politics – Terence Eden’s Blog

Donald Trump's Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card

@edent — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 12:00:28 +0000

I don't often venture into American politics.

It is hard to know whether Trump is a master strategist - as Dilbert seems to think - or merely a chaos monkey. But, somehow, he seems to have stumbled on genius tactic.

Trump has repeatedly called for Clinton to be thrown in jail. This has provoked a howl of rage from the liberal media elite. In a civilised democracy the victor simply doesn't imprison their opponents.

Trump is promising to direct the state to imprison his political opponents. I can’t overstate how scary this is. Max Fisher - 9 Oct 2016

This presents us with a quandary. It is no secret that Trump faces a trial in December, it is also possible that his admission of sexual assault may cause further legal problems. As his past is dug up and more malcontents come forward, he could become the first modern presidential candidate to face conviction and imprisonment.

And there's the problem. While US Presidents don't have immunity from prosecution, what happens if Trump loses?

After a such a fraught campaign, where he has squared up to special interests, the media, the government, and the President herself - any prosecution of Trump looks politically motivated!

With the great and the good screaming about the damage it would do to democracy to have President Trump prosecute Clinton, to have President Clinton prosecute Trump looks like rank hypocrisy.

I don't know what powers President Clinton would have to delay or dismiss any prosecution of Trump. But I do know that Presidents have the power to enact pardons.

As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience.
My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquillity but to use every means that I have to insure it.
President Ford's pardon of Nixon

Given the deep polarisation in American society, what better way to show grace than to pardon Trump? Clinton gets to show magnanimity and help heal her country - and Trump gets to waltz away.

Is that why he is running? Has he found a sure-fire way to ensure that his past can't catch up with him?

Perhaps Clinton does deserve to be in jail. Perhaps they both do. But the spectacle of either being thrown in jail cheapens the appearance of democracy.

PDFs are the Cheques of the 21st Century

@edent — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 11:09:35 +0000

Cheques (checks if you're American) are an amazing legacy technology. Invented in the 17th Century, they immediately transformed the financial landscape. They allowed anyone to transfer both vast and trivial sums of wealth with ease.

Whole industries grew up around them - one of my first jobs was ~~programming binary loadlifters~~ repairing computerised cheque-readers - they're an example of a technology which "just works".

Which, of course, is nonsense. They're fragile, easy to forge, have little protection, and are cumbersome to use for all parties - they're just generally terrible. At this stage of a legacy technology, we generally have two choices - replace or double-down.

Most of the modern world has replaced cheques with electronic banking. Whether its the innovative mobile services of Africa's M-Pesa or the somewhat stodgy British Direct Debits - money flows electronically. Low latency, low cost, low effort.

America, however, has decided to pile on successive work-arounds for the inconvenience. This cool app lets you take a photo of a check and have it magically deposit in your account! (After five days.)

What a pile of nonsense. Shuffling paper around from one end of the country to the other, at high latency, high cost, and high effort. It's just bollocks, isn't it? No matter how many iPhone-based band-aids you stick on.

So we come to the PDF.

The Chilcot Report into the Iraq War has just been released. As PDF. Fifty separate PDFs.

This is despite repeated requests that it should be available in a more suitable format.

Let me be clear. Releasing a PDF is a hostile act. It says you care more about your own convenience than your users'.

As described in The New Statesman, this is an intersection of politics, open standards, and technology.

Let's take a quick look at PDF's sins.

Hard to reflow

If you're reading a PDF on a digital device - because who prints out to paper any more? - you'll probably want to zoom in on the text. Here's what happens with the Chilcot Report if you ask Android to reflow the text:

Inaccessible.

Supposedly accessible PDFs fail in horrendous ways - even when trying to do something as simple as copying text from them.

There are many technique you can use to make a PDF accessible - just like with HTML - but it would appear that the Chilcot Report doesn't take advantage of any of these.

Difficult to extract data.

Quick - find every reference in these PDFs to "Camp David". You can't. Quick - disambiguate between Camp David, Sir David Manning, David Brummell, Dr David Kelly. You can't. There is no semantic markup.

Of course, some people see this as an advantage.

RT[redacted]: Crushing news that people will need to read shit and not just hop from keyword to keyword https://twitter.com/edent/status/750652342853365760 — Matilda (@tillywrites) July 6, 2016

Huge attack surface

PDF is a horrifically complicated standard. So complex that it leads to all sorts of terrifying ways to abuse the reader.

(That's not to say that HTML5 isn't also complex, of course.)

Bloated file size.

Combined, those PDFs add up to around 40MB. Great if you're on a fast connection - not great if you're paying per MB on your phone.

Converted to a plain text format like markdown, it's a mere 370 KB. That's a full two orders of magnitude smaller.

Hard to link to specific parts

PDF does make it possible to link to specific pages - but pages are a skeuomorph. We want to be able to link to specific paragraphs.

While the reports contain some external links, there are no internal links between the documents - making navigation and cross referencing even harder than necessary.

And So It Goes

Other people have written about PDF's failings with far more eloquence than me. This isn't a new rant - Jakob Nielsen was criticising PDF back in 2001.

I truly believe that the Internet needs to treat the PDF as harshly as it treated Flash. We should be embarrassed that such legacy technologies have been allowed to create a stranglehold on our creativity. They are stifling our democracy by trapping vital information in a digital tar pit.

We must drive PDF out - cast it to the winds - make it as impolite to use as auto-playing MIDI on a website.

You wouldn't accept being paid by paper cheque - why should you accept receiving data by PDF?

If you'd like to help convert the Chilcot Report to a more open, accessible, and semantic format please get involved with official-inquiries.com

What Is "Internet Use"?

@edent — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 16:37:35 +0000

A former advisor to the Prime Minister was recently convicted on charges of downloading indecent images of underage girls.

I don't want to go into detail about whether or not his punishment is adequate, but I would like to talk about this curious remark made by the Judge during his sentencing:

beginning today and lasting for two years, you are prohibited from using any device capable of accessing the internet unless it has the capacity to retain and display the history of internet use and you make the device available on request for inspection by a police officer. You are also prohibited from deleting such history.
R v Patrick Rock. Sentencing Remarks of HHJ McCreath - Southwark Crown Court - 2nd June 2016

On the face of it, this seems quite sensible - but what exactly is "accessing the Internet" and what do we mean by retaining "the history of Internet use"?

History

By "Internet history", I suspect most people think of a web-browser's "history" function. Silently recording every page that you've visited.

There are two flaws in this thinking.

All web browsers have an "incognito" mode which prevents a history being created.
History usually covers pages - not embedded media.

I don't know of any way - short of persistent monitoring of a connection - that you could tell if Incognito mode had been used. That's the whole point in it existing. It doesn't delete the history - it never records it in the first place.

Is it enough for the offender to say "just because Firefox has an incognito mode, that doesn't mean I've used it."? Or are they prohibited from using any browser with such a feature?

Secondly, your browser is recording a visit to this specific page in its history. But it is not recording a visit to the page hosting this image:

It would be possible to craft a page full of forbidden content, yet have the browser only record a visit to a seemingly innocuous site.

Similarly, a history may record that you visited a specific page on YouTube - but if the video is subsequently deleted, there's no way to know what its contents were.

The Internet is not the Web

It is a common misconception that the Internet is the same thing as the Web. It isn't.

There are many different ways to access the Internet on a device. For example, switching on your Internet connected lightbulbs doesn't use the Web.

Suppose this person has an Internet connected thermostat. Does his smarthome have to retain every time he adjusts the temperature?
What about email? Can he delete unsolicited spam messages? How about discarding drafts of emails?
A games console can access the Internet. But generally doesn't record its Internet use. So can he play on an Xbox if it isn't connected to his WiFi?
Most devices will not have access to the encrypted streams that an app requests. So are all apps out of the question unless they also retain a hstory?
Consider a Skype video call. Is it enough to preserve the metadata (when was the call placed, who were the participants)? Or does the video and audio need to be preserved?

Thoughts

Is it impractical to completely ban someone from using the Internet given how much of modern life relies on it? If it is, how do you adequately craft an unambiguous order which allows an offender to be monitored without overwhelming complexity?

I'm (obviously) not a legal scholar. The spirit of this ruling seems to be "you can access the Internet only if we're allowed to inspect everything you do" - but the wording seems (deliberately?) vague and technologically naïve.

Does that embolden the guilty party to look for loopholes? Does it give the police too much power to arrest on a whim? Given that it is rarely the "device" which records Internet history, is there any way of practically complying with the order?

What are the alternatives?

Directly monitor the offender's Internet connection? Wouldn't be able to see encrypted traffic. Doesn't stop someone buying a SIM card.
Install surveillance software on all Internet connected devices? Impossible for Smart TVs, games consoles, eBooks, smart watches, etc.
Only use approved apps on approved devices, and ensure that the phone/laptop/games console/etc can't install anything else? Complex and expensive.
Ban the offender from buying a burner phone / SIM or using Incognito Mode? This seems to be what the Judge wants - but it is almost impossible to detect.

At this point, we're back where we started. The offender has to be trusted to comply with an order which is easy to unexpectedly break, and those supervising him have an almost impossible job detecting unauthorised use.

I'd welcome thoughts from people better informed than I am.

Lies, damned lies, and political billboards

@edent — Sun, 29 May 2016 14:07:42 +0000

2024 Update. Some of the Tweets in this post have been deleted. You can see them on the archived version of this page.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that any photograph which doesn't fit your political viewpoint must have been photoshopped.

A few weeks ago, as I was driving down the M40, I saw a giant "Vote Leave" poster with a fairly repulsive message on it.

I was immediately pounced on by people who thought I was making it up in order to discredit the Brexit side. So, the next time I passed it, my wife snapped a few photos.

The response was an endless cacophony of deluded shrieking.

It fell in to four main camps. Deny, delight, disparage, dumb.

Deny

"OMG! You FAKED this. I can tell by the pixels!"

Yes, apparently I am a master of photo editing. The number of people who have seen CSI one too many times and can apparently tell what a fake looks like is astounding. Here are two of my favourites.

Sorry, can't see any supports for poster and perspective looks wrong Simon Carswell

Of course, they mysteriously went silent when confronted with the video evidence:

Delight

Of course, there were those who thought the whole think was hilarious.

"Mate! It's just banter mate! Two World Wars One World Cup Doo-Dah! Can't you take a joke? Don't mention the war, eh! Do you get it? IT'S FUNNY!"

And the ever popular "it's a joke because it's true."

@edent 1. It's a joke, get a sense of humour. 2.EU is 3rd attempt at European Unity.Like 1914 & 1939, the impetus for it is German. #Brexit

Jon White (@Jon_White99) May 28, 2016

Let's ignore rising tensions, start antagonising our neighbours, and make ourselves look like idiots. Archbishop of Banterbury grade material right there...

Disparage

Then there are those who think that this is a hoax. That it, the poster is physically real, but it has been put in place by pro-Remain supporters. Or possibly a rogue faction of the Leave campaign.

Everyone knows it's a "false flag!"

Either way, it's just one poster. God! Stop being so...

...oh.

That second poster is in a different field - several miles away from the first. Interestingly, someone has obscured the word "German" in this one.

Dumb

As well as the various fanatics who can't make a post on Twitter without #important #EUliars hashtags and links to poorly produced "documentaries" - were those who were so outraged at my temerity to question their politics that all semblance of spelling and grammar went out the window.

Blackadder: Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick: Yes, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made out of iron.

It's quite amazing how bad Twitter is for any form of discussion. It quickly degenerates into name-calling and attempted smears.

Mind you, USENET wasn't much better back in the day...

What's also interesting is how I didn't receive any threats - or gendered abuse. I see women posting less controversial comments who are then subject to a torrent of vile abuse. At worse I was called "naive" and a "lamb" - which is touchingly patronising.

I'm a reasonably tough bloke - but waking up to hundreds of angry messages is still intimidating. Mind you, it was counterbalanced by an outpouring of support.

Digital Daze

There's a serious point under all this. Our new digital world means it is easier than ever to manipulate photographs and videos.

Take a look at this - it is nothing short of terrifying!

It's extremely good to be sceptical. But I'm not sure that an army of amateur sleuths are best placed to determine the truth.

You are welcome to download the original photos if you'd like to look for evidence of manipulation.

Is This Illegal?

The reason I stopped on the hard shoulder was because I wanted to capture evidence of what I suspected was a crime. Surely stirring up this level of hatred must be against the law. Right?

The Advertising Standards Authority seem like the right people to complain to.

…we can’t look into complaints about political ads - they’re not subject to the Advertising Code. The best course of action for anyone with concerns about a political ad is to contact the party responsible and exercise your democratic right to tell them what you think.
…
We can’t, therefore, look into complaints that political ads are misleading, harmful or offensive.
ASA Statement on Political advertising - 21 July 2014

Brilliant. So you can basically lie as much as you want in a political advert. Perhaps the Electoral Commission can help?

We frequently receive complaints about political advertising or campaign material and the behaviour of candidates, especially in the period before an election. These are not within the scope of the complaints policy and will be referred to our Public Information Team.

While we have regulatory duties relating to campaign spending, including in relation to political advertising/election material, we have very few powers to deal with the content of material published by candidates and parties, or their general conduct. In most cases we will not be able to deal with such complaints, which should instead be made directly to the party or candidate responsible for the material.

If you feel that the content of the material may constitute a criminal offence, you should contact the police. Every police force has a dedicated Single Point of Contact officer (SPOC), who may be contacted about such allegations.

The Electoral Commission - Complains

So, is this offensive poster an offence?

@edent it looks like an offence under referendum rule 16.1.41

This should be reported to the police by dialling 101.

Phil Dunn - Lib Dem (@LibDemPhil) May 28, 2016

1.41 Under the Public Order Act 1986, it is an offence to publish or distribute threatening, abusive or insulting material that is intended to stir up racial hatred or which is likely to stir up racial hatred.

Campaigning dos and don’ts for EU Referendum campaigners

The Germans are not a specific race. So it's hard to say that this breaches that specific regulation.

…And with that, I'm at somewhat of a loss. Whoever has put of this poster it's not clear to me whether they are committing a crime, or are just relishing in offensiveness.

For now, I'm leaving it to the media to investigate - Buzzfeed generously paid for the photograph and have run a story on it, as did The Metro.

It has also been picked up by the Evening Standard, the Mirror, and Spiegel Online.

Of course, Vote Leave are denying that they are responsible. But that doesn't pass the Mandy Rice-Davies test.

Please - register to vote before it's too late.

Brexit Lies

@edent — Thu, 26 May 2016 11:11:49 +0000

At this point, I think it is a certainty that the UK will vote to leave the EU. The people who are anti-EU are passionate about their cause - every single one of them will be out to vote. For the rest of us, the EU doesn't occupy our every waking thought, we're happy to benefit from it but if the weather is rainy, we might not vote.

With all that said, I'd like to take a moment to point out some of the blatant lies being told by the Leave campaign. I think it is important to show people exactly how they are being mislead.

This is part of a leaflet which was shoved through my door last night.

Let's take the points one by one.

There is a £14 billion trade deal with China.
There is also a massive trade deal with India.
We do not have a separate trade deal with Australia. Although one is being negotiated with the EU. If we leave, those negotiations will have to start again - assuming Australia is interested.
The UK has not bailed out the Euro. We have a veto against doing so and refused to contribute to the IMF's bail out. Our latest negotiations mean we don't need have any "rows" about bailing out the Euro (€).
We already are a member of the WTO!
...and, as part of the WTO, the UK is part of a trade agreement with Australia!

