Tag: Theresa May

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Flush with $42M, hot AI startup Faculty plans to hoover-up more PhDs… and steer clear of politics

In the wake of the news that UK-based AI startup Faculty has raised $42.5 million in a growth funding round, I teased out more from CEO and co-founder Marc Warner on what his plans are for the company.

Faculty seems to have an uncanny knack of winning UK government contracts, after helping Boris Johnson win his Vote Leave campaign and thus become Prime Minister. It’s even helping sort out the mess that Brexit has subsequently made of the fishing industry, problems with the NHS, and telling global corporates like Red Bull and Virgin Media what to suggest to their customers. Meanwhile, it continues to hoover up Ph.D. graduates at a rate of knots to work on its AI platform.

But, speaking to me over a call, Warner said the company no longer has plans to enter the political sphere again: “Never again. It’s very controversial. I don’t want to make out that I think politics is unethical. Trying to make the world better, in whatever dimension you can, is a good thing … But from our perspective, it was, you know, ‘noisy,’ and our goal as an organization is, despite current appearances to the contrary, is not to spend tonnes of time talking about this stuff. We do believe this is an important technology that should be out there and should be in a broader set of hands than just the tech giants, who are already very good at it.”

On the investment, he said: “Fundamentally, the money is about doubling down on the UK first and then international expansion. Over the last seven years or so we have learned what it takes to do important AI, impactful AI, at scale. And we just don’t think that there’s actually much of it out there. Customers are rightly sometimes a bit skeptical, as there’s been hype around this stuff for years and years. We figured out a bunch of the real-world applications that go into making this work so that it actually delivers the value. And so, ultimately, the money is really just about being able to build out all of the pieces to do that incredibly well for our customers.”

He said Faculty would be staying firmly HQ’d in the UK to take advantage of the UK’s talent pool: “The UK is a wonderful place to do AI. It’s got brilliant universities, a very dynamic startup scene. It’s actually more diverse than San Francisco. There’s government, there’s finance, there are corporates, there’s less competition from the tech giants. There’s a bit more of a heterogeneous ecosystem. There’s no sense in which we’re thinking, ‘Right, that’s it, we’re up and out!’. We love working here, we want to make things better. We’ve put an enormous amount of effort into trying to help organizations like the government and the NHS, but also a bunch of UK corporates in trying to embrace this technology, so that’s still going to be a terrifically important part of our business.”

That said, Faculty plans to expand abroad: “We’re going to start looking further afield as well, and take all of the lessons we’ve learned to the US, and then later Europe.”

But does he think this funding round will help it get ahead of other potential rivals in the space? “We tend not to think too much in terms of rivals,” he says. “The next 20 years are going to be about building intelligence into the software that already exists. If you look at the global market cap of the software businesses out there, that’s enormous. If you start adding intelligence to that, the scale of the market is so large that it’s much more important to us that we can take this incredibly important technology and deploy it safely in ways that actually improve people’s lives. It could be making products cheaper or helping organizations make their services more efficient.”

If that’s the case then does Faculty have any kind of ethics panel overseeing its work? “We have an internal ethics panel. We have a set of principles and if we think a project might violate those principles, it gets referred to that ethics panel. It’s randomly selected from across faculty. So we’re quite careful about the projects that we work on and don’t. But to be honest, the vast majority of stuff that’s going on is very vanilla. They are just clearly ‘good for the world’ projects. The vast majority of our work is doing good work for corporate clients to help them make their businesses that bit more efficient.”

I pressed him to expand on this issue of ethics and the potential for bias. He says Faculty “builds safety in from a start. Oddly enough, the reason I first got interested in AI was reading Nick Bostrom’s work about superintelligence and the importance of AI safety. And so from the very, very first fellowship [Faculty AI researchers are called Fellows] all the way back in 2014, we’ve taught the fellows about AI safety. Over time, as soon as we were able, we started contributing to the research field. So, we’ve published papers in all of the biggest computer science conferences Neurips, ICM, ICLR, on the topic of AI safety. How to make algorithms fair, private, robust and explainable. So these are a set of problems that we care a great deal about. And, I think, are generally ‘underdone’ in the wider ecosystem. Ultimately, there shouldn’t be a separation between performance and safety. There is a bit of a tendency in other companies to say, ‘Well, you can either have performance, or you can have safety.’ But of course, we know that’s not true. The cars today are faster and safer than the Model T Ford. So it’s a sort of a false dichotomy. We’ve invested a bunch of effort in both those capabilities, so we obviously want to be able to create a wonderful performance for the task at hand, but also to ensure that the algorithms are fair, private, robust and explainable wherever required.”

That also means, he says, that AI might not always be the ‘bogeyman’ the phrase implies: “In some cases, it’s probably not a huge deal if you’re deciding whether to put a red jumper or a blue jumper at the top of your website. There are probably not huge ethical implications in that. But in other circumstances, of course, it’s critically important that the algorithms are safe and are known to be safe and are trusted by both the users and anyone else who encounters them. In a medical context, obviously, they need to be trusted by the doctors and the patients need to make sure they actually work. So we’re really at the forefront of deploying that stuff.”

