Monthly Archives: March 2015

Chair of UK Conservative Party Grant Shapps MP on Gawker.com Coca-Cola Robot Stunt – “Nazism and anyone sympathising for it is simply unacceptable”

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Grant Shapps MP

Grant Shapps MP

This is going to be an upbeat post. The Witchfinder is pleased to note that people are listening to reasonable persuasion from GamerGate as well as other sensible, moderate voices. The battle against the unhinged, out-of-control left, the so-called ‘Social Justice Warriors’ can be hard. When there are setbacks or things seem to be going badly it is worth reminding ourselves of our successes.

No matter how much the left-wingers who infest the media try to talk it down, from their perspective the truth is grim. Moderate and Conservative voices in the gaming industry and more generally in society outnumber them vastly.

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Kobalt Law Boss Deliver Almighty Smackdown to the Block Bot Creator James Billingham – Praises Dawkins and GamerGate as People of Worth

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The Witchfinder will be brief.

The Claim By the Block Bot …

NotAClient

The Block Bot Claims that I was Not a Client of Kobalt Law, Later Publishing Part of an Email Sent to Billingham

https://archive.today/7tmXi

The Response from Kobalt Law …

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Billingham was offered the option to clarify on his own behalf but responded claiming he is not operating the Block Bot twitter feed, he merely shared the correspondence with the administrators. He also claimed he is being ‘harassed’. So basically, this is James Billingham –

  • a man who runs a tool to ostracise and exclude people online for ‘trolling’ but at the same time hosts his ‘trolling’ memoirs on his personal blog – talking fondly of the time he wound up a forum about ‘kiddy porn’.
  • a man whose tool describes others (for example Professor Dawkins) as ‘racist’, ‘gross’, ‘rapeapologist’, ‘childabuseapologism’, ‘transphobia’, ‘youradick’ but complains to the police when stridently criticised online in turn.
  • a man who gives no forwarding address, who ignores emails, but complains when served with legal correspondence at his workplace.
  • a man who refuses to correct factually inaccurate statements but cries harassment at every turn

Billingham continues with this course of conduct at his peril. He has dished it out in spades and now the tables are turned. He cries to police about my words whilst one of Britain’s most prominent thinkers, no natural ally, shares them with the world – https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/579550321049006081 . What is Billingham going to do? Demand Dawkins be arrested for helping with my sinister campaign of ‘harassment’? Breitbart?

I agree with Stefano’s kind advice. James Billingham needs to find a new hobby and soon.

Typo Corrected – this post was written by the Witchfinder General.

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The Block Bot’s PR Problem

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The Witchfinder thought a screenshot of the Block Bot’s current rankings would amuse and rally the forces of reason, be they #GamerGate, moderate atheists like Professor Dawkins or the feminists with whom we find common cause on this issue. Googling ‘The Block Bot’ yields the following –

At the time of writing, the only positive sites about The Block Bot on the front page of Google are the Block Bot itself on Twitter and its website. Every other article is adverse. Now, I believe we have some Wikipedia editors in our ranks and that Wikipedia has rules about only using reputable sources. Not exactly a shortage, is there? Even the BBC. Oolon / James Billingham’s desperate spinning will not restore their reputation. Everyone knows who they are now.

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The Block Bot website and some negative articles.

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The Block Bot’s Twitter and Negative Articles.

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The last of the top ten Google results. Another negative article about the Block Bot.

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The Block Bot Fact Checked

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In the wake of recent humiliating revelations that the Block Bot has been blocking celebrities like Professor Richard Dawkins their team have been spinning desperately. The Witchfinder reviews and clarifies their claims as needed.

The Claim – Barack Obama is Not on the Block Bot

ObamaIsNotBlocked

Obama is Not Blocked … Anymore.

True … now … but that has never been the allegation. The allegation in my article was that ‘Barack Obama was on at one point’, as this archive demonstrates. Barack Obama was listed in the Block Bot as Level 1 … the “Worst of the Worst”.

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Barack Obama! Level 1 Troll. “The Worst of the Worst” … According to the Block Bot.

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Randi Harper To File Complaint About Imaginary Robot Shock

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It seems that Anti-GamerGate are Quite A Bit Upset. After Atheism Plus ‘Won’ the recent litigation by having both defendants resign, remove the objectionable text and move their ‘bot out of the country, they are now joined by Randi Harper, who has declared war on an entirely imaginary application.

TheBigHat

Randi Harper is on a crusade against an imaginary enemy. Literally, this time.

Yesterday, I registered this Twitter account, for a ‘parody’ robot. In case it was not too obvious, I wrote ‘Parody’ at the top. Unfortunately, words are hard for @FreeBSDGirl .

‘Parody’ being a word of a whole two syllables is clearly too difficult for Randi Harper. ETHICS EDIT 22/03/2015 21:05 GMT KiA CORRECTLY POINT OUT 3 SYLLABLES. So I was interrupted from a happy evening working on my ’emotional triggers’ analysis device by the below spew of targeted tweets.

Not only has Randi attacked me, she appears to have sent me 7 unsolicited tweets whilst blocking me, which I believe is now defined as ‘harassment’ under the new Twitter rules. Feel free to report. The irony is, she says that, I “can’t understand sarcasm”.

ImaginaryRobot

Randi Harper is very, very angry. She is also very, very dumb.

