Hello Home Office Blog Watchers
"Blogs are increasingly used as a political tool. Political blogging has risen rapidly in the last 18 months and will no doubt be important in next year's French elections. The most visited political blog Guido Fawkes is as popular as Private Eye magazine. Fawkes publishes his server logs on his site to show that politicians go there and use the site.
"There are stories that appear in the media that we tracked using traditional press cuttings services, but blogging is not tracked by cuttings agencies. Monitoring news is important as so much affects us as a government.
"We see a number of newspapers are crediting the blogs that gave them the lead. The Home Office used its library current awareness service to track blogs.
Karen George, head of the Home Office library told them how the blog monitoring was done -
"In July 2005 they had a meeting with the press office to set up a montoring service on a trial period of six months.
"As news of what we were doing for the press office spread we were asked by lawyers, IT and all areas of Home Office made requests. Issues like ID cards produce a peak in blogs. In November of this year we already on 1888 alerts. We have 12 librarians that monitor blogs on a daily seven day week basis. These come in as feeds, the tools make the job easier, they cannot replace the skills of the professionals. Fundamental information professional skills of knowing your audience really comes to light. In just over a year it has become a key part of our department service, the benefits include a public enquiries unit that we can alert to media campaigns that are Home Office issues. There is now an enquiry department that is ahead of the news. As a result the department has a better relationship with its users."
41 comments:
The Home Office wastes lots of our money on "media monitoring", which, incredibly, seems to be part of a vicious circle of brief, spin, leak, monitor the results of the media spin, feed that back into setting the Home Office's crime fighting priorities, which then get briefed and leaked to the media, round and round.
Is it any wonder that there is periodic tabloid "climate of fear" hysteria and witchhunts ?
See the interview with Sir Stephen Lander, the former Director General of MI5 and now the Chair of SOCA:
UK's crime-fighting agency will use the press to set agenda
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
Published: 10 January 2005
The Independent
"Sir Stephen, a former head of MI5, said: "The brainboxes in the Home Office have been putting together a sort of harm model. It articulates the harm that is caused to the UK under a number of headings - the rewards taken and made by the criminal, the social and economical harm to the UK, the institutional harm, and tries to put a cost. It also brings into play judgements about the degree of public concern - and they have a proxy for this which is the amount of column inches in the press. It is pretty rough and ready but it is asking the right questions. It is asking not what is the incidence of something, but what is its impact."
Given the way in which bureaucracies work, the really dangerous bit of the article you quoted is:
"There is now an enquiry department that is ahead of the news"
How long before they and their political and civil servant superiors at the Home Office, delude themselves, that, in order to "keep ahead of the news", it is in the national interest, perhaps even "vital to national security", that they should use the vast powers available to the Home Office, to order the snooping on and surveillance of the emails and phone calls etc, of journalists and bloggers, and their whistleblower sources of inside information ?
What a great rant! How dare the Government waste our money monitoring blogs this way, particularly as it is for Smearlabour party political purposes that Blair and Co should pay for themselves.
Guido, that is 84 man-days of employment - no wonder the Governnent encourages the rest of the 486 million in the EU to come work in Britain with such make-work schemes
To the 12 Home Office plonkers
Fuck Off
The only good thing to be said about this, is that as librarians, they're a cheaper waste of space than coppers; viz the Doughty St debacle.
More worrying is when they start to investigate blog comments...and maybe a knock at the door or a friendly writ from our paranoid Government. Talk about big brother...The whole festering stable needs to be swept clean...of the putrid self seeking morass...
Would this be in any way linked to the Toulmin statement earlier?
Sorry, its easier to use 'other' now than this f/ing awful google system. Does anyone know a way of going back to the original blogger?
In the days of the rule of law (c1997) we were told "Things can only get better".
Instead they have got worse. Now we have the rule of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and police whistle politics - step forward Mr Reid - and we are promised the rule of thud - step forward Mr Brown with his clunking great fist. Big Brother is, indeed, watching us all.
Thank God for Anonymous
As previously stated, the phrase :-
"There is now an agency that is ahead of the news" is really dangerous. What is to stop this stalinist government of ours being even further in front of the news and actually use the blogs to leak, spin etc. They could surely employ these blog watchers to comment.
By the way, as an aside, using Tony speak, should a blog watcher be called a blitcher?
You are trapped Julian in Google land now, so make the best of it...the pain goes after a few weeks...its called improvement!
karen george,has she got big tits?
I have known a govt department to commission (at great £££) the development from scratch of bespoke database software, when a superior (and fully de-bugged) product could be bought in PC World for £299. Doubtless, if the truth were told, some ministry or other has commissioned a word-processing package too.