Now, at this point I'd expect Vote Leave to point out that the trade deals with China and India aren't free trade deals - that is where both countries lower barriers to each other's goods & services.

But these concessions are not always symmetric. For example, the Switzerland-China trade deal gives China immediate access to Swiss markets but Switzerland has to wait 15 years for access to Chinese markets.

Similarly, the Chinese-Australian trade deal allows companies to bring in Chinese economic migrants, even when there is no labour shortage in Australia! That "deal" took 10 years to negotiate.

So, OK, we leave the EU and abandon all the trade deals signed with them. Then we spend years negotiating from a weakened position. Then, somehow, we end up with preferential trade deals.

Yeah, right.

We're the fifth largest economy in the world. But the EU is six times larger! If you're China, India, Australia - who do you prioritise in your trade negotiations? If you're in the EU, what concessions do you give the UK knowing that doing so could hasten the break-up of the Eurozone?

There may very well be valid arguments for leaving the EU - but the Leave Campaign seems content just to mislead voters.

If you want some impartial facts on the EU referendum, please visit Full Fact.

You Can't Be Banned From The Houses of Parliament✱

@edent — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 11:03:05 +0000

I was listening to the excellent RHLSTP - because I am one of the cool kids - when the guest, Richard Bacon, made a curious confession about his adventures bringing News Bunny to the State Opening of Parliament.

I got a letter from Black Rod - who runs both houses […] and it says that I am banned for life from the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

It's at the 7 minute 20 mark on the video - or listen to the whole thing on SoundCloud.

"Hmmm…" I wondered, "Who else has been banned from Parliament?"

TO THE BAT-FREEDOM OF INFORMATION MACHINE, ROBIN!

Using the excellent What Do They Know site, I fired off an FoI request to the House of Commons.

I quickly received this back:

The House of Commons has not banned any person, therefore does not hold this information.
I notice in your request you mention Black Rod. It may interest you to know that Black Rod is a senior officer in the House of Lords. As our response only deals with people banned by the House of Commons you may wish to consider forwarding your request to the House of Lords
Carole Fisher - Information Rights and Information Security (IRIS) Service | House of Commons

While waiting for an answer, I'd done a little research and discovered that the Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison was banned from Parliament.

The letter mentions that she should be added to the "Index Expungatoris" - a list of people banned from Parliament. (NB this is also referred to as the the "Index Expurgatorius")

I wrote to the House of Lords and specifically mentioned the "Index". Their reply was swift:

The House Administration does not hold "a list of people who have been banned from Parliament." A search has been conducted and no recorded information relevant to your request has been located.
Frances Grey - Freedom of Information Officer - House of Lords

So! There you have it. If you think that you have been banned from Parliament, it seems that they don't hold any records and you are free to enter.

✱ This does NOT constitute legal advice!

A Complete List of Every UK Government Domain Name

@edent — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 08:29:12 +0000

Eight years after I published this blog post, I helped officially release all these domain names as open data! Funny how life works out, eh?

Would you like to know every domain name the UK Government had registered? Of course you would! There could be all sorts of interesting tit-bits hidden in there (ProtectAndSurvive.gov.uk? EbolaOutbreak2017.nhs.uk? MinistryOfTruth.police.uk?)

Rather than relying on Freedom of Information requests, or Open Data, we can go straight to the source of domain names - the DNS!

Shut Up And Give Me The Codez!

Download all UK Government host names .gov.uk 15,436 records .nhs.uk 4,877 records .police.uk 466 records .mod.uk 268 records .parliament.uk 91 records

That's... quite a lot! The majority are host names - only around 2,247 of the GOV.UK ones are domain names. Many of them are not currently live.

Still, I wonder how many are new?

The Gov.UK file is a CSV which also show when the domain was first registered (if available).

Geeky Details

The Domain Name System (DNS) lists every single domain name (example.com). It tells your computer which IP Address is associated with a Domain Name. If your local DNS doesn't know where example.gov.uk lives, it goes to the ISP's DNS. If they don't know, they ask an upstream provider's DNS. And so on, until someone asks the .gov.uk nameserver for an authoritative response.

So, can you download every domain name in existence? No, not easily. It usually involves filling out lots of forms and giving some compelling reason why you want it.

However, Rapid7's sonar project provides a sort of "best guess" for all the domain names which it can see.

To download the entire file is 12GB. That's the zipped version.

Once unzipped, it's a whopping 67GB

A quick look at the file shows it contains 1,408,097,159 records. Youch! That's a lot of domain names!

This is what the file looks like

$ head 20150926_dnsrecords_all
cshengmei.com.h310.6dns.net,a,103.225.196.101
reseauocoz.cluster007.ovh.net,cname,cluster007.ovh.net
cse-web-cl.comunique-se.com.br,a,200.166.77.69
ext-cust.squarespace.com,a,198.185.159.176
ext-cust.squarespace.com,a,198.185.159.177
ext-cust.squarespace.com,a,198.49.23.176
ext-cust.squarespace.com,a,198.49.23.177
ghs.googlehosted.com,cname,googlehosted.l.googleusercontent.com
isutility.web9.hubspot.com,cname,a1049.b.akamai.net
sendv54sxu8f12g.ihance.net,a,54.241.8.193
sites.smarsh.io,a,199.47.168.63
www.triblocal.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com,cname,s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com
*.01ete21.cn.cname.yunjiasu-cdn.net,a,162.159.210.34
*.01ete21.cn.cname.yunjiasu-cdn.net,a,162.159.211.34

As a brief primer, a CNAME points to another domain name. An A Record points to an IP address. There are lots of different domain records.

Ok, so let's get all the *.gov.uk records out of there...

grep "gov\.uk" 20150926_dnsrecords_all
0-19insalford.info,soa,ns0.ictservices.co.uk postmaster.salford.gov.uk 2010022204 28800 7200 604800 86400
019186.gov.ukpfl.cn,a,122.9.230.117
100days.local.gov.uk,a,198.154.241.231
101.gov.uk,a,216.146.46.10
101.gov.uk,a,216.146.46.11
101.gov.uk,mx,20 sms2.101.gov.uk
101.gov.uk,ns,ns1.p08.dynect.net

Ah! Ok, we're picking up some websites which are pointing to a gov.uk site (potentially useful) and some false positives like "019186.gov.ukpfl.cn". Let's just look at records where the first column ends with .gov.uk":

grep "\.gov\.uk," 20150926_dnsrecords_all
100days.local.gov.uk,a,198.154.241.231
101.gov.uk,a,216.146.46.10
101.gov.uk,a,216.146.46.11
101.gov.uk,mx,20 sms2.101.gov.uk
101.gov.uk,ns,ns1.p08.dynect.net
101.gov.uk,ns,ns2.p08.dynect.net
101.gov.uk,ns,ns3.p08.dynect.net
101.gov.uk,soa,ns1.p08.dynect.net hostmaster.cscdns.net 2014121100 3600 600 604800 1800
1901redirect.nationalarchives.gov.uk,a,193.132.104.151
1sttouch.powys.gov.uk,a,212.219.229.79
1t6c3c0p2r0m934.forestry.gov.uk,a,212.38.180.45
2011.census.gov.uk,a,94.126.106.132
2014.colneyheathparishcouncil.gov.uk,a,81.27.85.11
2050-calculator-tool-wiki.decc.gov.uk,cname,wiki.2050.org.uk

OK, so how do we de-duplicate these? The first thing to do is manipulate the data. We only want the first column. There are an number of ways to do this in Linux, I prefer to use the Python tool CSVfilter.

To install sudo pip install csvfilter.

To grab only the first (zeroth) column
cat 20150926_dnsrecords_all | csvfilter -f 0 > out.csv

Now, this doesn't quite work. Why? Because some DNS records contain incredibly strange data! You can manually clean up the data, but that's a bit boring and utterly impossible to load into Excel or any other normal editor.

Here's what I did...

Copy all the lines containing gov.uk into a new file
grep "\.gov\.uk," 20150926_dnsrecords_all > govuk.csv
Create a new file with only the first column
cat govuk.csv | csvfilter -f 0 > govuk0.csv
Sort the file and make sure each line in unique
sort govuk0.csv | uniq > govuk.txt

Hey presto! A more-or-less complete list of every .gov.uk website which is registered. The same can be performed for .NHS.uk, .police.uk, .MOD.uk etc.

Getting The Dates

Time to crack out the Ruby!

Using the WHOIS library, I wrote a simple script to parse the text records and query when the domain name was created.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'whois'

c = Whois::Client.new

File.open( "govuk.txt" ).each do |line|
   begin
      r = c.lookup(line.chomp)
      puts "#{line.chomp},#{r.created_on}"
   rescue Whois::Error => e
   rescue StandardError => e
   end
end

This isn't perfect - there are only records for the third level of gov.uk - and no records at all for Parliament, MOD, Police, and NHS. It is also a bit slow to run through the thousands of records - but we can see a few interesting bits and bobs.

Created in 2015

I suspect some of these are merely renewals, rather than brand new domains.

seemis.gov.uk,2015-10-29 00:00:00 +0000
yjb.gov.uk,2015-10-28 00:00:00 +0000
crbonline.gov.uk,2015-10-23 00:00:00 +0100
coi.gov.uk,2015-10-14 00:00:00 +0100
gibraltar.gov.uk,2015-07-29 00:00:00 +0100
dorsetforyou.gov.uk,2015-03-19 00:00:00 +0000
ico.gov.uk,2015-03-19 00:00:00 +0000
bridgnorthtowncouncil.gov.uk,2015-01-29 00:00:00 +0000

Oldest

wdc.gov.uk,2003-06-03 00:00:00 +0100
west-dunbarton.gov.uk,2003-06-03 00:00:00 +0100
clacks.gov.uk,2003-06-02 00:00:00 +0100
bassetlaw.gov.uk,2003-04-29 00:00:00 +0100
dti.gov.uk,2003-03-13 00:00:00 +0000

Sadly, clacks.gov.uk has very little to do with Terry Pratchett!

That's all folks!

Spotted anything unusual? Found a better way to do things? Stick a comment in the box!

If you've enjoyed this post, you can buy me something from my Amazon Wishlist.

Notes on Digital Surveillance

@edent — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 08:45:07 +0000

Earlier this year, I attended a lecture given by Alan Rusbridger - the outgoing editor of The Guardian - entitled "The World After Snowden." Held at Oxford University, and attended by journalists, technologists, and former spies - it was an exceptionally interesting talk and provoked a lively debate over dinner.

In light of the publication of the disastrous Investigatory Powers Bill, I've decided to write up my notes.

Except for the opinions expressed in public, I've deliberately avoiding attributing any of the comments to individuals. As per my posts on Communist Robots and iPhone Slavery the points I make here aren't necessarily my own.

This is a series of observations and questions.

The lecture theatre is filling with greying hair - almost exclusively male. Beside me a couple of chaps with RAF pins on their lapels mutter darkly about how it wouldn't have been allowed in their day. The journalists in front of me are either tapping furiously on iPads or scribbling indecipherable shorthand.

Alan Rusbridger cuts an impressive figure as he carefully maps out the story of Snowden. Not the tawdry details of how documents were liberated from the US Government - but how the response from the press and lawmakers has been curiously subdued.

In the USA, there have been numerous reports, debates between lawmakers and the public, a strong response from the Intelligence Services. In the UK... Nothing. Labour have been terrified of being seen to be weak on security. While the Libertarian wing of the Tory party would normally support personal freedoms - they've been overruled by their hatred of the liberal media. The LibDems - bless 'em - don't have the clout to do much of anything.

The odd questioning of spooks and their nominal overseers has been lacklustre at best.

Unspoken in the room is the problem of collusion. The Guardian journalists are Oxford educated. The GCHQ chaps are Oxford chaps. The politicians - you guessed it - PPE from Oxford. There's a cosy club of perfectly decent fellows - and most of them are men - all gently assuming that the other is acting in the best interests of... society, one supposes.

This trick is working. The state is simply ignoring the argument - at all levels. Don't mistake it for a head-in-the-sand attitude - it's the sure-fire knowledge that wholesale surveillance is just too big for anyone to understand. And that makes it hard for people to care about. So it can be pushed aside. After a few years of intense non-debate, the establishment can state with confidence that "it's time to move on from Snowden."

Perhaps industry will pick up the fight? In the USA, we see companies aggressively promoting Privacy as a competitive advantage - yay capitalism. And in the UK? It's hard to find a significant industry player who has kicked up a stink about the pillaging of their customers' data. Say, I wonder where their CEOs went to school...?

At least the tech community is having a passionate debate. We're the ones busy fixing bugs, getting tools to those in needs. We're the ones doing the damned work, fighting the good fight, and still being ignored, belittled, and infiltrated.

Sat a little way ahead of me is a former Director of GCHQ. He writes exclusively in green ink. His hands trembles as he talks. And, boy, does he talk! He's a terribly reasonable. That's the worst thing about him. As he's telling the audience that mass surveillance of all citizens by the state really isn't that big a deal - I find it hard to disagree with him. Such a kindly old man couldn't be malicious, could he?

But when you listen to his words, it becomes clear that he's a trained liar. There's no way an honest man can say with a straight face that it is in no way intrusive for the police to have a list of every websites you've visited. Lawyers don't really need confidentiality with their clients.

There's a philosophical debate to be had. If a computer system snaffles up all your emails - but they're not read by a human - have they really been intercepted?

Above all, he asks, can we please be a little more respectful in our tone. It strikes me that it's not possible to have a polite conversation with a burglar. Especially while a theft is in progress.

The conversation is schizophrenic. When Sony was hacked - they were castigated for having such weak security. In the aftermath of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, companies were criticised for being too secure. How can we track the enemies of freedom if we can't read everyone's emails?

There are protections - of course. Journalists - especially the decent sort - ought to be protected. That's what American law says anyhow. We're often asked "is blogging journalism" - perhaps we need to ask "why do journalists get protection from state intrusion when ordinary citizens don't?" But that's not quite so snappy, is it?

And snappiness is a problem. As well as the philosophical debates - there's the technological debate. And it's too hard for most people to follow. Half the MPs can't turn on a computer without an advisor pointing out where the switch is. How many of them do you think understand the intricacies of public key cryptography?

No, it's more fundamental than that. It's a public perception problem.

In the UK, we never had the KGB or the Stasi. We didn't have the FBI undermining our civil rights leaders. We didn't have that sonofabitch Nixon screwing everything up. We had Alan Turning single-handedly defeating the Nazis and James Bond keeping the British end up. Our guys are the goodies!

Which, of course, leads one old journalist to huff and puff that The Guardian really ought to have been more responsible and let the government see the stories before publication.

One of the journalists around the table likes this struggle to the fight against slavery. Not in terms of human pain and misery, but there are parallels to be drawn. This is a fight against huge economic resources, entrenched culture, and men who crave the power of life and death over other humans. They are fighting to keep the status quo. The fight against slavery took hundreds of years. It is all but eliminated and yet we're still living with the repercussions of such evil. That's the time scales we have to work on. A minimum of 50 years to change public and private opinion.

It will take a catastrophe to shake up the public. The leaking of everyone's medical details? Perhaps Facebook inadvertently shows who other than your wife have you been looking at? The end of a million marriages in one weekend, what would that do to the public's perception of data security? (This was all months before Ashley Madison. Sadly, that event seems to have failed to shift the public's attitude.)