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A Bot for Endangered Sea Lions

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TheBigHat

The Big Hat. A community petitions tool.

The Witchfinder has a project on the go. The Big Hat Project was initially intended as a community patrol tool for dealing with anti-social accounts. That idea lacked traction because Conservatives and #GamerGate are pro-free-speech. So the project has been refactored as a community petition tool.

@BigFriendlyHat is a work in progress. The purpose of the project is to enable and facilitate inclusive, community petitions by supporters. People who sign up are giving the project leaders permission to send political tweets on their behalf.

For example, suppose like minded people wanted to support an endangered species like, for example, sea lions and someone was spreading hate speech. This would enable the project leaders to simply hit a button and hey-presto, users would send polite tweets to (say) Greenpeace alerting them of the plight of the poor sea creatures.

The application is in development but alpha access will be made available to the like-minded in due course.

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Working Together – How Conservatives and #GamerGate Can Find Common Ground With Some Feminists

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BoodleOops

Academic Becca Reilly-Cooper comments on female reproductive biology being relevant to feminism. Via Twitter/BoodleOops.

All movements have their extremists and their moderates. In light of the ongoing Block Bot debacle, the Witchfinder identifies common ground with some feminists who have been subject to harassment by the same perpetrators.

Unsurprisingly, your author has spent considerable time recently searching online for credible individuals aggrieved with the Block Bot. Whilst trawling I encountered a public spat between a woman called @BoodleOops, (Academic Becca Reilly-Cooper) and some unsavoury SJW types loosely associated with The Block Bot. She was BLOCKED. BLOCKED I tell you. They were calling her a TERF. Your author had no idea what a TERF is but assumed from the lady’s enemies she was probably doing something virtuous. So he looked up the term ‘TERF’.

It is like this … As we all know, SJW (supposedly Social Justice Warrior) may as well stand for ‘Silencing Journalists and Women’. TERF is an acronym invented by SJWs for oppressing women. It stands for ‘Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminists’ and is yet another example of prolixity by the hard left trying to label reasonable behaviour as in some way wrong. TERF is a slur.

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Can Disgraced Ex-Councillor Dean Archer Sue Grant Shapps?

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So Dean Archer, a former Labour Councillor your author calls ‘disgraced’ because he was removed from office for non-attendance at council meetings, is upset with Grant Shapps MP. It appears that Mr Archer’s public libel apology to Mr Shapps, drafted by Shapps’ lawyers was in fact misleading. Archer now indicates that he intends to seek compensation from Shapps for stress.

Before continuing, the Witchfinder would like to point out that he still thinks Archer is a ‘constituent’ – only without the ‘onstit’ and the ‘e’. However it is irritating, to say the least, for a loyal Conservative blogger to have to ‘update’ a story due to an error by their own Conservative MP. So I thought it would be a nice legal exercise to speculate as to what causes of action might be arguable and how much Archer might get. This is of course only speculation and no substitute for a Court decision.

There is a legal subtlety here that needs to be highlighted firmly. The law distinguishes between accidental or negligent mistakes on the one hand and lies and malice on the other. The law also makes it very hard to prove lies. A common (and essential) legal tactic is to pick laws where mistake is all that is needed or where the burden of proof is reversed. Grant says it is all an innocent mistake so your author is going to run with that for the purposes of this article.

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Aggravating Ignorance

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The Witchfinder points out some potential flaws in the Block Bot team’s reasoning, in light of their claims that hosting data abroad makes them immune from UK Data Protection legislation.

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The Block Bot thinks being abroad makes them immune.

Your author will be brief. Some members of the Block Bot team advance the idea that holding the data abroad makes them immune from UK Data Protection law. Funnily enough, UK legislators thought of that.

The Data Protection Act 1998, Schedule 1, provides as follows –

“[…] 8 Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.“

Now, Block Bot creator James Billingham and for that matter the blocker who added me are based in the UK (although the latter has now resigned). So if they decide to block someone, where is the data? Well they have to write it down on a computer or similar device such as a mobile phone, based wherever they are.

Q. If someone types data into the Twitter client on a mobile phone in the UK, before they click ‘send’ where is the data?

A. In the mobile phone’s memory, in the UK.

Q. If someone types data into the Twitter website on a PC in the UK, before they click ‘send’ where is the data?

A. In the PC’s memory, in the UK.

Q. When they click send what happens?

A. The data is transmitted to the Twitter servers in the United States, thereby transferring it outside the EEA.

 What does the ICO Guidance, here say?

“You will be processing personal data in the UK and transferring it even if:

you collect information relating to individuals on paper, which is not ordered or structured in any way; and”

and

“Putting personal data on a website will often result in transfers to countries outside the EEA.”

The Claimant rests. (If someone junior from the Information Commissioner’s Officer went along with the ‘abroad’ argument we would only escalate it and ask them to clarify).

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BlockBot Busted? Front Page Rewrite and a Resignation for a Block Bot Team in Disarray

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It has been a busy week for the Block Bot. A front page rewrite, a resignation and more troubles to come … The Witchfinder explains the possible legal consequences of running an enormous public blacklist.

BBCheckerRichardDawkins

These are some utterly false allegations about Richard Dawkins hosted in the database on Sarah Noble’s site. She needs urgent legal advice.

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