A day for quiet reflection

Yesterday was European Data Protection Day; this blog held a one day's silence as a gesture of respect to the millions of pieces of personal and sensitive data that have been lost in the last year.Across the continent people gathered in their hundreds of thousands, coming together in their workplaces, in their communities, in the fields, in the hills and in the streets, to mark this most solemn and momentous day of data.I need not tell you what an emotional day it was for us all.Some of us may have brushed aside manly tears as we reflected on the 182 per cent rise in card cloning and phishing in the second quarter of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007; others may have stifled their sobs over the $2.8bn cost of phishing attacks; still more wept -openly and without shame - for the 44 per cent of small businesses that have fallen victims to identity fraud through phishing, internet scams and data theft.But all were united in their fervent hope that 2009 finally marks the year when the UK's government pulls its bloody finger out and puts a stop to departments' haemorrhaging of our personal and sensitive data.Fat chance...

A load of nonce-sense

If the first law of marketing is that sex sells, the first rule of tabloid journalism is that paedos shift papers.Things may have quietened down a bit since the 2000 moral panic, when the News of the World whipped up a hysterical mob of mouth-breathing simpletons into an orgy of vigilante violence, but tabloid editors still know that their barely-literate readers love a good “hate” almost as much as a new Lizzy Duke sovereign ring.So it’s no surprise to see yet another paedo story in today’s Sun, with the baffling headline: “Internet pervert charges rap”. In a nutshell, the story concerns comments made by the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre which "slammed" (criticised) Internet Services Providers (ISPs) for charging child abuse investigators to access their data.The way that the Sun spins it, cynical ISPs are making an easy profit from the authorities hunting down Britain's biggest nonces. Naturally, the Sun is sympathetic to CEOP’s chief executive, Jim Gamble, who believes that ISPs should waive these charges in the public interest.Balance has never been the Sun’s strongest suit. If it were, they would have pointed out that under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) ISPs are entitled to charge the police for reasonable costs for data retrieval and that in the last four years, the Government has paid ISPs and telcos £19m for its agencies’ growing demands for access to communications data. This information was obviously deemed by the Sun to be of no interest to its audience, even to its more intellectual readers who don’t need to use their index fingers to read a newspaper.Interestingly, CEOP’s share of this £19m amounts to around £170,000 – less than one per cent of the total paid to ISPs. With CEOP having made just shy of 10,000 requests, the average cost of each request works out at less than £18.Why, then, is the Sun focused purely on paedophile investigators, when all regular police forces and government agencies are charged, fairly and under UK law, for using ISPs’ time and resources?As Malcolm Hutty, policy chief at the London Internet Exchange (Linx) points out, "Regular police forces investigate extremely serious crimes using communications data, including murder, rape and kidnapping, and they believe they are better served by cost recovery. We don't believe that the situation becomes different for child abuse cases merely because they are investigated by a specialist national unit."But here we come to the second law of tabloid journalism: never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Effect of terrorist attacks on India Property Market

The recent terrorist carnage in Mumbai has pushed India into the spotlight with many questioning the horror and condemning those responsible. In the aftermath of the attacks, concerns have been raised about the country’s financial and commercial economy with attention drawn to the deceleration of the Indian property market.India’s property market was previously thought to be a ‘crunch-free haven’, being seemingly unaffected by the recession. Merrill Lynch had even predicted a 700% increase in property prices from 2005 – 2015, yet evidence has now shown a damaging slow down in home sales.The immediate response to the attacks with property advisors revealing a massive loss of pace in enquiries and sales of properties in many areas of India. Concerns are rife that because British and Americans were targeted in the attacks, there has been a vast loss of interest in property entrepreneurs from these countries. There are also worries of more attacks resulting in property demand decreasing further.The terrorist attacks are not solely the reason the markets in India have been falling back. Recent months have already seen a great deal of pressure on India’s property trade with predictions of land prices falling by a quarter in the coming year. The recent attacks have magnified the flailing market but the real causes being the uneven supply and demand in property with there being more property than people are actually willing to buy. With the recession diminishing confidence in buying property, interest rate upsurges together with the rapid rise in home prices help to slow sales of properties. There is also the ‘wait-and-watch’ effect with many potential investors waiting for prices to drop so they can take full advantage so there is hope for a pick-up sometime soon.In the short-term there has been an effect as a result of the attacks but it is important to remember that the property market was already sluggish before the attacks.But bargain hunting anyone?