The Hangover, Part 50?

A couple of my long (suffering) friends have agreed to be best men at my wedding blessing / renewal of vows later this month. Thank you Mike and Simon.

I know this is payback big time for the fact Sandra and I got married in a register office 25 years ago... Be warned anyone else doing that! But it will be a nice event and I am looking forward to it.

Now, when it is a wedding blessing a "stag night" in any traditional sense does not really seem right. But we did wonder about doing somethings, and then we realised (a) Simon was 50 a week or two ago, and (b) Simon has never ever been to Vegas!

So, the three of us, are off to LA then Vegas shortly, for a week. It seems they have what they are calling a heat wave and temperatures are forecast for something like 42℃.

Vegas is a challenge, it is a strange place. I once went during Halloween, and that was doubly strange.

We know that what happens in Vegas stays in vegas, apart from STDs and tattoos, and we have no intention of getting close to either!

Hopefully it will be fun. It may be a tad hot, but they have air conditioning, and we are all a bit old now :-)

I'll post pictures, I am sure.

What could possibly go wrong?

Update: Pictures here http://e.gg/e460

#IPBill implications

So, it is Christmas, and my son is having some fun knocking up an on-line game. Occasionally he needs my help but to be honest he is not doing badly with some javascript, mysql back-end, and a few of my tools I knocked up many years ago, and he is learning something about designing the software and making it work.

We knocked up an on-line poker game some years ago whilst on holiday, it can indeed be fun.

One of the first, and essential, features of the game was a simple in-game chat. This is a feature of most games.

There are a couple of other features which are likely to be part of this game or any game in future - one is running the game on a cheap VM (Virtual Machine) from some VM provider which are typically not in the UK. The other is the availability of free https certificates from someone like https://letsencrypt.org. Indeed some VM providers are working with Let's Encrypt to make it simple.

But hang on! The second you make a game like this, with an on-line chat like this, you have just created a secure communications platform with encryption that ends outside the UK.

James is not making permanent logs of the in-game chat. He has no intercept capability or any resources to make one. He has not published any contact details (he does not have to - not taking money, not a company, not trading) so nowhere to send a RIPA request.

The on-line secure chat is simply a side effect of a simple free on-line game a kid has knocked up (OK not so much a kid any more, but this could be done by a kid).

Where does the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill fit in with this?

Who tracks the creation of such things - he is not advertising it - it is for him and some mates to play a game, but it could be used by terrorists. It could be created by terrorists in the first place.

Who ensures that such platforms have intercept capabilities, and data retention of communications data? Who pays for it all?

It is just one more example of how the IP Bill is just broken, and not fit for purpose, even though it seeks to reach way beyond normal privacy and human rights.