Last year the Guardian reported that Faculty had won seven government contracts in 18 months. To what does he attribute this success? “Well, I mean, we lost an enormous number more! We are a tiny supplier to government. We do our best to do work that is valuable to them. We’ve worked for many many years with people at the home office,” he tells me.

“Without wanting to go into too much detail, that 18 months stretches over multiple Prime Ministers. I was appointed to the AI Council under Theresa May. Any sort of insinuations on this are just obviously nonsense. But, at least historically, most of our work was in the private sector and that continues to be critically important for us as an organization. Over the last year, we’ve tried to step up and do our bit wherever we could for the public sector. It’s facing such a big, difficult situation around COVID, and we’re very proud of the things we’ve managed to accomplish with the NHS and the impact that we had on the decisions that senior people were able to undertake.”

Returning to the issue of politics I asked him if he thought – in the wake of events such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, which were both affected by AI-driven political campaigning – AI is too dangerous to be applied to that arena? He laughed: “It’s a funny old funny question… It’s a really odd way to phrase a question. AI is just a technology. Fundamentally, AI is just maths.”

I asked him if he thought the application of AI in politics had had an outsized or undue influence, on the way that political parties have operated in the last few years: “I’m afraid that is beyond my knowledge,” he says. But does Faculty have regrets about working in the political sphere?

“I think we’re just focused on our work. It’s not that we have strong feelings, either way, it’s just that from our perspective, it’s much, much more interesting to be able to do the things that we care about, which is deploying AI in the real world. It’s a bit of a boring answer! But it is truly how we feel. It’s much more about doing the things we think are important, rather than judging what everyone else is doing.”

Lastly, we touched on the data science capabilities of the UK and what the new fund-raising will allow the company to do.

He said: “We started an education program. We have roughly 10% of the UK’s PhDs in physics, maths, engineering, applying to the program. Roughly 400 or so people have been through that program and we plan to expand that further so that more and more people get the opportunity to start a career in data science. And then inside Faculty specifically, we think we’ll be able to create 400 new jobs in areas like software engineering, data science, product management. These are very exciting new possibilities for people to really become part of the technology revolution. I think there’s going to be a wonderful like new energy in Faculty, and hopefully a positive small part in increasing the UK tech ecosystem.”

Warner comes across as sincere in his thoughts about the future of AI and is clearly enthusiastic about where Faculty can take the whole field next, both philosophically and practically. Will Faculty soon be challenging that other AI leviathan, DeepMind, for access to all those Ph.D.s? There’s no doubt it will.

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Russian cyberops are targeting COVID-19 vaccine R&D, intelligence agencies warn

Western intelligence agencies say they’ve found evidence that Russian cyber espionage is targeting efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine in a number of countries.

In an advisory report, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said the Russia-linked cyber espionage group commonly known as ‘APT29’ — which is also sometimes referred to as ‘the Dukes’ or ‘Cozy Bear’ — has targeted various organisations involved in medical R&D and COVID-19 vaccine development in Canada, the US and the UK throughout 2020.

Per the report, APT29 is using custom malware known as ‘WellMess’ and ‘WellMail’ to target a number of organisations globally, including those involved with COVID-19 vaccine development.

WellMess and WellMail have not previously been publicly associated to APT29, it notes.

The NCSC, which is a public facing branch of the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency, said it believes it “highly likely” that the intention of the malware attacks is to steal information and IP related to the development and testing of COVID-19 vaccines.

The findings in the report are also endorsed by Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the US National Security Agency (NSA).

“In recent attacks targeting COVID-19 vaccine research and development, the group conducted basic vulnerability scanning against specific external IP addresses owned by the organisations. The group then deployed public exploits against the vulnerable services identified,” the advisory adds.

It concludes by assessing APT29 is “likely” to continue to target organisations involved in COVID-19 vaccine R&D — as “they seek to answer additional intelligence questions relating to the pandemic”.

“It is strongly recommended that organisations use the rules and IOCs [indicators of compromise] in the [report] appendix in order to detect the activity detailed in this advisory,” it adds, flagging compromise indicators and detection and mitigation advice contained in the document.

Responding to the advisory the UK government condemned what it called Russia’s “irresponsible” cyber attacks against COVID-19 vaccine development.

“It is completely unacceptable that the Russian Intelligence Services are targeting those working to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” said foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in a statement. “While others pursue their selfish interests with reckless behaviour, the UK and its allies are getting on with the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health.”

“The UK will continue to counter those conducting such cyber attacks, and work with our allies to hold perpetrators to account,” he added.

Last month EU lawmakers named Russia and China as states behind major disinformation campaigns related to the coronavirus which they said had targeted Internet users in the region.

The European Commission is working on a pan-EU approach to tackling the spread of damaging falsehoods online.

