings.

The processing of my personal data by Phorm consititues a breach of Article 8 of The Human Rights Act 1998 "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence" and that such processing will cause me unwarranted and distress by violating my right to privacy."

Phorm further constitues a use of my personal data and a violation of the second and third Data Protection Principles, from Section 8 of the Data Protection Act 1998:

2 Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes.

3 Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed.

Under the law, you have 21 days to inform me of your response, stating your reasons for regarding the data subject notice as to any extent unjustified and the extent (if any) to which you have complied or intends to comply with it.

Please be aware that if I am unsatisfied with your response, I am entitled to complain to the Information Commissoner who can investigate and, should it find you to have failed to comply with a reasonable request, force you to comply.

Yours sincerely,

[Insert Name]

Section 11 Notice

Section 11 of the Data Protection Act 1998 states:

11 Right to prevent processing for purposes of direct marketing

"(1) An individual is entitled at any time by notice in writing to a data controller to require the data controller at the end of such period as is reasonable in the circumstances to cease, or not to begin, processing for the purposes of direct marketing personal data in respect of which he is the data subject.

(2) If the court is satisfied, on the application of any person who has given a notice under subsection (1), that the data controller has failed to comply with the notice, the court may order him to take such steps for complying with the notice as the court thinks fit.

(3) In this section “direct marketing” means the communication (by whatever means) of any advertising or marketing material which is directed to particular individuals."

Please see below for suggested wording:

Dear [ISP or contact name],

I am [insert name]. My customer number is [insert customer number or other relevant identification here]

Under Section 11 of the Data Protection Act 1998, I hereby serve notice upon you as Data Controller to cease immediately processing of my personal data for the purposes of direct marketing by means of Phorm.

I am legally entitled to have a data controller cease, or not to begin, processing of my personal data within "a reasonable period". I suggest a period of five working days should be sufficient to stop processing of my data.

Please be aware that if I am unsatisfied with your response, I am entitled to complain to the Information Commissoner who can investigate and, should it find you to have failed to comply with a reasonable request, force you to cease processing my data.

Yours sincerely,

[Insert Name]

This is distinct from S10 and you should do both.

Please post a link to this article to as many places as you can - if you do post the text elsewhere, a link back here would be appreciated.

Expelled - Could This Be The World's Worst Movie?

Once upon a time, my mate Emlyn and I wrote, directed, filmed and ‘acted’ in a thing called Thomas is Different - The Movie.

It was, being generous, a turd. This may have had something to do with the fact that we were pissed for most of it, and hadn't the first clue about how to write, direct, shoot or act in a flick. On the rare occasion I've been forced to see any of it since, I have normally ended up in a fetal position, mewing helplessly, a speck of white dribble gleaming at the corner of my mouth. It was a definite candidate for the world's worst movie.

Now, however, there's a new contender in town, and unlike our piece-of-crap movie, this one apparently had quite a lot of money behind it, and the people making it were almost certainly not drunk.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a movie that purportedly investigates how a sinister cabal of scientists and educators are censoring anyone who dares even think that there might be any evidence of intelligent design at work in the universe.

Intelligent Design is Creationism by another name. It claims to be scientific and a serious contender to evolution, but is essentially saying,' um... God did it'. There is no serious evidence to back up their claims. Their best attempt is a thing called 'Irreducible complexity', which says that certain biological systems could not have come into existence except as a complete entity, since removing one part of the system renders the whole thing useless. If you're talking about a respiratory system, then you can see there's a sort of logic - if you remove part x, the lungs no longer work, the organism cannot possibly survive. The problem is that as a system is put forward as irreducibly complex, mainstream science discovers how such a system could evolve in small incremental stages. Examples include the flagella of certain bacterium (debunked), the eye (debunked) and the blood clotting cascade system (debunked). Despite the fact that examples keep getting debunked and it has been shown time and time again that very complex biological systems absolutely can arise through incremental change, the Intelligent Designers keep insisting this is a valid theory. Enough about Intelligent Design - after all, if they can't even be bothered to actually try and explain what it is in the movie, why should I?

Expelled maintains that people who have published pro-Intelligent Design material or even have sympathies with ID have been expelled from their jobs and colleges and otherwise victimised. A number of examples are given in the film. On further investigation, none of the claims stands up. Here's one:

Having previously given notice of his resignation six months previously, Richard Sternberg, published a pro-ID article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in his penultimate edition as editor. Other editors on the paper subsequently questioned how Sternberg was able to choose himself to handle with the article in question, given it wasn't in his field of specialism and other editors were much better qualified to carry out a peer review. As a result of Sternberg's failure to adhere to proper editorial policy, the paper was withdrawn, branded 'substandard science' and the journal issued a statement saying the PBSW supported the American Association for the Advancement of Science's statement that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity.