They do this out of pure ignorance - the predominance of technically illiterate *generalists* with *first-class minds* (= Cambridge First in Elizabethan Madrigals).
Why don't we offer to outsource this work for them at the cost of say 6 librarians, and let Google & Technorati do the work whilst we sit down the pub?
Karen George is responsible for the management of library services to staff in the Home Office and its agencies. She has worked in several government libraries over the last 14 years including MAFF (now DEFRA) and the Department of Health. She is on the Committee of the Government Libraries and Information Group and has been Editor of the Group's Government Libraries Journal since 1996. In December 2004 Karen received the IWR Information Professional of the Year award in recognition of her many achievements in the field of information provision.
Damnit you bastards have exposed us.
Blogwatchers you are fired when you read this.
Or if you dont read it you're fired for not doing your jobs haha god I am so funny I will enjoy being the next PM.
I'm with Serf, you buyin'?
Yes, but isn't the hidden agenda here 'Big Mummy is watching you lads playing, so be nice to each other, no fighting and no bad language or its no tea, no toys and an early bed for you rapscallions'...
This will be the same Peter Griffiths that regularly contravenes The Civil Service Code, Standards of behaviour.
6 You must not:
misuse your official position, for example by using information acquired in the course of your official duties to further your private interests or those of others;
Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd.
If any civil servants are reading this can I ask if you got my Tax credit forms yet? I sent them last week and they should be with you now.
" Guido uses Google Alerts, Blogpulse and Technorati to track every mention of him on the web."
Now you've done it. Of course the 12 librerians(sic) knew about google alerts etc, they just didn't tell their bosses. For months they've been surfing porn sites and w*nking like demented chimpanzees ( as Mr Hitchens would so elegantly put it) and all at public being expense. Oh well, all good things come to an end and their health and eyesight were beginning to suffer. One was regularly mistaken for David Milliband
I simply find it incredible that the govt. is spending money employing 12 (the majestic 12 anyone?)people to read blogs, so they know how to act/react/spin things in their favour.
If that doesn't show the true stalinist side of this government then nothing will.
Oh, and if they are reading this, then hello, you stasi-esque bastards.
Is this the same Peter Griffiths as in Family Guy?
Nanny is watching us....again! Enough to drive as chap to his laudanum bottle. That comment will doubtless bring the constabulary round with sniffer dogs.
Anyway - what about my right to privacy? It is a bit like saying we should have our houses bugged lest we get a bit political.
I see a challenge from the Human Rights laywers....hold on, those blighters are the government. Despair, despair, despair.
A demonstration of the paranoia that the government and NuLab suffer.
Also goes to confirm what a bunch of control freaks NuLab really are.
Possibly explains why Campbell resigned, he has a small brain and wasn't able to keep up with the new technology.
That's an absolute disgrace. How dare they pay people to read blogs for a living? From our taxes? They should be horsewhipped.
He does not say that the librarians only monitor blogs as their sole job, and there's a great deal more to do other than using google alerts - like researching corrections when blogs get their stories wrong.
Anonymous 10:51 AM said:
Now you've done it. Of course the 12 librerians(sic) knew about google alerts etc, they just didn't tell their bosses. For months they've been surfing porn sites and w*nking like demented chimpanzees ( as Mr Hitchens would so elegantly put it) and all at public being expense.
I doubt it. Each Civil Service Department has its own IT section devoted to running filtering software that prevents its employees from looking naughty sites. Librarians' web access would be filtered, so they couldn't get away with that: it would be monitored and logged, to be used in evidence against them.
Also, why this obsession with autoeroticism? What you allege would soon become obvious in an open-plan office...
Big brother really is watching us under New Labour, you think they are monitoring blogs for media purposes. Think again it will be for both political and intelligence reasons. Our state now has:
- CCTV everywhere (doesn't seem to stop much crime though)
- ANPR in very wide use, especially at choke points in the road network (Automatic Number Plate Recognition)
- Face cameras on road network (those Blue cameras that hang off bridges or at the side of the road)
- All telephone traffic routinely monitored via System X telephone exchanges by GCHQ/NSA (a warrant for a telephone tap from a judge, don't make me laugh!)
- All international telephone traffic routinely monitored by GCHQ/NSA
- All internet traffic / email routinely monitored by GCHQ/NSA
- All financial transactions, credit card and other payment flows routinely reported and monitored by GCHQ/NSA
- All international financial transactions reported and monitored (SWIFT was caught handing payment data over to the NSA)
- Mobile phone locations (operators cannot cope with volume of requests, so now the billing system (MPay) is integrated with you know who....)