Russian election meddling

The NCSC advisory follows hard on the heels of an assertion by Raab that Russia attempted to influence the 2019 UK election via the online amplification of leaked documents.

“On the basis of extensive analysis, the government has concluded that it is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election through the online amplification of illicitly acquired and leaked government documents,” Raab said in a statement yesterday.

The Guardian reports that UK intelligence agencies have spent months investigating how a 451-page dossier of official emails ended up with the opposition Labour party during the election campaign — providing an opportunity for then leader Jeremy Corbyn to make political capital out of details related to UK-US trade talks.

Back in 2017 former UK and Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, also warned publicly that Russia was trying to meddle in Western elections. However she failed to act on a series of recommendations from a parliamentary committee that scrutinized the democratic threats posed by online disinformation.

The timing of this latest flurry of Russian cyberops warnings from UK state sources is especially interesting in light of a much delayed report by the UK parliament’s Intelligence & Security Committee (ISC) into Russia’s role in election interference.

Publication of this report was blocked last year on orders of prime minister, Boris Johnson. But, this week, an attempt by Number 10 to install Chris Grayling, a former secretary of state for transport, as chair of the ISC was thwarted after Conservative MP Julian Lewis sided with opposition MPs to vote for himself as new committee chair instead.

Publication of the long delayed Russia report is now imminent, after the committee voted unanimously for it to be released next week before parliament breaks for the summer.

Last November The Guardian newspaper reported that the dossier examines allegations Russian money has flowed into British politics in general and to the Conservative party in particular; as well as looking into claims Russia launched a major influence operation in 2016 in support of Brexit.

In 2017, under pressure from the DCMS committee, Facebook admitted Russian agents had used its platform to try to interfere in the UK’s referendum on EU membership — though it claimed not to have found “significant coordination” of ad buys or political misinformation targeting the Brexit vote.

Last year, former ISC chair, Dominic Grieve, called for the Russia report to be published before election day — saying it contained knowledge “germane” to voters.

Instead, Johnson blocked publication — going on to be elected with a huge Conservative majority.

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Reddit links UK-US trade talk leak to Russian influence campaign

Reddit has linked account activity involving the leak and amplification of sensitive UK-US trade talks on its platform during the ongoing UK election campaign to a suspected Russian political influence operation.

Or, to put it more plainly, the social network suspects that Russian operatives are behind the leak of sensitive trade data — likely with the intention of impacting the UK’s General Election campaign.

The country goes to the polls next week, on December 12.

The minority Conservative government has struggled to negotiate a brexit deal that parliament backs. The UK has been politically deadlocked since mid 2016 over how to implement the result of the referendum to leave the European Union . Another hung parliament or minority government would likely result in continued uncertainty.

In a post discussing the “Suspected campaign from Russia on Reddit”, the company writes:

We were recently made aware of a post on Reddit that included leaked documents from the UK. We investigated this account and the accounts connected to it, and today we believe this was part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia.

Earlier this year Facebook discovered a Russian campaign on its platform, which was further analyzed by the Atlantic Council and dubbed “Secondary Infektion.” Suspect accounts on Reddit were recently reported to us, along with indicators from law enforcement, and we were able to confirm that they did indeed show a pattern of coordination. We were then able to use these accounts to identify additional suspect accounts that were part of the campaign on Reddit. This group provides us with important attribution for the recent posting of the leaked UK documents, as well as insights into how adversaries are adapting their tactics.

Reddit says that an account, called gregoratior, originally posted the leaked trade talks document. Later a second account, ostermaxnn, reposted it. The platform also found a “pocket of accounts” that worked together to manipulate votes on the original post in an attempt to amplify it. Though fairly fruitlessly, as it turned out; the leak gained little attention on Reddit, per the company.

As a result of the investigation Reddit says it has banned 1 subreddit and 61 accounts — under policies against vote manipulation and misuse of its platform.

The story doesn’t end there, though, because whoever was behind the trade talk leak appears to have resorted to additional tactics to draw attention to it — including emailing campaign groups and political activists directly.

This activity did bear fruit this month when the opposition Labour party got hold of the leak and made it into a major campaign issue, claiming the 451-page document shows the Conservative party, led by Boris Johnson, is plotting to sell off the country’s free-at-the-point-of-use National Health Service (NHS) to US private health insurance firms and drug companies.

Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, showed a heavily redacted version of the document during a TV leaders debate earlier this month, later calling a press conference to reveal a fully un-redacted version of the data — arguing the document proves the NHS is in grave danger if the Conservatives are re-elected.

Johnson has denied Labour’s accusation that the NHS will be carved up as the price of a Trump trade deal. But the leaked document itself is genuine. It details preliminary meetings between UK and US trade negotiators, which took place between July 2017 and July 2019, in which discussion of the NHS takes place, in addition to other issues such as food standards. Although the document does not confirm what position the UK might seek to adopt in any future trade talks with the US.

The source of the heavily redacted version of the document appears to be a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by campaigning organisation, Global Justice Now — which told Vice it made an FOI request to the UK’s Department for International Trade around 18 months ago.

