Evidence

A day or two ago, I read a blog article on where UKIP’s vote comes from and who it threatens published on the LSE blog site by Evans & Mellon. They say, they,

… examine the voting history of UKIP supporters, finding that the party is attracting, primarily, disaffected former Labour voters from the Conservatives and elsewhere, and that the working class basis of UKIP has been markedly over-stated. On the whole, however, it is the Conservatives, not Labour, who have most to fear from UKIP.

This is an important piece of evidence of deep inconvenience to those arguing that we have to do more than listen to UKIPs voters, usually an excuse to explore the cess pitc corners of the immigration control policy cupboard.. I tweeted it as I thought it was interesting and one of the retweets, emphasised the factual nature of the paper.


https://twitter.com/DaveLevy/status/816327113515134976

Thanks for the retweet Red Labour, howver we need to remember that

“you can’t reason people out of positions that they didn’t reason themselves into”.

I made a storify to document my sources,

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Serious Crime

I am preparing a blog article on the Investigatory Powers Act and the CJEU ruling on DRIPA and one issue that comes up is, “What is a serious crime?”. I have looked it up and find the UK’s definition appallingly low. I wonder what others think? …

Encryption

Last month, Bruce Schneier commented on The Encryption Working Group of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s  has 2017 Annual Report. He says they conclude that, strong encryption is in the (US) national interest, the supply of encryption tools is globally liquid (hmm!), there is no one size fits all answer to law enforcement’s need to snoop, or whatever they call it, and that co-operation between law enforcement and the tech. sector should be fostered.

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Roshambo

Mrs. L went off on one this morning. It was brought to her attention that a bijou 2 bed room flat in Bordon, built on public land were deemed affordable at £240,000 and the Labour Party having failed to change the legal regime of housing finance management when in power are now too busy playing Roshambo to do anything about it. It should be noted that the UK is the only OECD country that treats public housing debt as part of the national debt since it is not paid for through taxation. …

GOLD

I had a quick look at the August Economic Journal over the Xmas break, and specifically at the article by Barro & Misra, ” Gold Returns”. They argue that the facts (1836 – 2011) suggest that Gold is not a long term extraordinary good investment, offering a long term rate of return of about 1% which they categorise as the equivalent of the standard risk free ROI although its volatility is much higher since 1971 when the US quit the gold standard. They also argue that it is not a great hedge against macro-economic disasters. It would seem it’s like everything else, you need to get it right when to buy and when to sell. …

Oi!, You! No snooping on my emails and chat!

Oi!, You! No snooping on my emails and chat!

Earlier this week, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgement on the legality of the UK & Swedish data retention and surveillance laws. They confirmed their ruling from 2015 that general monitoring is illegal, that retention must be specific and is only allowed to combat serious crimes, that access to surveillance records must be authorised by independent authorities and that EU data subjects must be have access to legal remediation if their rights to privacy are breached. The Guardian report on it here, the Independent here ,the Register here and even  the Daily Mash comments here. The UK’s Investigatory Powers Act also gives the government the right to mandate backdoors in UK operated communications products; these powers may also fall foul of the prohibition on general monitoring and the need for independent review. While the ruling is specific to the UK’s DRIPA law, which has now been replaced by the Investigatory Powers Act, it poses a clear challenge to the legality of the new Law. …

A note on the coming GDPR

A note on the coming GDPR

In a blog at my employer’s site I looked at how to become compliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Regulations are the Law in all the member states, and members of the European Economic Area. The article looks at the issues of consent, the new data subject rights, privacy by design, the meaning of adequate protection and new public accountability via the duty to report breaches and to appoint a professional data protection officer. …

Adrift

I tried to write something about the Momentum National Committee meeting earlier this month; what those who want to run a fan club without a national voice underestimate is the massive anger amongst the grass roots, who joined the Labour Party to be listened to and aren’t. Many were excluded from the Leadership and NEC elections, the NPF is designed as a filter and the Right are closing down any policy discussion in the CLPs. The old guard left organisations are also insufficiently welcoming and frankly don’t understand the dramatic shift in politics post 2008. (More soon) …

Backdoors

The investigatory Powers Act 2016 has empowered the Government to secretly instruct the installation of backdoors into encrypted telco systems including internet communication systems.

Some people seem to think this is bad but should we care?

Most consumer systems require a platform running on US authored software (Windows, MacOS, IOS or Android) in which we should also assume there are backdoors. We should note that the Snowden revelations didn’t stop people buying US (nor Chinese) software; there’s no other way to use the internet.

Do we think this change in Law will really make a difference to UK authored software exports?

This is a mirror of a comment I posted on Linkedin, I’d prefer it if you posted any comments, there, but otherwise feel free to comment here. …