Monthly Archives: July 2013

  • Crapita’s lack of integrity revealed again

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Evidence continues to stack up on the Court Delays website about Capita Translation & Interpreting’s continuing failure to meet the terms of its courts and tribunals interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim).

    This blog has previously highlighted Capita’s tactics to save its own skin when challenged; back in May it seemed to imply that the Clerk of Nottingham Crown Court was being untruthful when it failed to provide an interpreter for a murder case (posts passim).

    That is, however, not an isolated case, as shown by the following comment posted on the Court Delays website by Tim Sapwell.

    One whole day of Court time wasted.

    Warwick sitting at Leamington Spa

    9/7/13
    Defendant in robbery trial not produced from custody. Then no Punjabi interpreter for witness. Capita claim on telephone to CPS that no booking has been made. This is clearly not correct, because they later send an e-mail giving the exact details of the booking as the subject heading! They say they only have 2 Punjabi interpreters, one of whom is busy and the other cannot be found (!). It is suggested that the interpreter cannot attend before 12 noon the following day because he/she is based 100 miles away. Options offered are that the interpreter could be available at “around 12″ the following day or else a possibility that another could be found who might be available for 10.15 am.

    Identity of defendant withheld – case not concluded.

    First Capita T&I tell an untruth to the Crown Prosecution Service and then contradict themselves: you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried!

    As far as I can see, honesty and integrity are important qualities to possess for undertaking work in the courts. Capita T&I clearly has neither.

  • Farewell to The H

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Open Source, Tech

    Today’s a sad day in the IT news world: The H is closing down. For the last few years it has been an excellent source of IT news in the fields of free and open source software, security and software development, or as it said in its own words: “The H brings you the in-depth coverage of the world of IT, communications, data security and the politics of technology.”

    Earlier today editor DJ Walker-Morgan (aka Codepope. Ed.) posted the message below on The H’s website.

    Although The H has produced many widely read stories, it has not been possible to effectively monetise that traffic to produce a working business model.

    Because of this, after four and a half years as The H and six years online, The H is, sadly, closing its doors. We thank all our readers for their deep interest and engagement. Work is taking place to create an archive to ensure that the content of the site will remain publicly accessible.

    Best regards

    DJ Walker-Morgan and the entire team at The H

    The H was produced in association with Heise Online, a major German IT news site and one I’d recommend.

    So farewell, The H and thanks for providing quality news for the last few years and best wishes for the future; you’ll be missed.

  • Boycott bingo

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    The second Ashes Test match is currently underway at Lord’s in London between England and Australia.

    Over the years I’ve become a fan of the live coverage provided by the Test Match Special team on Radio 4 LW; local Bristol community station BCfm interferes with the signal on Radio 4’s FM signal where I live.

    portrait of Geoff Boycott
    Geoff Boycott
    As a consequence, I’ve got to know and appreciate the consummate broadcasting skills of Aggers, Blowers and company, including Geoff Boycott, regarded by some as the ‘greatest living Yorkshireman’.

    One of the joys of listening to the coverage is the banter between the team, especially the ribbing of Boycott and the interplay between him and Aggers in particular.

    Now Geoffrey is not known for keeping his counsel to himself, being a man of strong opinions. Like all of us, he’s got little foibles in his speech and recurring phrases, affectionately known as ‘Boycottisms‘. These Boycottisms have been used to produce ‘Boycott bingo’ cards like the example below.

    image of a Boycott bingo card

    You can get your own Boycott bingo card at http://boycott.gdb.me/.

    Play along and enjoy the game!

  • USA: world’s leading spammer

    Steve WoodsTech

    image of can of SpamLe Monde Informatique reported earlier this week on the release of the Dirty Dozen survey for the second quarter of 2013 by IT security company Sophos.

    The United States of America continues to lead the rankings, whilst the French IT news website seems relieved to note that France has dropped out of the leading spammer rankings along with Peru and South Korea.

