The BBC has picked up on yesterday’s mini-row about the curse of “Reply All”.  What started the problem was an email from Mark Pritchard MP asking, what he no doubt thought was an innocuous question, about who might be interested in joining a new All-Party Group on Cyber-Security.  He had sent it to all MPs and Peers on the Parliamentary email system.  This in itself is not uncommon.

Derek Wyatt MP then responded to say – I paraphrase – that, as one of the handful of Parliamentarians interested in and knowledgeable about cyber issues, he  hadn’t known that Mark Pritchard was also concerned about such matters, that there were a number of other All-Party Groups in existence that looked at cyber questions and, given the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups in general, was an additional one really necessary.  Perhaps in an effort to stifle the fledgling prior to birth he pressed the “Reply All” button and sent his comment to all MPs and Peers.

This then prompted, first, a cascade of MPs and Peers agreeing with him that there were far too many All-Party Groups (all sent using “ReplyAll”) and, second, a torrent of MPs and Peers complaining about the excessive use of the “Reply All” button (some of them were quite intemperate in tone, typed in capitals and used red ink) but also – no doubt to emphasise how irritating it was – sent “Reply All”.

There are, of course, two issues here.

The first is why for so many people is it their default reaction when responding to something to tell an entire mailing list that unfortunately they cannot attend a particular meeting or whatever it might be.  No doubt, it is assumed that their presence or otherwise is so crucial that the response of others will be determined by what they say.   This is sheer arrogance.  If they are that self-important, there are other outlets – they could take up blogging, for example.

Parliamentarians are not, in fact, the worst offenders.  I find members of the London Assembly and their staff are even more profligate with the “Reply All” button.

The second issue is the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups these days.  If you want to count them, look here.  There are so many that it is often impossible for them to find a room, however small, in the Parliamentary Estate for a meeting.  Often there are so many competing Groups meeting simultaneously that most of them are lucky to get more than two or three Parliamentarians even to look in for a few minutes.

And just for the record I responded to Mark Pritchard saying this was a topic I was interested in and in which over the last few years I had been actively involved.  I didn’t press “Reply All” – my reply was just to him – but I also said I had some sympathy with the view that the issue could be pursued ender the umbrella of one of the existing groups.

I have a confession to make.  At least once a day I read Iain Dale’s blog.  Sometimes I find it amusing and sometimes I find it interesting, particularly as a means of understanding the modern Conservative mindset.  Occasionally, of course, I read it as an antidote to low blood pressure.

Today, he had a good rant with “This Pseudo-Fascist Plan Must be Scrapped“.  This relates to the proposals on communications data and the need to preserve these for law enforcement purposes.

Reading the rant, I was surprised – not at its tone (Iain Dale is renowned for giving good rant), but at what I naively assumed was the factual trigger for the rant.  It sounded as though the Government was pressing ahead with legislation on this with a view to getting it passed this side of a General Election.  I was surprised for two reasons: first, that I had missed the announcement; and second, I had understood that this was not what was intended.

However, such was my faith in Iain Dale that I have only just got round to checking the facts.

And what did I find?  The entire rant was based on absolutely nothing.

The Government has NOT announced that it is pressing ahead with legislation.  All it has done is publish the results of its consultation exercise on the issue.  And sensible commentators (not Iain Dale) have recognised that the plans have been shelved.  The idea of a single Government database had in any event been dropped months ago.

I have two warnings for Iain Dale.

First, if he gets himself this worked up about something that ISN’T happening, he will need to be on heavy-duty tranquillisers long before we get into a General Election campaign.

And second, as I have pointed out before, there is a real and serious issue here that any Government must address.  As I said before the consultation was launched:

“At present, telephone companies keep data on their subscribers who make telephone calls, who they connect to and for how long.  They do this, so that they can bill people.  For many years, it has been possible for the police to access this data as part of their investigations into crime.  To do so, they have to get proper authorisation, certifying that accessing the data is proportionate to the crime being investigated and each case has to be considered individually.  The data can be used as evidence in Court and does not involve tapping the call and listening to the content.  Many trials rely on this evidence for criminals to be convicted – there is a murder trial under way at the moment where the crucial evidence is which mobile phones contacted each other just prior to and immediately after the murder took place.

