Let me count the ways. If you think Phorm – the evil advert-spooking system practically all the UK’s eyeball ISPs want to force on you – isn’t so bad, I’ve got news for you. First of all, let’s have a look at this Grauniad Tech article. BT’s 2006 trials certainly involved some sort of interception,…
Read More Phorm, how do I hack thee?When Pakistan Telecom tried to kill the Internet in an effort to stop the public seeing evil things on YouTube the other week, there was instant media-reaction and a fairly swift fix by the organisations involved. Things are different when you’re a small Kenyan ISP, though; for about a day now, Africa Online (AS36915) has…
Read More On the African Internet, no-one can hear you screamThis is hilarious, and depressing: you may find tech-libertarians annoying, but just think yourself lucky we got Paul “Van der” Staines, and not this guy. Dmitri Golubov, for it is he, was nailed in 2005 for running a massive credit-card phishing operation (in that case he was probably behind some percentage of the spamwave I…
Read More Hands across the sea continentOne of the many wonderful things about the Web is that its hypertext structure not only permits us to navigate it, and to invoke external resources (scripts, graphics, etc), but also to measure relevance and authority. Google’s killer insight was of course just this; to use links as votes for the relevance of a given…
Read More Anti-LinkSo they arrested Viktor Bout, in the same week the ID cards scheme saw its latest rightward slither and the government’s ragingly impossible road-pricing scheme bit the dust. And I cleared my to-do list on our report on new forms of voice and messaging. What next, it rains ponies? as PZ Myers said. Something like…
Read More What next, ponies?Much more is filtering out about the Bangkok Bout Bust; it seems fairly certain that his arrest was the result of a sting operation in which the DEA posed as buyers from the FARC. Bout booked a meeting room in the Bangkok Sofitel; he, and several others, were waiting for their guests to arrive when…
Read More Smulian In the Bag With Viktor BoutSpyblog is, of course, making sense when they say that the BT/Virgin Media/Carphone Warehouse spying scheme may be illegal because of the sweeping-up of e-mail traffic with the rest. As you know, Bob, e-mail has the legal status of a letter, thanks to the good folks of the EFF years ago. I thought of this,…
Read More More Phorm HorrorsMy ISP just did something naughty. BT, Virgin Media, and Carphone Warehouse have been caught in a scheme to sell details of all your Web activity to marketers (…and anyone else) without your knowledge or consent. And the full details are genuinely worrying. The Register has a major scoop, in that it’s got hold of…
Read More Who needs remote control?It looks like an attempt to censor rightwing arsewit Geert Wilders’s anti-Islam home movie has broken YouTube. Pakistani authorities issued a circular to ISPs in Pakistan demanding that they block access to YouTube; but this doesn’t explain why it’s unreachable from the UK. A traceroute to www.youtube.com goes into PCCW’s network and dies; the explanation…
Read More YouTube is Borked: Pakistani Censors SuspectedIt looks like an attempt to censor rightwing arsewit Geert Wilders’s anti-Islam home movie has broken YouTube. Pakistani authorities issued a circular to ISPs in Pakistan demanding that they block access to YouTube; but this doesn’t explain why it’s unreachable from the UK. A traceroute to www.youtube.com goes into PCCW’s network and dies; the explanation…
Read More YouTube is Borked: Pakistani Censors Suspected