The group said it was subsequently emailed a fully unredacted version of the document by an unknown source which also appears to have sent the data directly to the Labour party. So while the influence operation looks to have originated on Reddit, the agents behind it seem to have resorted to more direct means of data dissemination in order for the leak to gain the required attention to become an election-influencing issue.

Experts in online influence operations had already suggested similarities between the trade talks leak and an earlier Russian operation, dubbed Secondary Infektion, which involved the leak of fake documents on multiple online platforms. Facebook identified and took down that operation in May.

In a report analysing the most recent leak, social network mapping and analysis firm Graphika says the key question is how the trade document came to be disseminated online a few weeks before the election.

“The mysterious [Reddit] user seemingly originated the leak of a diplomatic document by posting it around online, just six weeks before the UK elections. This raises the question of how the user got hold of the document in the first place,” it writes. “This is the single most pressing question that arises from this report.”

Graphika’s analysis concludes that the manner of leaking and amplifying the trade talks data “closely resembles” the known Russian information operation, Secondary Infektion.

“The similarities to Secondary Infektion are not enough to provide conclusive attribution but are too close to be simply a coincidence. They could indicate a return of the actors behind Secondary Infektion or a sophisticated attempt by unknown actors to mimic it,” it adds.

Internet-enabled Russian influence operations that feature hacking and strategically timed data dumps of confidential/sensitive information, as well as the seeding and amplification of political disinformation which is intended to polarize, confuse and/or disengage voters, have become a regular feature of Western elections in recent years.

The most high profile example of Russian election interference remains the 2016 hack of documents and emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Democratic National Committee — which went on to be confirmed by US investigators as an operation by the country’s GRU intelligence agency.

In 2017 emails were also leaked from French president Emmanuel Macron’s campaign shortly before the election — although with apparently minimal impact in that case. (Attribution is also less clear-cut.)

Russian activity targeting UK elections and referendums remains a matter of intense interest and investigation — and had been raised publicly as a concern by former prime minister, Theresa May, in 2017.

Although her government failed to act on recommendations to strengthen UK election and data laws to respond to the risks posed by Internet-enabled interference. She also did nothing to investigate questions over the extent of foreign interference in the 2016 brexit referendum.

May was finally unseated by the ongoing political turmoil around brexit this summer, when Johnson took over as prime minister. But he has also turned a wilfully blind eye to the risks around foreign election interference — while fully availing himself of data-fuelled digital campaign methods whose ethics have been questioned by multiple UK oversight bodies.

A report into Russian interference in UK politics which was compiled by the UK’s intelligence and security parliamentary committee — and had been due to be published ahead of the general election — was also personally blocked from publication by the prime minister.

Voters won’t now get to see that information until after the election. Or, well, barring another strategic leak…

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Laurel Bowden of VC firm 83North on the European deep tech and startup ecosystems

London and Tel Aviv based VC firm 83North has closed out its fifth fund at $300 million, as we reported earlier. It last raised a $250 million fund in 2017 and expects to continue the same investment mix, while tracking developments in emerging areas like healthcare AI and autonomous vehicles.

In a conversation with general partner Laurel Bowden, the veteran investor shared a few further thoughts with Extra Crunch — talking about the tech scene in Europe vs Israel, what the firm looks for in a team and tips on scaling globally.

83North closes $300M fifth fund focused on Europe, Israel

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

TechCrunch: Is Europe starting to catch up to Israel when it comes to deep tech startups?

Laurel Bowden: We clearly think we have in our portfolio some deep tech. And in other VC portfolios too — there’s clearly some deep tech [coming out of Europe]. And then on the reverse side you’ve seen more consumer-related stuff coming out of Israel. But still if you take a blanket look, we see more data infrastructure, security, storage coming out of Israel than we see in Europe — that’s for sure.

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UK watchdog eyeing PM Boris Johnson’s Facebook ads data grab

The online campaigning activities of the UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, have already caught the eye of the country’s data protection watchdog.

Responding to concerns about the scope of data processing set out in the Conservative Party’s Privacy Policy being flagged to it by a Twitter user, the Information Commissioner’s Office replied that: “This is something we are aware of and we are making enquiries.”

The Privacy Policy is currently being attached to an online call to action that ask Brits to tell the party what the most “important issue” to them and their family is, alongside submitting their personal data.

Anyone sending their contact details to the party is also asked to pick from a pre-populated list of 18 issues the three most important to them. The list runs the gamut from the National Health Service to brexit, terrorism, the environment, housing, racism and animal welfare, to name a few. The online form also asks responders to select from a list how they voted at the last General Election — to help make the results “representative”. A final question asks which party they would vote for if a General Election were called today.

Speculation is rife in the UK right now that Johnson, who only became PM two weeks ago, is already preparing for a general election. His minority government has been reduced to a majority of just one MP after the party lost a by-election to the Liberal Democrats last week, even as an October 31 brexit-related deadline fast approaches.

