Has Downing Street put anonymous security officer at risk?

The following picture for the Police Bravery Awards was published in the Sun. Note the blacked-out officer.


The next picture is from the Downing Street Flickr album. I have pixelated his face but the linked image on their own Flickr page, along with the one I have saved locally makes him plain to see.


Something tells me that the Sun was requested to black-out this person's face for a reason. Clearly Downing Street 's "uber web team" could not be arsed.
Note: Screenshots of original Flickr image taken before it gets pulled down.

Update: The picture has been pulled by Downing Street from Flickr. Wonder who is going to get fired.

New Media Maze Rebuttal

New Media Maze have issued a number of rebuttals to the contentious question on the use of someone else's code on the Downing Street website theme. Read them in full:

• Antbag’s theme. The Facts.
• Legals
• Email treads between Anthony and New Media Maze

Make your own mind up.

Update: They even left the How To Post Images In This Theme document on the server. All a bit sloppy really.

Downing Street website says Wegg-Prosser "a prat, but not the prat"

More insanity joy for you from the flashy new Number 10 website that New Media Maze say was ever so very complex and difficult to do. Take the page listing the Cabinet. Scroll down and what do you see?


Hmmm whatever are those link? What could BWP Home be about? Oh look, it's about Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Blair former man in Number 10. Is it slagging him off or being nice about him? Who knows, is he a prat? Did the person that created this page that was presumably hidden in the old website have an issue with Benji, or "the prat" a reference to Brown? I wonder how Time Warner feel about Downing Street claiming Crown Copyright on an image of Harry Potter?


Who is Adam and why was he testing, and what's with the question mark after the bit that says "the new PM?"? Such a professional website don't you think?


Still we always have the test page which says "tent". Perhaps this was an aspiration about the whole "big tent" strategy? I still wonder why it is an enabled page though. What other gems that were once hidden on Downing Street have now been made visible for the world?


Perhaps there will be more evidence of the Blair/Brown love-in with pages like BWP that slag off former ministers. Oh how we all love good Easter Eggs and the surprises they reveal!

Update: more broken stuff found by Mike Rouse here.

Downing Street message for Jeremy Clarkson

Guido beat me too it because I had to leave the office and catch a train, but this latest video on the Downing Street YouTube channel is a brilliant example of how crazy the bunker has become.

What on earth is happening in there to make them think that wasting their time and resources on making this would be seen in a positive light?

Update: Apparently, according to those bastions of hilarity and outrageous humour at the Guardian, I am joyless. To this I say bollocks. That video is now juxtaposed with a video that wishes the families of French soldiers well after their deaths in Afghanistan. It's hardly befitting of the highest office in the land, satire and jokes should be left to the satirists, not Downing Street.

Copyright update...

Just a little follow-up on the copyright issue with the new Number 10 website. According to the original theme creator, Anthony Baggatt, he spoke to New Media Maze before answering requests from the Her Majesty's Press. They told him that they tested the Networker theme but rebuilt it from scratch.

However, Alan Lord, over at OpenSourcerer has done some diff'ing between the original theme and the files and it looks very much like they have not rebuilt from scratch but simple built on top of the originals.

Ministry of Justice loses peoples bank details?

According to the the Ministry of Justice's 2007-08 resource accounts they lost discs containing 27,000 supplier records, including supplier name, address and in some cases bank details. The MoJ then took no steps to notify those who's data had been lost. Reported by Kablrnet, apparently the DWP has been cocking up aswell.

In its resource accounts, the Department for Work and Pensions revealed three data losses, all of names, addresses and national insurance numbers, affecting in total more than 16,800 people.

The incident affecting most people took place in December 2007. It involved the unauthorised disclosure of data on 9,000 people and saw the department notify law enforcement agencies.

The words endemic, systematic, and failure spring to mind.

Department of Transport admits to breaking security standards?

According to information published under the Freedom of Information Act, the Department of Transport has had a total of 7 laptop stolen or lost in the last 12 months (4 stolen, 3 lost). What is interesting in the DfT's response though is that it says,

Since January 2008, all laptops have been encrypted to HMG standard.

The implication being that prior to January 2008 no laptops were encrypted to HMG standard even though the standard was in place. A rare admission that they broke the rules surely?

