Politics

  • CCC files internet spying charges against German state

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    CCC logoGermany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has filed a lawsuit against the German Federal government and other agencies in conjunction with human rights organisation the Liga für Menschenrechte e. V. (League for Human Rights). The government and its agencies are being charged with violating citizens’ personal lives by security services surveillance and toleration of such surveillance, Linux-Magazin reports.

    In addition to domestic and foreign agents, the charge filed by the plaintiffs with the Federal Prosecutor General is made against the chairman of the Federal Intelligence Service, the military counter-intelligence service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The CCC and the Liga are accusing these and the Federal government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, of aiding and abetting due to toleration of and co-operation with the surveillance activities of the American NSA and UK’s GCHQ.

    With the charge the instigators would like to initiate investigations by the Federal Prosecutor General since the secret service organisations and others have broken German law by the surveillance measures. The are charging intelligence service and Federal government officials of having “not only tolerated banned intelligence service activities, but also of having provided assistance to them actively and to a considerable extent”. This is contrary to § 99 of the Criminal Code (prohibited intelligence agency agent activity), §§ 201 et seq. of the Criminal Code (infringements of personal life and privacy) and § 258 of the Criminal Code (aiding and abetting the commission of crime).

    Furthermore, the plaintiffs are demanding in the charge that US whistleblower Edward Snowden is called as an expert witness. If called as a witness, he should receive safe conduct and be protected against extradition to the USA.

  • UK Government speaks of open standards and ODF

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    ODF file iconOn Wednesday the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called Sprint 14, in which it invited Ministers, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to showcase some major new digital public services for the first time.

    Among the speakers was Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who in his speech made some interesting and welcome noises about document formats:

    Today I can announce that we’ve set out the document formats that we propose should be adopted across government – and we’re asking you to tell us what you think about them.

    He then continued with equally welcome and interesting noises on open standards:

    Technical standards for document formats may not set the pulse racing – it may not sound like the first shot in a revolution. But be in no doubt: the adoption of open standards in government threatens the power of lock-in to propriety vendors yet it will give departments the power to choose what is right for them and the citizens who use their services.

    The documents formats referred to by Mr Maude in his speech can be found on the Cabinet Office’s Standards Hub section of its website on the Sharing or collaborating with government documents webpage, which states

    When dealing with citizens, information should be digital by default and therefore should be published online. Browser-based editing is the preferred option for collaborating on published government information. HTML (4.01 or higher e.g. HTML5) is therefore the default format for browser-based editable text. Other document formats specified in this proposal – ODF 1.1 (or higher e.g. ODF 1.2), plain text (TXT) or comma separated values (CSV) – should be provided in addition. ODF includes filename extensions such as .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.

    Whilst the government has conceded that open formats and standards should be used when dealing with citizens, how long will it take for changes to take place before editable documents intended for use by we peasants citizens will be available in anything other than the quasi-ubiquitous MS Office formats currently provided?

  • Swiss canton of Bern focuses open source

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    Bern coat of armsWith a massive majority of 130 in favour, 0 against and one abstention, the Grand Council (Grossrat), the parliament of the Canton of Bern, has passed the motion “To exploit synergies when using software in the Canton of Bern”, Computerworld.ch reports. The cantonal administration had previously announced its support for the request by the Evangelical People’s Party (EVP), Social Democratic Party (SP), Conservative Democratic Pary (BDP), the Green Party (GPS) and the Green Liberal Party (GLP). The individual points of the motion will now go to the Canton’s chief civil servant for implementation.

    With this motion the parliament wants the Cantonal Office for Computing and Organisation (KAIO) and Bedag Informatik AG, which is owned by the Canton, to co-operate in the information technology sector with other authorities on open source projects. Its own developments for which the Canton holds the copyright shall be released as open source software where reasonable so that other authorities can use the software and future development costs can be shared.

    In addition, managers for each new IT project must disclose in future which open source alternatives have been investigated during procurement. If none is included, this must be justified. The same criterion shall be applicable to every new specialist application or one that is to be adapted. Either a release under an open source licence must be planned here or a justification given as to why it should not be released as open source.

    Finally, the Canton of Bern is to be more actively involved in existing and new open source development and specialist applications and their respective organisations.

  • Chinese internet suffers major breakdown

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Social Media, Tech

    keyboard showing Chinese flag on enter keyAt the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed.) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms?

    Last Tuesday more than two-thirds of Chinese websites were inaccessible and millions of users were deprived of internet access for some 8 hours, according to Qihoo 360, a Chinese security software supplier best known for supplying anti-virus products. Security experts are wondering about the origin of this outage. Some believe it was hacking whilst others think there was a fault with the country’s so-called ‘Great Firewall’ censorship system.

