[Gllug] What the government is doing it IT .

[Peter Adamson]

I'm actually a member of the libdems.
While I'm just a lonely little member down the bottom, I've began to 
build up some contacts.

The point is the Libdems are going to have a conference soon, and I'll 
be able to meet people & pass on information and ideas.
Including MEPs, MPs and the like.

I haven't actually had time to read the EUCD thread (I'll give it a good 
going over in the next few days).
So sorry about the lack of any EUCD mention.
(The last time I looked at it, the EUCD was being sent back to the 
patent office for being cruft)

But what do you guys think government should be doing / shouldn't be 
doing in the world of it?

This is my little old list so far:

1) The manner in which files are saved in a file should be openly 
documented, allowing anyone to undersand the way in which information 
has been saved.
The idea being that their is a clear distiction between an application 
(someone else's IP), and your file (your IP).
Since you own the file, it's up to you to be able to get at your 
information in any way you choose.
If there isn't a prefered application to access your file(s), then its 
now possible to build one, (or just create some decent filters in Open 
Office, etc)

This would (hopefully) go some way to end the "You've been sent a word 
document and have to use MS-Word to read it properly" routine.

2) Government officials in charge of purchasing software should sumbit 
an email at least once a year stating how much software / OSs they have 
purchased. What the cost was,
and a technical justification as to why they purchased that bit of 
software / OS . The emails would then be listed on a website.
(The idea here is to make people think about what they are purchasing, 
why did you go out and order Windoze XP IIS  instead of *nix with Apache)
Also software purchases could be grouped together, so government 
officials would be able to there more than just Ms-office)
It would also make it possible for software developers / organisations 
to see why their products aren't being selected.


3)All ISPs should have an LDAP server rigged up so that when a customer 
logs on, their IP address is associated with a unique subscriber number.
The LDAP server should only accept connections from trusted parties (ie 
the police).
When a police "bot" which acts on a node on a Peer-to-Peer network such 
as gnutella detects certain words like "pre-teen", the police bot can 
use protocol "x" to look up
the ISPs LDAP server, perform an enquiry matching the users IP address 
to their unique subscriber number. The bot then can make a note of the 
subsciber number & ISP.
After say 10 hits, the bot could then email the police, who could then 
use the unique sub number & ISP info to find out which computer had been 
searching for child porn.



Thats it.

Any comments?

Cheers,
Peter Adamosn





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