Phorm Is Not the Norm- Brits Scorn
Posted in Censorship, Civic Issues, E-Commerce, Intellectual Property, Personal Privacy, Proxy, Security by wayne.porter on June 7th, 2008 Earlier I updated readers on the latest action with the CDT and more importantly the smack down going on in the U.K. over Phorm (previously known as the artists- 121 Media). I would lay money down that paperghost will have a field day with this on vitalsecurity.org
Just in from Timeless Prototype. Now it appears there is a BT internal report leak on illegal secret Phorm test.
Shameful indeed…It almost feels like the days of Nail.exe and Direct Revenue….wonder if they have a Dark Arts section?
It seems that there has now been a leak of the internal British Telecom Retail report, dated January 2007, which highlights the technical issues and performance of the illegal 2 week secret technical trial which British Telecom inflicted on thousands of its unsuspecting broadband internet customers, for two weeks in September 200 The report confirms that that none of the BT customers were consulted beforehand, and they did not grant their permission for their port 80 web traffic to be intercepted and modifiedby British Telecom and 121Media (as Phorm were then known
They tested out the substitution of banner adverts from a range of British based advertising agencies, mostly relating to Motoring, which were substituted in place of some charity adverts e.g. from Oxfam. It is unclear from this report whether Phorm had paid for the charity adverts, but, given the sneakiness of this commercial espionage test, it seems unlikely that any charity would have been consulted or agreed. The BT report highlights the obvious web cookie dropping problem and its incompatibility with informed consent.
The effect on static IP address customersby the sneaky imposition of the proxy servers is also recognized in the report. The report does not mention the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 section 1 criminal offence legal implications of intercepting web based emails, but the engineers do seem to be passing the buck over to the BT legal department, to get the terms and conditions of the broadband customer contract changed.
Update:
A copy of the BT report (17Mb .pdf) also now resides on the supposedly “uncensorable” Wikileaks.org website in Sweden. Ouch.
ADDENDUM: Phorm contacted me about an accuracy. Please see this post regarding their letter, the original author’s retraction, etc. I have also offered up some questions for Phorm if they wish to respond to the e-commerce and security community.
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