    After the outage, Chinese authorities conducted a preliminary inquiry which focussed on hacking. The Chinese CERT team is continuing its inquiry. giving priority to the hacking theory, Chinese specialists believe that they hijacked a root DNS server in China to reroute all the traffic. The Greatfire.org website, which analyses Chinese online censorship, disputes this diversion, stating that Google’s DNS servers were affected.

    A poorly blocked traffic hijack?

    However, Greatfire.org also showed that some of the user traffic had been redirected to an IP address in the United States and more specifically to the Dynamic Internet Technology site which has links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is heavily repressed in China. Greatfire.org believes the origin of the breakdown was due to a technical problem with the ‘Great Firewall’.

    China regularly blocks sites whose content is critical of its government, including Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times. By wanting to block the Dynamic Internet Technology site, the Chinese authorities would have inadvertently rerouted the whole nation’s traffic, according to Greatfire.org.

  • Clueless Crapita tweets its ignorance

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    This blog has drawn attention before to the lamentable lack of knowledge of certain bodies, e.g. the BBC and various newspapers, to the difference between translating and interpreting.

    As the screenshot below shows, these bodies have now been joined by Capita Translation & Interpreting, that arm of the Crapita empire which is busy wasting public money by failing to provide interpreters – or those of good enough quality – for courts and tribunals under a contract with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim).

    screenshot of exchange of tweets on Twitter

    This exchange came into my Twitter timeline on the same day as the Law Gazette reports that Capita T&I has never managed to reach its 98% performance target under its Framework Agreement with the Ministry of Justice in the 2 years it has held the contract and just a few days before Ursula Brennan, Permanent Secretary at the MoJ, is due to appear before the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee as they examine the interpreting contract for a second time (posts passim).

    As the Crapitards in charge of the Capita T&I are clearly confused by the difference between translators and interpreters, I can only recommend they too read my illustrated guide post.

  • Cambridge City Council confused by apostrophes, so bans them!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Last year Mid Devon District Council took the daft and ungrammatical decision to ban the use of apostrophes – and other punctuation – in street signs (posts passim).

    Mid Devon’s decision was justified by the pathetic excuse that removing punctuation was to “avoid confusion”.

    This same line is now being trotted out by Cambridge City Council, in whose hallowed halls the city’s reputation for learning and scholarship appears has lost a battle with the dead hand of bureaucracy, as the Cambridge News reported on Friday.

    According to the Cambridge News

    Officers said they were following national guidance which warned apostrophes could lead to mistakes, particularly for emergency services.

    image of Hobson's Conduit Cambridge
    Hobson’s Conduit. Soon to be Hobsons Conduit courtesy of Cambridge City Council?

    Needless to say, with such a high profile city, the move has been criticised by language experts.

    Quoted in the Daily Telegraph, Kathy Salaman, Director of the Cambridge-based Good Grammar Company said:

    I know some people think apostrophes are superfluous but we really need them and I think it’s the first step on a slippery slope.

    If councils are getting rid of them, what kind of message does that give out to students at schools?

    Dropping apostrophes is pandering to the lowest denominator and while eradicating them anywhere is dreadful, it is particularly bad to do it in Cambridge.

    Quite.

    One must wonder what kind of English language teaching the officers of Cambridge City Council underwent at school, particularly since according to the British Council‘s grammar reference for people learning English, the rules for the use of apostrophes are “very simple”.

    The British Council’s advice on using apostrophes is reproduced below for any passing council officers with responsibility for road and street signs.

    Apostrophes
    We use an apostrophe (‘) to show either possession or that there is a letter missing (e.g. the apostrophe in ‘she’s’ shows that there is a letter missing in ‘she is’)

    We use apostrophes with people or animals to show possession.

    • My sister’s house.
    • The dog’s blanket.

    For things we use ‘of’ (the front of the car, NOT the car’s front.)

    The position of the apostrophe depends on whether the noun is singular or plural. look at these two examples.

    • My friend’s house. This is about one friend.
    • My friends’ house. This is about two or more friends who share a house.

    If a plural noun does not end in ‘s’ (e.g. men, people, children) we use ‘s to show possession.

    • The children’s bedroom.
    • A pair of women’s sunglasses.

    We also use an apostrophe in some time expressions.

    • two weeks’ holiday
    • ten years’ experience

    If people are really getting confused by apostrophes, doesn’t this indicate that English language teaching – particularly that related to punctuation – needs to be improved? After all, banning something you don’t understand is the action of a philistine.

  • MoJ up before the PAC again

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee is keeping up the pressure on the Ministry of Justice over its disastrous courts and tribunals interpreting service with Capita Translation & Interpreting.

