March 2009 Archives

Businesses are being advised to reschedule non-essential meetings during the G20 summit because of the expected clashes between over 5,000 police and a coalition of "anarchist" groups. About the same time we will supposedly see the introduction of requirements to register travel plans for those wishing to leave the country.

It is said that only ten registrars issue the domain names used to organise 80% of the world's current malware operations: from the fast-flux hosting of child abuse subscription services to botnet herding, spam, phishing and denial of service attacks  Last week, at a meeting in Mexico, ICANN agreed a 30 day consultation on proposals to amend its Registration Accreditation Agreememts.

Lord Carter demonstrates a clear understanding of the obstacles to his vision for Digital Britain, from the lack of risk capital to rebuild our obsolescent local communications infrastructure to the collapse of advertising revenues to support content creation. The announcement of the DCMS implementation of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive shows an equally clear lack of understanding. or does it?

The publication of the recent House of Lord report , the debate over ill-drafted proposals for data sharing and the consultation over the implementation of the EU Data retention directive have triggerred a rash of press cover on surveillance. The National Audit Office plans to look at value for money in HMG spend on e-crime. The time has come for a similar study into the value of its spend on electronic surveillance.