Two interesting articles

On 2nd February 2009, The Guardian carried an article from Becky Hogge entitled "Your ISP is watching you"
"Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are not media companies. They do not get to decide, or even influence, what we watch, who we talk to or what we buy online. If they did, the world wide web would never have got off the ground."

Early in 2009 BT's Bruce Schneier published a thoughtful essay entitled The Architecture of Privacy on his personal website:
"Just as we look back at the beginning of the previous century and shake our heads at how the titans of the industrial age could ignore the pollution they caused, future generations will look back at us - in the early decades of the information age - and judge our architecture, and what we did to foster freedom, liberty, and democracy."

Internet Advertising Bureau Good Practice Principles

On 4th March 2009, UK's Internet Advertising Bureau launched Good Practice Principles, self-regulatory guidelines for companies that collect and use data for online behavioural advertising purposes. Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group identified a number of clear problems with this.

Parliamentary Round Table 11th March 2009

On Wednesday 11th March Baroness Sue Miller of Chilthorne Domer chaired a parliamentary round table event entitled Online Privacy and the Interception of Internet Communications. This was addressed by distinguished group of speakers led by Sir Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and the audience included MPs, Peers, journalists and representatives from Phorm. A list of the speakers, experts, MPs, Peers and Phorm staff present can be found on a NoDPI posting entitled 'Great Minds'.

Sir Tim's notes for the event can be found on this w3.org page. Material distributed to participants consisted of Speaker Bios, a briefing paper, a legal summary and a comparison of 19th century attitudes to privacy with those of today.

The event gained considerable publicity and substantially raised the media profile of opposition to interception-based behavioural profiling, with coverage by national media such as the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. New Scientist's report provides a particularly good account. A list of some of the other press coverage was published on NoDPI.

Phorm prefers to talk about commerce, rather than legality or website owner's rights

On Tuesday 17th March, Phorm's Chief Executive Kent Ertugrul was interviewed by Lesley Curwen for the BBC World Service's Business Daily programme. Despite a slick performance overall, he stumbled badly when the question of Phorm's legality was asked, and also whether website permission was required for interception. On both issues he tried to move discussion to commerce and the online advertising industry. A transcript of this part of the interview can be found on the NoDPI Forum.

Open Rights Group call for major websites to opt out of Phorm

On 22nd March 2009, the Open Rights Group issued an open letter to the Chief Privacy Officers at Microsoft, Google / Youtube, Facebook, AOL / Bebo, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay asking them to exercise their ability to opt out of Phorm. An associated Facebook Group 'Tell Phorm to Eph Off and leave my Facebook data alone' grew to more than 1000 members in under a week.

Subsequently Amazon, Wikiupedia, Livejournal and others opted out. You can read about this on our Websites Blocking Phorm page.

Phorm Town Hall Meeting 7th April 2009

On 4th March 2009, the BBC reviewed the past year for Phorm. This was stimulated by an announcement from Phorm that they would be holding a Town Hall Briefing on 7th April 2009 in central London. Referring to the similar event exactly a year previously, the BBC's Darren Waters stated: The firm says the new meeting "follows on from last year where we engaged with the concerned, the curious and the enthusiasts". I was at that meeting and while there were plenty of the first and some of the second, I certainly don't recall any of the third group.

Writing after the meeting, the lawyer blogger Pragmatist said: "By the end of Phorm's '2nd Town Hall Meeting' it became obvious that the company is still trying to launch a product with both hands tied behind its back ... Ultimately, comparisons with Google and Facebook highlight the fact that Phorm is not a bottom-up phenomenon. It's something that will only happen if big telecoms providers say so, and that collides with the Web 2.0 ethos. This, coupled with the Orwellian privacy issues - whether real or perceived - makes the marketing job very much harder."

Canadian Privacy Commissioner: Essays

Also on 7th April 2009, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada published a series of essays on their Deep Packet Inspection web pages.

Lord West stumbles

On 23rd April, the House of Lords debated Civil Liberties and Electronic Surveillance.

This included the following exchange:

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, will the Minister comment on the one point that I raised that came out in the FOI request? The Home Office drew up a policy document on whether targeted online advertising was lawful interception. Was it normal Home Office practice for that document to be reviewed and commented on and for deletions to be suggested by the very company intending to undertake the activity?
Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I cannot really comment on that, because I do not know the details. I shall get back to the noble Baroness in writing. I was not aware that that had gone on, but I shall look into it.

Yet on 29th September 2008, Lord West had stated in a written answer that:
The Government first learnt of the targeted online advertising trials in April this year. The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) have held discussions with BT on this matter.

No 10 responds (or doesn't respond) to the Phorm Petition

On Tuesday 19th May 2009, the UK Government responded to the No 10 petition "to stop ISPs from breaching customers privacy via advertising technologies". The petition had run for a year to 4th March 2009, and had gained 21,403 signatures.

The Government's response attracted considerable criticism, most particularly because it entirely ignored the Home Office's responsibility to enforce the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and so prevent the interception of Internet communications. Nigel Kendall, blogging for The Times entitled his criticism of the Government's response "UK Government Phorm response is a complete waste of webspace"

OFT investigation into targeted advertising

On 21st August 2009, the Office of Fair Trading announced that they would investigate targeted ads and pricing online. The Guardian reported that: "Behavioural advertising has been seen as a potentially lucrative revenue generator by companies looking to make use of web interactivity to learn more about users' browsing habits and personal information in order to better target ads and products. One of the most controversial companies in this sector is Phorm."

More commentary

On 23rd September 2009, NetImperative published a guest comment by Tom Weiss, CEO of TV GeniusGuest, entitled 'Moving recommendations beyond user profiling' covering the lessons learned from the privacy issues behind Phorm's setbacks, and how recommendations engines can help broadcasters extend online viewing figures.
"With the mass exodus of customers from online profiling vendor Phorm, many people are questioning how relevant user profiling can be to the TV industry. .... Phorm's business case has collapsed because of user uproar during trials: it would seem that the people of the UK do not like having their behaviour stored and profiled. The privacy concerns are substantial and many saw the UK as a more liberal test market than other parts of Europe so a widespread rollout now seems unlikely."

On 9th October 2009, The Register reported on Phorm's woes in an article entitled 'Phorm takes a bullet for the advertising industry'.

apComms reports

The All Party Parliamentary Communications Group is an independent group of MPs and Lords, from all political parties. It seeks to encourage debate on a range of communications issues, bringing together relevant stakeholders including Government, Parliamentarians, industry and consumer groups.

On 15th October 2009 apComms issued a report 'Can we keep our hands off the net?'. The report included a recommendation that behavioural advertising should only be operated on an explicit, informed, opt-in basis.