People who submit their personal data to the Conservative’s online survey are also asked to share it with friends with “strong views about the issues”, via social sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter or email.

“By clicking Submit, I agree to the Conservative Party using the information I provide to keep me updated via email, online advertisements and direct mail about the Party’s campaigns and opportunities to get involved,” runs a note under the initial ‘submit — and see more’ button, which also links to the Privacy Policy “for more information”.

If you click through to the Privacy Policy will find a laundry list of examples of types of data the party says it may collect about you — including what it describes as “opinions on topical issues”; “family connections”; “IP address, cookies and other technical information that you may share when you interact with our website”; and “commercially available data – such as consumer, lifestyle, household and behavioural data”.

“We may also collect special categories of information such as: Political Opinions; Voting intentions; Racial or ethnic origin; Religious views,” it further notes, and it goes on to claim its legal basis for processing this type of sensitive data is for supporting and promoting “democratic engagement and our legitimate interest to understand the electorate and identify Conservative supporters”.

Third party sources for acquiring data to feed its political campaigning activity listed in the policy include “social media platforms, where you have made the information public, or you have made the information available in a social media forum run by the Party” and “commercial organisations”, as well as “publicly accessible sources or other public records”.

“We collect data with the intention of using it primarily for political activities,” the policy adds, without specifying examples of what else people’s data might be used for.

It goes on to state that harvested personal data will be combined with other sources of data (including commercially available data) to profile voters — and “make a prediction about your lifestyle and habits”.

This processing will in turn be used to determine whether or not to send a voter campaign materials and, if so, to tailor the messages contained within it. 

In a nutshell this is describing social media microtargeting, such as Facebook ads, but for political purposes; a still unregulated practice that the UK’s information commissioner warned a year ago risks undermining trust in democracy.

Last year Elizabeth Denham went so far as to call for an ‘ethical pause’ in the use of microtargeting tools for political campaigning purposes. But, a quick glance at Facebook’s Ad Library Archive — which it launched in response to concerns about the lack of transparency around political ads on its platform, saying it will imprints of ads sent by political parties for up to seven years — the polar opposite has happened.

Since last year’s warning about democratic processes being undermined by big data mining social media platforms, the ICO has also warned that behavioral ad targeting does not comply with European privacy law. (Though it said it will give the industry time to amend its practices rather than step in to protect people’s rights right now.)

Denham has also been calling for a code of conduct to ensure voters understand how and why they’re being targeted with customized political messages, telling a parliamentary committee enquiry investigating online disinformation early last year that the use of such tools “may have got ahead of where the law is” — and that the chain of entities involved in passing around voters’ data for the purposes of profiling is “much too opaque”.

“I think it might be time for a code of conduct so that everybody is on a level playing field and knows what the rules are,” she said in March 2018, adding that the use of analytics and algorithms to make decisions about the microtargeting of voters “might not have transparency and the law behind them.”

The DCMS later urged government to fast-track changes to electoral law to reflect the use of powerful new voter targeting technologies — including calling for a total ban on microtargeting political ads at so-called ‘lookalike’ audiences online.

The government, then led by Theresa May, gave little heed to the committee’s recommendations.

And from the moment he arrived in Number 10 Downing Street last month, after winning a leadership vote of the Conservative Party’s membership, new prime minister Johnson began running scores of Facebook ads to test voter opinion.

Sky News reported that the Conservative Party ran 280 ads on Facebook platforms on the PM’s first full day in office. At the time of writing the party is still ploughing money into Facebook ads, per Facebook’s Ad Library Archive — shelling out £25,270 in the past seven days alone to run 2,464 ads, per Facebook’s Ad Library Report, which makes it by far the biggest UK advertiser by spend for the period.

Screenshot 2019 08 05 at 16.45.48

The Tories’ latest crop of Facebook ads contain another call to action — this time regarding a Johnson pledge to put 20,000 more police officers on the streets. Any Facebook users who clicks the embedded link is redirected to a Conservative Party webpage described as a ‘New police locator’, which informs them: “We’re recruiting 20,000 new police officers, starting right now. Want to see more police in your area? Put your postcode in to let Boris know.”

But anyone who inputs their personal data into this online form will also be letting the Conservatives know a lot more about them than just that they want more police on their local beat. In small print the website notes that those clicking submit are also agreeing to the party processing their data for its full suite of campaign purposes — as contained in the expansive terms of its Privacy Policy mentioned above.

So, basically, it’s another data grab…

Screenshot 2019 08 05 at 16.51.12

Political microtargeting was of course core to the online modus operandi of the disgraced political data firm, Cambridge Analytica, which infamously paid an app developer to harvest the personal data of millions of Facebook users back in 2014 without their knowledge or consent — in that case using a quiz app wrapper and Facebook’s lack of any enforcement of its platform terms to grab data on millions of voters.

