The big problem with recent developments in common law 'privacy' protection is that they are happening under the rubric of the tort of breach of confidence. They are thus highly likely to be used by corporations to press even further the absurd degree of 'commercial confidentiality' and even 'taxpayer confidentiality' that they already enjoy, and which helps to obscure the workings of what is now in effect the ruling class.
Once precedents and principles have been set by personal privacy cases, they are likely to be used by corporate lawyers. Given the huge resources at the disposal of big corporations, they can afford to wait for favourable cases, then press their advantage to the full. An example of one such principle is the idea that confidentiality can be owed to someone you've never had anything to do with before, rather than resting on a duty that emerges from some particular relationship.
Talking of 'privacy' law as protecting corporations and other impersonal entities is of course quite out of place. Describing laws about what may be published, however the information was obtained, as being about privacy rather than secrecy is somewhat strained too. I tend to think of privacy as being concerned with such issues as freedom from intrusive surveillance, spying and indeed phone hacking, which is a criminal matter apart from anything else. I'm not sure I've made out an utterly clear distinction here, but I think there is one to be made which is of some importance.
The recent civil actions that have carved out the new doctrines have tended to rely not solely on the tort of confidentiality as extended in reponse to the HRA and Convention, but also on such actual invasions of privacy. This tends to muddy the waters, since the 'anti-invasive' conception of privacy undoubtedly has an influence on what is seen by the judge as the desirable outcome, but given the prior state of the common law and an incremental approach to developing it, the legal doctrines enunciated in their decisions tend to fall on the secrecy/confidentiality side of the distinction.
Showing posts with label Secrecy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secrecy. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 May 2011
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Conspiracy for Dummies, Lesson 1: don't write it down
A rare - minor - case in which the conspiratorial (dishonest, co-ordinated, unacknowledged) behaviour that's an integral part of big business as usual is actually blown wide open.
BBC News:
Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE), has been found guilty of tricking people into switching from their existing energy firms.
...
Steve Playle, of Surrey County Council Trading Standards, which brought the prosecution, said he was delighted with the court's decision.
"When we first became aware of the sales script being used by Scottish and Southern Energy we were convinced that it overstepped the mark and was misleading to potential customers," he said.
"A doorstep seller had a print out which he claimed showed consumers were paying too much with their current energy supplier, but the print out did not show this.
"The seller didn't actually have a clue but the sales script was cleverly designed to put potential customers on the back foot and to open the door to a sale," he added.
'Wilful mis-selling'
It is thought to be the first time that one of the big six energy firms has been prosecuted for using dishonest sales techniques.
The problem of doorstep trickery has plagued gas and electricity consumers since the industry was privatised in the 1990s.
Audrey Gallacher, of Consumer Focus, said the firm's behaviour had involved "deliberate and wilful mis-selling."
"'Misleading doorstep energy sales have been a nightmare for consumers for years, leaving many switching to a worse energy deal," she said.
"This verdict has revealed a deliberate tactic by SSE, not the behaviour of a rogue salesperson."
Honestly, it's really not difficult to do it properly: you employ the right kind of people (this can be by trial and error - just sack those who don't reach their targets) and rely on them to use a bit of initiative in making up the gap between your required result and what they can get by being honest. Even if managers coach the slower sales staff to improve their dirty tricks skills, they don't actually build it into a written script. That way, you have ample deniability, because as intimated, without the script, if you get caught you can simply blame "the behaviour of a rogue salesperson". No controlling mind, no awareness at upper management level, one expendable drone sacked and replaced, business as usual.
Let that be a lesson to these firms. Consumer protection means you do have to put a modicum of effort into making it look good.
Still, it's no biggy. The appeals process will no doubt be pursued (by the richer side) until such time as it's exhausted or finds that this was a case of a rogue manager and not the company's fault. And if past form is anything to go by, the fine will be manageable enough: for all I know it will be outweighed by the financial benefits of running a fraud without needing to pay for staff who have enough initiative to take a hint.