Geeks have failed to realise that we are engaged in massively asymmetrical warfare. International standards bodies are corrupted by the state, trillions of dollars are directed towards total domination, human lives are collateral. We have GitHub, Tumblr, and the sainted BlockChain.

Where's the tipping point where geeks can freely admit that we lost and it's time to kowtow?

Our government wants to protect the Internet. They see it as an engine of massive growth. But they fear the ease with which criminals and ne'er-do-wells and use it. The gives the security services contradictory requirements.

Perhaps the only question we need to ask is "How do we reach a least worse local minimum?"

At the moment, there is the technical capability to store... everything. They can hold an infinite file on everyone for an indiscriminate period of time - then all they need to do is wait for the law to change and run a dragnet through all the data.

Y
our guilt is a quantum needle simultaneously popping in and out of multiple haystacks.

Finally - and it's been a long evening - how do we prepare for the next leak? Snowden won't be the last. The next might come from within industry, or a nation state, or a hacker who blags her way into a cache of juicy data? What are technologists doing to tighten up systems? What are legislators doing to ensure proper procedures are in place?

Our spies ought to be protecting us. But they're conflicted. Every flaw they fix means one less access point for criminals - and one less access point for the themselves.

We melt off into the night. This isn't even the end of the beginning - this is a culture war which can never be resolved as long as men desire each others' secrets.

A Tale of Two Open Data Sets

@edent — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 08:14:03 +0000

It was the best of FoI requests, it was the worst of FoI requests.

While some data holders are wise, others are foolish. Some strengthen our belief in the promise of open data, while others leave us reeling with incredulity. I hereby present a tale of light and darkness, which will bring you equal measures of hope and despair.

Earlier this year, I decided to embark on an open-data-quest. I wanted to find all the fire hydrants in my local area and map them. Where where the areas of poor coverage? Should I buy a house on this road or that? Would insurance companies adjust premiums based on the presence of hydrants?

I could just wander around the streets of Oxford and mark every one I came across on a map - but that is a tiresome and error-prone process. Instead, I turned to "What Do They Know" and submitted a Freedom of Information request to my local Fire and Rescue service.

A month later and I had the data! I was ecstatic! A beautiful .CSV filled with locations and descriptions. I crafted interactive maps, mashed the data up with other sources, brilliant!

My good friend Andy Mabbett thought he'd try to do the same thing with a different local Fire & Rescue service. And that's where the trouble started.

Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service initially refused to supply the information on the grounds that "disclosure of the location of many or all hydrants in the County would prejudice the commercial interests of the water companies and Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service."

That is, to put it politely, bunkum. All hydrants are prominently displayed in public - so what's can be commercially sensitive about them? They also tried the old "national security" canard:

The water network is part of the critical national infrastructure and we are only provided access to the hydrant information to fulfil our statutory role of fire-fighting.
...
The water network could be perceived to be a potential target. It is part of the critical national infrastructure and Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service is only provided access to the hydrant information to carry out its statutory role of fire-fighting. Furthermore, the information is received as part of an agreement with water utility companies and we are not permitted to release the information.

Andy appealed and, after intervention from the ICO, the data were released.

the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) are of the view that the national security argument to claim the exemption is not strong enough at this time in terms of level of risk and impact on the Critical National Infrastructure.

Hurrah!

Emboldened with his success, Andy tried his luck with the West Midlands Fire Service. An identical request was made - and it was refused. Why? National Security

Yes, that's right, the terrorists might disrupt hydrants in the West Midlands (which they can easily see) or they might commercially compete with the local water company. Errr... what?

Andy is in the middle of an appeal to the ICO. It's hard to see how the West Midlands can refuse this request when others are releasing the data.

And that's part of the problem with Open Data in the UK. Too many public services are outsourced to commercial providers who have no incentive to open up the data for the good of the country. The pervasive fear that someone, somewhere might behave maliciously acts as a massive brake on the progress of open data. Public authorities have to recognise that these data can provide massive public benefits with little real chance of serious harm.

We also have to contend with the fragmented nature of decision making in the UK which leaves us in a confusing and contradictory state. Perhaps, ICO decisions in favour of releasing data need to be binding on all related public bodies?

For now, sadly, we have to make the same arguments time and again in order to promote open data. Onwards!

Migrants and Mobiles

@edent — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 14:31:59 +0000

There's a pernicious myth - often spread by tabloids - that the poor and hungry don't deserve the meagre possessions which make life worth living. You see this in headlines like "Benefit Scum Have Flat Screen TV!" It ignores the fact that a) they may have bought the TV when they had disposable income, b) that a TV can provide nearly limitless free entertainment, and c) Flat Screen TVs are really fucking cheap!

As the refugee crisis in Europe grows, there are those who wish to exploit human misery and suffering for their own ends. They are usually backed up by the hoard of useful idiots who will spew hatred for their fellow man at the drop of a hat. One particularly spiteful meme is that displaced persons are obviously not poor because they all have "expensive smartphones."

These are not expensive phones! The original photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters is titled "Afghans used a generator-powered charging station this month at a camp in Calais, France." and appears in an excellent New York Times article about how mobile phones are an essential lifeline.

I work in the mobile industry. Let's take a look at all those phones, and see just how expensive they are.

This is the Nokia 100. It's literally designed to be the cheapest phone on the planet. You can pick one up for £16 brand new.

These appear to be Samsung E1200. They are free. No joke, pop into a UK phone store and you can get one free if you buy a £20 top up.

I'm pretty sure this is the Asha 220. Designed for the developing market, Amazon will ship you one next day for around £30.

It's rare to see an Android phone with the back button on the right. No physical home button means it isn't a Samsung. No branding, so unlikely to be Sony. I think it's a Micromax or similar no-brand Chinese handset. Generally these handsets are under £100 - but it's hard to say.

The back of this looks like the Samsung S4 Mini. That was £230 when launched, now available for around £145. No idea about the phone underneath it.

Physical button and smallish form factor, I'm going to say Samsung S3 Mini. £180 when first released, under £90 now.

Based on the orange colour and top charging port, I thought this might be the ZTE Firefox phone, but a closer look at the buttons at the bottom makes me think it's an Android. Back button is on the right, which either makes it very old, or a no-brand phone. Based on the top charger and bight colour, my guess is that this is the NIU Niutek 3.5D2. A dual-SIM phone you can buy for around $40 in the US.

Based on the front facing camera, the white phone is probably the Galaxy Trend. Originally £140 - now yours for ninety quid. The black phone could be anything.

Generic pink powerbank. You can buy these for £4. Not a typo. Under a fiver.

Mobile phones are ridiculously cheap. Even the top end phones listed above can be found for under £75 in any second-hand phone shop.

With a phone, you can call or text home to let people know you're safe. You can buy a cheap SIM card in any country and be contactable by your lawyer and by aid agencies, register to look for work, find housing, meet up with friends, email loved ones, update Facebook, and generally take part in modern society.

Download an app and you're halfway to learning a new language. Find free WiFi and communicate around the world for nothing.

If I was down to the clothes I wore and the phone in my pocket, I'd sell my shirt before cutting myself off from modern communications!

The next time someone tries to tell you that a refugee can't be that destitute because they have a smartphone - gently remind them how cheap modern technology is and how essential phones are to modern life. Then tell them to shut the hell up.

If you can, please set up a monthly donation to Oxfam, or a charity of your choice, in order to help people survive.

Track deletions on Twitter - AKA build your own Politwoops

@edent — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 06:32:27 +0000

Twitter, as part of its never-ending quest to alienate users and appease the rich and powerful, have shut down Politwoops accounts. Politwoops monitored politicians' Twitter accounts and noted when they deleted a tweet.

Most of the time deletions were done for the same reason we all deleted content - mispellings, broken links, etc - but occaisionally they caught politicians attempting to flush history down the memory hole.

If you're a dab hand with Python, and have a server upon which to run code, it's fairly easy to make an ersatz Politwoops service of your very own.

Equipment

Python
Tweepy.
A new Twitter account which is following the people you wish to track.
A Twitter developer account & API Keys either in your name, or your new accounts name.

The Script

Once you have all these, here is a very quick and dirty script I knocked up one evening. It works - but it's not pretty. Don't like it? Fork it on GitHub!

It saves every Tweet made by the accounts you follow. If it sees a Tweet being deleted, it makes a note of it.

import sys
import json
import tweepy
from tweepy import Stream
from tweepy.streaming import StreamListener


# Go to http://apps.twitter.com and create an app.
# The consumer key and secret will be generated for you after
consumer_key        = 'aaaaaaaaaaa'
consumer_secret     = 'bbbbbbbbbbb'
access_token        = 'ccccccccccc'
access_token_secret = 'ddddddddddd'

# Set up the authorisation to use the Twitter API
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)

# Handle the output generated from the stream
class listener(StreamListener):

    def on_data(self, data):
        # Raw output to screen.
        print data

        # Convert the message to JSON
        json_data = json.loads(data)

        if 'id_str' not in json_data:
            # If this isn't a status, do nothing.
            print "no ID"
        else :
            print json_data['id_str']
            # Write a file "123456789.json" containing the Tweet and all the metadata
            text_file = open(json_data['id_str'] + ".json", "w")
            text_file.write(data)
            text_file.close()

        if 'delete' in data:
            # Deleted Tweets look like this
            #{"delete":{"status":{"id":123456789,"user_id":99999999,"id_str":"123456789",
            print "DELETED!"
            # Write a file "123456789-DELETED.json" containing the metadata. Do NOT delete the original Tweet
            text_file = open(json_data['delete']['status']['id_str'] + "-DELETED.json", "w")
            text_file.write(data)
            text_file.close()

        return True

    def on_error(self, status):
        print status

#   Start consuming from the stream.  This will get all the Tweets & Deletions from the users the user is following.
twitterStream = Stream(auth, listener())
twitterStream.userstream("with=following")

The latest version can be found on GitHub.

As I say, this is very basic - but it does work. It will faithfully track every Tweet deleted by those accounts you follow. Use it wisely...

Using Twitter To Predict The #GE2015 Outcome

@edent — Sun, 03 May 2015 14:05:15 +0000

Here's a very silly idea. Can we use the number of followers each candidate has to predict who will win the election?

No, probably not - but let's give it a try anyway, eh?

Hypothesis

Support on Twitter - as measured by the number of followers - is a reasonable predictor of electoral success.

It is likely that the incumbent MP will have a large number of followers - having been in the public eye for five years and (possibly) being on Twitter that long.

It is also likely that MPs with high-profile jobs - like Chancellor, Leader of the Opposition, etc - will be followed by a range of people outside their constituency. These candidates are usually in safe seats, but not always.

These factors may skew the results.

Apparatus

Tweepy - a Twitter Library for Python.
YourNextMP - free and open crowdsourced data about every candidate standing.

Method

YourNextMP provides a CSV showing every candidate in every constituency. 72% of candidates have a Twitter ID listed against their name.

For each constituency, we take all the candidates and, if they have Twitter handles, we see which candidate has the most followers.

This data was collected on the weekend before the election. It took around 2 hours to run thanks to Twitter's rate limits. Follower numbers may have changed since and during the run.

Results

Based on this extremely unscientific measurement the results are...

Party	Seats
Labour Party	247
Conservative Party	204
Liberal Democrats	69
UK Independence Party (UKIP)	36
Scottish National Party (SNP)	24
Green Party	23
Sinn Féin	7
Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales	5
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	5
Ulster Unionist Party	5
English Democrats	4
Independent	3
SDLP (Social Democratic & Labour Party)	3
Pirate Party UK	2
The Respect Party	1
Speaker seeking re-election	1
Class War	1
British Independents	1
Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol	1
Something New	1
Digital Democracy	1
Democratic Unionist Party - D.U.P.	1
Red Flag - Anti-Corruption	1
The Independent Political Alliance Party	1
Lincolnshire Independents Lincolnshire First	1
Scottish Green Party	1
Traditional Unionist Voice - TUV	1

Although that doesn't look like anything the reputable polls are showing, it does look strikingly close to what proportional representation would achieve. A strong showing from the main parties, but with the absolute need to work with the smaller parties in order to sustain a stable government.

Incidentally, Transmute performed a similar exercise back in February. It's interesting to see how the data have changed since Election Season kicked off.

Conclusion

Well, come the results on Friday, I'll update this to show just how accurately this "poll" performed.

There are some obvious deviations from the likely reality.

In Birmingham, Perry Barr - the Green candidate has been active on Twitter since 2009. The incumbent only since February 2015. An improved polling model could correct for this.

While the Pirate Party's Cris Chesha is probably a terrific chap, he is unlikely to defeat the incumbent Gerald Kaufman who doesn't Tweet.

Indeed, in Beckenham, it is only the Lib Dems' Anuja Punj Prashar with a Twitter presence.

Raw Data

You want every result? Here you go!