But – and this seems to have passed the pundits by – technology is changing.  Telecoms companies (both fixed line and mobile operators) are building new networks based on VoIP technology.  This is cheaper and more flexible and - critically – does not require detailed call-by-call billing.  The data on which so many trials now rely will soon cease to exist.  The Government is therefore quite rightly going to consult on what can be done to capture this information and allow it to be used in criminal investigations where necessary.

It is not about giving the police more powers to pry into people’s personal lives.  It is about not losing vital material that is currently used to catch criminals.

And, of course, new forms of communication are being created all the time (eg. on social networking sites and chat facilities built into on-line gaming).  Should the police have powers to find out who is communicating with who in these new ways?  That’s what the consultation is about.  It is not some monstrous new assault on civil liberties.  It is allowing a sensible debate about how existing powers should be modified to reflect the changes in technology.”

Unless Iain Dale wants to see the police having to fight serious criminals with even less information available to them than they have at the moment, this is a nettle that is going to have to be grabbed.

I see from the Evening Standard that a member of CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s specialist firearms command, has had to stand down/withdraw*/quit the command after his profile on an adult dating site came to light.

Apparently, on the site he appears as “funboybobby”, had posted pictures with his weapon displayed and as the Standard puts it:

“In some photographs the CO19 officer appeared aroused while in another he showed off a tattoo above his bare bottom.”

A Met spokesperson said:

“We expect firearms officers to display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement on a daily basis.”

I would, of course, hope that all officers display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement.  The spokesperson then continued:

“This case highlights serious concern about the officer’s judgement.”

Indeed!  I would hope that everyone understands the dangers of putting too much personal information on social networking sites – see my earlier comment following the debate I initiated in the House of Lords.

Or as the Standard reports:

“One source close to CO19 said officers could not lay themselves open to blackmail: “Armed officers keep surveillance on terrorists and serious criminal suspects. It is not appropriate that their most personal details should be open for anyone to view.””

Although, I am not quite clear which personal detail the source had in mind in this case ….

Also, the question arises how did Metropolitan Police management find out about “funboybobby”?  Were they trawling the adult dating site in question?

*searching for a term without triggering a double entendre

At today’s Lords’ Question Time, I am afraid that a spirit of devilment got the better of me.  There was a question on the progress being made towards delivering broadband to rural communities.  I should make it clear that I am a great supporter of the Government’s proposals to ensure that all citizens have access to broadband services.  However, the automatic sense of entitlement that was being expressed on behalf of rural interests finally got the better of me, so I intervened to ask:

“My Lords, can we be assured that, given the extraordinary extent to which city dwellers already subsidise those who live in rural communities, this will not be another example where urban dwellers will be taxed, or have to pay more, so as to subsidise the often very pleasant lifestyles of those who live in rural communities?“

In essence, the answer was that this would indeed be yet another subsidy that everyone else would pay for by the 50p levy on fixed line telephony.  This will go with the subsidy to ensure that all rural households can get digital TV, the subsidy that maintains less well-used roads in rural areas, and, of course, the many subsidies paid to farmers.

This was regarded as being rather “controversial”, but an interesting number of Peers from all parts of the country came up to me afterwards and congratulated me for raising the “elephant in the room” …..

The full series of exchanges were as follows:

“Internet: Broadband

Question

2.52 pm

Asked By Baroness Byford

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made towards delivering broadband to rural communities.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Davies of Oldham): My Lords, the Digital Britain White Paper outlined the Government’s universal service commitment for broadband at a speed of 2 megabits per second to virtually every community in the UK by 2012. The paper also outlined plans for a next generation fund, to help to deliver next generation broadband to at least 90 per cent of homes and businesses by 2017. The Network Design and Procurement Company will be responsible for the delivery on behalf of the Government.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that response, I understand that Ofgem does not have powers to compel internet service providers to provide broadband in rural areas, which has resulted in some 166,000 people having no internet at all and more than 2 million having inadequate service provision. How will the broadband be delivered in these circumstances, particularly with regard to the proposed new megabyte speeds of 24, 40 and 100? Will this not be more focused on urban areas, leaving rural areas out in the cold?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, Ofgem cannot command to be done what cannot be done technically. The noble Baroness is right to identify that a percentage of our households cannot receive the requisite signal. We are addressing that. Under the universal service commitment, which we have been following since the summer, we are committed to ensuring that all households have access to the basic service of 2 megabits per second. The second, longer-term project concerning vastly improved speeds, to which the noble Baroness referred, depends partly on market conditions and provision by private companies, but the Government are also taking steps to ensure that we universalise that service in due course as far as we are able to do so.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, with more and more people in rural communities working from home and the increasing trend to media-rich content, the requirement for broadband speeds is more in the region of 50 to 100 megabits per second? What assurances can the Government give that rural communities will move to these speeds in the future?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that is exactly the objective of the next generation access. It is clear that we will not be serving our communities, nor will we be remaining competitive with other countries, if we do not guarantee that next generation broadband is more universally available than it is at present. Certainly, there is provision of broadband at present from, for instance, Virgin, while BT is also interested in spreading its reach in these terms. However, the Government are concerned about that reach and I am grateful to the noble Lord for emphasising how important it is.