UPDATE, originally 12 May (Blogger has had a meltdown and quietly rolled back a few days' changes to this and other blogs, it seems):
Audrey Gallacher, Head of Energy at something called Consumer Focus agrees that This verdict is a wake-up call for the energy industry, but seems to take a more sanguine view than I do about what lessons might actually be learned:
Firms should be reviewing their...pay and incentives systems for salespeople...
Since this must be intended as a remedy for 'don't ask don't tell' sharp practice on the doorstep, it amounts to the suggestion that sales as we know it be abolished.
BBC News:
Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE), has been found guilty of tricking people into switching from their existing energy firms.
...
Steve Playle, of Surrey County Council Trading Standards, which brought the prosecution, said he was delighted with the court's decision.
"When we first became aware of the sales script being used by Scottish and Southern Energy we were convinced that it overstepped the mark and was misleading to potential customers," he said.
"A doorstep seller had a print out which he claimed showed consumers were paying too much with their current energy supplier, but the print out did not show this.
"The seller didn't actually have a clue but the sales script was cleverly designed to put potential customers on the back foot and to open the door to a sale," he added.
'Wilful mis-selling'
It is thought to be the first time that one of the big six energy firms has been prosecuted for using dishonest sales techniques.
The problem of doorstep trickery has plagued gas and electricity consumers since the industry was privatised in the 1990s.
Audrey Gallacher, of Consumer Focus, said the firm's behaviour had involved "deliberate and wilful mis-selling."
"'Misleading doorstep energy sales have been a nightmare for consumers for years, leaving many switching to a worse energy deal," she said.
"This verdict has revealed a deliberate tactic by SSE, not the behaviour of a rogue salesperson."
Honestly, it's really not difficult to do it properly: you employ the right kind of people (this can be by trial and error - just sack those who don't reach their targets) and rely on them to use a bit of initiative in making up the gap between your required result and what they can get by being honest. Even if managers coach the slower sales staff to improve their dirty tricks skills, they don't actually build it into a written script. That way, you have ample deniability, because as intimated, without the script, if you get caught you can simply blame "the behaviour of a rogue salesperson". No controlling mind, no awareness at upper management level, one expendable drone sacked and replaced, business as usual.
Let that be a lesson to these firms. Consumer protection means you do have to put a modicum of effort into making it look good.
Still, it's no biggy. The appeals process will no doubt be pursued (by the richer side) until such time as it's exhausted or finds that this was a case of a rogue manager and not the company's fault. And if past form is anything to go by, the fine will be manageable enough: for all I know it will be outweighed by the financial benefits of running a fraud without needing to pay for staff who have enough initiative to take a hint.
UPDATE, originally 12 May (Blogger has had a meltdown and quietly rolled back a few days' changes to this and other blogs, it seems):
Audrey Gallacher, Head of Energy at something called Consumer Focus agrees that This verdict is a wake-up call for the energy industry, but seems to take a more sanguine view than I do about what lessons might actually be learned:
Firms should be reviewing their...pay and incentives systems for salespeople...
Since this must be intended as a remedy for 'don't ask don't tell' sharp practice on the doorstep, it amounts to the suggestion that sales as we know it be abolished.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Hysteria for Women, or: What has Julian Assange got that David Aaronovitch hasn't?
So did Wikileaks really help spark the Tunisian revolt? Probably. I think commenter 'eleny' on some messageboard I was looking at had it right:
Secrecy, its degrees and varieties and its penumbra of deniability and doubt, is a favourite topic in these my sporadic and desultory remarks. I haven't attempted anything approaching thorough investigation or analysis of the situation in Tunisia, but the idea that a credible source certifying previously penumbral factoids can catalyse latent resentment seems fairly plausible to me. (One aspect is the idea that publicity provides a standard around which previously private opinion can rally, as in the Emperor's New Clothes parable.)
But letting that issue dangle unargued, I'll turn instead to the burning question of the moment: what would Serious Political Analyst and unwonted but determined Radio 4 colonist David Aaronovitch have to say about this? I don't know the answer to that either, which is probably good for the old equanimity. I imagine he subscribes to one of the 'power to the people as long as they do what we want' arguments that have emerged among the neocons and all the usual suspects, but again, I don't actually know, and don't intend coughing up whatever it costs to find out.
