The Leveson Love Triangle

One of the problems with the Leveson Inquiry is that it’s too bloody interesting. I’ve had to switch off the live webcast because otherwise I’d never get any work done.

I can do that with a clear conscience because Damien Tambini and his LSE colleagues are in there every day, monitoring what’s going on and reflecting on it. Today, Damien has a really useful round-up of Module 2 of the Inquiry. This graphic is taken from his post, and summarises the cosy ecosystem that Leveson has been probing over the second ‘module’ of his investigation. The points he highlights are:

Numerous witnesses of the police have supported Sue Akers’ claim that a culture of illegal payments to police in return for stories and other information has persisted at the Met and other forces. Many journalists see this as normal practice and police officers both at the met and at various regional forces agreed that it was widespread.

Individual journalists are alleged to receive various favours from the police: stories and access, but also tip offs for example if a prisoner is to be released, or if police have been notified of celebrity movements.

News International has been alleged to operate a system of payments for stories that include frequent and significant payments to police.

There have been numerous separate allegations that police inquiries were curtailed, promoted or in some way affected due to the complex of reciprocities resulting from various forms of media favours. In particular: the investigation of phone hacking itself.

The evolution of the 419 scam

Once upon a time, much of my unsolicited email came from relatives, descendants or former colleagues of African despots, all of whom had left vast fortunes which needed to be expatriated from their countries of origin without incurring the wrath of those jurisdictions’ tax officials. My assistance in this matter was solicited: all that was required was that my current account should become a temporary parking garage for these vast sums, after which a substantial consideration (for example “$15,000,000 (FIFTEEN MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS”) would be paid to compensate me for services so briefly rendered. This was the 419 Scam or the Advance Fee Fraud.

I assumed that it had declined, on the grounds that even the dimmest half-wit must by now be alert to it. But an intriguing new version has surfaced. This time the deceased billionaire whose fortune needs to be dispersed is not an African despot, but my friend, the late, great Roger Needham.

NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEST
PARTNER MANAGING
KEITH OVERLANDER

On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Prof Roger
Michael Needham. I once again try to notify you as my earlier letter
was returned Undelivered. I hereby attempt to reach you again by this
Same email address on the WILL.

I wish to notify you that late Prof Roger Michael Need ham made you a
beneficiary to his WILL.
He left the sum of Fifteen Million, One Hundred thousand United States
Dollars to you in the Conductibility and last testament to his WILL.

These may sound strange and unbelievable to you with the current upsurge
in cyber crime and the likes, but it is for real and true.
Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in
the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous
friends abroad who wished you good.

Prof Roger Michael Needham, an engineer/Computer scientist who worked
as Director, Microsoft Research limited, Cambridge before he died on 1st
March in the year 2003 and was patron of the Royal Academy of
Engineering and also member of various societies and organizations.

He was a very dedicated Christian who loved to give out. His great
Philanthropy earned him numerous awards during his life time one of which
was the Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Late Roger Michael Needham died on the 1st March in the year 2003 at
the age of 68 years, and his WILL is now ready for execution. According
to him this money is to support humanitarian/philanthropic activities
and to help the poor and the needy in our society. Please if I reach you as
I am hopeful, endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible to enable
me conclude my job. I hope to hear from you in no distant time.

In your response, please provide the following information.
FULL NAMES AND ADDRESS
TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBER
SEX
OCCUPATION

The requested information shall enable me authenticate the ones in the
WILL and my file.

I await your prompt response.

Yours in Service

KEITH OVERLANDER.

Some random thoughts:

1. A quick Google search reveals that there is a Keith Overlander whose LinkedIn profile says that his current position is “Managing Director at Lehman Brothers”. I’m sure that this Keith Overlander — assuming he exists — has nothing to do with this particular little fraud, but given that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008, it doesn’t exactly improve one’s confidence in LinkedIn profiles. Perhaps that Keith Overlander concluded that he wouldn’t need another job after the bankruptcy, and consequently had no need to update his LinkedIn profile.

2. When he died, Roger was Managing Director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge and moderately well off. But he and his wife Karen Sparck-Jones gave most of their money away to educational charities like the Cambridge College of which they were Fellows.

3. I particularly enjoyed the revelation that Roger was “a very dedicated Christian” though it is true that he enjoyed giving money away. When I asked him about it once, he replied: “Well, we figured why should our executors have all the fun?”

4. You’d have thought that by this time the scammers would have figured out that if they don’t get capitalisation, titles and grammar right then even the average half-wit will smell a rat.

Thanks to Bill Thompson, who got one of these before I did and alerted me to the ironies therein.

Quote of the day: lucky you, lucky me

From Daniel Dennett, who is 70 today.

Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.

From his book, Freedom Evolves.

On reading (and not understanding?) Heidegger

This morning’s Observer column.

If you write about technology, then sooner or later you’re going to meet a smartarse who asks whether you’ve read Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology. Having encountered a number of such smartarses in recent years, I finally decided to do something about it, and obtained a copy of the English translation, published in 1977 by Harper & Row. Having done so, I settled down with a glass of sustaining liquor and embarked upon the pursuit of enlightenment.

Big mistake. “To read Heidegger,” writes his translator, William Lovitt, “is to set out on an adventure.” It is. Actually, it’s like embarking on one of those nightmares in which you’re wading through quicksand and every time you grasp a rope or a rock it comes apart in your hand. And it turns out that Heidegger’s fiendish technique is actually to lure you into said quicksand.

The Peer and his iPad



Lord Puttnam, originally uploaded by jjn1.

David (Lord) Puttnam checking email on his iPad after the Open University ceremony last Friday awarding an honorary doctorate to Cathy Casserly, the new CEO of Creative Commons.

As it happens, it was 30 years to the day since he won an Oscar for his film Chariots of Fire.

Republican philosophy: the Romney version

Lovely, succinct summary by Dave Winer:

I have a lot of money. I got it the right way. I inherited a lot of it, and then I made a lot more. Every year I make a hundred million or more. Money is a big deal for me.

And in that way I represent Republicans everywhere.

Now I know what you all want. You want my money. Hey if I were you I’d want my money too. Here’s what I have to say to that: Fuck You. I have my money and it’s mine and you can’t have it and that’s that.

In summary. 1. My money is mine. 2. Fuck you.

Those are the two basic tenets of the Republican philosophy.