May 2009 Archives

The domain name structure is at the heart of the Internet - including of the fights against spam, malware, electronic impersonation et al. Nominet is to be congratulated on the scale and nature of its current consultation exercise.

The saga of the MPs' expenses disc is not only a classic tale of information governance, or rather the lack of it, but of  the selective use of information to bring about revolution. We do not yet know what kind of revolution. But, with the largest ever new intake of MPs in prospect, the Revolution of 2010 will be more akin to 1660 or 1688 than 1946, let alone 1979 or 1997. 

What is the difference between the Larry Page's claim that making Google wipe data after six months would hit Flu Protection and a Ministerial claim that spending umpty £billion on data retention and Interception Modenrisation would help the War Against Terror"? This morning I also received an eloquent lawyer plea "Please kill this cookie monster to save Europe's websites".  

During my recent bout of manflu, I tried to make sense of the morass of material on the current scale and nature of on-line malpractice and the reasons for the current erosion of confidence in the on-line world. My conclusion is that there are three main culprits:.