800-lb gorilla buys cool new gadget

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David Pogue’s take on Microsoft’s purchase of Skype.

Every time some big clumsy corporate behemoth buys a popular consumer-tech product, I cringe. It almost never works out. The purchased company’s executives take a huge payday; promises are made all around that they’ll be allowed to continue operating independently; and then, within a couple of years, the product disappears altogether. A little star of the tech sky is snuffed out, for absolutely no good reason.

Yahoo bought GeoCities, Broadcast.com, HotJobs.com, MusicMatch, Konfabulator and Upcoming. AOL bought CompuServe, Netscape and Xdrive—all gone or irrelevant now. Cisco bought the Flip camcorder, and then killed it last month.

But what about Microsoft? Its acquisitions list includes the Sidekick (Danger) service, Groove, Placeware, Massive, LinkExchange and WebTV.

It has shut down all of them.

(As my Twitter follower @jfhaft notes, “Microsoft = King Midas in reverse.”)

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m skeptical. This feels more like an 800-pound-gorilla move than anything that will wind up benefiting you.

Form and function-creep

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Just back from the annual Lee Seng Tee Lecture at my college, which was given this year by Peter Hennessy, Britain’s most interesting constitutional historian. His title was “Watching Prime Ministers”, which he interpreted as an analysis of how the functions of the Prime Minister have evolved since the war. It was largely distilled from his book on the subject — The Prime Minister: The Office And Its Holders Since 1945: The Job and Its Holders Since 1945 and was a classic Hennessy performance. That is to say it was conversational, informal, gossipy, thought-provoking, irreverent and informative. It was also leavened with the odd bit of ham acting: one was left thinking that somewhere on his CV there must be a spot of amateur dramatics. He’s an excellent mimic: his impersonation of David Bellamy, for example, was pitch perfect. The only thing that grated slightly was the way he contrives to leave his audience in no doubt that he’s really an insider — someone on first name terms with all the leading politicians, a regular attendee at No 10, privy to lots of off-the-record conversations that the less privileged members of the audience can only dream of. One has the feeling that if one expressed one’s loathing of namedropping to him would reply: “My dear boy, I couldn’t agree more — and I was saying just that to the Chancellor only yesterday”.

But one forgives him because he is such a terrific chronicler and explainer of our recent past. Like me, he’s a great admirer of Clem Attlee, and Never Again: Britain 1945-1951, his book on the Atlee government is, IMHO, masterly.

His lecture took us on a tour of the functions of the office of Prime Minister as they have expanded since the war. The most striking thing to emerge from his analysis is the inverse relationship between (i) the functions of the office and (ii) Britain’s importance in the world.

For example, the Cabinet Office list of Prime Ministerial functions prepared for Clement Attlee in 1947 ran to only 12:

1. Managing the relationship between the Monarch and the government as a whole.
2. Hiring and firing ministers.
3. Chairing the Cabinet and it’s most important committees.
4. Arranging ‘other Cabinet business’, i.e. chairmanships, agendas, memberships of other committees.
5. Overall control of the Civil Service.
6. Allocation of functions between departments; their creation and abolition.
7. Relationships between other heads of government.
8. An especially close involvement in foreign policy and defence matters.
9. Top Civil Service appointments.
10. Top appointments to many institutions of ‘a national character’.
11. ‘Certain scholastical and ecclesiastical appointments’.
12. The handling of ‘precedent and procedure’.

By the time David Cameron arrived in office in 2010, this list had expanded to 47. Yet over the intervening 63 years Britain’s place in the world had shrunk dramatically. The country had, as Dean Acheson memorably observed, lost an empire and failed to find a role — other than as the United States’s poodle. Yet its First Minister was busier than ever. Clearly, Prime Ministerial work is like a gas: it expands to fill the space available.