The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, the problem of lack of access to broadband is compounded for those rural communities that have poor analogue TV, no digital TV and often, at best, limited mobile phone connectivity. Do the Government have any plans to provide suitable grant aid to enable local rural communities to develop their own broadband, where it is clearly not commercially viable to provide that through the telecoms company? If there are no plans, will they consider that as part of implementing Digital Britain?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, far from there being no plans, there is a major government commitment to meeting the exact objective that the right reverend Prelate has indicated. We are going to use funds from the digital switchover—£175 million—to guarantee that we reach those areas that have not got digital television at present; the development of broadband goes along with that. The Government have identified the funds that will be made available. We have not the slightest doubt that that is merely objective No. 1. The right reverend Prelate will recognise that we are spreading digital television across the whole of the UK in the next four years.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, can we be assured that, given the extraordinary extent to which city dwellers already subsidise those who live in rural communities, this will not be another example where urban dwellers will be taxed, or have to pay more, so as to subsidise the often very pleasant lifestyles of those who live in rural communities?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that may be regarded as a somewhat provocative question in some quarters. I merely emphasise to my noble friend that we are intending to guarantee that these services are available across the whole country, because they are essential to our future economic and social success. That is why there will be a tax on telephone users of 50p per month for a line—we are not talking about an excessive amount—to subsidise and help to spread the opportunities across the whole country, in circumstances where we could not possibly have parts of our communities having no access at all to these services.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, I am tempted to invite the noble Lord, Lord Harris, to come with me to visit some of my upland sheep farmer friends, who do not exactly have a luxurious lifestyle. Back in July, Defra announced that money from the European economic recovery plan, which rural development agencies would use as part of the rural development programme, would help to fill some of the holes in broadband provision, not least for my upland sheep farmer friends and for people in places like that. What is the mechanism by which this money will be used and what will it be used for?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we are of course grateful for resources from wherever they emerge, but the noble Lord will be all too well aware that £2.5 million from Europe is a flea bite in relation to the total issues to be addressed. While it is welcome and is directed towards particular areas, the context of this question is universal access. That is a massive project and we have given clear indications since the summer of how we intend to tackle it. It can be fulfilled only by a long-term commitment to the objectives that I have identified.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords—

The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, if noble Lords asked shorter questions and gave shorter responses, we would have time for more questions. We are in the 24th minute.”

Provocative – me?

The Ministry of Justice has issued a consultation document on proposals to introduce prison sentences for thsoe who who seek to profit from the illegal trade in personal data, and for those who knowingly or recklessly disclose personal data to those who have no right to have it.

I accept that our prisons are already seriously over-full, but I am quite clear that we will not achieve higher standards of data security in this country until there are much tougher penalties.  The Government is committed to ensuring a robust framework of protection for personal data and wants to increase public confidence in its use and deter and punish appropriately those who seek to profit from its illegal trade.  (Quite properly it is proposed that there be a “public interest” defence to protect genuine investigative journalism.)

The only thing that will concentrate the minds of those engaged in this sort of trade will be the threat of prison.  Such crimes are not “victim-less”.

Earlier this week, as Chair of the Panel of Judges, I took part in the awards ceremony for Make IT Happy, the annual UK wide competition celebrating the positive and creative ways that the UK’s Primary schools are using technology.

About one hundred primary school children – representing the schools that were the Regional Winners – packed the Members’ Dining Room of the House of Commons (usually accompanied by their MPs) to receive their prizes from (in a nice bit of bi-cameralism) from the Lord Speaker, Baroness Hayman.  The children’s excitement was palpable, as I read out the names of the National Winners – you can see how excited here.

