Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Dirty deeds done by Digger?, in reply to James George,
Well as someone who followed the NDS saga quite closely at the time, I have to say the old ‘way back machine’ must have been going hard.
Indeed. Oddly enough, I also paid lots of attention to that sphere back then -- a legacy of stories I'd written about the hacking of stored-value cards (remember Mondex?) for Computerworld.
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Legal Beagle: Police: "Ambrose not guilty", in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Graeme – I’m guessing that S.216B of the Crimes Act requires intent, and recklessness isn’t enough.
That seems to be what the relevant commentators have said from the outset.
Also, “more likely” is not “beyond reasonable doubt?”.
It very much is not.
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Hard News: Back to mediocrity, in reply to Naly D,
on Friday all I could find was Speights and light Steinies, no Tui
Yeah, it was Speights. I kinda blanked out on the details. But it is particularly awful beer.
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Hard News: Keeping Austin Weird, in reply to Damian Christie,
How difficult would it be for an enterprising (read: time rich, money poor) writer to boost his or her page views to guarantee the three-fiddy? Or are their technological/subscription barriers in place?
I need to quiz Barry on exactly how this works and whether they actually mean page-views, subscribers who read each story or whatever.
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Hard News: The real problem with the…, in reply to Ian MacKay,
Ambrose was never interviewed to assess his intent. Funny that. Natural justice?
The HoS journalists weren't either, nor Winston Peters. But the police decided they needed to serve a search warrant on Radio New Zealand, which had done no more than cover the bloody story. It really is fairly bizarre.
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Hard News: Dirty deeds done by Digger?, in reply to Paul Campbell,
They’re all a bit paranoid, very hard to deal with, which is I guess is understandable given the business they’re in, building a relationship to work with them was always hard – and NDS were always the hardest of them all – story was they originally came out of Mossad’s crypto people and still have that whole spy frame of mind. Maybe the dirty tricks side too. Their code sucked as well.
Several other leading Israeli companies in broadcast tech emerged from military and security applications I think -- most notably those behind the motion-tracking products we see in sports coverage.
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Hard News: The real problem with the…, in reply to Lilith __,
The other thing I love in the Police statement is they say if Ambrose didn’t plant the mic intentionally, then he did so “recklessly”.
Reckless driving I understand; “recklessly” putting a mic on a table, not so much.You know, I don't think they knew what they meant.
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And here’s the BBC’s own report on the Panorama programme that screened in the past couple of hours:
Lee Gibling said NDS paid for Thoic’s servers and was across all of its hacking and TV piracy.
“Everything that was in the closed area of Thoic was totally accessed by any of the NDS representatives,” he said.
He added that although Thoic was in his name, in reality the website belonged to NDS.
“It was NDS. It was their baby and it started to become more their baby as they fashioned it to their own design.”
Once ITV Digital’s codes were published on Thoic, Mr Gibling said his site was then used to defeat the electronic countermeasures that the company used to try to stop the piracy.
Mr Gibling said new codes created by ITV Digital were sent out to other piracy websites.
“We wanted people to be able to update these cards themselves, we didn’t want them buying a single card and then finding they couldn’t get channels. We wanted them to stay and keep with On Digital, flogging it until it broke."
Sheeit.
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Hard News: The real problem with the…, in reply to Lilith __,
Lilith, that is a very able summary.
Meanwhile, the Herald reveals that police struck a deal with Key more than a week ago -- but waited until he was out of the country to announce it.
And the paper's editorial column goes ballistic this morning:
It should not have taken the police more than three months to decide no charges should be laid in the so-called "teapot tapes" affair. From the beginning, when the Prime Minister and Act candidate John Banks were inadvertently recorded at a stage-managed photo opportunity during the election campaign, it was clear no crime had been committed.
And concludes:
As the police walked away yesterday, there was an unnecessary but chilling sting in the tail. The warning to Ambrose "sends a clear message to media that the recording and distribution of conversations that are considered private is likely to lead to prosecution in the future". But "considered" by whom?
I think I read something similar in some blog yesterday ;-)
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Legal Beagle: Police: "Ambrose not guilty", in reply to Keith Ng,
I/S: Sure, there wasn’t enough to convict, and he was therefore rightly not charged – but why does that taint the Police’s view that it was “more likely deliberate”?
Keith, according to the police statement, Ambrose wasn't spared prosecution for lack of evidence -- the police statement declares his conduct unlawful and issues a warning not only to Ambrose but to any and all other journalists tempted to use recordings of conversations that are "considered" private. He was spared because, um, he wrote a letter in which he said the same as he has from the beginning -- the recording was inadvertent.
And then Burgess uttered the statement noted by Graeme, which indicates that despite having declared Ambrose guilty, the police had not even convinced themselves. Had it gone to court, I'm sure a defence lawyer would have been happy to introduce the assistant commissioner's summary of investigations as evidence.