Private Eye and that baby
No further comment necessary!
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Crapita’s lack of integrity revealed again
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.
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France: Twitter hands over anti-Semitic tweets data
Micro-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”.
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FSFE: storing your data at Microsoft is negligent
In 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.”
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Recommended: AdBlock Edge
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.
Needless 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!
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Inadequate interpreter supplied, case adjourned
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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Court ‘interpreters’ being sent to Fire Service College
Reposted from RPSI Linguist Lounge, with added links.
Anonymous writes:
You might be aware that Capita acquired the Fire Service College, the award-winning leader in fire and emergency response training, for £10 million. The Fire Service College, located in Moreton in Marsh – Gloucestershire, gets clients from all over the world, including: the UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia.
Some of their delegates can’t speak in English, so therefore Capita has tried improving their Fire Service College by bringing their very own, cheap, ‘Interpreters’ to assist the delegates.
So now, as you can see, the court ‘Interpreters’ which work for Capita are now being sent to the Fire Service College, to interpret for the delegates who are being trained for emergency response; I just hope they can interpret accurately.
Anyway, Capita called me up and offered me a 3 month interpretation project at the Fire Service College before it was actually official that Capita had acquired the College. I gave it a go, but I didn’t really like it because it was actually quite hard compared to Court Interpreting but it actually looked like Capita hired their best interpreters which have been on the NRPSI.
However, Capita had told me that I had to arrive the night prior to the day I interpret for the delegates. So, it becomes clear that Capita don’t trust its interpreters and know that they are unreliable.
Now let’s get to the interesting part, the rates. The normal day is 8:30 to 17:30 with a 1 hour lunch at about 12:00, so for the day (8 hours of full interpreting) you just get paid a flat fee of £140. That’s the amount of 7 hours interpreting in a court. But what was different was that they paid me door-to-door travel time and of course millage [sic].
Therefore, Capita pay you less, for harder work.
But on the other hand, Capita do give you free accommodation (which is on-site but not nice at all), they also give you free food; including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also, there is a bar, gym, swimming pool and some small shops.
It does look quite appealing, doesn’t it? But it does mean leaving your family for 5 days in the week and giving you only 2 days (Saturday and Sunday) to go back home and spend it with your loved ones.
If any of you, Interpreters, have been to the Fire Service College, please leave a comment.
Many thanks.
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Crapita in the dock this morning
As the screenshot below shows, Capita, that paragon of outsourcing efficiency, is due to appear at 9.30 at Blackfriars Crown Court in London before His Honour Judge Marron QC regarding “Interpreter Issues”, presumably the failure of Capita Translation & interpreting to fulfil its courts and tribunals interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim).
Update: 10.00 am.Peter Shortall has just commented as follows on the RPSI Facebook page:
Just left Blackfriars CC. It’s being heard in chambers, so I and a lady who had turned up to watch were asked to leave so the judge could talk to the Capita rep privately. So much for transparency!
Peter also added in an earlier comment that Neal Kelly is Capita’s “relationship manager” who handles “high-level complaints”.
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Crapita loses contract in double-quick time
Transport Extra reports that our friends at Capita (posts passim) have lost a contract with a term of 5 years, an option on a further 2 years and worth £100 mn. just eighteen months into the contract.
The contract was with the DVLA and concerned vehicle excise duty enforcement.
The contract has now been awarded to rival outsourcing outfit NSL.
Well done Crapita. How much longer before you lose the courts interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice? Let’s face it, you’ve been under-performing on that one ever since you took over the under-performing ALS (subsequently rebranded as Capita Translation & Interpreting. Ed.)?
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France’s Big Brother revealed
Originally posted on Bristol Wireless yesterday.
Following recent revelations about massive extent of telecommunications and internet traffic surveillance carried on by the USA’s NSA and the UK’s GCHQ (news passim), revelations have now emerged in Le Monde, one of France’s leading national newspapers.In a post today entitled “Revelations about the French Big Brother”, Le Monde reveals that France has a large scale snooping apparatus. The DGSE, the French secret service, is systematically collecting the electromagnetic signals emitted by computers or telephones in France, as well as the traffic between the French and abroad: all of the French population’s communications are spied upon. French politicians are aware of this, but secrecy is the rule: this French Big Brother is clandestine and evades all control.
What the intelligence service is looking is the metadata; their aim is to know who is talking to whom, allegedly to piece together the links between targets and thus to identify “cells”. The DGSE is thus collecting data on millions of telephone subscribers, plus emails, text messages, faxes, etc., plus all internet traffic sent to the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc. The apparatus is alleged to be invaluable for fighting terrorism, but also enables snooping on anybody.
The DGSE is therefore collecting billions of items of data which are compressed and stored in Paris on three floors in the basement of its headquarters on the boulevard Mortier. The intelligence service has a supercomputer capable of handling tens of millions of gigabytes, according to Le Monde.
Other French intelligence services have fully discretionary access to this enormous database; this is termed the “pooling infrastructure”. Certain information can even be used by the police under the cover of “anonymous information”.
French law has made no provision for the bulk storage of technical data by the secret services. “For years we’ve had virtual authorisation,” one old intelligence services boss confides, “and each agency is happy with it.” A French parliamentarian confirms “that a large part of the electronic communications network in France is actually intercepted and [the data] stored by the DGSE”.
However, officials deny that the “pooling infrastructure” actually exists.