At last, a comprehensive report on Fake Charities...

Some years ago, your humble Devil and his Kitchen colleague, the Filthy Smoker, noticed that more and more charities were being cited by news media—and, most especially, the BBC—in connection with government initiatives.

These charities almost always reinforced these policies: and these policies were almost always ones that aimed to reduce freedom and liberty in this country.

Out of curiosity, we started to investigate these charities in a very simplistic way: when a charity was quoted as being in favour of yet more grossly invasive legislation, we went to the Charity Commission website and looked up the public accounts.

In the majority of cases, we found that these quoted "charities" were, in fact, largely funded by the government whose policies they were enthusiastically endorsing.

I would like to say that what we unearthed shocked us, but that would be a lie. What did surprise us was just how many of these organisations there were.

People tend to think of charities as being... well... voluntary organisations, doing actual, physical good deeds in the community—whether that be running soup kitchens, cancer hospices or homeless shelters.

But most of these organisations were indulging in little more than flat-out lobbying. And they were using our money to do it. In our view, these charities were being deliberately disingenuous.

And we came up with a name for these organisations—"fake charities".

We came up with a definition of what a fake charity was:

We define a Fake Charity as any organisation registered as a UK charity that derives more than 10% of its income—and/or more than £1 million—from the government, while also lobbying the government. That lobbying can take the form of calling for new policies, changes to the law or increases in (their own) funding.

And then we set up the fakecharities.org website, in order to inform people about these organisations, and to enable them to search a database in order to satisfy themselves as to whether the charity that they gave money to was, indeed, a fake.

Some of these organisations spend a large amount of their time lobbying the state to curtail our freedoms and not all charities are upfront about the amount of money they receive from the state.

When an ‘independent’ charity takes a political stand or attempts to sway public opinion on matters of policy, we think you have a right to know whether they are being funded by the generosity of the public or by the largesse of the state. We think you have the right to know whether you’re listening to a genuine grass-roots charity or are being fed PR from an astro-turfed lobby group. This site exists to help you make up your own mind about who these campaigners are really working for.

A great many other people—mostly recruited through The Kitchen—helped to build up the site's database; but it was a colossal task. There seemed to be so many of them and, in order to keep things current, the accounts had to be checked every year.

As such, fakecharities.org website is now somewhat out of date. I hope to switch the site to a wiki-style format over the next couple of months, and I am immensely grateful to those people who have already offered to help.

In the meantime, however, the Institute of Economic Affairs has now published a report on these fake charities. Sockpuppets: how the government lobbies itself and why is a new publication, written by the excellent Chris Snowden.

• In the last 15 years, state funding of charities in Britain has increased significantly. 27,000 charities are now dependent on the government for more than 75 per cent of their income and the ‘voluntary sector’ receives more money from the state than it receives in voluntary donations.
• State funding weakens the independence of charities, making them less inclined to criticise government policy. This can create a ‘sock puppet’ version of civil society giving the illusion of grassroots support for new legislation. These state-funded activists engage in direct lobbying (of politicians) and indirect lobbying (of the public) using taxpayers’ money, thereby blurring the distinction between public and private action.
• State-funded charities and NGOs usually campaign for causes which do not enjoy widespread support amongst the general public (e.g. foreign aid, temperance, identity politics). They typically lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, greater regulation and the creation of new agencies to oversee and enforce new laws. In many cases, they call for increased funding for themselves and their associated departments.
• Urgent action should be taken, including banning government departments from using taxpayer’s money to engage in advertising campaigns, the abolition of unrestricted grants to charities and the creation of a new category of non-profit organisation, for organisations which receive substantial funds from statutory sources.

Commenting on the report, Christopher Snowdon, its author, said:

“It is appalling that for so long the government has got away with debasing the term ‘charity’. Many so-called ‘charities’ are little more than fronts for state-funded campaigns or providers of state-funded services. It is vital that more transparency is introduced so the public know exactly what the government is funding. We also need much greater measures to prevent government squandering our money on trying to manipulate our opinions and behaviour.”

The report [PDF] is very comprehensive, tracking the rise of this practice—stemming, almost inevitably, from a relaxation of the laws about the amount of political campaigning charities can do. I commend it to you all.

Having read the report, it is no wonder that the few volunteers at fakecharities.org were unable to keep on top of the site—27,000 fake charities is an awful lot of organisations to keep track of on a yearly basis.

But it is essential that we continue to try to do so: these organisations are taking large sum of money from the government—money that is taken from us by force. Then these same organisations are then using that money to lobby the state to pass legislation to oppress us.

These fake charities are—in collusion with the state—using our own resources against us: they must be stopped, and the proper meaning of "charity" restored.

This new IEA report is a welcome start in bringing this scandal to a wider audience.

