Editor's comment: January 2017

And how things have changed. I remember feeling very high-tech when I bought my first 56K dial up modem and I’ll never forget ‘that sound’ the modem made as it connected to the web. Difficult to describe: a bit like a dozen budgerigars trying to outdo each other. Of course when you did make it online at a sizzling 40-50 kb/s, no-one else in the household could use the phone. That caused a few heated exchanges if my memory serves me correctly.

In those days you went online for a reason and then got off quick because you were being charged. The BBC website was launched in 1997 and the domain google.com was registered on September 15^th 1997. World domination for Google would follow soon enough but in the early days it was competing against other search engines. Remember Hotbot, Excite, Lycos, Alta Vista and Web Crawler?

The advent of broadband really brought the Internet to the masses and today it’s simply taken for granted. Smartphones, tablets, computers, laptops all seamlessly sync in digital harmony which for business users is indeed a wonderful thing. Email is second nature now, but just think how brilliant it is. When I first started doing this job, press releases and images were sent by post. Now I can move 10MB images around the globe like I’m sending them next door.

Today it’s all about data – collecting it, sharing it and using it. In our own sector, Industry 4.0 and ‘Smart’ factories are focused on automation, data exchange and interconnectivity. Cyber physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and humans in real-time, and the Internet underpins it all.

But with all this power inevitably comes a darker side. We all know the Internet is used for some pretty despicable things and this has led to a ‘Big Brother’ age where everything is subject to surveillance and scrutiny.

In November 2016, the Investigatory Powers Act – or Snooper’s Charter – became law. Home Secretary Amber Rudd called it: “World leading legislation that provided unprecedented transparency and substantial privacy protection,” but privacy campaigners claimed that it would provide an international standard to authoritarian regimes around the world to justify their own intrusive surveillance powers.

The bottom line: the new law requires web and phone companies to store everyone’s web browsing histories for 12 months and give the police, security services and official agencies unprecedented access to the data. It also provides the security services and police with new powers to hack into computers and phones and to collect communications data in bulk.

However the latest development is that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has just ruled that the mass retention of our online communications data should not be allowed. Stay tuned!

Dave Tudor Editor