PageSense technical trial report.

The request was successful.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Was a copy of the PageSense Technical Trial report requested by the ICO?

Was a copy offered or was the request declined?

Yours faithfully,

Phillip Main

Information Commissioner's Office

Link: [1]File-List

17th April 2009

Case Reference Number IRQ0244263

Dear Mr Main

Thank you for your email dated 16 April 2009 in which you have made a
request for information to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Your request is being dealt with in accordance with the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.  We will respond by 15 May 2009 which, taking into
account the May bank holiday, is 20 working days from the day after we
received your request.

Yours sincerely

Joanne Crowley

Assistant Internal Compliance Manager

show quoted sections

http://www.ico.gov.uk or email: [email address]
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545 700 Fax: 01625 524 510

References

Visible links
1. file:///tmp/rad41CCE_files/filelist.xml

Information Commissioner's Office

1 Attachment

Link: [1]File-List

13th May 2009

Case Reference Number IRQ0244263

Dear Mr Main

I am writing further to my email dated 17 April 2009 in which I
acknowledged your request for information to the Information
Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Specifically you asked:

“Was a copy of the PageSense Technical Trial report requested by the
ICO?
Was a copy offered or was the request declined?”

Such requests are dealt with as requests for information under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (the FOIA).

I have contacted our Data Protection Practice department and they have
advised that no recorded information is held by the ICO which would answer
your request.  However they have informed me that the ICO did not request
a copy of the “PageSense Technical Trial report” and no copy was
“offered” to us.

If you are dissatisfied with the response you have received and wish to
request a review of our decision or make a complaint about how your
request has been handled you should write to the Internal Compliance Team
at the address below or e-mail [2][email address]

Your request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40
working days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request
received after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the
Commissioner.

If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint
handler under the legislation.  To make such an application, please write
to the Case Reception Team, at the address below or visit the
‘Complaints’ section of our website to make a Freedom of Information
Act or Environmental Information Regulations complaint online.

 

A copy of our review procedure is attached.

Yours sincerely

Joanne Crowley

Assistant Internal Compliance Manager

show quoted sections

http://www.ico.gov.uk or email: [email address]
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545 700 Fax: 01625 524 510

References

Visible links
1. file:///tmp/rad334EA_files/filelist.xml
2. mailto:[email address]

Paul Hancocks left an annotation ()

It seems a bit odd that ICO did not ask for a copy of the report about the trial of Phorm's system which intercepts and categorises all an internet user's actions, especially since BT plc ran this system on customers without asking or even telling them.

It's not surprising, I guess, that neither BT nor Phorm freely offered the report for ICO to review.

It not at all comforting, that in the UK a company as large as BT can work with Phorm (previously known as 121Media) and carry out these actions with no action taken against them after the fact.

121Media have a history of creating software that respected anti-virus companies have created routines to remove - not easy when 121Media purposely designed them to be difficult to remove. No wonder Phorm wants to put the system "within the ISP network", the perfect place to put adware, spyware or any malware you want and avoid the steps consumers otherwise take to stop them.

One really thinks ICO needs to at least get hold of a copy of that report and see what BT got up to with 121Media/Phorm in their covert trials, snooping on their customers without consent in the hope of developing a new profit stream.

A copy of that report was leaked by a BT employee and can be found on Wikileaks (search the web, easily found) - PageSense is the previous incarnation of a system like Webwise that BT tested out, also known as Smartweb which Phorm hopes to launch upon the North Koreans.

Home internet users would do well to read up on this, the history and the recent website publication by Phorm. Interent users need to be aware that blocking cookies is currently not going to stop Phorm's system working and there is no complete way to stop them other than changing ISP:

More on Facebook - Search for groups with Phorm in the name.

More on the web - Search Google for 121Media, Phorm and visit one of the campaign websites (Dephormation, Inphormationdesk, and NoDPI - DPI is the name for the technology Phorm uses: "Deep Packet Inspection")

Phorm has a recently launched website, which it claims tells the truth. On the site, called StopPhoulPlay.com, Phorm brands those who have revealed the untruths they have propergated as "Privacy Pirates". When it launched the site, it included a number of untrue statements which have since been removed. One of those "vanishing truths" is a subject of a FOI request of my own here on this excellent site (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/do...) We can only speculate on the reasons Phorm has removed such content, at least, until we learn otherwise.