The reality was that any of the Regional Winners could have won a national prize – they were all so good.  So congratulations to all the Schools and all the children involved.

Here are a few quotes from the children:

-          “This has been the best day of my life so far, the London Eye was scary, I got loads of photos for my mam to see”

-          “I had a great day out in London and I went to where the Prime Minister works and met students from other parts of the country.  I saw where the Queen lives from the London Eye”

-          “I had a fun day and was proud to win the money for my Primary School to buy new stuff”

My webmaster (a grand title for a really nice guy who is also really good on sorting out websites for novices like me) has been cyber-squatting but for a sound political purpose.  He has demonstrated that the new European Conservatives and Reformists Group – the strange alliance that the British Tories have joined in the European Parliament – has no web presence.  So he registered one for them: www.ecrg.info.  More than three months later, there is still no official ECRG web presence.

It does highlight what a nonsense (albeit a damaging nonsense to the UK’s prestige in Europe) the Conservative Party’s stance in the European Parliament has become. 

Iain Dale has been banging on about how wonderful the Tories’ new online strategy is going to be.  If it is so good and so expert, you might have expected them to make sure that their presence in Europe also reflected this expertise.  But then again, perhaps the UK’s largest market just doesn’t matter to them.

Technology Guardian reports that the London Assembly has agreed that the votes in the 2012 Mayoral and Assembly elections will as in the three previous GLA elections be counted electronically.

I have to admit that I am rather ambivalent about this.  There is something that brings home the reality of the electoral process with traditional manual counts: the ballot boxes being opened up and emptied in front of observers appointed by each of the candidates; the ballot papers being unfolded and counted to verify that the number of papers issued matches the number in the box; the separation of the papers into piles for each candidate; the piles being counted into batches of fifty; the batches for each candidate being placed together on trestle tables; the adjudication of disputed papers; the candidates and their agents being summoned by the Returning Officer; and finally the declaration of the result itself.  It looked and felt transparent.  The votes themselves were tangible and real.  The process was being scrutinised and checked: the result becoming clear as the bundles piled up and when it wasn’t clear the wait for the final tally (and possibly the request for a recount).

Electronic counts do not feel the same.

I remember my count in 2000 in a sports hall in Harrow.  The promise had been that the electronic count would be quicker – with results declared three or four hours after the polls closed.  I remember the count dragging on – and on – and on.  There was nothing to do.  The machines churned away, but you couldn’t see the ballot papers themselves, as they went through the machines face down.  By 2am, the heating had gone off.  By 3am the refreshments (only tea, coffee and biscuits anyway) had run out.  By 4am most people had gone home – leaving a small core of supporters around each candidate.  At around 6am the Returning Officer summoned the candidates and agents to say:

“When I press this button, we will find out who’s won.”

I had been confident throughout (although having by then been up for 24 hours I was virtually catatonic as well).  It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that my agent had notified Party headquarters eight hours earlier that, on the basis of the turnout and canvass returns, her assessment was that I had probably lost.  In the event, I was elected – but by a margin of less than 1% of the electorate.

It also turned out that the Brent and Harrow count had been the quickest of the fourteen GLA divisions.  The final results (and therefore the Mayoral result and the outcome of the top-up list) took another six hours: ten hours later than predicted and fully fourteen hours after the polling stations had closed.

Four years later, I instinctively knew that I had lost.  The count was held over until the Friday and I spent the morning packing up my office in City Hall.  Again the Brent and Harrow count took about eight hours (although inexplicably the machines in some of the other divisions seemed to run rather more quickly this time, so my result was not the first).  As before, there was nothing to do and nothing to see.  (The count – along with those for two other divisions – was held in Alexandra Palace, so at least there were refreshments this time.)  If anything, the process was even more anti-climatic than four years earlier.  No button was ceremonially pressed.  Instead, the Returning Officer simply appeared with a print-out in his hand – and this time the margin was less than 1% of the electorate the other way.

I wasn’t present at the 2008 count.  I gather this time the machines were programmed to produce running tallies.  While these were not publicly announced, the net effect was to remove whatever dramatic tension there might have been.  The turnout was higher, so the counts took even longer than in 2000 and 2004.  I think the Brent and Harrow count took about eleven hours and the final Mayoral result was not available until nearly midnight – 26 hours after the polling stations had closed and rather beyond the bedtime of the youngest children of the new Mayor who had been kept up to watch their father’s acceptance speech at City Hall.