Constituency	Party	MP	Vote %
Aberavon	Labour Party	stephen kinnock	45%
Aberconwy	Conservative Party	Guto Bebb	53%
Aberdeen North	Liberal Democrats	Euan Davidson	37%
Aberdeen South	Labour Party	Anne Begg	78%
Airdrie and Shotts	Labour Party	Pamela Nash	87%
Aldershot	Conservative Party	Sir Gerald Howarth	83%
Aldridge-Brownhills	Conservative Party	wendy morton .	59%
Altrincham and Sale West	Liberal Democrats	Jane Brophy	72%
Alyn and Deeside	Labour Party	Mark Tami	40%
Amber Valley	Conservative Party	Nigel Mills	66%
Angus	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Mike Weir	71%
Arfon	Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales	Hywel Williams	82%
Argyll and Bute	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Caroline Santos	46%
Arundel and South Downs	Conservative Party	Nick Herbert	52%
Ashfield	Labour Party	Gloria De Piero	94%
Ashford	Conservative Party	Damian	82%
Ashton-under-Lyne	Labour Party	Angela Rayner	72%
Aylesbury	Conservative Party	David Lidington	79%
Ayr Carrick and Cumnock	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Cllr Corri Wilson	71%
Banbury	Green Party	Ian Middleton	67%
Banff and Buchan	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Eilidh Whiteford	52%
Barking	Labour Party	Margaret Hodge	97%
Barnsley Central	Labour Party	Dan Jarvis	95%
Barnsley East	Labour Party	Michael Dugher	92%
Barrow and Furness	Labour and Co-operative Party	John Woodcock	94%
Basildon and Billericay	Labour Party	Gavin Callaghan	86%
Basingstoke	Labour Party	Dr Paul Harvey	48%
Bassetlaw	Labour Party	John Mann	96%
Bath	Conservative Party	Ben Howlett	48%
Batley and Spen	Labour Party	Jo Cox	86%
Battersea	Conservative Party	Jane Ellison	59%
Beaconsfield	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Tim Scott	83%
Beckenham	Liberal Democrats	Anuja Punj Prashar	100%
Bedford	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Charlie Smith UKIP	50%
Belfast East	Sinn Féin	Niall Ó Donnghaile	36%
Belfast North	Sinn Féin	Gerry Kelly	64%
Belfast South	Sinn Féin	Máirtín Ó Muilleoir	61%
Belfast West	Sinn Féin	Paul Maskey	61%
Bermondsey and Old Southwark	Liberal Democrats	Simon Hughes	52%
Berwick-upon-Tweed	English Democrats	English Democrats	36%
Berwickshire Roxburgh and Selkirk	Liberal Democrats	Michael Moore	61%
Bethnal Green and Bow	Labour Party	Rushanara Ali	83%
Beverley and Holderness	Conservative Party	Graham Stuart	85%
Bexhill and Battle	Liberal Democrats	Rachel Sadler	59%
Bexleyheath and Crayford	Conservative Party	David Evennett	65%
Birkenhead	Labour Party	Frank Field	96%
Birmingham Edgbaston	Labour Party	Gisela	83%
Birmingham Erdington	Labour Party	Jack Dromey	91%
Birmingham Hall Green	Labour Party	Roger Godsiff	74%
Birmingham Hodge Hill	Labour Party	Liam Byrne	92%
Birmingham Ladywood	Labour Party	Shabana Mahmood	92%
Birmingham Northfield	Labour Party	Richard Burden	61%
Birmingham Perry Barr	Green Party	James Lovatt	45%
Birmingham Selly Oak	Labour Party	Steve McCabe	70%
Birmingham Yardley	Liberal Democrats	John Hemming	58%
Bishop Auckland	Labour Party	Helen Goodman	83%
Blackburn	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Dayle Taylor	38%
Blackley and Broughton	Liberal Democrats	Richard Gadsden	79%
Blackpool North and Cleveleys	Conservative Party	Paul Maynard	88%
Blackpool South	Labour Party	Gordon Marsden	65%
Blaenau Gwent	Labour Party	nick smith	40%
Blaydon	Labour Party	Dave Anderson	58%
Blyth Valley	Labour Party	Blyth Valley Labour	48%
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton	Green Party	Simon McDougall	44%
Bolsover	Conservative Party	Peter Bedford	95%
Bolton North East	Conservative Party	James Daly	51%
Bolton South East	Labour Party	Yasmin Qureshi	100%
Bolton West	Labour Party	Julie Hilling	76%
Bootle	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Paul Nuttall	92%
Boston and Skegness	Conservative Party	Matt Warman	66%
Bosworth	Liberal Democrats	Michael Mullaney	47%
Bournemouth East	Conservative Party	Tobias Ellwood	96%
Bournemouth West	Conservative Party	Conor Burns	94%
Bracknell	Conservative Party	Dr Phillip Lee	70%
Bradford East	Liberal Democrats	David Ward	91%
Bradford South	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Jason Smith UKIP	72%
Bradford West	The Respect Party	George Galloway	97%
Braintree	Conservative Party	James Cleverly	75%
Brecon and Radnorshire	Liberal Democrats	Roger Williams	64%
Brent Central	Green Party	Shahrar Ali	41%
Brent North	Labour Party	Barry Gardiner	89%
Brentford and Isleworth	Conservative Party	Mary Macleod	81%
Brentwood and Ongar	Conservative Party	Eric Pickles	94%
Bridgend	Labour Party	Madeleine Moon	71%
Bridgwater and West Somerset	Liberal Democrats	Theo Butt Philip	68%
Brigg and Goole	Conservative Party	Andrew Percy	83%
Brighton Kemptown	Conservative Party	Simon Kirby	52%
Brighton Pavilion	Green Party	Caroline Lucas	96%
Bristol East	Labour Party	Kerry McCarthy	89%
Bristol North West	Conservative Party	Charlotte Leslie	73%
Bristol South	Green Party	Tony Dyer	34%
Bristol West	Liberal Democrats	Stephen Williams	54%
Broadland	Green Party	Andrew Boswell	64%
Bromley and Chislehurst	Liberal Democrats	Sam Webber	37%
Bromsgrove	Conservative Party	Sajid Javid	90%
Broxbourne	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	David Platt	82%
Broxtowe	Conservative Party	Anna Soubry	81%
Buckingham	Speaker seeking re-election	John Bercow MP	100%
Burnley	Liberal Democrats	Gordon Birtwistle	73%
Burton	Conservative Party	Andrew Griffiths	61%
Bury North	Conservative Party	David Nuttall	79%
Bury South	Labour Party	Ivan Lewis	86%
Bury St Edmunds	Green Party	Helen Geake	46%
Caerphilly	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Sam Gould	46%
Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Paul Monaghan	89%
Calder Valley	Conservative Party	Craig Whittaker	56%
Camberwell and Peckham	Labour Party	Harriet Harman	87%
Camborne and Redruth	Liberal Democrats	Julia Goldsworthy	67%
Cambridge	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Patrick O'Flynn	48%
Cannock Chase	Labour Party	Janos Toth	50%
Canterbury	Green Party	Stuart 4 Canterbury	39%
Cardiff Central	Liberal Democrats	Jenny Willott	54%
Cardiff North	Labour Party	Mari Williams	55%
Cardiff South and Penarth	Labour and Co-operative Party	Stephen Doughty	67%
Cardiff West	Labour Party	Kevin Brennan	76%
Carlisle	Labour Party	Lee Sherriff	47%
Carmarthen East and Dinefwr	Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales	Jonathan Edwards	74%
Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire	Conservative Party	Simon Hart	47%
Carshalton and Wallington	Liberal Democrats	Tom Brake	83%
Castle Point	Conservative Party	Rebecca Harris	71%
Central Ayrshire	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Philippa Whitford	83%
Central Devon	Green Party	Andy Williamson	46%
Central Suffolk and North Ipswich	Liberal Democrats	Jon Neal	34%
Ceredigion	Liberal Democrats	Mark Williams	49%
Charnwood	Labour Party	Sean Kelly-Walsh	93%
Chatham and Aylesford	Conservative Party	Tracey Crouch	74%
Cheadle	Liberal Democrats	Mark Hunter	53%
Chelmsford	Liberal Democrats	Stephen Robinson	73%
Chelsea and Fulham	Conservative Party	Greg Hands	90%
Cheltenham	Liberal Democrats	Martin Horwood	74%
Chesham and Amersham	Conservative Party	Cheryl Gillan	82%
Chesterfield	Labour Party	Toby Perkins	81%
Chichester	Conservative Party	Chi. Conservatives	30%
Chingford and Woodford Green	Class War	Lisa Mckenzie	67%
Chippenham	Liberal Democrats	Duncan Hames	59%
Chipping Barnet	Green Party	A. M. Poppy	61%
Chorley	Labour Party	Lindsay Hoyle	66%
Christchurch	Green Party	Shona Dunn	100%
Cities of London and Westminster	Conservative Party	Mark Field	54%
City of Chester	Conservative Party	Stephen Mosley	77%
City of Durham	Labour Party	R. Blackman-Woods	67%
Clacton	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Douglas Carswell	90%
Cleethorpes	Conservative Party	Martin Vickers	69%
Clwyd South	Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales	Mabon ap Gwynfor	92%
Clwyd West	Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales	marc jones	48%
Coatbridge Chryston and Bellshill	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Phil Boswell SNP	64%
Colchester	Labour Party	Jordan Newell	44%
Colne Valley	Conservative Party	Jason McCartney	73%
Congleton	Labour Party	Dr Darren Price	61%
Copeland	Labour Party	Jamie Reed	97%
Corby	Labour and Co-operative Party	Andy Sawford	62%
Coventry North East	Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	Nicky Downes	50%
Coventry North West	Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	Dave Nellist	91%
Coventry South	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Mark Taylor UKIP	50%
Crawley	Conservative Party	Re-Elect Henry Smith	53%
Crewe and Nantwich	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Cllr. Richard Lee	50%
Croydon Central	Conservative Party	Gavin Barwell	73%
Croydon North	Labour and Co-operative Party	Steve Reed	74%
Croydon South	Labour Party	Emily Benn	35%
Cumbernauld Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East	Labour Party	Gregg McClymont	87%
Cynon Valley	Labour Party	Ann Clwyd	56%
Dagenham and Rainham	Labour Party	Jon Cruddas	87%
Darlington	Labour Party	Jenny Chapman	55%
Dartford	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	joneselizab	55%
Daventry	Conservative Party	Chris Heaton-Harris	84%
Delyn	Labour Party	David Hanson	82%
Denton and Reddish	Labour Party	Andrew Gwynne	82%
Derby North	Labour Party	Chris Williamson	93%
Derby South	British Independents	David Gale	70%
Derbyshire Dales	Liberal Democrats	Benjamin Fearn	34%
Devizes	Conservative Party	Claire Perry	94%
Dewsbury	Conservative Party	Simon Reevell	43%
Don Valley	Labour Party	Caroline Flint	98%
Doncaster Central	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Chris Hodgson UKIP	86%
Doncaster North	Labour Party	Ed Miliband	100%
Dover	Conservative Party	Charlie Elphicke	67%
Dudley North	Labour Party	Ian Austin	51%
Dudley South	Labour Party	Natasha Millward	48%
Dulwich and West Norwood	Labour Party	Helen Hayes	41%
Dumfries and Galloway	Labour Party	Russell Brown	51%
Dumfriesshire Clydesdale and Tweeddale	Conservative Party	David Mundell	55%
Dundee East	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Stewart Hosie	88%
Dundee West	Labour Party	Michael Marra	36%
Dunfermline and West Fife	Labour Party	Thomas Docherty	40%
Dwyfor Meirionnydd	Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales	Liz Saville Roberts	45%
Ealing Central and Acton	Conservative Party	Angie Bray	45%
Ealing North	Liberal Democrats	Kevin McNamara	100%
Ealing Southall	Labour Party	Virendra Sharma	72%
Easington	Labour Party	Grahame Morris	77%
East Antrim	Ulster Unionist Party	Roy Beggs	42%
East Devon	Conservative Party	Hugo Swire	74%
East Dunbartonshire	Liberal Democrats	Jo Swinson	69%
East Ham	Labour Party	Stephen Timms	69%
East Hampshire	Conservative Party	Damian Hinds	84%
East Kilbride Strathaven and Lesmahagow	Liberal Democrats	Paul McGarry	70%
East Londonderry	Sinn Féin	Caoimhe Archibald	55%
East Lothian	Labour Party	Fiona O'Donnell	46%
East Renfrewshire	Scottish National Party (SNP)	kirstenoswald	83%
East Surrey	Conservative Party	Sam Gyimah 2015	86%
East Worthing and Shoreham	Conservative Party	Tim Loughton	64%
East Yorkshire	Conservative Party	Sir Greg Knight	76%
Eastbourne	Conservative Party	Caroline Ansell	52%
Eastleigh	Liberal Democrats	Mike Thornton	61%
Eddisbury	Conservative Party	Antoinette Sandbach	82%
Edinburgh East	Labour Party	Sheila Gilmore	34%
Edinburgh North and Leith	Conservative Party	Iain McGill	29%
Edinburgh South	Labour Party	Ian Murray	59%
Edinburgh South West	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Joanna Cherry QC	47%
Edinburgh West	Liberal Democrats	Mike Crockart	40%
Edmonton	Labour and Co-operative Party	Kate Osamor	48%
Ellesmere Port and Neston	Labour Party	Justin Madders	38%
Elmet and Rothwell	Conservative Party	Alec Shelbrooke	64%
Eltham	Labour Party	Clive Efford	81%
Enfield North	Conservative Party	Nick de Bois	75%
Enfield Southgate	Conservative Party	David Burrowes	73%
Epping Forest	Green Party	Epping Forest Greens	34%
Epsom and Ewell	Independent	Lionel Blackman	32%
Erewash	Labour Party	Catherine Atkinson	48%
Erith and Thamesmead	Labour Party	teresa pearce	66%
Esher and Walton	Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol	Matt Heenan	80%
Exeter	Labour Party	Ben Bradshaw	88%
Falkirk	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	David Coburn MEP	93%
Fareham	Green Party	Miles Grindey	42%
Faversham and Mid Kent	English Democrats	English Democrats	66%
Feltham and Heston	Labour and Co-operative Party	Seema Malhotra	83%
Fermanagh and South Tyrone	Sinn Féin	Michelle Gildernew	65%
Filton and Bradley Stoke	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Cllr Ben Walker	64%
Finchley and Golders Green	Conservative Party	Mike Freer	51%
Folkestone and Hythe	Conservative Party	Damian Collins	50%
Forest of Dean	Conservative Party	Mark Harper	78%
Foyle	SDLP (Social Democratic & Labour Party)	Mark Durkan	71%
Fylde	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Paul White	65%
Gainsborough	Labour Party	David Prescott	88%
Garston and Halewood	Labour Party	Maria Eagle	99%
Gateshead	Labour Party	IanMearns4Gateshead	79%
Gedling	Labour Party	Vernon Coaker	81%
Gillingham and Rainham	Conservative Party	Rehman Chishti	34%
Glasgow Central	Labour Party	AnasSarwar	70%
Glasgow East	Labour Party	Margaret Curran	45%
Glasgow North	Labour Party	Ann McKechin	52%
Glasgow North East	Labour Party	William Bain	53%
Glasgow North West	Labour Party	John Robertson	56%
Glasgow South	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Stewart McDonald	45%
Glasgow South West	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Chris Stephens	41%
Glenrothes	Labour and Co-operative Party	Melanie Ward	87%
Gloucester	Conservative Party	Richard Graham	52%
Gordon	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Alex Salmond	97%
Gosport	Conservative Party	Caroline Dinenage	71%
Gower	Conservative Party	Byron Davies	76%
Grantham and Stamford	Conservative Party	Nick Boles	94%
Gravesham	Labour Party	Tanmanjeet S Dhesi	83%
Great Grimsby	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Victoria Ayling	33%
Great Yarmouth	Conservative Party	Brandon Lewis	81%
Greenwich and Woolwich	Labour Party	Matthew Pennycook	58%
Guildford	Conservative Party	Anne Milton	41%
Hackney North and Stoke Newington	Labour Party	Diane Abbott	97%
Hackney South and Shoreditch	Labour and Co-operative Party	MegHillierMP	53%
Halesowen and Rowley Regis	Conservative Party	James Morris	42%
Halifax	Conservative Party	Philip Allott	45%
Haltemprice and Howden	Liberal Democrats	CarlMinns	91%
Halton	Labour Party	Derek Twigg	70%
Hammersmith	Labour Party	Andy Slaughter	65%
Hampstead and Kilburn	Labour Party	Tulip Siddiq	66%
Harborough	Labour Party	Sundip Meghani	73%
Harlow	Conservative Party	Robert Halfon	67%
Harrogate and Knaresborough	Conservative Party	Andrew Jones	52%
Harrow East	Labour Party	Uma Kumaran	56%
Harrow West	Labour and Co-operative Party	Gareth Thomas	77%
Hartlepool	Labour Party	Iain Wright	67%
Harwich and North Essex	Conservative Party	Bernard Jenkin	77%
Hastings and Rye	Conservative Party	Amber Rudd	55%
Havant	Conservative Party	Alan Mak	29%
Hayes and Harlington	Labour Party	John McDonnell	94%
Hazel Grove	Labour Party	Michael Taylor	61%
Hemel Hempstead	Labour Party	Tony Breslin	54%
Hemsworth	Labour Party	Jon Trickett	82%
Hendon	Labour Party	Andrew Dismore	50%
Henley	Conservative Party	John Howell	75%
Hereford and South Herefordshire	Conservative Party	Jesse Norman	95%
Hertford and Stortford	Conservative Party	Mark Prisk	59%
Hertsmere	Labour Party	Richard Butler	100%
Hexham	Conservative Party	Guy Opperman	50%
Heywood and Middleton	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	John Bickley	42%
High Peak	Conservative Party	Andrew Bingham	69%
Hitchin and Harpenden	Labour Party	Rachel Danae Burgin	55%
Holborn and St Pancras	Green Party	Natalie Bennett	86%
Hornchurch and Upminster	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Lawrence Webb	86%
Hornsey and Wood Green	Liberal Democrats	Lynne Featherstone	80%
Horsham	Something New	James Smith	73%
Houghton and Sunderland South	Labour Party	Bridget Phillipson	92%
Hove	Labour Party	Peter Kyle	50%
Huddersfield	Labour and Co-operative Party	Barry Sheerman	70%
Huntingdon	Conservative Party	Jonathan Djanogly	79%
Hyndburn	Conservative Party	Kevin Horkin	81%
Ilford North	Labour Party	Wes Streeting	95%
Ilford South	Labour and Co-operative Party	Mike Gapes	85%
Inverclyde	Labour Party	Iain McKenzie	74%
Inverness Nairn Badenoch and Strathspey	Liberal Democrats	Danny Alexander	87%
Ipswich	Conservative Party	Ben Gummer	74%
Isle of Wight	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Iain Mckie	43%
Islington North	Labour Party	Jeremy Corbyn;	83%
Islington South and Finsbury	Labour Party	Emily Thornberry	75%
Islwyn	Labour and Co-operative Party	Chris Evans	52%
Jarrow	Conservative Party	Nick Mason	28%
Keighley	Labour Party	KeighleyLabour	84%
Kenilworth and Southam	Digital Democracy	True Democracy	42%
Kensington	Liberal Democrats	Robin McGhee	53%
Kettering	Labour Party	Rhea Keehn	71%
Kilmarnock and Loudoun	Labour and Co-operative Party	Cathy Jamieson K&L	77%
Kingston and Surbiton	Liberal Democrats	Edward Davey	77%
Kingston upon Hull East	Labour Party	Karl Turner	92%
Kingston upon Hull North	Labour Party	Diana Johnson	87%
Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle	Liberal Democrats	Claire Thomas	69%
Kingswood	Conservative Party	Chris Skidmore	44%
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Roger Mullin	78%
Knowsley	Liberal Democrats	Carl Cashman	80%
Lagan Valley	Democratic Unionist Party - D.U.P.	Jeffrey Donaldson	72%
Lanark and Hamilton East	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Cllr Angela Crawley	54%
Lancaster and Fleetwood	Labour Party	Cat Smith	98%
Leeds Central	Labour Party	Hilary Benn	95%
Leeds East	Labour Party	Richard Burgon	61%
Leeds North East	Labour Party	Fabian Hamilton	76%