LATER: There is, of course, one responsibility that Attlee didn’t initially have to shoulder that all his successors have had to take on — personal responsibility for the use of UK nuclear weapons. This went through two phases: first, when the UK’s strike capability was airborne only; and second, after JFK gave Harold Macmillan access to US submarine-launched technology and Britain acquired its own so-called ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent. Hennessy was very interesting on this function of the Prime Minister, which he calls “end of the world stuff”. The big issue is the instructions that Trident captains are given before embarking on the 90-day patrol during which time they are are largely incommunicado. Each incoming PM is now required to write, on four handwritten sheets of paper, the four options that the commander of the submarine is given. These sheets are then sealed and the envelope lodged in the submarine’s safe. Hennessy raised a grim laugh when he claimed that Tony Blair “went white” when this was explained to him, and speculated that one of his concerns was that the trident patrols are not synchronised with the electoral cycle: when Blair arrived in Downing Street, one of the subs was on patrol — with John Major’s handwritten instructions in the vessel’s safe!

Dorothy Parvaz: the US is on her case

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So far, the only concession from the Syrian government about the detainment of our former Wolfson Press Fellow, Dorothy Parvaz, has been confirmation that they are holding her. (She’s now been in detention for eight days and has had no contact with the outside world). We knew from Facebook and other sources that her friends have been pressing the US Embassy in Damascus on her behalf. (Dorothy has American — as well as Canadian and Iranian — citizenship.) This excerpt from yesterday’s Press Briefing by Mark Toner of the US State Department is the first public indication that the US is on her case.

QUESTION: Assistant Secretary Posner yesterday talked about the Ambassador working with the human rights groups and the families. Has he been able to help locate missing people, for example? Is that part of his duty, and has he done? And more particularly, there’s a missing woman from Al Jazeera TV who has Iranian, Canadian, and U.S. citizenship. Can you say anything about her?

MR. TONER: Lach, the – your second question first. We are certainly aware of the case of this detained American journalist for Al Jazeera. And as you said, I believe she has – has dual or even triple citizenship. But we are aware of her case and obviously concerned about it. And we’ve asked for, obviously, given that she’s an American citizen, for consular access.

We have pressed our concerns to the Syrian Government about missing individuals, as we often do. The other day we had the UN say that it was going to investigate human rights abuses by the Syrian Government. We are concerned about the situation there and we’re taking steps.

QUESTION: Does the Ambassador have a long list of missing people that he presents to his counterparts?

MR. TONER: I’m not sure, in fact, if he’s presenting a list or just inquiring in general about these cases. But obviously, it’s foremost on our agenda.

MORE: Chris Barton, a New Zealand journalist who was in the same group as Dorothy at Wolfson last year, has written a nice piece about her in the New Zealand Herald.

Homeland Security leans on Mozilla to take down the Firefox MafiaaFire Add-on

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From Harvey Anderson’s blog.

Recently the US Department of Homeland Security contacted Mozilla and requested that we remove the MafiaaFire add-on. The ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit alleged that the add-on circumvented a seizure order DHS had obtained against a number of domain names. Mafiaafire, like several other similar add-ons already available through AMO, redirects the user from one domain name to another similar to a mail forwarding service. In this case, Mafiaafire redirects traffic from seized domains to other domains. Here the seized domain names allegedly were used to stream content protected by copyrights of professional sports franchises and other media concerns.

Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order. Thus, to evaluate Homeland Security’s request, we asked them several questions similar to those below to understand the legal justification:

* Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)

* Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.

* Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down the Mafiaafire add-on is based?

To date we’ve received no response from Homeland Security nor any court order.

Step 1: Send confidential documents to WSJ. Step 2: Go to gaol.

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If you wanted a demonstration of the naiveté of traditional media in relation to networked technology, then you be hard pressed to better the Wall Street Journal’s new ‘whistleblowing’ facility, SafeHouse.

Documents and databases: They’re key to modern journalism. But they’re almost always hidden behind locked doors, especially when they detail wrongdoing such as fraud, abuse, pollution, insider trading, and other harms. That’s why we need your help.

If you have newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits, you can send them to us using the SafeHouse service.

