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Listed below are comments made by BTCustomer between Tuesday, 2nd June 2009 and Friday, 14th August 2009.

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• BBC Online Open Meeting 4:53pm on 14 Aug 2009 #9 Exactly.
  #8 - I'm very patient Nick - and a great fan of the BBC. Just quite confused. As I said - no problems with the actual meeting or the process or even the fact that it wasn't public after all. Don't expect it to be. Just VERY confused by the description of an Open Online Meeting with words like transparency and openness - then actually realising that there was nothing on offer of that sort at all.
  I'm mindful that the Beeb is in the communication business. So words do matter.
  Hope the meeting goes well.
• BBC Online Open Meeting 11:52am on 14 Aug 2009 #4 - yes - I was being a tad ironic.
  
  #5 - thank you for the clarification. I obviously totally misinterpreted the meaning of both "open" and "online" and "sharing". I suppose I should have spotted the fact that there was no indication of exactly who the "sharing" was going to be with.
  
  I do hope the BBC isn't getting into a form of "Newspeak" (Orwell) where words mean the opposite of what they seem to mean.
  
  Why not just say you have got an internal meeting coming up between yourselves and some undisclosed others, and you will tell us a bit about it later sometime? That would have conveyed the required meaning without straining the meaning of words like "transparency" and "openness". You need to remember that those words have been seriously devalued recently - I could give you two very good connected examples, one from the private sector, and the other from government (Cabinet Office), both in relation to the internet, where "transparent" has actually meant "hidden" or "invisible". If you recognise my user name, you may be able to work out what I am referring to.
  
  As a licence fee payer - I have now been informed of a meeting that I can't participate in and won't get the full details about. I don't know when it starts or finishes, or who is involved in it. I don't know who the non-BBC particpants might be. I don't know what rules will govern it's progress or what can or can't be reported to me. That's fine - it happens every day.
  
  But why call it open, online, transparent and open?
  
  As I said, thanks for the feedback. It clarifies things enormously. I still don't understand the purpose of the original blog post, but I sort of think that maybe, I almost know what it means now. It means there is a private BBC meeting today. Great. Enjoy!! ;-))
• BBC Online Open Meeting 10:00pm on 13 Aug 2009 Good to hear about the online open meeting, where and when please? Is there a link somewhere? Does "open" in "open meeting" mean the license fee payers will be taking part? Hope it goes well.
• The spinning of Spinvox 2:48pm on 23 Jul 2009 If a company tells the ICO (and their customers) that their data was not going abroad and in fact it is, then they are lying, and they are breaking the law. If their privacy policy happened to include similarly false claims, that would also be criminal, because they would be trading under false pretences. In fact there would be a whole host of offences - all very very serious ones. Any company guilty of those sorts of offences should be ashamed of themselves and ought to be pilloried and prosecuted. Of course none of these things will happen. That's the UK for you. The safest place in the world to commit Data Protection fraud.
  Secondly - how do you anonymise voicemail messages? You can do what you like with the "headers" but the body content of the messages themselves contain PII - "Hi there - this message is for Jim Bloggs if he's there, Fred Smith here, could he meet me at my house at 23 Acacia Gardens, Hammersmith, or ring me at 01234567890 please?"
  
  When are we going to wake up and DO something about protecting the data and privacy of ordinary citizens, and take this sort of thing seriously? The report on the Today programme (R4) this morning was a joke. They almost totally ignored the appalling breach of trust (and law) that would be involved if these allegations are true, and just twittered on to each other about how exciting the technology was. They missed the point entirely.
• BT and the iPlayer 7:11pm on 10 Jun 2009 And yet BT want the BBC to let Phorm's Webwise trawl all through licence funded website content so that BT can make a commercial gain from the BBC valuable copyrighted, and licence-funded web content? It's time for the BBC to politely but firmly tell BT where to get off. As a BT customer I have ALREADY paid BT handsomely for the bandwidth I use to view BBC programmes on the iPlayer, and the BBC have already paid their own ISP for uploading the material to the net in the first place. If BT can't market bandwidth successfully to their own customers, then that is hardly the BBCs fault. Perhaps if BT hadn't played fast and loose with their customers' privacy, they might have more contented paying broadband customers today? Or does this perhaps have more to do with yesterdays announcement of the departure of the BT Vision boss Dan Marks?
• Phorm's phlat product launch 2:28pm on 04 Jun 2009 @ digital_elysium (post 22) who says: "My point was that there are those who are complaining, not so much about DPI, as about targetted advertising in general."
  