What terrible victimisation did Sternberg suffer..? er... none whatsoever. He retained all other posts he held at the time he published the offending article. Oh, and he was, according to Expelled, made to give back his office keys and denied access to specimen collections by the Smithsonian where he had another unpaid position. According to the Smithsonian, Sternberg was moved to a different office as part of a move involving 17 other people that was arranged prior to the publication of the offending article and retains access to the specimens. It would appear that bullying has gone through some changes since it last happened to me.

There's more on the other 'victims' at Expelled Exposed, a website set up to counter the claims in this movie.

The movie also features eminent pro-evolution scientists such as PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and Eugenie Scott. All were told they were taking part in a movie called Crossroads that would investigate the ID/evolution debate. Expelled producer Mark Mathis would later claim that movies used working titles all the time. True. However, it later emerged that the domain name for the Expelled movie had been purchased prior to interviews with Myers, Dawkins and Scott being set up. Their interviews are edited selectively and presented out of context in order to make it seem as though the scientists, and by extension, evolution, are silly and trivial.

Riddle me this: does the Bible - in the Ten Commandments, no less - not state that 'Thou shalt not lie'..?

The single most egregious part of this movie is its attempt to suggest that 'Darwinism' - a term nearly exclusively used by Creationists and IDers who hope to poison the well by implying that Darwin's less pleasant personal characteristics must be inherent in evolutionary theory (which is a bit like suggesting that because John Maynard Keynes was gay, Keynesian Economic Theory must therefore show its cock to George Michael in public toilets) - directly caused Nazism and the holocaust.

PZ Myers has a great post on his blog Pharyngula. It makes the point wonderfully. The thing from Darwinism which IDers and Creationist would have you believe was an essential pre-requisite for Nazism and the Holocaust is this:

"If members of a population die or are killed off, they will leave no descendants for subsequent generations."

As Myers points out, "Any idiot can figure that one out - and many idiots have". The idea that it took Darwin to state this before anyone could attempt a genocide are clearly ridiculous - not least because God orders quite a few in the Old Testament. We should also consider the fact that Christians were carrying out pogroms against Jews for centuries before Darwin came along. Martin Luther held some particularly vile ideas about Jews. Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels was a defrocked monk who advocated the sterilisation of Jews as a lesser race in the early 20th century. He used the Bible to support his views. Finally, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman has previously made the point regarding this argument, "Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis."

Richard Dawkins makes an entirely sensible observation:

"[...]there are two reasons why we need to take Darwinian natural selection seriously. Firstly, it is the most important element in the explanation for our own existence and that of all life. Secondly, natural selection is a good object lesson in how NOT to organize a society. As I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian. But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'."

At an early pre-release showing of the movie, interested parties were invited to apply for tickets via public website. PZ Myers did so, under his own name. When he turned up at the cinema and showed his ID to collect his tickets, he was ejected by the movie's producer. His guests, however, were allowed to see the movie. They included Myers's wife and daughter and a certain Professor Dawkins, who described the decision as "an extraordinary and costly lapse of judgment" and who further went on to describe the film itself as "a shoddy, second-rate piece of work" and "drearily boring, the tedium exacerbated by the grating monotony of [presenter Ben] Stein's voice".

Of course, one shouldn't take Dawkin's word that this film is a suckfest. You can't take the word of the numerous reviewers that say it's pisspoor either.

You can't take my word for it either; I haven't seen it.

"You haven't even seen it?"

Nope. It's only out today, and that's in the US. Here's a challenge to anyone who thinks that I should see it before criticising its contents: Feel free to point out anything I have claimed is in the film that is not. Feel free to point out any untruths in my rebuttals of what is in the film. I will not edit them.

My reason for writing this is two fold. Firstly, I want to promote Expelled Exposed which provides a commentary for the film. I may have accidentally linked every mention of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to Expelled Exposed. Whoops...

Secondly, although we're not nearly as badly off as the US in terms of this kind of crud being foisted on the public, it is happening, and it's getting worse not better. The people behind Expelled may not be much good at movie making, but make no mistake that they are good at getting their message out there, and that they target those without the necessary knowledge to understand why their science has the prefix 'pseudo'. When my daughter gets to an age where she's in a science class, I want her taught science, not superstition.

I will watch Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and I think perhaps you should too, preferably without paying the makers for the privilege - but only if you can do that without committing an offence, obviously.

Alternatively, I have a copy of Thomas is Different - The Movie, if you're interested..?