    The world’s top 12 spamming nations are now as follows in descending order:

    • United States of America (13.8%);
    • Belorussia (11.7%);
    • China (5.9%);
    • Ukraine (5.5%);
    • Taiwan (3.6%);
    • India (3.6%);
    • Spain (3.4%);
    • Kazakhstan (3.3%);
    • Argentina (3.1%);
    • Italy (2.9%);
    • Russia (2.6%);
    • Germany (2.5%)

  • Chinese interpreter jailed for helping people cheat driving theory test

    Steve WoodsLanguage

    West Midlands Police has announced that a Chinese interpreter has been jailed for helping driving test candidates cheat on theory exams in a scam that’s believed to have netted him up to £100,000.

    Interpreter Peter Hui was approved by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) to guide foreign applicants through the exam and provide a Mandarin voice-over for its multiple choice questions and answer options.

    However, a joint West Midlands Police and DSA investigation revealed Hui had helped more than 200 candidates pass by agreeing a cheat’s code, which involved him saying “shi” – Mandarin for “yes” – before reading out the answer he believed was correct.

    DSA officials became suspicious of the increased number of prospective drivers choosing to be represented by the 55-year-old interpreter as his client list expanded rapidly towards the end of 2011 and into 2012.

    They appointed their own Mandarin language expert to assess audio recordings taken from 27 of his translations and found he repeatedly used the “shi” prompt to steer candidates to the right answer.

    Hui was arrested at the Birmingham test centre on 21st August 2012 and, faced with the evidence, admitted conspiring to defraud the DSA.

    On Monday 15th July 15 Hui was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court to 12 months in prison.

    Police finance investigators will look to recover cash and assets Hui is believed to have gained illegally.

    This is believed to be the first time an interpreter has been jailed for such a fraud.

    Two candidates who admitted paying Hui to help them cheat also admitted a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud and were ordered to carry out 80 hours of unpaid work and pay £100 costs.

    Theory test candidates that cannot speak or read English can ask for a ‘voice-over’ in one of 21 different languages provided by the DSA-approved interpreters.

    Furthermore, on 10th July officers from West Midlands Police’s ECU arrested an Urdu interpreter suspected of helping bus and lorry drivers cheat on theory tests. He was bailed till a date in September pending detailed enquiries.

  • Advertising’s acceptable face

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Media, Oddities, Open Source, Tech

    KDE is one of the 2 major providers of GUIs and applications for Linux systems (some KDE applications are also now available for Windows too! Ed.).

    It’s currently holding the KDE Akademy 2013, a free, non-commercial event organised by the KDE community, in Bilbao in the Basque Country of Northern Spain from 13th to 19th July.

    The local public transport company has also picked up on this event and is advertising it on its ticket machines; and in 3 languages too!.

    image of Bilbao public transport ticket machine
    Free software advertising – Bilbao

    Would London Underground or the UK’s train operating companies do likewise?

    I’ve written before of my dislike of advertising (posts passim), but advertising for community-based projects – even if those communities are scattered throughout the world – is something for which I’ll make an exception.

  • France: Twitter hands over anti-Semitic tweets data

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Tech

    Twitter logoMicro-blogging site Twitter is complying with a recent judicial decision to hand over identification data for anti-Semitic and racist tweets, reports Le Monde Informatique.

    In October last year, there was outrage after numerous anti-Semitic comments were posted on Twitter using the hashtags #UnBonJuif (a good Jew) and #UnJuifMort (a dead Jew). When alerted to the tweets, Twitter immediately removed them. The UEJF (French Jewish Students Union) and four other human rights and anti-racist organisations appealed to the courts to force Twitter to hand over personal details of users who had posted the tweets so they could be prosecuted under French laws against publishing racist and discriminatory hate speech.

    In June 2013 the Court of Appeal in Paris dismissed a plea by Twitter and confirmed the social media site’s obligation to pass on the details of the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets to five human rights associations concerned.

