Voting by Mobile Phone

firefoxphone

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian today bemoans the low turn out and the perceived ‘rotten borough’ nature of Britain’s parliamentary democracy. Among her arguments she suggests voting should be made easier by allowing people to use their mobile phones.

I have commented; because identifying oneself to government, counting elections and guaranteeing the secrecy of the ballot are the last things we should hand over to proprietary, closed software. Digital activists have come to the conclusion that even counting election results by scanned paper ballots is undesirable and where it is done in this country, a sample based manual verification is undertaken. I presented the argument that the regulator’s code must be open to the @labourdigital Top of the Manifestos event. …

Who’ll win in the London Euro poll?

Who’ll win in the London Euro poll?

The LibDems are going to struggle. Will Labour get three MEPs? Will Jean Lambert, the Green keep her seat?

After the ORG hustings, I had a brief word with Claude Moraes about the likely results, whether Labour would win more seats and if Sarah Ludford, the sole London LibDem MEP would hold on. The following day, the Evening standard published an article quoting a YouGov poll, putting Labour well in the front in London. The Standard’s article sadly doesn’t quote its YouGov source, which may have been private and it does not mention the Greens. The most recent YouGov report I can find is dated early May, and is here. In addition the counting method is complex. I have  sought to see what the results in London might be based on what data I have.  …

What do London’s MEP candidates think about digital?

ec-london

Yesterday the Open Rights Group held its final European Parliament hustings at Shoreditch Village Hall in Hoxton, London. It’s been a while since I visited and it’s certainly cleaned up well. It was great to be there. On the way in, I met Claude Moraes, Labour’s spokesman who told me that the Tories non-attendance was deliberate policy. I don’t know if it’s shame at their behaviour on the lobbying around the data protection directive or fear of a digitally educated audience. The meeting was moderated by Glyn Moody, who led the meeting through the issues of privacy, surveillance, whistle blowing, net neutrality, lobbying and copyright reform. The Tories absence meant that representatives from Labour, the LibDems, both represented by incumbents Claude Moraes and Sarah Ludford,the Greens (Danny Bates) and UKIP (Paul Oakley) who were not, were present. …

I.T. & e-referenda

I.T. & e-referenda

One of the proposals at the Top of the Manifestos event was loads of e-referenda. (That’s an interesting sentence, the plurals of manifesto and referendum are both unusual.) So apart from the IT security issues, one has to ask, where’s the debate and where’s the evaluation of evidence. Obviously the debate would once have happened in a broadcast world where the cost of a seat at the table was immense and thus the voices of the wealthy are amplified; and this applies to the newspapers as well as the 24 hour news channels such as Sky. The relevance of the print is diminishing, but the TV not so much. Social media platforms are developing new collaboration and voting mechanisms, often specifically to solve issues of governance. But it’s not yet ready. There is little argument that blogging software has empowered many people to express their views which has in some, but not all cases, drawn them into the policy development and analysis. …

It’s austerity, stupid!

It’s austerity, stupid!

Earlier this week, Pascale Lamb, one of Labour’s MEP candidates tweeted, “It’s not immigration that causes pressure on services…..it’s austerity”, and in under 100 characters sums up what should be at the heart of Labour’s campaigns this spring and isn’t. The right wing led Commission of the European Union is the world’s ideological engine of austerity and in this country austerity economics has been adopted by the Tory led coalition as a macro-economic policy enabling the assault on standards of living and the welfare state. There are alternatives. Labour should be offering hope of a better (economic) life, not to mention a decent tolerant society. It should also be making something of the fact that it has a candidate for President of the Commission. It’s austerity which is killing jobs, and it’s the result of policy. …

An internet accountable to private contract

An internet accountable to private contract

The BBC ran a story yesterday about the impending agreement between the UK based industrial content and the ISPs to adopt a warning system whereby the top four ISPs, will on notification from the industry trade associations write and warn their customers who allegedly download potentially copyright infringing material. The BBC covered this scoop in the morning on the Radio 4 today program and later in the evening on News Night.  …

Both sides of the jurisdictional fence

fence

In an discussion thread in a BCS group on linkedin, I commented on the bind that US companies have in attempting to meet European Privacy Laws and the US requirement to co-operate with their law enforcement authorities. Some raised the issue of extra-territoriality as based on the location of the storage medium, I said,

The US jurisdictional claim is over the ownership of the storage media not its location. The EU’s jurisdictional claim is over ownership of the data. The current state of law means that it is not possible for US companies to obey the European duty of privacy and the US duties of disclosure.

I should add that the US legal system has some difficulty in accepting privacy as an inalienable right as well as accepting that it is universal; they believe the rights to privacy from government intrusion only belongs to its citizens. This is the inexorable logic of the republic. …