Brussels bounces BT-Phorm quiz back to UK.gov

'Let's try that once more shall we?'

By Chris Williams

Posted in Telecoms, 10th October 2008 10:02 GMT

The European Commission has again written to the government for an
explanation of UK authorities' response to BT's allegedly illegal
secret trials of Phorm's ISP adware system.
Brussels still wants answers after a September missive from Whitehall
failed to address legal issues surrounding past deployments of the
technology, and didn't provide details about how future rollouts will
be regulated.
EU officials originally wrote to the UK at the end of June to find out
why no action had been taken over the 2006 and 2007 trials, which were
conducted in secret and without customer consent. The European Privacy
and Electronic Communications directive demands that customers are
given informed prior warning if their communications and data are
intercepted or processed in any way.
The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR)
eventually replied and released a public statement to say the
government believed that Phorm's system could operate within the law
in future if conditions for consent and anonymity were met. It did not
tackle the interception and profiling of tens of thousands of BT
customers' web data that had already occured.
Martin Selmayr, spokesman for commissioner Viviane Reding's
Information Society and Media directorate-general told The Register
the UK had more questions to answer. "We wrote to them again on the
6th [of October]", he said. "For us the matter is not finished. Quite
the contrary."
Responsibility for enforcing the European Privacy and Electronic
Communications directive in the UK rests with the Information
Commissioner's Office. When The Register uncovered the secret trials
it wrote to BT to say it didn't intend to take any action, agreeing
with the firm's claim that explaining to subscribers they were being
monitored would have been difficult.
Selmayr said the EU's new letter also poses new questions about the
detail of the implementation of the ongoing third Phorm trial. BT
began inviting customers to use "WebWise" soon after the UK government
gave the system its qualified public backing. "The UK's first response
gave assurances that consumers will be protected. We are keeping a
very close eye on this," he said.
As before, the UK has been given a month to respond.
A spokesman for BERR said the government had not yet received the EU's
new letter. "Should we receive such correspondence it will of course
receive our full attention," he said.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/10/eu_phorm_again/

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WM
www.critest.com