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May, 2008

Sponge

Posted by Ciarán on Sat, 31/05/2008 - 15:56

Panke on the EU

Fair dues to United Irelander, who though I do tend to find him annoying at times (which is not necessarily a bad thing), tends to be a generally honest interlocutor. Anyway, he's massively anti-Lisbon but did post a long email interview with Diana Panke at UCD on Lisbon and other matters. Check it out. My only quibble is that the format doesn't give UI an opportunity to reveal whether what Panke has to say makes him change his mind (or if not, why not), but still, this the discursive element in the Irish blogosphere at its best.

Posted by Ciarán on Wed, 14/05/2008 - 10:29

Alien Torts

There are two interesting articles in today's Times, suggesting at major extensions of domestic law in response to globalisation. The first reports on the US Supreme Court's decision (though in odd circumstances) to allow a lawsuit to go ahead, under the Alien Tort Claims Act (see also here), of companies that collaborated with the Apartheid regime in South Africa. If lawyers establish that these companies knowingly assisted the South African regime in breaching human rights, they may be liable for millions of dollars.

Second, there's an article on the implications of corporations being found responsible for bribery in both developing and developed countries. It's always one of those things denied by the sorts of twats who advocate cutting aid to developing countries because of corruption: corrupters are just as guilty and they tend to be a lot closer to home. Certainly, the BAE probe was depressing, but corruption is very much coming onto the agenda. Again, the Alien Tort Claims Act may be start to be employed in interesting ways here. In which case, private action will emerge as one of the major sources of regulation of globalisation.

Posted by Ciarán on Tue, 13/05/2008 - 08:43

Banks and Browsers

If ever people need an incentive to upgrade to firefox (3?) or to Internet Explorer 7, it's the British Banking Code. As LSN news points out (behind LexisNexis's paywall), section 12.11 of the code (here, pdf) tells you, regarding online banking. that "If you act without reasonable care, and this causes losses, you may be responsible for them. (This may apply, for example, if you do not follow section 12.5 or 12.9 or you do not keep to your account’s terms and conditions.)" Amongst other things, section 12.9 says "Keep your PC secure. Use up-to-date anti-virus and spyware software and a personal firewall" and "Treat e-mails you receive from senders claiming to be from your bank or building society with caution."

Apparently this policy has been in the code for a while, although it was updated in April just gone. While no bank seems to have invoked the clauses, you can pretty much bet that they will at some stage. Which will be bad news for the elderly and the ignorant when they discover that, having been pushed out of branches to save the banks money, they are also responsible for the security of the banks' alternative offerings.

While I of course recommend ditching dodgy Windows for altogether better operating systems, and while I find it perplexing that I still get hits from people using IE6 and IE5, I do think we ought to be sympathetic with people who simply don't know how the software on their machines works and who don't read the latest missives on internet security. If fraud does become sufficiently problematic as to make banks consider invoking the responsibility clause, there's an easy solution: publicly acknowledge that the internet, Windows-style, is not an appropriate venue for financial transactions and take steps to encourage people back into branches. In other words: the banks should just swallow whatever is the cheaper alternative.

Posted by Ciarán on Thu, 01/05/2008 - 08:46