Leeds North West	Liberal Democrats	Greg Mulholland	73%
Leeds West	Labour Party	Rachel Reeves	91%
Leicester East	Labour Party	Keith Vaz	81%
Leicester South	Labour and Co-operative Party	Jonathan Ashworth	98%
Leicester West	Labour Party	Liz Kendall	96%
Leigh	Labour Party	Andy Burnham	99%
Lewes	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Ray Finch UKIP	34%
Lewisham East	Labour Party	Heidi Alexander	63%
Lewisham West and Penge	Green Party	Tom Chance	45%
Lewisham Deptford	Labour Party	vickyfoxcroft	61%
Leyton and Wanstead	Liberal Democrats	Carl Quilliam	42%
Lichfield	Conservative Party	Michael Fabricant	93%
Lincoln	Labour Party	Lucy Rigby	44%
Linlithgow and East Falkirk	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Martyn Day	82%
Liverpool Riverside	Labour and Co-operative Party	Louise Ellman	69%
Liverpool Walton	Labour Party	Steve Rotheram	99%
Liverpool Wavertree	Labour and Co-operative Party	Luciana Berger	88%
Liverpool West Derby	Labour and Co-operative Party	Stephen Twigg	94%
Livingston	Scottish National Party (SNP)	HannahB4LiviMP	64%
Llanelli	Labour Party	Nia Griffith	52%
Loughborough	Conservative Party	Nicky Morgan	95%
Louth and Horncastle	Conservative Party	Victoria Atkins	71%
Ludlow	Conservative Party	Philip Dunne	44%
Luton North	Conservative Party	Dean Russell	87%
Luton South	Labour and Co-operative Party	Gavin Shuker	71%
Macclesfield	Conservative Party	David Rutley	69%
Maidenhead	Labour Party	Charles Smith	56%
Maidstone and The Weald	Conservative Party	Helen Grant	87%
Makerfield	Labour Party	Yvonne Fovargue	61%
Maldon	Liberal Democrats	Zoe O'Connell	91%
Manchester Central	Labour and Co-operative Party	Lucy Powell	71%
Manchester Gorton	Pirate Party UK	Cris Chesha ⚑ PPUK	43%
Manchester Withington	Liberal Democrats	John Leech	60%
Mansfield	Green Party	Paul Frost for MP	69%
Meon Valley	Conservative Party	George Hollingbery	60%
Meriden	Labour Party	Tom McNeil	47%
Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney	Labour Party	Gerald Jones	63%
Mid Bedfordshire	Conservative Party	Nadine Dorries	70%
Mid Derbyshire	Conservative Party	Pauline Latham	82%
Mid Dorset and North Poole	Liberal Democrats	vikki slade	35%
Mid Norfolk	Conservative Party	George Freeman	81%
Mid Sussex	Conservative Party	Nicholas Soames	54%
Mid Ulster	Ulster Unionist Party	Sandra Overend	35%
Mid Worcestershire	Conservative Party	Nigel Huddleston	77%
Middlesbrough	Green Party	Hannah Graham	51%
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland	Labour Party	Tom Blenkinsop	87%
Midlothian	Labour Party	Kenny Young	68%
Milton Keynes North	Conservative Party	Mark Lancaster	48%
Milton Keynes South	Conservative Party	Iain Stewart	54%
Mitcham and Morden	Labour Party	Siobhain McDonagh	51%
Mole Valley	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Paul Oakley UKIP	68%
Monmouth	Conservative Party	David Davies	66%
Montgomeryshire	Conservative Party	Glyn Davies	70%
Moray	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Angus Robertson	90%
Morecambe and Lunesdale	Conservative Party	David Morris	49%
Morley and Outwood	Labour and Co-operative Party	Ed Balls	97%
Motherwell and Wishaw	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Marion Fellows	57%
Na h-Eileanan an Iar	Scottish National Party (SNP)	VoteMacNeilSNP	51%
Neath	Labour Party	Christina Rees	45%
New Forest East	Labour Party	Andrew Pope	81%
New Forest West	Conservative Party	Desmond Swayne	78%
Newark	Conservative Party	Robert Jenrick	50%
Newbury	Conservative Party	Richard Benyon	76%
Newcastle upon Tyne Central	Labour Party	chi onwurah	94%
Newcastle upon Tyne East	Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	Paul Phillips	73%
Newcastle upon Tyne North	Labour Party	Catherine McKinnell	92%
Newcastle-under-Lyme	Conservative Party	Tony Cox	40%
Newport East	Labour Party	Jessica Morden	50%
Newport West	Labour Party	Paul Flynn	67%
Newry and Armagh	SDLP (Social Democratic & Labour Party)	Justin McNulty	37%
Newton Abbot	Conservative Party	Anne Marie Morris	90%
Normanton Pontefract and Castleford	Labour Party	Yvette Cooper	90%
North Antrim	Sinn Féin	Daithí McKay	63%
North Ayrshire and Arran	Labour Party	Katy Clark	55%
North Cornwall	Conservative Party	Scott Mann	53%
North Devon	Liberal Democrats	Nick Harvey	46%
North Dorset	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Steve Unwin	89%
North Down	Green Party	Steven Agnew	66%
North Durham	Labour Party	Kevan Jones 4 MP	97%
North East Bedfordshire	Conservative Party	Alistair Burt	97%
North East Cambridgeshire	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Andrew Charalambous	88%
North East Derbyshire	Labour Party	Natascha Engel	56%
North East Fife	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Stephen Gethins	53%
North East Hampshire	Labour Party	Amran Hussain	94%
North East Hertfordshire	Liberal Democrats	Joe Jordan	38%
North East Somerset	Labour Party	Todd Foreman	58%
North Herefordshire	Labour Party	Cllr Sally Prentice	61%
North Norfolk	Liberal Democrats	Norman Lamb	88%
North Shropshire	Conservative Party	Owen Paterson	78%
North Somerset	Conservative Party	Dr Liam Fox	88%
North Swindon	Conservative Party	Justin Tomlinson MP	79%
North Thanet	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Piers Wauchope	41%
North Tyneside	Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	Tim Wall	46%
North Warwickshire	Conservative Party	Craig Tracey	41%
North West Cambridgeshire	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Peter Reeve	67%
North West Durham	Labour Party	Pat Glass	96%
North West Hampshire	Conservative Party	Kit Malthouse	69%
North West Leicestershire	Conservative Party	Andrew Bridgen	79%
North West Norfolk	Labour Party	JoAnne Rust	47%
North Wiltshire	Conservative Party	James Gray	79%
Northampton North	Conservative Party	Michael Ellis	63%
Northampton South	Labour Party	Kevin McKeever	65%
Norwich North	Labour Party	Jessica Asato	54%
Norwich South	Liberal Democrats	Simon Wright	41%
Nottingham East	Labour and Co-operative Party	Chris Leslie	85%
Nottingham North	Conservative Party	Louise Burfitt-Dons	46%
Nottingham South	Labour Party	Lilian Greenwood	88%
Nuneaton	English Democrats	English Democrats	36%
Ochil and South Perthshire	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Tasmina Sheikh	78%
Ogmore	Labour Party	Huw Irranca-Davies	91%
Old Bexley and Sidcup	Conservative Party	James Brokenshire	75%
Oldham East and Saddleworth	Labour Party	Debbie Abrahams	93%
Oldham West and Royton	Labour Party	Michael Meacher	93%
Orkney and Shetland	Liberal Democrats	Alistair Carmichael	84%
Orpington	Conservative Party	Jo Johnson	79%
Oxford East	Labour Party	Andrew Smith	46%
Oxford West and Abingdon	Conservative Party	Nicola Blackwood	64%
Paisley and Renfrewshire North	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Gavin Newlands	78%
Paisley and Renfrewshire South	Labour Party	Douglas Alexander	83%
Pendle	Conservative Party	Andrew Stephenson	88%
Penistone and Stocksbridge	Labour Party	angela smith	100%
Penrith and The Border	Conservative Party	Rory Stewart	98%
Perth and North Perthshire	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Pete Wishart	88%
Peterborough	Liberal Democrats	CllrDarrenFower	50%
Plymouth Moor View	Conservative Party	Johnny Mercer	52%
Plymouth Sutton and Devonport	Labour and Co-operative Party	Luke Pollard	58%
Pontypridd	Labour Party	Owen Smith	79%
Poole	Conservative Party	Robert Syms	45%
Poplar and Limehouse	Red Flag - Anti-Corruption	Rene C Mugenzi	70%
Portsmouth North	Conservative Party	Penny Mordaunt MP	89%
Portsmouth South	Conservative Party	Flick Drummond	29%
Preseli Pembrokeshire	Conservative Party	Stephen Crabb	92%
Preston	Conservative Party	Richard Holden	56%
Pudsey	Labour Party	Jamie Hanley	41%
Putney	Conservative Party	Justine Greening	94%
Rayleigh and Wickford	Liberal Democrats	Mike Pitt	71%
Reading East	Conservative Party	Rob Wilson	65%
Reading West	Labour Party	Victoria Groulef	43%
Redcar	Labour and Co-operative Party	Anna Turley	80%
Redditch	Labour Party	Rebecca Blake	47%
Reigate	Conservative Party	Crispin Blunt	94%
Rhondda	Labour Party	Chris Bryant 2015	96%
Ribble Valley	The Independent Political Alliance Party	Tony Johnson	86%
Richmond (Yorks)	Independent	Robin Scott	55%
Richmond Park	Conservative Party	Zac Goldsmith	91%
Rochdale	Labour Party	Simon Danczuk	89%
Rochester and Strood	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Mark Reckless	72%
Rochford and Southend East	Conservative Party	James Duddridge	84%
Romford	Conservative Party	Andrew Rosindell	48%
Romsey and Southampton North	Conservative Party	Caroline Nokes	63%
Ross Skye and Lochaber	Liberal Democrats	Charles Kennedy	91%
Rossendale and Darwen	Labour Party	Will Straw	72%
Rother Valley	English Democrats	English Democrats	83%
Rotherham	Labour Party	Sarah Champion	85%
Rugby	Conservative Party	Mark Pawsey	72%
Ruislip Northwood and Pinner	Conservative Party	Nick Hurd PPC	80%
Runnymede and Weybridge	Conservative Party	Philip Hammond	91%
Rushcliffe	Green Party	Richard Mallender	85%
Rutherglen and Hamilton West	Labour and Co-operative Party	Tom Greatrex	90%
Rutland and Melton	Conservative Party	Alan Duncan	88%
Saffron Walden	Labour Party	Jane-Saffron Walden	50%
Salford and Eccles	Pirate Party UK	Sam Clark	46%
Salisbury	Conservative Party	John Glen	68%
Scarborough and Whitby	Liberal Democrats	Michael Beckett	86%
Scunthorpe	Labour Party	Nic Dakin	88%
Sedgefield	Labour Party	Phil Wilson	55%
Sefton Central	Labour Party	Bill Esterson	86%
Selby and Ainsty	Labour Party	Mark Hayes	53%
Sevenoaks	Liberal Democrats	Alan James Bullion	64%
Sheffield Central	Labour Party	Paul Blomfield	62%
Sheffield South East	Labour Party	Clive Betts	64%
Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough	Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	Maxine Bowler	43%
Sheffield Hallam	Liberal Democrats	Nick Clegg	97%
Sheffield Heeley	Labour Party	Louise Haigh	90%
Sherwood	Conservative Party	MarkSpencer	73%
Shipley	Conservative Party	Philip Davies	87%
Shrewsbury and Atcham	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Suzanne Evans	69%
Sittingbourne and Sheppey	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Richard Palmer	58%
Skipton and Ripon	Conservative Party	Julian Smith	88%
Sleaford and North Hykeham	Lincolnshire Independents Lincolnshire First	Marianne Overton MBE	50%
Slough	Labour Party	Fiona Mactaggart	95%
Solihull	Liberal Democrats	Lorely Burt	65%
Somerton and Frome	Conservative Party	David Warburton	81%
South Antrim	Ulster Unionist Party	Danny Kinahan	51%
South Basildon and East Thurrock	Labour Party	Mike Le-Surf	45%
South Cambridgeshire	Labour Party	Dan Greef	49%
South Derbyshire	Conservative Party	Heather Wheeler	66%
South Dorset	Labour Party	SimonBowkett	61%
South Down	SDLP (Social Democratic & Labour Party)	Margaret Ritchie MP	34%
South East Cambridgeshire	Liberal Democrats	Jonathan Chatfield	35%
South East Cornwall	Conservative Party	Sheryll Murray	74%
South Holland and The Deepings	Green Party	Dan Wilshire	70%
South Leicestershire	Labour Party	Cllr Amanda Hack	85%
South Norfolk	Labour Party	Deborah Sacks	58%
South Northamptonshire	Conservative Party	Andrea Leadsom	93%
South Ribble	Conservative Party	Seema Kennedy	56%
South Shields	Labour Party	Emma Lewell-Buck	79%
South Staffordshire	Conservative Party	Gavin Williamson	98%
South Suffolk	Labour Party	Jane Basham	59%
South Swindon	Conservative Party	Robert Buckland	65%
South Thanet	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Nigel Farage	86%
South West Bedfordshire	Conservative Party	Andrew Selous	100%
South West Devon	Labour Party	Chaz Singh	79%
South West Hertfordshire	Conservative Party	David Gauke	64%
South West Norfolk	Conservative Party	Elizabeth Truss	90%
South West Surrey	Conservative Party	Jeremy Hunt	92%
South West Wiltshire	Labour Party	George Aylett	99%
Southampton Itchen	Labour and Co-operative Party	Rowenna Davis	84%
Southampton Test	Labour Party	Alan Whitehead	58%
Southend West	Labour Party	Julian Ware-Lane	59%
Southport	Liberal Democrats	John Pugh MP	64%
Spelthorne	Conservative Party	Kwasi Kwarteng	60%
St Albans	Liberal Democrats	Sandy Walkington	47%
St Austell and Newquay	Liberal Democrats	Stephen Gilbert	67%
St Helens North	Labour Party	Conor McGinn	88%
St Helens South and Whiston	Green Party	James Chan	58%
St Ives	Liberal Democrats	Andrew George	67%
Stafford	Conservative Party	Jeremy Lefroy	64%
Staffordshire Moorlands	Conservative Party	Karen Bradley	72%
Stalybridge and Hyde	Labour and Co-operative Party	Jonathan Reynolds	93%
Stevenage	Conservative Party	Stephen McPartland	44%
Stirling	Scottish Green Party	Mark Ruskell	39%
Stockport	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Steven Woolfe MEP	49%
Stockton North	Labour Party	Alex Cunningham	80%
Stockton South	Conservative Party	James Wharton	50%
Stoke-on-Trent Central	Labour Party	Tristram Hunt	95%
Stoke-on-Trent North	Labour Party	Ruth Smeeth	52%
Stoke-on-Trent South	Conservative Party	Joe4Stoke	64%
Stone	Conservative Party	Bill Cash	83%
Stourbridge	Conservative Party	margot james	71%
Strangford	Traditional Unionist Voice - TUV	Cllr Stephen Cooper	47%
Stratford-on-Avon	Conservative Party	Nadhim Zahawi	82%
Streatham	Labour Party	Chuka Umunna	94%
Stretford and Urmston	Labour Party	Kate Green	83%
Stroud	Conservative Party	Neil Carmichael	39%
Suffolk Coastal	Conservative Party	Therese Coffey	90%
Sunderland Central	Labour Party	Julie Elliott MP	100%
Surrey Heath	Conservative Party	Michael Gove MP	54%
Sutton Coldfield	Labour Party	Rob Pocock	56%
Sutton and Cheam	Liberal Democrats	Paul Burstow	74%
Swansea East	Labour Party	Carolyn Harris	97%
Swansea West	Labour and Co-operative Party	Geraint Davies MP	75%
Tamworth	Conservative Party	Christopher Pincher	85%
Tatton	Conservative Party	George Osborne	99%
Taunton Deane	Independent	Mike Rigby	30%
Telford	Conservative Party	Lucy Allan	80%
Tewkesbury	Labour Party	Ed Buxton	67%
The Cotswolds	Liberal Democrats	Cllr Paul Hodgkinson	61%
The Wrekin	Conservative Party	Mark Pritchard	47%
Thirsk and Malton	Conservative Party	Kevin Hollinrake	79%
Thornbury and Yate	Liberal Democrats	Steve Webb	80%
Thurrock	Labour Party	Polly Billington	49%
Tiverton and Honiton	Liberal Democrats	Stephen Kearney	56%
Tonbridge and Malling	Conservative Party	Tom Tugendhat	32%
Tooting	Labour Party	Sadiq Khan	95%
Torbay	Liberal Democrats	Adrian Sanders	70%
Torfaen	Labour Party	Nick Thomas-Symonds	55%
Torridge and West Devon	Conservative Party	Geoffrey Cox Q.C.	52%
Totnes	Conservative Party	Sarah Wollaston	93%
Tottenham	Labour Party	David Lammy	94%
Truro and Falmouth	Conservative Party	Sarah Newton	60%
Tunbridge Wells	Conservative Party	Greg Clark	88%
Twickenham	Liberal Democrats	Vince Cable	97%
Tynemouth	Labour Party	Alan Campbell	66%
Upper Bann	Ulster Unionist Party	Jo-Anne Dobson	34%
Uxbridge and South Ruislip	Conservative Party	Boris Johnson	61%
Vale of Clwyd	Labour Party	Chris Ruane	57%
Vale of Glamorgan	Conservative Party	Alun Cairns	56%
Vauxhall	Labour Party	Kate Hoey	46%
Wakefield	Labour Party	Mary Creagh	92%
Wallasey	Labour Party	Angela Eagle	97%
Walsall North	Conservative Party	Douglas Hansen-Luke	100%
Walsall South	Labour Party	Valerie Vaz	30%
Walthamstow	Labour and Co-operative Party	stellacreasy	92%
Wansbeck	Labour Party	Ian Lavery	97%
Wantage	Conservative Party	Ed Vaizey	97%
Warley	Labour Party	john spellar	84%
Warrington North	Conservative Party	Richard Short	44%
Warrington South	Labour Party	Nick Bent	41%
Warwick and Leamington	Conservative Party	Chris White	83%
Washington and Sunderland West	Labour Party	SharonHodgson4MP	94%
Watford	Conservative Party	Richard Harrington	59%
Waveney	Conservative Party	Peter Aldous	55%
Wealden	Liberal Democrats	Giles Goodall	55%
Weaver Vale	Conservative Party	Graham Evans	83%
Wellingborough	Conservative Party	Peter Bone	76%
Wells	Liberal Democrats	Tessa 4 Wells	76%
Welwyn Hatfield	Conservative Party	Grant Shapps	87%
Wentworth and Dearne	Labour Party	John Healey MP	86%
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine	Scottish National Party (SNP)	Stuart Donaldson	36%
West Bromwich East	Labour Party	tom_watson	99%
West Bromwich West	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Graham Eardley	90%
West Dorset	Labour Party	Rachel Rogers	71%
West Dunbartonshire	Labour and Co-operative Party	Gemma Doyle	78%
West Ham	Labour Party	Lyn Brown	57%
West Lancashire	Labour Party	Rosie Cooper	65%
West Suffolk	Conservative Party	Matt Hancock	97%
West Tyrone	Ulster Unionist Party	ROSS HUSSEY	34%
West Worcestershire	Conservative Party	Harriett Baldwin	80%
Westminster North	Labour Party	Karen Buck	75%
Westmorland and Lonsdale	Liberal Democrats	Tim Farron	97%
Weston-Super-Mare	Conservative Party	John Penrose WsM	90%
Wigan	Labour Party	Lisa Nandy	91%
Wimbledon	Conservative Party	Stephen Hammond	57%
Winchester	Conservative Party	Steve Brine	90%
Windsor	Green Party	Derek Wall	70%
Wirral South	Labour Party	Alison McGovern	97%
Wirral West	Conservative Party	Esther McVey	92%
Witham	Labour Party	John Clarke	71%
Witney	Conservative Party	David Cameron	98%
Woking	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Rob Burberry	46%
Wokingham	Conservative Party	John Redwood	76%
Wolverhampton North East	Labour Party	Emma Reynolds	76%
Wolverhampton South East	Labour Party	Pat McFadden	96%
Wolverhampton South West	Conservative Party	Paul Uppal	88%
Worcester	Conservative Party	Robin Walker	40%
Workington	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Mark Jenkinson	63%
Worsley and Eccles South	Labour Party	Barbara Keeley	72%
Worthing West	Conservative Party	Sir Peter Bottomley	71%
Wrexham	Labour Party	Ian Lucas	55%
Wycombe	Conservative Party	Steve Baker	89%
Wyre Forest	Conservative Party	Mark Garnier	78%
Wyre and Preston North	Conservative Party	Ben Wallace	47%
Wythenshawe and Sale East	Labour Party	Mike Kane	56%
Yeovil	Conservative Party	Marcus Fysh	85%
Ynys Môn	UK Independence Party (UKIP)	Nathan Gill	45%
York Central	Labour and Co-operative Party	Rachael Maskell	38%
York Outer	Liberal Democrats	James Blanchard	37%