Amusingly they also responded to requests about the use of iPods and removable media devices on DfT equipment. Apparently users are free to plugin their iPods because installing iTunes is blocked making it all rather pointless. However, when also asked if staff were banned from using USB removable media the response was,

No. Staff can use USB storage devices (such as memory sticks) connected to a workplace computer but only in circumstances where no protected personal data, as defined in the Cabinet Office Data Handling review is involved.

So it's only when "protected personal data" is involved that they can't. If it's circusmtances where classified material exists it's OK to use a USB drive is it?

Has the Number 10 website breached the GNU GPL?

The story about the copyright on the Downing Street website seems to rumbling along, but something else has potentially now come to light. Not only does it look like they breached the Creative Commons License by failing to attribute the theme code of the site to the original designer, I'm now starting to wonder if they may have breached the GNU General Public License under which Wordpress is released aswell.

The basic principle of the GPL is that the code is free to use but if you modify it or customise it in anyway [and redistribute it*], you have to release those modifcations back under the GPL. I raise this because word reaches me that the company behind the Number 10 site, New Media Maze, have essentially said "its not just Wordpress" (which is not what was being said before) and there allegedly now claims that Wordpress has been modified for security reasons.

Under the GPL those changes [if you consider New Media redistributed them to Downing Street*] ought to have been released back into the community for review, and/or possible inclusion in version braches for the Wordpress source as it continues to be developed. The question is, has it? I guess that only New Media Maze will be able to confirm this, but given that they've used Open Source code then their changes are Open Source too.

It's also been brought to my attention that Downing Street are trying to claim that their copyright is for the content only and that the design and code (which is what, in essence, lays out the content) is not. Seems like they're trying to brush the issue of the original theme designer under the carpet, it is quite embarassing after all.

Open Sourcerer has noted ome other interesting stuff over here.
Update: * Insertions to keep the GPL pedants at bay.

Theme author says Downing Street did not pay him

The other day it was noted that the new Number 10 website had used a Wordpress theme and failed to acknowledge the original theme author and also claimed Crown Copyright on the whole site. The author of the theme Anthony Baggett has left a comment saying:

"Hi guys, I'm the theme author and can't find any record of them paying for the theme. I'm not sure at this point what my options are, but I'm looking into it."

What exactly this means for the New Media Maze MD, Dave who commented on Mike Rouse's blog I do not know. Apparently he is "looking into it". Let's see what antbag.com has to say about this.

BarackBook

Taking attack politics to another level? The GOP has released "BarackBook". Some good videos up there that show Obama extolling free tarde as good for America on the one hand and then saying that NAFTA is bad for America on the other.

America in the World

A new blog/website has launched as on off-shoot of ConservativeHome called America in the World which attempts to eliminate many of the popular myths about the nation.

I'm sure my mates over at The Crossed Pond will appreciate it.

Best job in Government?

*hic!*
Via Shane Greer

Brown to bury bad news on 9/11?

According to this morning's Times there is significant discusion going on in Dowing Street about when it will be best to hold the Glenrothes by-election. According to the report,

A senior party source in Scotland said that there were grounds for holding the by-election early rather than late. “It would get the bad news out of the way quickly and Gordon could use his conference speech to rally support. What's the point of a relaunch in September if the impact is completely snuffed out in October?”

It all has echoes of a day being good to "bury bad news" doesn't it? This is particularly ironic because the date being touted just happens to be September 11th. Spin is dead. Long live spin!

I guess if they do go for that date and lose to the SNP as many seem to expect, the commentariat will have a nice easy analogy ready made for indicating how significant the day is for the Brown Premiership.

Our Olympic logo isn't that bad really....

This is the Olympic logo for the Diving at the current Olympics.
Subtle.... very subtle (and not at all phallic)
Via b3ta

This amused me this morning....

Before you groan, I realise this is very poor but I am a man of little taste and my humour can be, too say the least, low at times. Thus as I walked through Belxeyheath this morning I saw an advert with a a picture of a British Olympic gymnast doing the paralell rings (is that what they're called?). Either way it was the quote when juxtaposed by his surname that made me giggle and get the cameraphone out.

£100K but where was the QA?