Do you trust...

... governments and huge corporatist multinationals? No, nor do I.



PIPA and SOPA are stupid, dangerous acts that threaten the internet. And this comes from someone who, by and large, supports Intellectual Property rights...

Identify the browser...

... a most amusing game sourced from The Art of Trolling.



Well, it made me giggle. And then, when I have to debug that bastard toilet again tomorrow, it will make me smile in between the bouts of incandescent rage...

Internet Explorer users are...

The mark of an idiot (apparently).

... according to Timmy, rather less intelligent than the general population. To put it kindly.

However...

There is one nagging feeling at the back of my mind though. It was revealed just last week that all British government computer systems must work and only work within IE6.

The trouble is that this simply isn't true: the Department of Health urged all NHS organisations to move away from IE6 and Windows XP back in February 2010.

The Department of Health (DoH) has urged all NHS staff still using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) to upgrade to version 7 of the browser as soon as possible.
...

Microsoft has since issued an out-of-band security patch for IE6 to address the issue, while the Cabinet Office has issued an advisory to Government departments on update from the browser.

And now, in a four-page bulletin (PDF) issued by the department's informatics directorate, the DoH's staff have been urged to take action to ward off potential “reputational damage”.

Staff are warned that the vulnerability could allow cyber criminals “to download and install further malware/spyware on to the computer, add user accounts to the computer [and] steal sensitive data held locally and centrally”.

The warning continues:

“It is also possible that exploiting this vulnerability could allow for the compromised computer to be used as a ‘staging point’ for further attacks against other computer systems including those outside of the organisation.

“If an organisation has systems compromised via this vulnerability, there may be consequential reputational damage, especially if sensitive data is affected or the compromised system is used to attack other systems.”

Employees and departments have been urged to act quickly, at the very least to apply Microsoft's newly issued patch, but also to look at upgrading the browser itself.

“It is recommended that this update is applied to all affected computers within an organisation. Organisations should ensure that appropriate levels of testing of the update take place prior to mass deployment," the guidance adds.

“It is additionally further recommended that organisations still using Internet Explorer 6 on the affected platforms upgrade to Internet Explorer 7. [It] has been warranted to work correctly with Spine applications such as CSA and provides additional security features over Internet Explorer 6.”

Despite Microsoft's own recommendation that users upgrade to IE8, the NHS instead advises only the step up to IE7—recognition of the reality of just how out of date many public systems are.

Despite this, many NHS systems are still running on Windows XP and IE6—in defiance of the government's guidelines and standard safety procedures. Indeed, Ed Bott at ZDNet opines that...

Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice.

But what the hell—it's only our most sensitive data that they are putting at risk, eh?

However, I suspect that it is not as simple as Timmy makes out: in our company, all of our websites are designed to work in IE6 (or to degrade gracefully) but the administration (back-end) areas do not support IE6—only IE7 and above (and we recommend the use of Chrome Frame for a faster, more beautiful experience (without losing control)).

At least, I sincerely hope that this is the case...

It's long past time that IE6 died

Over the last few years, your humble Devil has been working for a small web software company in Surrey. I was hired as a second-string website designer and—mainly due to the fact that I just won't shut up when I see things that need sorting out—I have swiftly moved through various jobs within the company: from second-strong designer, to Project Manager, to Head of Marketing*.

My current role, and the one that I hope to stay in, is as Product Manager. Despite the fact that I have seen the company triple in size over my three years with them, it is still a small company and, as such, I do rather more than a Product Manager in a large company would do. I put together the product roadmap, write software specifications, design the workflows, user experience (UX) and user interfaces (UI) for the products, as well as coding a good deal of the actual UIs too.

It's busy but immense fun and, usually, incredibly satisfying.

However, we are a web software company and, as such, there are a few things that are massively annoying: these can generally be defined as Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 (I am reserving judgement on IE9, since it looks to be half-way decent), and their prevalence amongst our customer base.

Of all of these, Internet Explorer 6 is the worst: its support for CSS and Javascript is pitiful and its debugging tools non-existent. What that means is that not only does it not work "properly" but it won't even give you a clue as to why. Released in 2001, IE6 for Windows had worse CSS support than (the now defunct) 5.2 for the Mac: as a browser it is slow, archaic and out-dated.

Unfortunately, for various technical reasons—mainly to do with the tight integration with Windows that led to accusations of monopoly abuse, as well as providing massive security flaws—many large organisations still use IE6 and are having a hard time weaning themselves off it.

But the simple fact is that IE6 not only prevents people like me from writing better web software: it is a massive security risk. As one writer at ZDNet put it... [Emphasis mine.]

Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice. Think that judgment is too harsh? Ask the security experts at Google, Adobe, and dozens of other large corporations that are cleaning up the mess from a wave of targeted attacks that allowed source code and confidential data to fall into the hands of well-organized intruders. The entry point? According to Microsoft, it’s IE6...

This would be worrying enough: after all, there are plenty of corporations which are still using IE6—but at least you don't have to give them your sensitive information.

But, as I know from personal experience, one of the areas most resistant to upgrades is the NHS—and they do have plenty of your most personal details on file. Yes, they are behind the N3 network (which brings a whole new set of challenges to those of us working with them) but it only needs one entry point to compromise the entire system.

Many NHS organisations believe that they are supposed to be using IE6; many of them believe that the Spine applications that they need to access will not work on anything other than IE6. This is not only untrue, but these organisations are ignoring a very clear Directive—issued over a year ago by the Department of Health—to cease using IE6 and to upgrade to IE7 as a minimum.

The Department of Health has told trusts using Windows 2000 or XP to move to version 7 of Microsoft's browser.

In a technology bulletin published by the department's informatics directorate on 29 January 2010, it advised NHS trusts using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 on either Windows 2000 or Windows XP to move to version 7 of the browser.

"We've advised NHS trusts to upgrade to IE7 as early as possible," said a spokesperson. The guidance said that IE7 works with the department's Spine applications, and provides additional security.

The notice also recommended that organisations that continue to use IE6 should apply a security update patch from Microsoft to all affected computers, or if this is not possible apply mitigation methods suggested by the vendor.

Microsoft reported a significant security problem with IE6 on 14 January which could compromise a computer's operating system, although the browser was already known to be less secure than newer versions. The new vulnerability could act as an entry point for hackers to a network, allowing sensitive information to be stolen, according to the DoH bulletin.

Some weeks ago, I raised this issue with a number of NHS organisations, and asked—given the sensitive nature of the data that they hold—why they are still using this browser. Most have said they will look into it, and that is the last that I have heard of the matter.

It is hardly surprising that government organisations—not known for their ability to keep our data safe—are still using this out-dated and flawed browser. It is bordering on the criminal that they continue to use IE6.

Now, Microsoft themselves have set up a new website—IE6 Countdown—which seeks to encourage the death of this shitty piece of software. Naturally, M$ do not put it in quite those terms—they seek to push the benefits of upgrading to the latest version of IE rather than pointing out that IE6 is crap—but the message is the same: don't use IE6, especially for security-critical systems.

Perhaps, with IE6's own manufacturers seeking to kill it, those who risk the integrity of our data every single day might pay some attention.

And then we can take some small steps towards a better web experience too...

* At the moment, we are desperately looking for friendly, enthusiastic people to fill two roles: that of a web designer/front-end developer and that of first-line tech support. Please drop me a line if you would like more details...

Speech as navigation

As readers may know, your humble Devil works as a product manager for a small web software and services company. One of the specialisms of this company—and thus, one of the concepts that I was introduced to when I joined—was that of Web Accessibility.

I had heard a wee bit about it in my freelancing days, but I had never paid much attention to it, but I am now reasonably expert in the various rules and guidelines (although, I must admit that, in my personal projects, I am not always entirely consistent in its application)—some glimpses of which can be seen, for those that are interested, in my critique of the Labour Party website last year.

I have worked with a couple of blind computer users—in organising our company's seminars and so forth—and they have used either JAWS or SuperNova screen-readers on Windows machines. There are a few free or cheap (or temporary) screenreaders out there, but nothing as high-powered.

The internet is a wonderful innovation, enabling the disabled to do things for themselves that they could only have done with assistance before. The addition of a screen-reader can set the blind free but many disabled people do not have a high income—and, tragically, screen-readers are expensive—SuperNova is nearly £1,000.

Given all of this, I really should have investigated Apple's built-in VoiceOver screen-reading software before: to be honest, however, I thought that it was a cheap, knock-down version that would never replace "proper" screen-readers. It appears that I was wrong.

Via Daring Fireball, I have come across a blog written by Austin Seraphin—who is blind—and who has just purchased his first new Mac since the Apple II. And it seems that I was wrong: VoiceOver is a fully functional piece of kit.

This represents the cutting edge of accessible technology for the blind. It cuts! I joyfully look forward to the day when blind people finally catch on and realize that for $700, HALF the cost of JAWS for Windows, the most popular software used or rather pushed on the blind, they can get a fully functional computer that delivers a superior experience and comes with a superior screen reader with superior speech. May the Mac relegate Windows to the recycle bin, where it properly belongs. Don’t worry, they’ll still have their corporate clients. This probably means that we can expect crappier services from these companies, but who cares, WE will have all switched to Macs by then.

Austin's re-conversion has come about—amazingly—because of his purchase of an iPhone a few months ago. VoiceOver on the iPhone, almost incredibly, enables blind users to use a touchscreen device with precision: for Austin, the iPhone has been a life-changing experience.