Stirring stuff, eh? But let’s have a look at the Terms and Conditions:

Submission Options

SafeHouse provides three options to submit documents and other information:

1. Standard SafeHouse: The standard online submission form can be used to provide any relevant documents and information along with your contact information. If you choose this option, and provide us with your contact information, Dow Jones retains the right to use the material and any other information you provide about yourself as it sees fit (as described more fully below in the Limitations section), and does not make any representations regarding confidentiality.

2. Anonymous SafeHouse: If you prefer not to include any contact information, and instead remain anonymous, you can still provide information through this form. If you choose this option, Dow Jones retains the right to use the material and any other information you provide as it sees fit (as described more fully below in the Limitations section), and does not make any representations regarding confidentiality. In an effort to attach an added level of security, we have designed this online submission form to minimize the amount of identifying information we or others can access. Despite efforts to minimize the information collected, we cannot ensure complete anonymity. For additional security, you can use certain online tools, such as The Tor Project (https://www.torproject.org), to submit any documents or information. When used correctly, these services and software can block the recipient of information from knowing the source of that information. More information on this topic is available here. You agree that we are not responsible for, and do not control, any such third party services and software that attempt to provide anonymity.

3. Request Confidentiality: If you would like us to consider treating your submission as confidential before providing any materials, please make this request through this online submission form. Please note that until we mutually decide to enter into a confidential relationship, any information you send to us (including contact information) can be used for any purpose, as outlined in point 1 above, and described more fully below in the Limitations section). If we enter into a confidential relationship, Dow Jones will take all available measures to protect your identity while remaining in compliance with all applicable laws.

You understand that regardless of the method of submission, we are unable to ensure the complete confidentiality or anonymity of anything you send to us. As a result, please use discretion in contacting us and providing us with information. You use this service at your own risk.

[…]

Except when we have a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement pursuant to the “Request Confidentiality” Section above, we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others.

(Emphasis added.)

According to the Guardian story dated 6 May, “uploading from Tor did not work on Thursday or Friday when tested by security researchers”.

So, here’s my question: if you were a whistleblower would you feel more comfortable sending stuff to (a) Wikileaks, or (b) the Wall Street Journal?

What this highlights, of course, is the difficulties established media organisations have in dealing with this stuff. The whole point of Wikileaks-type operations is that they have no assets to be seized, no executives to be subpoenaed, no shareholders to be intimidated, no publications to be injuncted, no advertisers to withdraw their support. It’s interesting to see that several traditional outfits (the NYT and Guardian are rumoured to be planning their own “secure” submission channels for leaked material, and Al Jazeera already what it calls its Transparency Unit). What remains to be seen is whether any one of them will be seen as deserving the trust of whistleblowers.

Free Dorothy!

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The Syrian authorities have now admitted that they have detained Dorothy Parvaz, a friend and a former Fellow on the Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme of which I am the Director. Dorothy works for Al Jazeera English and is based in Doha, Qatar. She’s a terrific journalist and a lovely person. Last Friday she flew to Damascus on a reporting mission and since then nobody has seen or heard anything from her. Through the MP for Cambridge, Julian Huppert, we have been pressing the British Foreign Office to make inquiries about her whereabouts. Al Jazeera have also been pressing very hard for her release. The Syrian admission is a step in the right direction, but none of us will rest until she is safely back in Qatar.

Her fiancee, Todd Barker, has recorded this video appeal, which is now on the Al Jazeera site.

Al Jazeera are maintaining a regularly-updated page about Dorothy.

There’s an interesting post by Swami Avi on the Free Dorothy Parvaz Facebook page which says:

I interviewed Syria’s chargé d’affaires to Canada today, Bashar Akbik, and he said Dorothy Parvaz was arrested in Syria for probably not registering herself with that country’s Ministry of Information–a requirement for foreign journalists. Interestingly, he noted that Al Jazeera is a tool of the Muslim Brotherhood, and are “working to undermine Syria’s regime.”