You made it all the way down here? Well done :-) Have a Unicode Cookie 🍪

Oxford East Hustings

@edent — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 11:58:32 +0000

The Labour candidate I wanted to vote for just lied straight to my face. So I'm backing his Green opponent.

Last night I attended a local hustings for the General Election.

The two candidates I was most interested to hear from were Andrew Smith (Labour) and Ann Duncan (Green). The Tory candidate pulled out due to a family emergency, and UKIP didn't bother to show up. The LibDem candidate also was a no show and instead sent a rather inarticulate student in his place.

We also were treated to candidates from both The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition - proving once again that the far left would rather be ideologically pure than wield any degree of power. Bloody splitters!

In the end, the only two speakers who actually offered coherent policy suggestions were the Greens and Labour. The others were extremely confused ("MAGNA CARTER!!!!!"), delusional ("Once we abolish money..."), or Liberal Democrats ("TTIP is great and will exclude the NHS.")

One of the questions posed to the candidates was around the introduction of biometric IDs in Oxford schools. This isn't an area I know much about - but the candidates were passionately against it. Andrew Smith gave a tub-thumpingly good answer on why it was a dangerous idea and how systems like this were renowned for failing safeguards and mission-creep.

This, I thought, was curious. It was Andrew Smith who tried to introduce Biometric ID cards for all British Citizens.

I asked him directly why he voted for ID cards if he thought they were such a bad idea. He replied (and I'm paraphrasing) "I am against biometric ID cards, and my voting record reflects that."

I pointed out that I was looking at his voting record on ID cards - and it clearly showed that he voted for every single measure. He said the situation was "more subtle than that" - and we moved onto the next question.

Now, I have a lot of respect for Mr Smith. He's always answered my letters, he's against Trident, and has a good voting record on most of the issues I care about. But this was a bare faced lie.

If he'd have said "I was for them, but after looking at all the evidence and listening to my constituents, I've come to the conclusion that I was wrong" - I would have happily accepted that. If he'd said he was still in favour of them in certain circumstances, I would have respected his integrity. But such a blatant rewriting of history is unacceptable.

Here he is, speaking in the House of Commons in 2003 :

Here is a letter to the Oxford Mail complaining about his stance.

At every stage, he voted for Biometric ID cards.

I went into the debates eager to hear from the Green party, but looking forward to voting in a Labour MP for the first time in my life. Instead, I was left with the impression that after 30 years of the same MP, it's time for Oxford East to choose a new representative.

This chart from Wikipedia shows how Oxford East voted last time.

It doesn't look hopeful for the Greens. But I'm not convinced that it's an impossible task. UKIP and the Tories will split the right-wing vote. The students who voted LibDem last time will (hopefully) abandon them following the tuition fee betrayal. If a substantial chunk of them go for a Green alternative rather than the Tory-lite Labour party, and the Labour vote collapses like in did in 2005, it's possible for the the Greens to win here.

Unlikely, sure. But I'd rather vote for a World Bank Economist who believes in social justice, than an MP content to throw his voting record down the memory hole.

Do I agree with 100% of the Green Manifesto? No. But I've had enough of being lied to by Labour politicians. It's time for a change - it's time for a Green alternative.

Vote for Ann Duncan on May 7th.

卐

@edent — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 11:17:29 +0000

I remember the first time I saw a Swastika in India. It was gaudy red, painted on the back of a dusty yellow moped. The driver wore a helmet, but the woman riding pillion had only her sari to protect her head.

India is different. The rules of the road are different. The languages are different. The colours, spices, and clichés are different. Over there, the स्वस्तिक is a symbol of auspicious fortune.

In England, however, when carved crudely into a wall, it has a different meaning. Be afraid.

As I sat on the loo at work today, that's what I saw. A Swastika, scratched into the wall. An incongruous and upsetting scar on an otherwise inclusive workplace.

My office is a beautifully diverse representation of modern UK. I regularly work with Eastern Europeans, Iranians, the odd Kiwi, the children of immigrants, and people with visible and non-visible disabilities. My boss - and her boss - are women. On Monday we had a lunchtime presentation by a transwoman staff-member who talked about how Star Wars helped her overcome personal and professional difficulties.

It's the sort of workplace that UKIP hate. We all get along, we all eat together, play pool together, and occasionally do some work together. I can't swear that it's paradise on Earth, but it's far from the homogenising cry of "Culture Fit" (read - young white guys who like the same stuff we do).

Yet someone - some dummkopf - is seething with impotent rage. His only outlet is a coward's ritualised scarring. A racist graffito designed to... to what? Act as a rallying point? (Groups of men meeting in a toilet isn't exactly in keeping with Paragraph 175...) Demonstrate strength? (Ah, Kraft durch Reizung.) Frighten and intimidate? Perhaps. But who? And why?

This has happened before. I don't mean in a figurative history-always-repeats sense. I mean literally. A few months ago, in the self-same toilet, I spotted a Swastika. My employers were quick to have the wall repaired and the symbol obliterated.

But, like a turd that just won't flush away, it's bobbed back to the surface.

Someone - presumably the same fascist sympathiser - has carved it into the same wall, larger (and a touch more artistically) than it was before.

Up until this point I had harboured a naïve notion that the original was carved by one of the many Asian expatriates in the office. But seeing a larger version, rotated 45° and encased in a circle, disabuses me of that comfort. I think it is obvious what that represents.

Again, my employer's response has been impeccable. They're removing it post-haste, and have offered me their sympathies. Ultimately, though, it's impossible to catch the culprit - short of placing cameras in toilets and hoping he's unimaginative enough to strike again.

So, what are we left with? In an office of several thousand people, at least one person finds the tyranny of having to work with Jews, homosexuals, trade-unionists, Catholics, people with disabilities, Gypsies, Slavs, and Jehovah's Witnesses - just far too much to bear. A diverse and successful working environment frightens their divisive and inadequate political opinions.

I pity them. While we're all having fun and celebrating the wide range of human experience - they are angrily engraving their mystic runes into the cave wall, hoping to ward off the last 60 years of progress.

Post-Employment Update When I reported this to O2's HR team, I was told that I was over-reacting, that it was probably a mistake, that I shouldn't make a big deal about it. When, eventually, it was removed there were no comms from O2's HR team. No diversity training. No fuss was made. When the racist graffiti came back a few weeks later, I reported it again and received another lacklustre response. They made me feel like I was the problem. I didn't stay there much longer.

If you are interested in the technical reasons why symbols like ࿗ are in Unicode, I can highly recommend Bablestone's When is a Swastika not a Swastika? and Elizabeth Pyatt's How the Swastika Got into Unicode.

The Usability of Anti-Apartheid Encryption

@edent — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 11:47:28 +0000

(An adaptation of my earlier blog post on the same topic ¹.)

This is a case study focusing on the usability of encryption systems as used by political dissidents in Apartheid era South Africa.

Background - South Africa

Between 1948 and 1994, the nation of South Africa was ruled by an ethnically white minority. They set in place a system of government – known as Apartheid - which suppressed, brutalised and discriminated against other races.

The African National Congress (ANC) was formed in the early 20th Century ² with the explicit aim of bringing "all Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms." In 1960, it was outlawed by the ruling National Party³ and was subsequently branded a terrorist organisation by many nations⁴.