    On Monday 27 January 2014 the Committee has summoned the MoJ’s Permanent Secretary, Ursula Brennan, to give evidence on ‘Interpreter services’, as shown by the following extract from the Parliamentary business calendar.

    3.15pm Public Accounts

    Subject: Treasury Minutes follow-up (i) Severance payments (ii) Interpreter services (iii) Rural broadband
    Witness(es): Una O’Brien, Permanent Secretary, Department of Health, Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE, Chief Executive, NHS England and Mark Sedwill, Permanent Secretary, Home Office; Ursula Brennan, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Sue Owen, Permanent Secretary, Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Jon Zeff, Director and Programme Senior Responsible Office, Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    In the Committee’s previous examination of interpreter services in 2012 neither the MoJ nor Capita exactly came away unscathed. On publication of its subsequent report, Committee Chair Margaret Hodge MP was scathing about the way the MoJ had managed the placing of its contract (posts passim), saying: “This is an object lesson in how not to contract out a public service.”

    As for Ursula, her Civil Service biography on the MoJ’s website linked to above informs us that she spent most of her career in what is now the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). While there one of the areas in which she was involved was fraud (in that instance benefit fraud. Ed.). Evidence to date would tend to suggest that she is having difficulty finding it under her nose in her present department.

    Update 26/1/14: Ursula Brennan will not now be appearing for the Ministry of Justice to assist the PAC with its continuing investigation of court interpreting; she has been replaced by Ann Beasley, Director-General of Finance at the Ministry of Justice and Peter Handcock CBE, Chief Executive of Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service (HMCTS).

    This is the third time Ursula Brennan has been due to appear before the PAC and has found something to do instead. One might get the impression she is frightened of Margaret Hodge et al., but I couldn’t possibly comment on that! 🙂

    Hat tip: Louise Gough for the update.

  • More trouble with Capita Vietnamese interpreters

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Our friends at Capita seem to be having a bit of bother recently with a dearth of Vietnamese interpreters (posts passim).

    On 10th January, I.V., a solicitor wrote the following post on RPSI Linguist Lounge.

    I was a duty solicitor on Tuesday night we were instructed on a cannabis factory case. Due to the co-accused giving an age the police did not believe we weren’t interviewed until mid afternoon. A decent interpreter turned up on time (credit where credit due).

    To the surprise of my rep our client and the “youngster” were charged and RIC. I am fortunate to have a Vietnamese member of staff so she came in to see him with me. No police booked interpreter attended and at lunchtime despite many requests the court finally looked in to it. They booked Capita at 2 – the use of my interpreter for the case was discounted. No interpreter attended and at 2 pm with no idea of what was happening the pair were remanded to today.

    The youth was taken to a detention centre and my client to Winson Green – an adult prison!! He is 18. Last night the court clerk in our hearing booked a new interpreter. None has arrived and despite conflicting stories we are now told none has been booked. The DJ has decided that should my interpreter be present this afternoon then a pragmatic approach may be taken. So all day yesterday much of today all for me for the mileage!! Of course we did nothing to help!!!

    We went to the crown court as I ascertained that a trial was taking place there with a Vietnamese interpreter. No, can’t use her. The 2 people in custody are highly confused and both allocated to incorrect institutions. Mine has already tried to dispense with my services. Luckily the approached solicitor on realising someone else instructed withdrew and let me know. This is how I make £’0000’s a year!!

    We used my interpreter in the end.

  • Italy puts free software first in public sector

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    The Italian government has made free software the default choice for public sector organisations, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports. In a document (PDF, Italian) published last Wednesday, the Italian Digital Agency (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale) issued rules saying that all the country’s government organisations must consider using free software before buying licences for proprietary programs.

    logo of Italian Digital Agency
    Logo of Italian Digital Agency

    The document, “Guidelines on comparative evaluation [of software]”, sets out a detailed method which public bodies must follow when deciding which software to use. They are required to look for suitable free software programs or choose software developed by the public sector. They may only consider procuring proprietary software no suitable programs of these types are available.

    “There is no excuse. All public administrations must opt for free software or re-use whenever possible”, says FSFE General Counsel Carlo Piana, who was part of the committee that advised on the guideline. “Now free software and re-use are the norm, proprietary software the exception. This is the most advanced affirmative action in Europe so far. I’m so proud that Italy leads the way, for once”.

    The document was authored by the Italian Digital Agency, which for the first time consulted representatives from the public sector, the free software community, and proprietary software makers.

    Importantly, the new rules come with a mechanism to ensure they are followed. Both public bodies and members of the public can ask the Italian Digital Agency to check if a given organisation is following the correct procedure. Administrative courts can annul decisions that contravene these rules and, in the event of negligence, individual public servants may be held personally liable.

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