    Twitter announced yesterday that it had handed over the “data likely to enable the identification of certain authors” of anti-Semitic tweets. Twitter also regard this move as settling the dispute with the UEJF, which had directly criticised the social network and its CEO, Dick Costolo, requesting €38.5 million in damages. The parties to the dispute are now going to work together to fight racism. Twitter added that this included “taking measures to improve the accessibility of the reporting procedure of illegal tweets”.

  • FSFE: storing your data at Microsoft is negligent

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    Bill Gates Borg imageIn an article published yesterday, The Guardian describes how Microsoft is actively cooperating with the USA’s NSA. According to the article, Microsoft is providing the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the company’s services, as follows:

    • Microsoft gives the NSA access to encrypted mails on Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com, as well as web chat messages;
    • Microsoft provides the NSA with easy access to its SkyDrive storage service, which currently has 250 million users worldwide;
    • Microsoft makes it possible for the NSA to monitor audio and video calls on the Skype service which it acquired in 2011.

    “This makes it clear that trusting Microsoft with your critical company data is downright negligent,” says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). “In both the public and the private sector, those responsible for security and data protection urgently need to take action to protect their organisations, customers and clients.”

    While it is difficult or impossible to entirely escape surveillance, there are ways to minimise the risk that sensitive data, such as confidential product data or patient records, is intercepted by a third party. Free Software solutions for groupware, office products and operating systems are fully auditable and often data security a priority. End-to-end encryption with free software such as
    GnuPG and off-the-record messaging (OTR) protects data in transit. Products providing secure audio, video and chat communications, such as Jitsi, go a long way towards replacing Skype.

    “We advise companies and all other organisations that wish to protect their data to use free software solutions, to store data in-house wherever possible and to cooperate only with providers whom they trust to protect their customers’ data,” says Gerloff. “Such providers will often use strong encryption, and minimise the amount of data they store. Using smaller providers instead of global IT companies makes it somewhat less likely that customers’ data will be caught in the NSA’s dragnet.”

  • Recommended: AdBlock Edge

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    When it comes to advertising, I agree with George Orwell who wrote the following in Keep the Aspidistra Flying in 1936:

    Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.

    However, virtually every news site on the web is infested with advertising ranging from the restrained to the impossibly annoying (you know the ones – distracting Flash animations. Ed.).

    It was with a great sense of relief that I greeted the arrival of browser plug-ins that blocked advertisements. For years I used Adblock Plus, which is available for Firefox, Chromium/Chrome, Opera and is currently being developed for Internet Explorer. However, I was disappointed that Adblock Plus still allowed some ‘acceptable advertising’ and there was no way of turning off that particular setting.

    Adblock Edge logoNeedless to say, I was most gratified to discover Adblock Edge, which is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web.

    Adblock Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 source code package “http://adblockplus.org/downloads/adblockplus-2.1.2-source.tgz” created by Wladimir Palant.

    Adblock Edge provides the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without “acceptable ads” feature.

    Try it with your browser today!

  • Inadequate interpreter supplied, case adjourned

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Yesterday’s Wales Online carried a report of a court case at Cardiff Magistrates Court involving public order offences by Tamil protesters on 20th June connected with a protest at the city’s Swalec Stadium against the presence of the Sri Lankan cricket team on British soil.

    Hidden in the report was yet more evidence of the failing interpreting contract between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Capita Translation & Interpreting (posts passim), in this instance, the provision of an incomprehensible interpreter.

    An eighth man admitted throwing a stone at a passing car outside the stadium, while a ninth man accused of common assault was unable to submit a plea because he could not understand the Tamil interpreter provided by the court – his case was adjourned until July 23.

    How can the MoJ continue to claim that the contract is working well when courts around the country experience delay, disruption and additional expense?

    If any reader has evidence of court delays for whatever reason (e.g. Capita not providing an interpreter, G4S failing to produce defendant for hearing, etc., they can be reported at https://courtdelays.wordpress.com/.

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