Activists working for and on behalf of the ANC were placed under intense scrutiny by the National Party and its allies. In order to safeguard their communications, the ANC needed to develop, deploy and successfully use digital encryption.

The primary source of this information comes from the ANC's monthly journal "Mayibuye". In 1995 they published a series of articles on their encryption efforts, collated in a single article: "Talking To Vula"⁵

Lines of Communication

With the ANC's leadership under extreme surveillance by a technologically superior aggressor, communications between the leadership and members were subject to interception and disruption.

Poor communications had determined the shape of our struggle. It was because our fighters and cadres could not communicate with their leaders and between themselves that the underground never developed and People's War never became a reality. "Talking To Vula"

The ANC's typical method of encrypting communications in the late 1970s was by the manual use of One Time Pads (OTPs).

While OTPs represent a theoretically uncrackable encryption, they have two fundamental flaws :

It is difficult to distribute an OTP; it wasn't until the late 1970s that key-exchange over a public channel was solved using the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange ⁶.
OTPs often suffer from unrecoverable errors introduced by flaws common in manual transcriptions⁷.

Activists had to manually encipher messages - a tedious and error prone process - and then manually transcribe and decipher the messages they received.

The lack of digital communications required that messages be physically distributed. This increased the latency of communication to the speed of international postal services.

It was always the same pattern: comrades would go back home feeling enthusiastic and begin by sending a series of messages. They soon came to realise that it was a futile activity as it took so much effort to say so very little and the responses, as few and far between as they were, contained little encouragement and advice.
"Talking To Vula"

These activists were fighting to free their country from the yoke of a repressive and racist government. Yet they found the long-winded process of protecting their communications just too hard.

Security is usability.

Operation Vula

The growth of the Personal Computer industry in the 1980s made digital computing increasingly affordable. The ANC's technical committee began to research digital encryption and communication over the telephone network using modems. This was known as "Operation Vula"⁸.

Modern cryptographic science frowns on the sort of self-created encryption algorithms used by Operation Vula; such algorithms often contain subtle weaknesses of which their creators are unaware⁹ ¹⁰. However, developing bespoke encryption systems was a common occurrence in the 1980s – mostly due to the United States Government forbidding the export of encryption software¹¹. This meant that strong, audited encryption was not widely available to the public.

The introduction of computer-based encrypting revolutionised the revolutionaries so that with little effort it was suddenly possible to communicate over vast distances with (apparently) total security. Messages could be long and complex, and the latency of response times were reduced.

This home-made encryption flourished for several years before it came crashing down ¹².

It failed not because of technological weakness - but because of human weakness.

Usability

Maintaining secrecy is hard. Attaching computers to modems and loading secret codes is still a lot easier than the mind-numbing process of hand powered encryption; but it is an extra burden.

Individuals were careless. They knew that organising against the government could result in torture or death. Despite that, it was hard to act with 100% vigilance.

The details of Vula that the regime released to the press revealed that indeed a number of important documents had fallen into their hands. It became clearer by the day that the comrades in Durban had violated all the rules of security that we had so assiduously tried to impress upon them. Data files of confidential information were kept "in clear" on disk and keywords and key books must have been easily obtainable. The minutes of an entire underground conference were quoted by police as evidence of the plot to overthrow the government.
"Talking To Vula"

These communications were not between "hacktivists" doing it for "teh lulz", lovers exchanging sexts or business people protecting their Intellectual Property. It was between freedom fighters working against a sadistic and murderous government. Failing to maintain security would not just end with their families being tortured - it could mean the disruption of an entire political movement.

And yet that threat still was not enough to keep people acting in a security-conscious manner. "Talking to Vula" concludes with the lessons the ANC learned from running their encryption programme:

Without first-class communications you cannot carry out a successful underground operation. "Talking To Vula"

"First class" does not just refer to the technology powering the system, but also the usability of the security.

Barriers

We know that commonly used encryption programs often have fundamental flaws (such as the recent POODLE¹³ and HeartBleed¹⁴ vulnerabilities), that state-based agencies have deliberately weakened encryption standards¹⁵ and that there are theoretical attacks on cryptography using quantum computing¹⁶.

Let us assume for now that via some combination of Vernam ciphers¹⁷ and Perfect Forward Secrecy¹⁸ it is possible to create an encryption scheme which, if used correctly, can withstand sustained attack from determined adversaries. The correct use of encryption relies on, at a minimum, the following behaviours :

Users understanding why encryption is necessary.
A provably secure way for users to generate encryption keys.
Securely storing the encryption keys.
Exchanging keys.
Validating that the keys are trusted by the recipient.
Correct enciphering of messages.
Correct deciphering of messages.
Validating the provenance of messages.
Securely storing or destroying messages.
Updating behaviours and technologies in the light of emergent threats.

If any of these behaviours are weak, the entire encryption scheme becomes vulnerable.

The Challenge

Is it possible to create a system that simultaneously satisfies the conditions of desirability (the understanding of its necessity) and usability (the inability to use incorrectly)?

Modern systems like GPG and Keybase.io have improved on the usability of older encryption systems – but they still require the user to act in an almost perfect manner.

A recent high profile case illustrates that, despite the improvement of these systems, intelligent and committed users still make basic mistakes :

David Miranda was carrying password for secret files on piece of paper
A journalist’s partner who was detained carrying thousands of British intelligence documents through Heathrow airport was also holding the password to an encrypted file written on a piece of paper, the government has disclosed.
Daily Telegraph. 2013-08-30

This careless attitude was present 23 years earlier, during Vula :

[Ghebuza's] assistant was in the habit of moving around with Ghebuza's program and "key" disks as well as his data files. This was against all the rules though we had always suspected that some of the comrades were less than meticulous about observing them.
"Talking To Vula"

Users will seemingly do almost anything to bypass security in the name of convenience¹⁹ ²⁰. From writing down passwords²¹ ²² to pointing a webcam at a VPN token²³, these behaviours completely negate any of the protection provided.

Users are left with, at best, a placebo security measure.

A comprehensive encryption programme has to account for the fallibility of human nature.

Ubiquity & Transparency

Usability of encryption relies on two essential factors: Ubiquity and Transparency.

Until the release of the Fire s heep software ²⁴ it was assumed that websites only had to protect the login portion of their services with HTTPS. Firesheep showed how every interaction with the site could leak login information to an observer.

The only way to guarantee the security of users was to ensure that every single interaction with the site was secured. Ubiquitous security became a necessity.

Similarly, it used to be common that in order to securely access a site like Facebook or Twitter, a user had to remember to enter the URL with the "https://" protocol, or they had to manually set an option to enable security.

By having the website insist on using HTTPS and enforcing it for all users at all times, they removed the need for the user to have to constantly check their security settings. This mode of operation means that encryption technology does not get in the way of the user's normal use of the site. Users do not have to undertake manual actions to enable encryption.

An excellent example of this can be found in my research into British Police websites ²⁵. Several forces run online crime reporting tools, enabling victims to send in details electronically.

Despite the obvious legal and moral need to protect such sensitive information, I discovered that 18 of the forces did not provide any website security. Six of the sites had encryption available but did not force visitors to use it. This meant that users of the site would have to manually manipulate the URL to select a secure method of communication.

Conclusions

Even minor transgressions in the correct use of security can offer an adversary the opportunity to penetrate a user's defences. Users have to continually protect themselves against an unending onslaught of criminals and state-backed hostiles.

"Remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always."
Anonymous IRA Spokesman²⁶ referring to the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing.

In order to make encryption practical and to extend the benefits of secure communication to as many people as possible, we have to find ways of making users as "lucky" as possible.

The challenge for future security systems is to protect users from their own fallibility whilst being as unobtrusive as possible.

1Eden, T "The Hardest Problem In Encryption? Usability." (2014) Retrieved 30 December 2014.

2 A brief history of the ANC Retrieved 30 December 2014.

3 The Unlawful Organizations Act (No. 34 of 1960) enacted by the Parliament of South Africa.

4 US government considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist until 2008 – NBC News – 7 December 2013.

5 Jenkin, T "The Story of the Secret Underground Communications Network of Operation Vula<"

6 Diffie, W. & Hellman, M. "New Directions in Cryptography" IEEE Transactions On Information Theory, Vol. It-22, No. 6, November 1976 .

7 Wahi, Monika M. et al. "Reducing Errors from the Electronic Transcription of Data Collected on Paper Forms: A Research Data Case Study." Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA 15.3 (2008): 386–389. PMC. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.

8 "Documentary On Operation Vula" BBC Interviews: December 2002 Retrieved 30 December 2014.

9 "Schneier's Law" - Bruce Schneier (2011) Retrieved 30 December 2014.

10 Zimmermann, P "Introduction to Cryptography" Page 54

11 Roberts, E. "Reevaluating Us Technology Export Controls" - Stanford University (1999) Retrieved 30 December 2014.

12 US State Department cables on Vula unravelling Retrieved 30 December 2014.

13 CVE-2014-3566 Retrieved 30 December 2014.

14 CVE-2014-0160 Retrieved 30 December 2014.

15 Hales, TC The NSA Back Door to NIST Notices of the AMS Volume 61, Number 2. (2014)

16 Shor, PW "Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Prime Factorization and Discrete Logarithms on a Quantum Computer" SIAM Journal on Computing (1997) 26:5, 1484-1509

17 Kahn, D (1996). The Codebreakers. Macmillan. pp. 397–8. ISBN 0-684-83130-9

18 David P. Jablon. 1996. "Strong password-only authenticated key exchange." SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 26, 5 (October 1996), 5-26. DOI=10.1145/242896.242897

19 Gait, Jason. "Easy entry: the password encryption problem." ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 12.3 (1978): 54-60.

20 Adams, Anne, and Martina Angela Sasse. "Users are not the enemy." Communications of the ACM 42.12 (1999): 40-46.

21 Zviran, Moshe, and William J. Haga. "Password security: an empirical study." Journal of Management Information Systems (1999): 161-185.

22 Nielsen , J. "Security & Human Factors" Retrieved 20 December 2014 (2000)

23 FobCam Retrieved December 30, 2014.

24 Butler, E. "Firesheep – codebutler" Retrieved December 30, 2014.

25 Eden, T "Secure The Police" Retrieved December 30, 2014

26 Taylor, Peter (2001). "Brits: The War Against the IRA." Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 265. ISBN 0-7475-5806-X

Crafting A Perfect FOI Request

@edent — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 11:55:18 +0000

One of the sessions I lead at Open Data Camp was "Open Data Horror Stories" - we talked about some of the disasters we've had when requesting or using Open Data.

This lead on to a session ran by Gaia Marcus on how to create the "perfect" FOI request.

This is not an exhaustive guide to making FOI requests. I strongly suggest that you read WhatDoTheyKnow's recommendations and FOI Man's Top Ten Tips.

To be clear, this isn't going to guarantee that you'll receive an answer - but it should ensure that the answer you get back is useful and conforms to best practices.

Data Format

If you want to interact with the data, you will need it to be supplied in an open and machine readable format. Not PDF!

It makes sense to be explicit as to which format you require the data to be supplied. If, for example, you want geographic data you might want it in KML format. Be aware that most FOI officers are not specialists and will almost certainly supply data in whatever the default format is that their systems export.

The suggested wording of your request should be something like :

Please can you supply these data in an open format such as a CSV file. Section 3 of The Secretary of State's Code of Practice (datasets) issued under Section 45 of the Freedom of Information Act gives more details on acceptable data formats https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/243468/9780108512636.pdf.
For the avoidance of doubt, please do not supply the data in PDF or Microsoft Word format.

Licence

You will often receive data which you cannot make use of due to a restrictive licence. Generally speaking, data provided from a public authority should be under the Open Government Licence. Add this line to the end of your FOI :

I assume that the data provided will be licensed under the Open Government Licence (OGL) as per the guidance from the ICO (https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1151/datasets-foi-guidance.pdf).

Online Publication

Ideally, all FOI data should live online. We shouldn't need to make specific requests to access it. We also want it to be regularly updated. Try including this line in your request :

Please can you publish the data on your website as per the ICO's model publication scheme (https://ico.org.uk/media2/for-organisations/documents/1153/model-publication-scheme.pdf) and supply me with the URL. I would appreciate it if you keep the data updated, with an indication of when and what changes are made. If you are unable to publish online, please send the me the file(s) by return.

Be Polite

Remember, FOI officers are human! They have a stressful and difficult job. Wrapping up your request in boilerplate legal language and being aggressive in your wording is unlikely to win you any friends.

FOI teams can reject "vexatious requests". Be polite, respectful, and as helpful as possible. Don't bombard a department with dozens of similar requests.

These are tips for getting better data - if you have any more, please leave a comment below!

Dying For An iPhone

@edent — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 12:06:56 +0000

Who made your iPhone? Sure, the back of the box says "Designed in California" - but who were the men and women who assembled your phone?

How well are they treated? Are they paid well? Are they trapped in a living hell where many of them feel the only way out is suicide?

This is the question posed by Dr Jenny Chan in her upcoming book Dying for an iPhone: The Hidden Struggle of China’s Workers which she talked about in Oxford earlier this week.

You can read for yourself some of the reports written about factory conditions of iPhone workers, including by Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour. You can watch the BBC's Panorama programme Apple's Broken Promises.

I'm not particularly interested in discussing the veracity of the claims - nor whether this is a painful but necessary economic stepping stone. I'll be discussing the points raised in the discussion about how we might go about improving the lives of the people slaving away to produce our electronics. As with my blog post on Communist Robots, the views expressed are not necessarily mine and are deliberately unattributed.

Firstly, it's worth noting that Apple and its partners are making progress on workers' right.

Apple has banned the practice of bonded labour - where new recruits are charged a fee - from its factories.
In its latest audit of factory conditions, the iPhone maker said that any such fee must be paid by its supplier and not the employee.
Apple began the audits following criticism of the working conditions in some of its factories.
"Apple bans 'bonded servitude' for factory workers" - BBC News 2015-02-12

Given that we believe Apple's suppliers - Foxconn - are deliberately mistreating their workers, what are our options for engendering change in these organisations? These are money-hungry companies desperate to cut every corner and bypass every regulatory edict in the face of overwhelming profit.

Broadly speaking, there are 4 major routes to change.

Agitating For Change

Apple trades on its reputation. Its brand relies on customer loving Apple.

It is imperative that the voices of those who are suffering are heard by those who are funding the suffering.

This can be achieved via protests and other methods of consciousness raising - such as posting on social media, holding talks with concerned parties, and encouraging people to watch documentaries.

Pension Funds

Some of the largest investors in Apple are Teachers' Pensions. Chances are, if you have a pension, you're invested in Apple.

We outsource our morality to pension funds. We ask them to provide the best possible return on investment, and we close our eyes to how they do it. Perhaps we should be lobbying teachers - and our own pension fund managers - to insist that Apple and Foxconn behave more ethically. Would it lead to a lower ROI to pay people a living wage? Maybe. Or would a more generous attitude pay dividends by increasing sales?

Conflict Minerals

The mobile phone industry has a large problem with conflict minerals. In particular Coltan is regularly mined by corrupt warlords and used to finance ongoing wars.

There is hope though - regulators worldwide have enacted laws to curb the sale of conflict minerals. It's imperfect, but it's a start.

Continual lobbying of law makers and phone companies has helped improve the lives of tens of thousands of people. There's no reason why the same can't happen with Apple.