Not content with grabbing a freebie theme for the Number 10 Wordpress site and then seemingly leaving references to the original designer without making a nod to his copyright, it turns out the company behind it, New Maze Media are quite proud of "their" handiwork.

The "handiwork" according to Jimmy Leach of The Independent in a Sky News interview, cost "just under 100 grand", which is pretty incredible considering its still only in "beta". In fact it should not have even gone live in such a state frankly, it sends a message that the highest office in the land is a quick bodge job.

What I found more amusing was the comment over on Puffbox by Jon Worth (builder of Harriet Harman's site which got totally owned) saying

Good work! Pity about the glitches today, but that’s normal… All the usual whingers are having a go at it (Dizzy, Guido) but it’s ace that the Number 10 site has been built with open source software.

No Jon. Glitches like the ones that occurred are not "normal" in professional live operational project, that's why you have QA, so that you're only bugs are functional ones that are not considered stopper to a project.

This is particularly the case for a site that will receive traffic on the scale of the Downing Street website. Ever heard of performance testing? That's not a "whinge" its a professional opinion of an Ops sysadmin that maintains full scale enterprise scale web servers and J2EE application servers.

Your attitude Jon is actually the typical "dev" attitude. That's the "ooooh look isn't it pretty, let's not worry about whether it can handle the pressure, or if it's full of holes and really silly coding mistakes". Let's take for example the "feeds" on the site, go adn have a look at them, all the links point to RFC1918 addresses, specifically 10.10.0.215.


Besides the fact that it means it won't work for anyone other than someone on that restricted network. It also, potentially, leaks out information about the set-up of the Government Secure Intranet (GSI), assuming that the address is an internally bound interface on the box. It could of course just be the IP of the development host, either way it's a universally stupid mistake should not have got past QA.

Given the fact that the site has been problematic, and has pretty basic coding mistakes pointing Internet users to non-routable addresses, it seems pretty clear that operational QA has been non-existent. That is not how a professional £100,000 project should work. It's pretty obvious it's launch was driven by politics, and the so-called "fightback" rather than sensible release management processes.

As I said above, the "glitches" are not "normal" when you're spending that sort of money. Frankly, if I was one of the admins behind this I would be thoroughly embarrassed of being associated with it. Of course, I'm assuming that there actual admins behind it and not just devs hacking their way through and making stupid mistakes (more likely).
Hat Tip: Mike Rouse for the cost.

Policy Exchange attack keeps on rolling?

I know the last post was about Policy Exchange, but it seems that the plan of Sunny Hundal over at Pickled Politics to do a "number" on it's director Anthony Browne and presumably the think tank as a whole is gaining some traction in the press.

The other day, as already mentioned, we had a report written by Liberal Democrats about northern cities which was then condemned by Labour MPs and comment writers in the centre-left press as evidence of nasty Thatcherism at the heart of Cameron's agenda.

Today we have news again that the "Tories favourite think tank" (interchange "Tories" with "David Cameron's" as and when) is being sued by the Al-Manaar Centre over the allegation (and it remains an allegation unless one has an ideological bent about Policy Exchange and evil Tories) that receipts for extremist literature were faked.

What's worth noting on that point is the very carefully guarded language the Independent uses in relation to the allegation. However, the wider point seems to be that a narrative about Policy Exchange being a vanguard of borderline fascism is emerging.

Never let the evidence and history of its current members get in the way of course. Or the political leanings and experience of some of its author. It's all a big giant Tory front even if the Charity Commission says that there is no evidence to support the accusation. Unlike the Smith Institute of course which did engage in overt party political material.

At the same time I guess we should ignore the fact that Demos, once a "Labour think-tank" are now courting the Tories and having Osborne speak at their events, and the Institute for Public Policy Research is hitting the fringe of Tory conference in a way unseen before.

I believe Bob Dylan used the phrase that the "times they are a changin'" and in wonk world that certainly seems to be the case, so it's hardly surpising that one of the more centre-right think tanks should come under attack by the side of the political spectrum that is slowly losing its authority of the social, political and cultural consciousness of the public.

Quiet Lib Dems and outraged Labour

I see the newspapers are still banging on about "The Tories favourite think tank" Policy Exchange and a report they published which said certain northern cities were beyond repair and that everyone should leave for the South.