Electronic counting is – as I have described – not any quicker than traditional manual counts, provided enough tellers are engaged.

In my view, electronic counting is less transparent.  Everyone has to take it on trust that the machines are scanning the ballot papers accurately – if the machines were programmed (or hacked into) to count every fortieth vote for candidate A for candidate B, it would not be apparent to those present and would be hard to detect.

I want to emphasise that I am not for one moment suggesting that this might ever be the case.  However, the point is that in an electronic count there would not be the army of people, like those who are involved in and take part in scrutinising a manual count, to ensure and be seen to ensure the electronic count’s transparency and accuracy.

Above all, some of the election drama is lost by electronic counting.  And that drama is itself – at least as far as I am concerned – an essential part of the democratic process.

Apparently, computer hackers are human beings too.

A new survey of computer hackers has found that hackers like to go on holiday during the summer months, but warns that they will be particularly active over Christmas and New Year.  Apparently, even though company IT security managers are likely to be on holiday during the summer months, hackers also like to go away then.  And for them the best time to target companies is over the winter holidays.  Of the hackers surveyed 56% said that Christmas was the best time to do some serious hacking into corporate systems, while 25% favoured New Year’s Eve.

Dominic Grieve has published a Conservative Party policy paper that promises to “reverse the rise of the surveillance state.”  Much of it is inevitably about ID Cards, DNA samples and the like.

There is also the usual stuff about repealing the Human Rights Act.  This, of course, is the Act that has given the citizen all sorts of legally-enshrined rights to protect him or herself against the power of the State – notably that any action by the Government which impacts adversely on an individual has to pass a proportionality test in relation to the supposed benefits that are intended to flow from it.  This can be tested in the Courts – as successive Home Secretaries have discovered to their cost in respect of Control Orders etc.  So why the repeal of the Human Rights Act is going to protect the public is not clear.

And then there is the strange (if you are Tory who normally fulminates against such politically-correct notions) proposal that a Privacy Impact Assessment must be prepared for new laws and regulations.  This is no doubt modelled on the requirement for Equality Impact Assessments – a requirement that as far as I am aware has not received universal approval from most Conservatives.

However, tucked away in the paper are a number of proposals on improving information security that I have to acknowledge are eminently sensible.  I have to acknowledge it because they are things for which I have been calling for years.

So I welcome proposals to strengthen the role of the Information Commissioner.  Not only have I been saying this for the last six years or so, but it also formed part of the report of the House of Lords Select Committee (I happened to be a member of it) on Personal Internet Security published in August 2007.

Likewise, I welcome the proposal for industry-wide kitemarks on data security best practice – another recommendation of the Select Committee.

And the proposal that a Minister and a senior civil servant in each Government Department should be designated as having personal responsibility for data security in that Department is also welcome (and again has a familiar ring to it).

I have long argued that requiring individual Ministers to champion information security and senior Whitehall mandarins to certify that they are personally satisfied with the information assurance processes in place would concentrate their minds wonderfully and lead to a real improvement in security.  (In a similar way, I am introducing – through the Committee I chair on the Metropolitan Police Authority, a system whereby senior officers sign off the health and safety arrangements in their commands.)

Dominic Grieve’s paper sets out an eleven-point plan.  I am happy to say that I can give three of the points my whole-hearted support.  It  would be churlish of me not to do so.  They were my ideas first.  (I’d accuse the Tories of pinching them from me, but I suspect it would be fairer – although why I should be fair, I don’t know – to accuse them of pinching them from the same person I did, if I could remember who it was.)

I do, however, have one concern about their/my proposal on Ministerial responsibility.  The difficulty is that most Ministers stay in particular jobs for too short a time for that responsibility really to mean anything.  Most Ministers are reshuffled every year – often far too short a time for them to make a real difference to anything.  Perhaps the answer would be for legislation saying that once appointed Ministers would have to stay in the same job for at least three years (unless sacked, in which case they would be banned from taking another Ministerial position until the original three years was over).  That would be good for the quality of administration in general.  I offer this to the Conservatives (or indeed anyone else) free, gratis and for nothing ….