TANSTAAFL

While doing some research on “Modern Monetary Theory”, which it would seem is now just short of 30 years old, I started to look for the breakout white paper. It is available on Amazon, of course, for free if you are a user of Kindle Unlimited (about £100 p.a. ) but about £20 as a book or Kindle. Why? The marginal cost of the e-book is close to zero, and I paid a 99p transaction charge for a kindle priced at zero the other day. The high cost of the e-books is to add value to the Kindle Unlimited offer! And this is probably On top of Prime as well and they get to know what you’re researching or otherwise reading! …

Second thoughts

The Tories trying to evade the charge of a #dementiatax, double down on #brexit claiming only Theresa May wants to negotiate a deal. Two things, it’s not true, Corbyn & Labour want to negotiate a deal, the question we as an electorate have is what’s their second best position if a satisfactory deal cannot be done; I think we know with the Tories, they’ll leave with no deal and no further consultation. Labour will consult, even if only with Parliament. …

Wannacry

Having done my best to ensure that my personal systems are as safe as I can make them, I am preparing a personal response to the #wannacry attack last weekend. Meanwhile, I consider this by John Elliot, a great response on the public policy side, and this by David Thomas, a useful look at the IT Security response where he argues that it’s not just about “Vulnerability Management” and that Technical Debt is not just a funky word to get money for the maintenance budget. Neither of them major on the NHS IT Security failings that made them such a target but David makes the points that the UK & NHS weren’t the only victims with Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine and India all suffering from attacks. This is from Microsoft’s Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith and is also important, He re-states Microsoft’s commitment to all its customers and calls for better government response including the idea of a digital Geneva convention. The Washington Post describes the discussions inside the NSA and reveals aspects of how they decide whether to release security vulnerabilities or weaponise them. It’s argued that the cyber weapon was like “Fishing with dynamite”, but as ever no public evidence to allow the people that pay for this to evaluate their claims. …

Digital

The third thing I did with the Manifesto was run a find on the word Digital which only appears in three paragraphs. So all Chi Onawurah’s work on data ownership & government digital procurement disappears and is not mentioned, we’ll get a Digital Ambassador (like Boris?), cross border data flows & privacy and a balance between digital innovators and creators, whatever that means … it should mean telling the trolls to piss off and it’s possible that their shills inside the Labour Party have much less influence in a Corbyn led party. One should also recognise that the EU’s GDPR is a major step forward reinforcing our rights not to be profiled, treated as a number and guaranteeing us a right to take our data away! …

Class action

Prompted by the ORG, last week I wrote to the DCMS to argue that 3rd Party organisations, like ooh!, the ORG should be allowed to initiate ICO investigations into corporate privacy breaches. The #wannacry worm attack is a proof point that campaigning organisations should be able to pursue class actions; as I said in my evidence, the right of private prosecution is the flip side of this coin. …

The submarine campaign

After campaigning I discussed with a comrade what was happening, and was curious about some of the military language used. The Air Campaign for the TV, Press and Radio, the Ground Campaign for door knocking and leaflet delivery, but thanks to Carol Cadwalladyr, we now know about the Submarine campaign, the use of purchased private data to develop secret online campaigns, seen only by the Parties and the individual voters targeted. Cadwalladyr has shown how this cannot be regulated, and how effective it is. …