Cameron condemned the report as "nonsense" whilst the Labour MP Vera Baird said it was "exactly the sort of vindictive, anti-northern thinking that led to the widespread industrial decline of swathes of the north under Thatche.. Cameron can distance himself from this all he wants but he needs to explain why his friends have no faith in the North."

What's interesting is the complete silence of the Liberal Democrats on the report. It couldn't possibly be because the lead author of the report, Tim Leiung is a registered contributer on Lib Dem Voice.

He also served on the Academic Advisory Panel for Gordon Brown's Barker Review of Land Use Planning, whilst his co-author, Policy Exchanges Chirf Economist, Oliver Hartwich worked for the Lib Dem peer, Lord Oakshott before going to Policy Exchange.

So, in short we have a couple of academics who wrote a report who are well and truly linked to political parties other the Conservative Party, but yet the reporting and the blogging leads one to think otherwise.

I really enjoyed this piece in the Guardian though. It comes complete with quotes from Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside such as

This is a counsel of despair and ignorance, harking back to the Tory days of Margaret Thatcher when Norman Lamont told people in the north to pack their bags and leave.

You'd think, given she lives and represents the place, she'd be attacking the local Council wouldn't you? After all, it was two Lib Dems that wrote the report, and Liverpool council is controlled by the Lib Dems.

Hey ho though. What can you do?

Update: Oliver Hartwich has said he has never been a Lib Dem member but has worked for Lord Oakshott.

Has Downing Street claimed Crown copyright on stolen code?

Interesting stuff in the depths of the new Dowing Street website. The theme for the site has a CSS file that references its source as antbag.com which calls the theme Networker.

However there is no reference to it and the Copyright of antbag.com has been removed on the Number 10 site. What's more, the Downing Street site is also claiming Crown Copyright on the site which is clearly not the case.

Put's the whole "Knock-off Nigel" stuff into perspective huh? Perhaps it should be renamed "Knock-off Gordon"?

Georgia, George Bush and Oil

Just wanted to throw this little gem out for the morning, slightly controversial to some I imagine, but it goes like this. There have been some, not just in the comments on this blog, who have mentioned that, in relation to Georgia and the US reaction to it, that it's all about oil pipelines and that if certain parts of Africa had oil we would care more.

This is absolutely right. Of course the strategic interest of an oil pipeline makes foreign policy stances different, and quite right too. Wars and countries with strategic interest but who are not directly involved in the conflict, will always be guided by those interests. People may not like it, they may say it is unethical, but it is the way things are.

Take Iraq and the oil angle. Here we had a dictator sitting on massive reserves who was hostile to the West, who also, quite crucially, and in the unanimous opinion of the United Nations, had a concealed weapons programme (forget whether that judgement was correct or not because it is irrelevant).

At the same time a judgment had to therefore be made upon what the potential threat to the bordering countries of Iraq were in respect of what was considered to be a reality. That judgment will, whether one likes it or not, quite rightly be made in line with the strategic interests of each state individually.

The strategic interests in this respect were obviously oil, and there is nothing wrong with that. It's a natural resource that people need and the possibly of supply disruption will have been a primary consideration by a nation the size and scale of the USA. There is nothing wrong with that all.

So take a look at Georgia. A nation with a dirty great oil pipeline running through being attacked by Russia, a dirty great big country who's economy is based largely on its stranglehold of energy supply, and one which has shown it is happy to use that control to get what it wants by switching off the taps (see Ukraine). What exactly does one expect to happen when that is the reality of the geopolitical and energy situation?

Energy - and its continuing supply unhindered by nations willing to hold it to ransom - is far more important to the world than anything else (unless you're a crazy envirofascist that wishes to live back in the Stone Age). No energy resource would bring economic turmoil, greater impact on food supply; massive slowdown in growth, and would also increase the likelihood of large-scale conflict rather than isolated small scale ones.

A “war for oil” therefore, or supporting the side that has oil you wouldn’t mind buying, is an inherently realistic thing. You may not like it; you may think it is immoral and unethical, but here's the clincher, when you're in a situation and position of power where you have to consider worst case scenarios and the consequence of them, ethics and morality are not by necessity equal to that which is the correct action.