Last Wednesday, my life changed forever. I got an iPhone. I consider it the greatest thing to happen to the blind for a very long time, possibly ever. It offers unparalleled access to properly made applications, and changed my life in twenty-four hours. The iPhone only has one thing holding it back: iTunes. Nevertheless, I have fallen in love.

When I first heard that Apple would release a touchpad cell phone with VoiceOver, the screen reading software used by Macs, I scoffed. The blind have gotten so used to lofty promises of a dream platform, only to receive some slapped together set of software with a minimally functional screen reader running on overpriced hardware which can’t take a beating. I figured that Apple just wanted to get some good PR – after all, how could a blind person even use a touchpad? I laughed at the trendies, both sighted and blind, buying iPhones and enthusing about them. That changed when another blind friend with similar opinions also founded in long years of experience bought one, and just went nuts about how much she loved it, especially the touchpad interface. I could hardly believe it, and figured that I should reevaluate things.

I went to the AT&T; store with my Mom. It felt like coming full circle, since we went to an Apple store many years ago to get my Apple II/E. To my delight, the salesman knew about VoiceOver and how to activate it, though didn’t know about how to use it. Fortunately, I read up on it before I went. Tap an item to hear it, double tap to activate it, swipe three fingers to scroll. You can also split-tap, where you hold down one location and tap another. This makes for more rapid entry once you understand it. It also has a rotor which you activate by turning your fingers like a dial. You can also double triple-finger tap to toggle speech, and a triple triple-finger tap turns on the awesome screen curtain, which disables the screen and camera.

Many reviews and people said to spend at least a half hour to an hour before passing judgment on using a touchpad interface with speech. I anticipated a weird and slightly arduous journey, especially when it came to using the keyboard. To my great surprise, I picked it up immediately. Within 30 seconds, I checked the weather. Next, I read some stock prices. Amazingly, it even renders stock charts, something the blind have never had access to. Sold.

Austin's issue was that iTunes on other platforms is not Accessible, and this was one of the primary reasons for his purchase of the new iMac—now he has full Access to all of the software that hooks into VoiceOver.

I know that many will see this post as simply another puff piece for Apple (disclosure: I no longer hold shares in the company) but I am seriously excited: now I know that I can start testing the sites and software that I build in a fully-functional screen-reader, I shall make every effort to do so.

Why?

Because I have seen, at first hand, how immensely liberating the digital world is for those who are disabled—especially those who are blind. Since I rarely get out and about to seminars these days, and work less than I used to with our partners, every now and again, I need reminding of how a little effort in software development can, quite literally, change someone's life.

A couple of techie bits...

First, as a follow-up to my post about how much I loathe Flash, here is an amazing interactive video for Arcade Fire's We Used To Wait.

You must use Safari, Chrome or one of the many other WebKit-based browsers, but do so and you'll see "birds" that follow your mouse and the formation of which also follows the music; you'll see the video use satellite pictures of your home town; be able to write a postcard, and then see the video interact with more satellite pictures. It's utterly, utterly enthralling.

And it's entirely built in HTML5 technologies—no Flash at all.

Obviously, it's pretty processor intensive and only works on the latest and greatest browsers, but as an indication of the capabilities of HTML5 (and CSS3) it is simply stunning. The Chrome Experiments website has some more beautiful examples of interactive HTML5 projects, some of which are really amazing.

And things, as they say, will only get better.

Second, in a bid to annoy the hell out of Dizzy, here is a Techcrunch article summing up the problems with the openness of Android...

In the post, I posed a question: if it’s not the iPhone/AT&T; deal, why do you choose Android? Nearly 1,000 people responded, and a large percentage focused on the same idea: the idea of “openness.”

You’ll forgive me, but I have to say it: what a load of crap.
...

In theory, I’m right there with you. The thought of a truly open mobile operating system is very appealing. The problem is that in practice, that’s just simply not the reality of the situation. Maybe if Google had their way, the system would be truly open. But they don’t. Sadly, they have to deal with a very big roadblock: the carriers.

The result of this unfortunate situation is that the so-called open system is quickly revealing itself to be anything but. Further, we’re starting to see that in some cases the carriers may actually be able to exploit this “openness” to create a closed system that may leave you crying for Apple’s closed system — at least their’s looks good and behaves as expected.
...

But who cares whether it’s great or it’s crap — isn’t the point of “open” supposed to be that the consumer can choose what they want on their own devices? Instead, open is proving to mean that the carriers can choose what they want to do with Android.

This has become more and more obvious as each new Android model is released, and it is going to become an increasing irritation. And whether Google can do anything about it—indeed, whether they want to—is unclear...