- ID Cards inc biometrics and RfID tags
- Now they are monitoring blogs and no doubt this comment
- Most if not all of this is integrated into one whopping big database that can be searched (you know where....)
Dear MI5ster reading this comment, when you leave Thames House tonight, or maybe walking down Hubble Road in Cheltenham or pehaps catching the train at Vauxhall that perhaps things have gone too far in a free and democratic society. I fully recognise the need to fight terrorism and crime but we need some freedom left for you to protect!
Does the Daily Mail know about the 12 librarians?
anyone but blair - I also heard on the radio that they are thinking of the integration of high power microphones into the CCTV system to eavesdrop on our conversations as well !!!
ANPR in very wide use, especially at choke points in the road network (Automatic Number Plate Recognition)
And the rest - I was at a sainsburies petrol station the other day; THEY are using ANPR too, to deter drive offs. Although quite how that is meant to deter drive offs I'm not sure... But since when did commercial operations get access to the PNC and DVLA?
Oh, and what's so wrong with 12 libertarians working at the home office?
Frank @ 1.07. Sadly commercial organisations do have access to the DVLA. That is how private companies take your number plate and send you a "fine" for illegaly parking on their property. They obtain your address from the DVLA by providing your licence plate in return for a fee.
The government will be selling our DNA records to insurance companies next (when they have the DNA database that I incompetently neglected to mention). You'll only know when you get a letter withdrawing your life insurance because you have some genetic suceptibility to say cancer in your genes.
I don't recognise my society anymore!
Librarians--not libertarians.Computers are the way to go and I know the left have their claws in the BBC.I'm going to end this 'Teflon Tony' syndrome for your lot.People will have an efficient way of keeping tabs on you.Now I've said it,I''d better go off and do it.
Time for a new (Labour) Panto figure 'Big Brother'--He's behind you!
Uncivil sevant
When I made my 1051 post it was in all honesty meant to be humorous but your oh so rapid response has convinced me I'm on to something.
"Each Civil Service Department has its own IT section devoted to running filtering software that prevents its employees from looking naughty sites"
Do us a favour. Even I know how to do an end run round that sort of software. (Although if that was true all Guido has to do to keep his blog from prying official eyes is include a minge montage with every post - should we vote on this?)
As for "would soon become obvious in an open-plan office...", well everybody else knows Home Office information professionals are a bunch of complete wankers so word must of gotten around SW1 by now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEOtckaZtLg
Apt though old technology
Anonymous 1:27 PM said...
Uncivil sevant
When I made my 1051 post it was in all honesty meant to be humorous but your oh so rapid response has convinced me I'm on to something. ...
Do us a favour. Even I know how to do an end run round that sort of software.
Hmm, I don't think you understand the culture of the Civil Service very well (at least that which prevails here out in the 'Regions' - not working anywhere near the Big Smoke I couldn't speak for SW1).
In Reach for the Sky shortly before the accident in which he lost both legs, there was a marvellous little bit of dialogue between Douglas Bader (Kenneth Moore) and his CO in which the CO remarked "You know what I think of some rules - 'Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men' ".
Well in the Civil Service rules, once written, have to be obeyed, and Civil Servants, especially those at the bottom of the dung-heap, are the fools whose only hope of continued employment depends on them obeying the rules to the letter. And that includes "information professionals" - who, by the way, will almost certainly not be at all geeky. Any attempt to circumvent the filtering software would be a breach of the Departmental IT Security rules, and therefore of their terms of employment. At the very least you would be looking at a formal warning, which in the Civil Service is serious.
Anon,
Its the same in industry....and from memory, more gorvenment employees seem to get sacked than private workers...
Just bumped into Peter Walker...wow he looks doddery...
Don't worry, they are all lithuanians getting 50p an hour!
I do wonder how John Reid is squaring the circle with his frozen Home Office budget. Seems that catching criminals is the corner he has decided to cut.
"Each Civil Service Department has its own IT section devoted to running filtering software that prevents its employees from looking naughty sites"
Do us a favour. Even I know how to do an end run round that sort of software.
It's not that easy if big brother has set it up correctly. Besides they can always allow access but keep the server logs and use it against you at an opportune moment.
The safest way if you're paranoid is to use a secure anonymising proxy, encrypted tunnel or something like tor - assuming the firewall lets you through.
Oh and don't forget to turn off browser cacheing - if you're using Windows you're probably screwed anyway unless you have a very good 'cleaner'.
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