What I do know, though, thanks to a recent foraging expedition among some old chip wrappers, is what Aaronovitch was writing about Wikileaks in his Times column a few months ago. And in light of some evidence that Wikileaks is capable of having a role in some pretty spectacular and broadly welcome events, it seems worth looking at what he was saying then in some detail.
The Times, Thursday December 9 2010, Opinion, p33
This is no Robin Hood. They were our secrets
The Assangeists don't trust the State to run foreign or defence policy. So why do they trust it to run everything else?
David Aaronovitch
I had the same conversation half a dozen times yesterday in different forms and on different media. Wasn't there something strangely "convenient" about the legal process under way to investigate sexual allegations against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks? What this must mean, if anything, is this: is there some kind of plot whereby Mr Assange's enemies have somehow procured these charges to silence him? In other words the Yanks have secretly (ha!) leant on the Swedes, the Swedes have silently manipulated two women, and there we are, halfway to the fourth Stieg Larsson novel, The Girl with the Badly Constructed Condom.
Aaronovitch has approximated accuracy here: what people were saying - huge numbers of people who are not normally interested in observing conspiratorial behaviour - is that Mr Assange's enemies have had a hand in these charges. But not necessarily to silence him - perhaps to spoil his attempt to gain permanent residence in Sweden, perhaps to taint his reputation, perhaps to hobble, disrupt or undermine the work of Wikileaks, and perhaps of course - watch this space - in order to get him into custody while they decide on the best way to inveigle him into the US penal system or its Kafkaesque shadowland. The latest development in the extradition proceedings against Assange have an irrelevant magistrate giving his decision (against Assange), in the certain knowledge that appeal proceedings will begin with his words still hanging in the air. [Edit: since that was written, a District Judge has taken the appeals procedure another unedifying step closer to exhaustion.]
Anyone who is interested in the motivation and merits of the action taken against Assange by Swedish prosecutors can find plenty of material on the web; I'm not going to analyse it in detail here. One can certainly say, though, that these suspicions are not exactly tinfoil-hat territory - the US is indisputably out to get Assange, the charges are incredibly dubious on a large number of counts, and the announcement that Assange had surrendered to custody was followed with amazing swiftness by an announcement from the US state department that they 'may' seek to extradite Mr Assange - out of the Anglo-Swedish frying pan and directly into the inferno, Stateside.
Aaronovitch does his best to isolate a weak and paranoid-sounding strand from the web of evidence: so his chosen quote is "convenient" ( not that he is necessarily quoting any actual words he has actually heard, of course). "Isn't this a bit convenient?", as in 'isn't it convenient for the international Jewish Illuminati that this earthquake should keep the West Kettering UFO Working Group's inaugural conference and buffet off the front pages?'. The idea is to suggest a very weak circumstantial case, one so weak that it can only be hinted at. But Aaronovitch is really pushing it here - not many are going to fall for his Emperor's New Clothes schtick this time. Avert your eyes, gentle reader, for the Grand Panjandrum Aaronovitch stands before us, naked and quivering with indignation. (My concern is not of course to spare his ample blushes, but to save you from a disturbing and, I fear, indelible image.)
"Maybe people believed that there was corruption. But when they had concrete examples in the words of their leaders it infuriated the citizenry."
Believing is one thing but knowing is all important. And facts appear to be what WikiLeaks provides. Secrecy, its degrees and varieties and its penumbra of deniability and doubt, is a favourite topic in these my sporadic and desultory remarks. I haven't attempted anything approaching thorough investigation or analysis of the situation in Tunisia, but the idea that a credible source certifying previously penumbral factoids can catalyse latent resentment seems fairly plausible to me. (One aspect is the idea that publicity provides a standard around which previously private opinion can rally, as in the Emperor's New Clothes parable.)