Unions

There are two approaches to unionising. The first is, somewhat obviously, getting the Foxconn workers into a strong and recognised labour union. This is not without its problems.

Foxconn workers report that they are victimised and harassed for standing up for their rights. The unions which are afforded to them often report directly to their abusive bosses.

So, what other options are there? Ask Apple workers in the USA and Europe to stand in solidarity with the people who make the products that they sell. Would they be willing to agitate for change within Apple and also explain the problem to potential customers entering the stores?

In some cases, this has already happened - Apple Store employees join with protesters to make their displeasure known.

Organizers picket an Apple store in San Francisco - carrying placards showing the names and ages of the Foxconn suicide victims
Photo credit: Chinese Progressive Association San Francisco.

It's a big ask. And it leads us into the final problem.

Getting People to Care

It's really hard to get people to care. It's one of the hardest things about trying to get people to join a cause, any cause. There are so many worthy causes in the world and we can't devote our time or emotional energy to all of them. Inevitably, people choose causes which affect them directly.

For most Western consumers, China is too far away to worry about. If you think your own job sucks, you don't want to spend time thinking about the depravity, squalor, and misery of those who make your gadgets. And if it means those shiny electronic toys cost a few dollars more...

As I'm fond of saying, we often treat our phones with more intimacy than our lovers. We caress them, rub our cheeks to them, and whisper our most intimate secrets into them. How can we stare at a screen multiple times per day and have so little regard for the plight of those who assemble our devices?

It's Working

All these efforts are ongoing - and they seem to be making a positive difference.

Around the globe, Apple employees are united in bringing equality, respect for human rights and protection of the environment to the deepest levels of our supply chain. While we have made significant progress, gaps still exist, and there is more work to do. We know that workers are counting on us. We will not stop until every person in our supply chain is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.
Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations at Apple

Do Comrades Dream of Electric Proletariat?

@edent — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 07:04:00 +0000

For the benefit of those who are hard of thinking: I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party.

One of the delightful things about living in Oxford is that there are a wide range of events going on. Events run by people who I like, run by people I vehemently disagree with, events run by intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals alike. I enjoy hearing from a variety of people who don't think the same things I do.

So, last week I went to "I for one welcome our new robot overlords" - a discussion run by the Communist Corresponding Society.

I live tweeted the events under Chatham House Rules - that is, these are the unattributed thoughts of the people in the room. They don't all represent my viewpoint, but I found them interesting enough to comment on.

The central thesis of the event was a little muddled. Let me try to distil it as best as I understood it.

The notion that "the workers control the means of production" breaks down when the production is solely the preserve of robots owned by capitalists.
Each member of society owning their own robot / 3D printer places production back in the hands of the masses.
Increased automation leads to less work. Less work means less money. If the masses cannot afford to purchase - or have their own means of production - what drives the economy?

There are some interesting philosophical discussions to be had here.

Robots are, essentially, slaves. We haven't programmed them with emotions or desires (yet) - so they can't be exploited in quite the same way as human or animal can.

It is possible, however, to perform software exploits on them. A hacker could infiltrate a system and make it act contrary to its owners wishes. An extreme example of this is Stuxnet - a virus designed specifically to instruct Iran's robotic nuclear enrichment centrifuges to self-destruct.

We are already witnessing nation states engaged in cyber-warfare to diminish their rivals' technological superiority. Will multi-national companies also start attacking their rivals? Will the capitalists launch attacks on domestic robots to ensure we continue spending money?

Capitalism can never rest on its laurels. There is always a competitor snapping at their heels. This is compounded by Moore's Law.

Moore's Law states that the computing power doubles for the same cost every 18 months. The robot you buy today will be twice as powerful next year - or you can have the same one for half the price.

This relentless growth is problematic. Suppose you built a state-of-the-art factory this year. A couple of years later your rival can do the same at a reduced cost.

In a way, this hyper-capitalism is delightfully Socialist. They run around like madmen, with the side effect of making the world better for everyone.

As with all massive infrastructure projects, it is often only the State which can afford the long term investment needed.

I wish I'd thought of this next point.

Most people in the "App Economy" are actually in the business of selling pick-axes to prospectors. The average miner / developer is chasing a big win that will probably never materialise. There are only a few million-dollar apps. The real money is in selling services to those developers chasing a dream.

The next few points relate to how we all survive when it's the robots performing all the labour.

Every new invention or labour-saving device puts someone out of work. The vacuum cleaner means we no longer need to employ maids to clean our houses.

The robotic self-checkout means we no longer need semi-skilled people working in supermarkets. What happens to those people? Are they thrown on the scrapheap? Do we need to re-train them?

Do we live in the glorious work-free future? Not quite. But we now have robots to assist with our heavy lifting. The number of people who physically exert themselves for a living has diminished.

Would it be desirable for all the messy, disgusting, and degrading jobs to be done by robots? Perhaps. Are there people who can only do the jobs that robots do? What happens to them?

The conversation took a turn to the inevitability of the capitalist cause.

It's incredibly hard to renationalise infrastructure. The whole ratchet of capitalism is designed to be uni-directional. Once you've had an self-driving car, what would it take for you to go back?

One of the problems with the discussion is that some people have a limited idea of what a robot is. They think it's C-3PO, or a vast car-building robot. That couldn't be further from the case.

When I started working in an office, there was a woman who came round with a trolley. On it was a tea urn and several packs of biscuits. That job has been replaced by a robot. Sure, the vending machine doesn't look like it came out of Star Wars - but it is a robot none-the-less. Ubiquity dulls our senses the the amazing future in which we live.

One woman was insistent that there are some things that robots simply couldn't replace - like midwiffery. That is, in my opinion, an extremely naïve view. A foetal heartbeat monitor is a robot - as are all the various equipment surrounding the expectant mother.

At the moment, surgery is routinely carried out by robots - albeit non-autonomously. Before too long, a midwife in Beijing will control a robot in Tallahassee to assist with a birth. A few years later, the robot will be fully autonomous.

On to some more political points. Capitalism, it is theorised, requires war to stay profitable and reduce the independence of the proletariat.

We're already seeing drones fighting drones, and computers attacking computers. Is the ultimate endgame fully robotic armies fighting each other?

As the work for the masses dries up, does the spirit of revolution increase?

What are the things that only humans can do?

Without getting to into The Matrix, if we can use robots to create efficiencies in reproduction then capitalists can extract more value per (female) worker.

We already entrust so much to robots. Whether it's automated call centres, or High Frequency Trading stock market algorithms. Can we fully understand what they are doing? Is it possible to understand and mitigate the risks involved?

The Flash Crash has already shown us that unregulated robots can take actions which rapidly spiral out of control.

Automated decision making is a form of labour-saving. How much of our political infrastructure can we put into the hands of robots? At the moment we use Excel Macros to calculate tax rates - why not have robots get and set rates automatically?

Robots act as witnesses in court cases (CCTV, computer logs, etc) - how long before judge and jury can also be automated?

These final two points are my favourites.

Some people like work. Even if you may think it is dull, even if they cannot do it as efficiently, even if it is dangerous - is it right to deprive someone of work they genuinely want to do?

Finally, in relation to Social Media

A Conclusion of Sorts

The discussion was lively and interesting. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of automation and how it relates to society - which is odd considering that the Spinning Jenny pre-dates The Communist Manifesto by around 80 years.

Unless we find ourselves reaching an unexpected technological bottleneck, it's clear that automation will only increase.

I don't necessarily believe that Communism is the solution to all of humanity's problems. As we continue to reduce the amount of unnecessary work, there will have to be a massive change in our economy.

There are two possibilities that those at the meeting foresaw.

Robots which require constant care and attention.
Total automation leading to permanent socialism.

In my opinion, we're rapidly reaching an inflection point. Low and medium skill jobs are in the process of being automated. Highly skilled jobs like accountancy can be replaced with digital tools. Computers can begin to program themselves.

Capitalism, then, faces a paradox. It need to be as efficient as possible to derive the maximum value from limited capital. But if every job is automated, the engine of consumerism stops - thus depriving it of profit.

We can't be certain that the robots are coming for all our jobs. Disemployment in administrative jobs could create new, and perhaps highly remunerative, work in sectors or occupations we can't yet anticipate. If we're lucky, that work will be engaging and meaningful. Yet there is a decent chance that "bullshit" administrative jobs are merely a halfway house between "bullshit" industrial jobs and no jobs at all. Not because of the conniving of rich interests, but because machines inevitably outmatch humans at handling bullshit without complaining.
On "bullshit jobs" - The Economist Aug 21st 2013

Why do we continue to pay for open location data?

@edent — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 06:30:36 +0000

I don't understand how our Government works. I understand that tough decisions often need to be made - but sometimes those decisions are so utterly without reason that you have to wonder if politicians spend most of their days "painting their noses".

The UK used to have a public sector postal service - the Royal Mail. Postmen need to know to where they were delivering mail. Postal Codes were created to help divide up the country into easily sortable destinations. And so, over time, a Postcode Address File was created. It listed every address in the UK and was the canonical source of data about UK locations.

Given that this was a public database, created with public money, for the public good - you would expect that this data would be available to benefit the public. It was not.

The Royal Mail kept their data behind lock and key - if you wanted access to it, you had to pay. Heavily.

Five years ago, the Earnest Marples project began in order to free our postcodes. They wanted the UK's nationally owned data to be available to the public at no cost. The project was swiftly killed by Royal Mail's lawyers.

Things dragged on, as they often do, until earlier this year when our Coalition Government decided to privatise the Royal Mail. I won't dwell on the fact that the sale cost the country billions of pounds. But I will point out that they also privatised the PAF. Now a private company controls our post codes and can charge pretty much what they like for access.

It's rare that I agree with a Tory MP, but Bernard Jenkin - the head of the Public Administration Select Committee was completely correct when he said:

The sale of the PAF with the Royal Mail was a mistake. Public access to public sector data must never be sold or given away again.
Sale of postcodes data was a 'mistake' say Committee - 17/03/2014

So, given that our Government professes to love Open Data - and knowing how decent location could generate billions of pounds of economic activity - what should be done?

I know! Let's pay the Open Data Institute £383,000 to recreate the data set!

Look, the ODI are properly awesome, but why are we paying them hundreds of thousands of pounds to recreate something we used to own? That's madness.

The Government is now paying a private company to create a service to deprive revenue from another private company which underpaid for a service which we sold them, even though we didn't have to, which makes a profit for the company which is still partially owned by the Government. Clear as mud.

Of course, the Government were warned in advance that privatising the PAF was a mistake. The people who warned them? The ODI!

No less a person than Sir Tim Berners-Lee criticised the sale and said:

Of course it is disappointing that the Address File has not been made public, a blow to the efficiency of UK businesses large and small. But we have hope.
The decision has been made to leave the file in the care of the Royal Mail. The Royal Mail may well decide to do the right thing and make it available as Open Data. This will allow the UK to participate in the explosion of location-based and mobile services happening around the world.
The Telegraph - 19 Apr 2013

So the ODI made "very forceful" protests to the Government and warned of the economic folly. Now, in a self-fulfilling prophesy, the ODI are being paid by the Government to fix the mistakes the ODI warned against!

This raises a few questions.

How will the ODI's dataset be different from the recently privatised PAF?

We can't have paying customers of the Royal Mail and consumers of this new open dataset working to incompatible standards - that would be a nightmare.

And, if they are compatible, will the Royal Mail take steps to recoup their loss of revenue? Either by changing their data so it is no longer compatible or simply suing?

Finally, maintaining a dataset which is constantly changing incurs a significant cost - at least, that was always the justification for charging for PAF access - so how much will we have to pay the ODI each year to ensure their data is up to date?

This is such a messed up situation. Can someone please give me directions to the nearest pub?

Apartheid Boycotts

@edent — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:45:10 +0000

My father tells a story of when I was very young and helping him do the shopping in the local supermarket. As I started to lift apples into a bag, he told me to stop, "We don't buy fruit from South Africa," he explained.

A woman near us in the aisle turned to him and said, "Quite right too! Imagine all your fruit being touched by black people."

At the time, South Africa was control by violent racists who strictly segregated the non-white population. This was Apartheid.

There's not much the ordinary citizen can do to influence a foreign government. Protesting is the street rarely works, letter writing had no effect, and our own government didn't seem overly keen on changing the situation.

Capitalism offers only one redress to amoral behaviour - the withdrawal of capital. Simply put, as consumers, we stop giving you money. Frankly, It's the only avenue of protest left available to citizens in a capitalist society.

So, we stopped buying fruit from South Africa.

The boycott of South African goods has a long history and undoubted helped change the regime. A single customer turning down their apples has a negligible effect - but once hundreds of thousands of people start doing it, it becomes and incredibly powerful force.

by withdrawing our purchasing power from certain institutions we can, as Chief Lutuli said, "punch them in the stomach"
...
The economic boycott has unlimited potentialities. When our local purchasing power is combined with that of sympathetic organizations overseas we wield a devastating weapon.
Karis and Gerhart, Challenge and Violence, p. 292 & p. 472.

Did our family's refusal to pay cause the downfall of the racists? No.

Did hundreds of thousands of people boycotting topple the government? No.

Did a continual campaign over dozens of years create an environment where doing business with murderous tyrants was no longer economically viable, help lead to Mandela's release and election victory? Probably.

For it is written "I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that..."

Mozilla, and DropBox, and...

In the UK, businesses aren't allowed to discriminate when offering services to the public - you can't stick a sign up in your bar saying "No Gays/Blacks/Atheists Allowed."

But, as a customer, you have the absolute right to vote with your wallet. If you don't like my stance on Open Source, don't buy my products. If you hear the pub landlord cracking a homophobic joke, you can either politely ask him to change his opinion - or you start drinking somewhere else.

The only other thing we can do is ignore it - and that's simply not an ethical option for many people.

This is why Mozilla and DropBox spent much of this year in consumer crisis. Ordinary members of the public have zero impact on a company's decision making process. Paying customers, on the other hand, are the lifeblood of a company. If you want to stay in business - and beat your competitors - you have to keep your customers happy.

Before I dive in too much further, I want to talk about feelings - those pesky emotions humans have.

Repeat after me: feelings are intrinsically valid. You cannot tell me that I don't feel happy Peter Capaldi is the new Doctor Who. You cannot tell me I don't feel sad that my dog died. You cannot tell me that I don't trust the Police. The way I feel is the way I feel.

Now, you can try to explain that Capaldi is a crap actor, or that dogs die and I should get over it, or that police corruption is rare. That may work - but you can't just start by attacking the way I feel.

People feel that Brendan Eich doesn't believe homosexuals deserve equal rights.

People feel that Condoleeza Rice is a war criminal who supports warrentless searches.

People feel that Bob Parsons disrespects women and find abhorrent that he enjoys killing elephants.

No one is saying these people should be banned from any job other than street-sweeper. People are saying that they feel disgusted at the thought of giving money to these people. People feel like they would be morally compromised if they supported a person with such hateful views.

Let me quote Condoleeza Rice on this issue. When asked about her views on abortion, she said that she did not favour federal funding for abortion:

I believe that those who hold a strong moral view on the other side should not be forced to fund it.
Washington Times - Friday, March 11, 2005

If you don't like a CEO's stance on abortion, or gay rights, or unions, or any topic that feels important to you - don't give 'em your money.

More importantly, tell them and others that's why you're no longer a customer.