Cambridge Analytica paid data scientists to turn this cache of social media signals into psychological profiles which they matched to public voter register lists — to try to identify the most persuadable voters in key US swing states and bombard them with political messaging on behalf of their client, Donald Trump.

Much like the Conservative Party is doing, Cambridge Analytica sourced data from commercial partners — in its case claiming to have licensed millions of data points from data broker giants such as Acxiom, Experian, Infogroup. (The Conservatives’ privacy policy does not specify which brokers it pays to acquire voter data.)

Aside from data, what’s key to this type of digital political campaigning is the ability, afforded by Facebook’s ad platform, for advertisers to target messages at what are referred to as ‘lookalike audience’ — and do so cheaply and at vast scale. Essentially, Facebook provides its own pervasive surveillance of the 2.2BN+ users on its platforms as a commercial service, letting advertisers pay to identify and target other people with a similar social media usage profile to those whose contact details they already hold, by uploading their details to Facebook.

This means a political party can data-mine its own supporter base to identify the messages that resonant best with different groups within that base, and then flip all that profiling around — using Facebook to dart ads at people who may never in their life have clicked ‘Submit — and see more‘ on a Tory webpage but who happen to share a similar social media profile to others in the party’s target database.

Facebook users currently have no way of blocking being targeted by political advertisers on Facebook, nor indeed no way to generally switch off microtargeted ads which use personal data to select marketing messages.

That’s the core ethical concern in play when Denham talks about the vital need for voters in a democracy to have transparency and control over what’s done with their personal data. “Without a high level of transparency – and therefore trust amongst citizens that their data is being used appropriately – we are at risk of developing a system of voter surveillance by default,” she warned last year.

However the Conservative Party’s privacy policy sidesteps any concerns about its use of microtargeting, with the breeze claim that: “We have determined that this kind of automation and profiling does not create legal or significant effects for you. Nor does it affect the legal rights that you have over your data.”

The software the party is using for online campaigning appears to be NationBuilder: A campaign management software developed in the US a decade ago — which has also been used by the Trump campaign and by both sides of the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign (to name a few of its many clients).

Its privacy policy shares the same format and much of the same language as one used by the Scottish National Party’s yes campaign during Scotland’s independence reference, for instance. (The SNP was an early user of NationBuilder to link social media campaigning to a new web platform in 2011, before going on to secure a majority in the Scottish parliament.)

So the Conservatives are by no means the only UK political entity to be dipping their hands in the cookie jar of social media data. Although they are the governing party right now.

Indeed, a report by the ICO last fall essentially called out all UK political parties for misusing people’s data.

Issues “of particular concern” the regulator raised in that report were:

  • the purchasing of marketing lists and lifestyle information from data brokers without sufficient due diligence around those brokers and the degree to which the data has been properly gathered and consented to;
  • a lack of fair processing information;
  • the use of third-party data analytics companies with insufficient checks that those companies have obtained correct consents for use of data for that purpose;
  • assuming ethnicity and/or age and combining this with electoral data sets they hold, raising concerns about data accuracy;
  • the provision of contact lists of members to social media companies without appropriate fair processing information and collation of social media with membership lists without adequate privacy assessments

The ICO issued formal warnings to 11 political parties at that time, including warning the Conservative Party about its use of people’s data.

The regulator also said it would commence audits of all 11 parties starting in January. It’s not clear how far along it’s got with that process. We’ve reached out to it with questions.

Last year the Conservative Party quietly discontinued use of a different digital campaign tool for activists, which it had licensed from a US-based add developer called uCampaign. That tool had also been used in US by Republican campaigns including Trump’s.

Campaign tool supplied to UK’s governing party by Trump-Pence app dev quietly taken out of service — thanks to GDPR

As we reported last year the Conservative Campaigner app, which was intended for use by party activists, linked to the developer’s own privacy policy — which included clauses granting uCampaign very liberal rights to share app users’ data, with “other organizations, groups, causes, campaigns, political organizations, and our clients that we believe have similar viewpoints, principles or objectives as us”.

Any users of the app who uploaded their phone’s address book were also handing their friends’ data straight to uCampaign to also do as it wished. A few months late, after the Conservative Campaigner app vanished from apps stores, a note was put up online claiming the company was no longer supporting clients in Europe.

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Freshly elected as UK’s next PM, Boris Johnson pledges full fiber broadband bonanza

Get ready for a British Trump: The UK will shortly have a new prime minister after the Conservative Party membership overwhelmingly voted to elect Boris Johnson as their new party leader, passing over his sole rival for the post, Jeremy Hunt.

Johnson received 92,135 votes, a full 45,497 more than Hunt.

He replaces Theresa May who announced she would step down in May after failing to achieve backing from parliament for her EU withdrawal deal — the second PM to be topped by Brexit in just under three years.

Whether Johnson can outlast even May’s brief tenure very much remains to be seen.

The former journalist and ex major of London has made a political success story of clowning around in public, cracking often self-depreciating jokes which encourage a perception of joviality and good humor, while simultaneously pressing his personal ambition behind the scenes and ruthlessly gunning for the highest office in the land — which was his motivation for switching to back Brexit in the first place.