  Just to make it clear, that although some individuals may be complaining about targeted advertising, the basic campaign about Phorm is not, and never has been, a campaign against advertising or even targeted advertising or e-commerce. It is against the use of Deep Packet Inspection within ISP networks as a means of DEILIVERING behaviourally targeted advertising, and the way in which that both interferes with consent, and also intercepts communications traffic. The new product that Phorm are talking about, "Webwise Discover", really does not alter the various legal arguments, and it does not substitute for, but merely acts as an addition to, the background problematic controversial Webwise product, and its use of DPI for interception, and also for the exploitation of copyrighted web content for commercial gain, without benefit of a copyright licence granted by the owner of intellectual property being exploited (such as licence funded BBC content for example). It also presents a number of security issues, which are currently the subject of investigation.
• BBC Online and behavioural targeting 10:42am on 04 Jun 2009 While launching the new "Webwise Discover" product yesterday, Kent Ertugrul of Phorm indicated that he would be meeting with the BBC - "We are going to be engaging shortly with the BBC, we look forward to explaining to them how our system works, and maybe dispelling some myths that have been propagated about what it does and doesn't do." (transcribed from an interview with Patrick Smith on the PaidContent site). Can I ask that if Mr Ertugrul gains access to the BBC to discuss the Phorm system, that the BBC also arrange to meet representatives of campaigners concerned about the use of Deep Packet Inspection as a method for delivering Behaviourally Targeted Advertising, to ensure a level playing field? We have been engaging with a number of bodies recently, including staff from the ICO, EU Commissioner Reding's office and various parliamentary bodies, and would value the opportunity of meeting with representatives of the BBC, to also add our understanding of how the Phorm "system" works, particularly the part installed in the heart of partner ISPs, as we too would like to dispel some of the myths that have been propagated about what it does and doesn't do.
• Phorm's phlat product launch 4:50pm on 03 Jun 2009 Did anyone at the launch mention the words Deep Packet Inspection, or Interception of Communications? And did anyone ask how the tracking of browsing - sorry - "discovering your interests" is done? Because that side of the product seems to be identical to the existing Webwise proposals. I saw nothing here which solved the problems that Phorm have been having with regulators here in the EU/UK environment, and nothing that will counter their appalling PR record with UK internet consumers. I've been checking their new website for mention of DPI and tracking and interception - none. And presumably the tracking continues to "scour the internet" making copies of web content licenced only for viewing by the site visitor and not for commercial gain - so the copyright issue remains unresolved. So what incentive is there for anyone to sign up and risk being tarnished with the terrible PR reputation that Phorm have acquired for themselves by the way they have done things so far at the ISP end of their controversial product? I am not at all surprised that they have no customers so far. It does indeed seem to be yet another of Phorm's attempts to manage the news in their favour, because their UK "partners", BT, VirginMedia and TalkTalk are remaining so silent and non-committal. Let's face it - no ISP is going to want to move on this till at least the EU commission have made their decisions about the infraction proceedings against the UK government, for failure to control interception of internet communications. And even then they will be conscious because of copyright issues and the PR backlash they would encounter. Phorm refer again to the vocal minority - is this the vocal minority referred to by Rudolf Strohmeier of Commissioner Reding's Cabinet, in these terms? "Mr Rudolf Strohmeier stated that in all his years working at the Commission there had only been 1 or 2 other issues which had generated such a high volume of written complaints from the public so they were taking the matter very seriously, which is why they initiated infringement action against the UK Government last month."
• iPlayer: BBC v BT 10:03pm on 02 Jun 2009 To answer a few questions about what BT do with BT Vision - that is managed separately by BT, along with the traffic from BT's VOIP phone service, BT Broadband Talk. Neither the BTV On Demand traffic (even if it is an overnight download of an HD film) nor the BTBBTalk traffic are counted in bandwidth usage, nor is the BTV traffic throttled. It is separated out and identified via the DPI technology that BT use for managing their network. I use both services and they work extremely well.
  
  The problem that BT are having, is that they sell the BT Option 1 Broadband package mainly on price. It is a cut-down lower cost service, with reduced bandwidth limits, and most people probably are aware that if they sign up to Option 1 Broadband they only get an allowance of, I think, 10GB per month and will have to pay if they go over that. What is NOT made at all clear, is that firstly, there is NO way for a user to monitor their bandwidth because BT refuse to provide any online metering. Secondly, there is a lot of obfuscation by BT about the throttling of speeds at peak times, both in relation to file sharing and iPlayer usage. The package is sold as being an "up to 8Mbps" service just like Options 2 and 3. The information about throttling is hidden away in the hard to locate "Fair Usage Policy", and even when you find it, or question BT support staff directly about it, they do not give clear information.
  
  I'm afraid BT gave up really trying to communicate clearly with customers a very long time ago. They simply want people to buy the Option 1 package on price. It would be much simpler if there was an upfront declaration of these throttling policies, and even better, if they just charged customers solely on the basis of usage - you pay for the bandwidth you use. Use the iPlayer a lot - pay for the bandwidth.
  
  It's a bit like the water utility company complaining to the luxury soap manufacturers that they are encouraging people to take more baths, then demanding that the soap manufacturers pay a water levy, and that if they detect a particular companies soap in the waste water from a house, they will cut off or throttle their water supply during peak hours. Of course it's madness - the water companies long ago worked out that the fairest way to deal with the problem was to install a meter so that high users pay more. Eventually this may occur to the ISPs. One day. Perhaps even to BT.
  
  Presumably the BBC pay their own ISP for the bandwidth used by the iPlayer leaving their network, and the end users of the iPlayer can pay THEIR ISPs for the iPlayer bandwidth coming down their connection. I know it's a revolutionary idea, but it might just work - it does for electricity, gas and water and even telephones. Where's the problem?
• Who's watching you? (2) 8:08pm on 02 Jun 2009 My post (151) above refers to Privacy International director Simon Davies when of course it should refer to Privacy International director Gus Hosein who was the PI person interviewed in the programme. My apologies, although the substance of my comment still stands - the programme and PI mysteriously fail to mention Phorm.

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