The Bloor Perspective: Who tracks your web usage, who owns your data, and who let the investors loose?

In order to protect commercial interests on the internet, there has been a requirement to monitor and control access to pages and content. For the majority, this is just a case of issuing usernames and passwords and restricting access to parts of websites. Services such as Napster need to present an open stance so that its site can be a forum for musicians to make their work available, but are also constrained by copyright laws. Its solution was to come up with a filter requiring copyright holders to provide the artist and title of music that is to be protected. It seems that Napster is getting around this by using exact matches only and allowing "fuzzy" searches to get through.

Such filters are one way to control access to web content - and a clumsy one. Right now, the big name in web monitoring is SurfControl. This UK-based company received bucket loads of publicity by enabling the Greater Manchester police to co-ordinate a nationwide paedophile bust involving 25 forces across the country.

SurfControl is not a favourite among many web users because its products can block access to a whole range of sites and report on pages visited. It has attracted criticism in the past for being a self-appointed keeper of morals by including all kinds of sites in its "banned" lists - including web journals that have criticised its behaviour.

Over a period of four months, police officers observed paedophile activity on the web and used SurfControl software to track down those who had downloaded content. The result was that offenders could be identified much more quickly and over 30 people were arrested. This is a clear indication that SurfControl is using probes that can pick up the network traffic to a site and return all of the IP addresses to a central base. This is the kind of technology that is usually associated with hacking and the question that arises is whether this technology is being sold commercially. While all of us can disable cookies and other technologies that are used to watch our online activity, this is one that we have little control over. Just who is out there watching us?

*Who owns your data?*

Many government institutions and commercial organisations hold data about each one of us. The spread of this is massive. Think banks, insurance companies, retailers, websites, health organisations, educational organisations, the police, charities, and so on. They gather this data about us - usually with our permission - in order to carry out their operations more effectively. But who owns our data? The answer is simple and irrefutable - we do.

However, changes recently have thrown a huge question mark over the ownership of data and, surprisingly, Microsoft is at the heart if the issue. Microsoft's HailStorm initiative is a very sensible and possibly attractive idea to allow users to have a common store for their data - common sign-ons for websites, device setting for user devices, a wallet that holds receipts, payments and transaction records, records of subscriptions and a log of all usage of such data.

The political issue is this. The granter of your identity is the government of the nation of which you are a citizen. However, individuals have a right to control their own, valuable data - or will have as soon as it becomes a political matter.

Here's the problem. Government itself should be driving the agenda. Whether Microsoft or anyone else provides the software to manage it is irrelevant, because it is government that must ensure privacy and legislate for the accessibility of such data and guarantee such a service.

As time goes by, we are more and more defined by our personal data and more and more of it is held electronically. If government does not get wise to this then it will find itself in a difficult situation, because the software market and the internet will gradually encroach on its territory. But there is no sign that any government anywhere is aware of this problem.

*Investor ignorance?*

IT technicians have long known little about business, and one could make the same generalisation about another group - investors.

ING Barings calculates worldwide wealth has been reduced by a cool $7,500bn since July, a size of downturn that has serious implications for all major economies.

But who are the investors upon whom the markets depend? It turns out a significant element comprises the major investment banks, which have research arms to advise other investors. The same banks also have investment arms to take advantage, you might think, of the carefully thought out findings of their research arms.

Except that it turns out that they don't necessarily take their own advice. After all, if the investment arm of a bank has blocks of shares it wants to get rid of, what better way to do it than have the research arm recommend them to other investors? Not that anyone is actually accusing the investment banks of monkeying around with the world's wealth in this way, you understand, because to do so would be to invite a lawsuit.

Anyway, the two arms of investment banks are managed separately to avoid just this kind of accusation. The arrangement works in the same way that big consultancies used to manage auditing and consulting practices separately, until legislation forced a more concrete division. The behaviour of investment banks is being viewed askance at the moment because, at the same time as share values are fast falling out of sight, the banks are telling us not to forget to invest in them through an ISA before the financial year end.

With advice like that, any lack of confidence in high-tech stocks seems almost irrelevant. We live in an age where some institutions have dumped $100m in shares in the last quarter of 2000 (the $100 Club) or ventures have lost 95 per cent of their IPO value (the 95 per cent Club).

It feels like there's a global gambling casino running the world economy. Why do we pay so much attention to sustaining a democracy if we are going to pass control of our wealth, and the health of our industry, over to a bunch of jokers and the inmates of a global asylum for the terminally bewildered?