The clown mask enables the political manoeuvering, as it were.

How the usual Johnson ‘circus’ will translate into firm policy positions is something of an open question at this stage, though early indications suggest he’s intending an infrastructure spending spree — to feed the popularity contest that has, after all, swept him to power.

Albeit how any such public spending bonanza will be funded is anyone’s guess at this stage. One of his few leadership pledges was an income tax cut for high earners — which would rather shrink the Treasury’s coffers by billions than expand it…

He has also implied he might withhold the UK’s exit payment to the EU — a multi-billion sum that’s intended to cover the country’s existing commitments as it leaves the bloc.

But if you’re simultaneously hoping to ink a trade deal with the very same neighbors you’re denying payment to that would seem a rather self-defeating and short-term strategy, both at home and abroad.

Giving his Conservative leadership acceptance speech this afternoon there was little of policy substance on show from Johnson. In his usual showman style, he preferred to stroke sitting Tory egos with a confection of positive projections and feel-good sentiments — principally about ‘getting brexit done’ (though nothing on how he will actually get it done).

He also dropped a few enthusiastic words vis-a-vis infrastructure, education and broadband — going longest on the latter by claiming that “fantastic full fiber broadband” would be “sprouting in every household”, before falling back on the safe and fuzzy ground of non-specific cheerleading of party and country.

On the surface the fiber broadband pledge looks like a rinse and repeat of an existing government policy — announced in last year’s digital strategy — to put all UK households in reach of fibre to the premise (FTTP) by 2033.

Though the government had not committed to paying the estimated £30BN to fund a full rollout, focusing on regulatory tweaks to encourage the market to cover the majority of the country, targeting public cash at the tricky last fifth.

But penning his regular column in the Telegraph newspaper last month, Johnson dubbed the 2033 target “laughably unambitious“, writing that: “If we want to unite our country and our society, we should commit now to delivering full fibre to every home in the land not in the mid 2030s — but in five years at the outside.”

So a Boris Johnson-led Tory government’s full fibre target is, seemingly, being brought forward to 2025.

If he really intends for the public purse to bankroll universal FTTP within a five year time-scale it would certainly be transformative — with many rural regions still lagging urban Britain’s high speed access to Internet services, as a result of the business case for a rapid upgrade of these digital slow-lanes not stacking up.

Johnson is also right to identify the digital divide as increasingly problematic given the onward march of commercial technology. (And, indeed, increasingly problematic as more government services get pushed online — which risks widening the inequality gap, though he didn’t really dwell on that.)

However there’s no doubt that pressing fast forward on universal FTTP will entail a much larger bill than the government had budgeted for.

Last year’s Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review suggested an additional £3BN to £5BN in public funding would be needed to support commercial investment in the final ~10% of areas that would otherwise be overlooked, per the 2033 timeline. It’s anyone’s guess how much more public money will be needed to accelerate the whole broadband project to meet a universal access goal almost a decade quicker, per Johnson’s plan.

Though, as noted above, a full rollout has been costed at £30BN.

Assuming that ceiling wouldn’t need to be raised as a result of increased deployment velocity, the cost of Johnson’s faster fiber ambition could therefore scale spending on this particular infrastructure project 6x more than current government plans. Hence the pressing question of where the public funds will come from?

How much the Johnson push for ‘rural first’ fibre might cost UK consumers is another matter.

He talks in his newspaper column about “stimulating the private sector to get it done”. And if that stimulation includes government agreeing to industry demands to lengthen or even hyper-extend market review periods in order to encourage the private sector to get digging and fast, then it could result in UK consumers being on the hook twice: First by shelling out to lay the fiber in the first place, and then getting price-gouged to use the fibre-powered Internet services they’ve helped pay for.

Of course ‘fiber for all’ makes a great soundbite for PM Johnson to make a play for hearts and minds.

But, as with everything soon set to cross his desk, the devil is in the detail. And, well, clowns aren’t renowned for their grasp of those kinds of things.

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Huawei 5G indecision is hitting UK’s relations abroad, warns committee

The UK’s next prime minister must prioritize a decision on whether or not to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to be a 5G supplier, a parliamentary committee has urged — warning that the country’s international relations are being “seriously damaged” by ongoing delay.

In a statement on 5G suppliers, the Intelligence and Security committee (ISC) writes that the government must take a decision “as a matter of urgency”.

Earlier this week another parliamentary committee, which focuses on science and technology, concluded there is no technical reason to exclude Huawei as a 5G supplier, despite security concerns attached to the company’s ties to the Chinese state, though it did recommend it be excluded from core 5G supply.

The delay in the UK settling on a 5G supplier policy can be linked not only to the complexities of trying to weight and balance security considers with geopolitical pressures but also ongoing turmoil in domestic politics, following the 2016 EU referendum Brexit vote — which continues to suck most of the political oxygen out of Westminster. (And will very soon have despatched two UK prime ministers in three years.)

