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Surveillance
BT, Phorm, and Me
There was a lot going on at the end of June 2007: a new Home Secretary, attempted bombings, the first iPhone, Blair’s last day. None of that registered. In an 8ft by 6ft office it looked as if foreign hackers had walked into the network and taken horse-racing data and customer records.
That was not what had happened. The sleepless nights were unnecessary. BT and Phorm had been running a secret advertising experiment, and this connection had been picked as a guinea pig. The affair reached ex-ministers, the Home Office, the City of London Police, and the European Commission.
These pages serialise the saga from one person’s point of view. On the live WordPress site the chapters still exist at the original URLs. This redesign lists them in order so they can be copied across.