But letting that issue dangle unargued, I'll turn instead to the burning question of the moment: what would Serious Political Analyst and unwonted but determined Radio 4 colonist David Aaronovitch have to say about this? I don't know the answer to that either, which is probably good for the old equanimity. I imagine he subscribes to one of the 'power to the people as long as they do what we want' arguments that have emerged among the neocons and all the usual suspects, but again, I don't actually know, and don't intend coughing up whatever it costs to find out.
What I do know, though, thanks to a recent foraging expedition among some old chip wrappers, is what Aaronovitch was writing about Wikileaks in his Times column a few months ago. And in light of some evidence that Wikileaks is capable of having a role in some pretty spectacular and broadly welcome events, it seems worth looking at what he was saying then in some detail.
The Times, Thursday December 9 2010, Opinion, p33
This is no Robin Hood. They were our secrets
The Assangeists don't trust the State to run foreign or defence policy. So why do they trust it to run everything else?
David Aaronovitch
I had the same conversation half a dozen times yesterday in different forms and on different media. Wasn't there something strangely "convenient" about the legal process under way to investigate sexual allegations against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks? What this must mean, if anything, is this: is there some kind of plot whereby Mr Assange's enemies have somehow procured these charges to silence him? In other words the Yanks have secretly (ha!) leant on the Swedes, the Swedes have silently manipulated two women, and there we are, halfway to the fourth Stieg Larsson novel, The Girl with the Badly Constructed Condom.
Aaronovitch has approximated accuracy here: what people were saying - huge numbers of people who are not normally interested in observing conspiratorial behaviour - is that Mr Assange's enemies have had a hand in these charges. But not necessarily to silence him - perhaps to spoil his attempt to gain permanent residence in Sweden, perhaps to taint his reputation, perhaps to hobble, disrupt or undermine the work of Wikileaks, and perhaps of course - watch this space - in order to get him into custody while they decide on the best way to inveigle him into the US penal system or its Kafkaesque shadowland. The latest development in the extradition proceedings against Assange have an irrelevant magistrate giving his decision (against Assange), in the certain knowledge that appeal proceedings will begin with his words still hanging in the air. [Edit: since that was written, a District Judge has taken the appeals procedure another unedifying step closer to exhaustion.]
Anyone who is interested in the motivation and merits of the action taken against Assange by Swedish prosecutors can find plenty of material on the web; I'm not going to analyse it in detail here. One can certainly say, though, that these suspicions are not exactly tinfoil-hat territory - the US is indisputably out to get Assange, the charges are incredibly dubious on a large number of counts, and the announcement that Assange had surrendered to custody was followed with amazing swiftness by an announcement from the US state department that they 'may' seek to extradite Mr Assange - out of the Anglo-Swedish frying pan and directly into the inferno, Stateside.
Aaronovitch does his best to isolate a weak and paranoid-sounding strand from the web of evidence: so his chosen quote is "convenient" ( not that he is necessarily quoting any actual words he has actually heard, of course). "Isn't this a bit convenient?", as in 'isn't it convenient for the international Jewish Illuminati that this earthquake should keep the West Kettering UFO Working Group's inaugural conference and buffet off the front pages?'. The idea is to suggest a very weak circumstantial case, one so weak that it can only be hinted at. But Aaronovitch is really pushing it here - not many are going to fall for his Emperor's New Clothes schtick this time. Avert your eyes, gentle reader, for the Grand Panjandrum Aaronovitch stands before us, naked and quivering with indignation. (My concern is not of course to spare his ample blushes, but to save you from a disturbing and, I fear, indelible image.)
Thursday, 14 October 2010
The House of Cards and the Numbers Game: Two Models of Secrecy
'Coventrian', in Aaronovitch Watch comments, describes discovering Denis MacShane's dodgy dealings:
'However, the big mystery is the strange sequence of invoices from The European Policy Institute (EPI), which doesn't seem to have any presence on the Internet other than it was founded by Denis MacShane. The invoices are strangely repetitive, lacking in detail as to what work was done and with all contact details redacted. Why?
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