Outgoing PM Theresa May, whose successor is due to be selected by a vote by Conservative Party members next week, appeared to be leaning towards giving Huawei an amber light earlier this year.

A leak to the press from a National Security Council meeting back in April suggested Huawei would be allowed to provide kit but only for non-core parts of 5G networks — raising questions about how core and non-core are delineated in the next-gen networks.

The leak led to the sacking by May of the then defense minister, Gavin Williamson, after an investigation into confidential information being passed to the media in which she said she had lost confidence in him.

The publication of a government Telecoms Supply Chain Review, whose terms of reference were published last fall, has also been delayed — leading to carriers to press the government for greater clarity last month.

But with May herself now on the way out, having agreed to step down as PM back in May, the decision on 5G supply is on hold. It will be down to either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, the two remaining contenders to take over from May, to choose whether or not to let the Chinese tech giant supply UK 5G networks.

Though whichever of the men wins the vote they will arrive in the top job needing to give their full attention to finding a way out of the Brexit morass — in a mere three months, with an October 31 extension deadline looming. So there’s a risk that 5G may not seem as urgent an issue as Brexit, and a decision once again be kicked back.

In its statement on 5G supply, the ISC backs the view expressed by the public-facing branch of the UK’s intelligence service that network security is not dependent on any one supplier being excluded from building it — writing that: “The National Cyber Security Centre… has been clear that the security of the UK’s telecommunications network is not about one company or one country: the ‘flag of origin’ for telecommunications equipment is not the critical element in determining cyber security.”

The committee argues that “some parts of the network will require greater protection” — writing that “critical functions cannot be put at risk” but also that there are “less sensitive functions where more risk can be carried”, without specifying what the latter functions might be.

“It is this distinction — between the sensitivity of the functions — that must determine security, rather than where in the network those functions are located: notions of ‘core’ and ‘edge’ ate therefore misleading in this context,” it adds. “We should therefore be thinking of different levels of security, rather than a one size fits all approach, within a network that has been built to be resilient to attack, such that no single action could disable the system.”

The committee’s statement also backs the view that the best way to achieve network resilience is to support diversity in the supply chain — i.e. by supporting more competition.

But at the same time it emphasizes that the 5G supply decision “cannot be viewed solely through a technical lens — because it is not simply a decision about telecommunications equipment”.

“This is a geostrategic decision, the ramifications of which may be felt for decades to come,” it warns, raising concerns about the perceptions of UK intelligence sharing partners by emphasizing the need for those allies to trust the decisions the government makes.

It also couches a UK decision to give Huawei access a risk by suggesting it could be viewed externally as an endorsement of the company, thereby encouraging other countries to follow suit — without them paying the full and necessary attention to the security piece.

“The UK is a world leader in cyber security: therefore if we allow Huawei into our 5G network we must be careful that that is not seen as an endorsement for others to follow. Such a decision can only happen where the network itself will be constructed securely and with stringent regulation,” it writes.

The committee’s statement goes on to raise as a matter of concern the UK’s general reliance on China as a technology supplier.

“One of the lessons the UK Government must learn from the current debate over 5G is that with the technology sector now monopolised by such a few key players, we are over-reliant on Chinese technology — and we are not alone in this, this is a global issue. We need to consider how we can create greater diversity in the market. This will require us to take a long term view — but we need to start now,” it warns.

It ends by reiterating that the debate about 5G supply has been “unnecessarily protracted”, pressing the next UK prime minister to get on and take a decision “so that all concerned can move forward”

Posted on

Huawei 5G indecision is hitting UK’s relations abroad, warns committee

The UK’s next prime minister must prioritize a decision on whether or not to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to be a 5G supplier, a parliamentary committee has urged — warning that the country’s international relations are being “seriously damaged” by ongoing delay.

In a statement on 5G suppliers, the Intelligence and Security committee (ISC) writes that the government must take a decision “as a matter of urgency”.

Earlier this week another parliamentary committee, which focuses on science and technology, concluded there is no technical reason to exclude Huawei as a 5G supplier, despite security concerns attached to the company’s ties to the Chinese state, though it did recommend it be excluded from core 5G supply.

The delay in the UK settling on a 5G supplier policy can be linked not only to the complexities of trying to weight and balance security considers with geopolitical pressures but also ongoing turmoil in domestic politics, following the 2016 EU referendum Brexit vote — which continues to suck most of the political oxygen out of Westminster. (And will very soon have despatched two UK prime ministers in three years.)

Outgoing PM Theresa May, whose successor is due to be selected by a vote by Conservative Party members next week, appeared to be leaning towards giving Huawei an amber light earlier this year.

A leak to the press from a National Security Council meeting back in April suggested Huawei would be allowed to provide kit but only for non-core parts of 5G networks — raising questions about how core and non-core are delineated in the next-gen networks.

The leak led to the sacking by May of the then defense minister, Gavin Williamson, after an investigation into confidential information being passed to the media in which she said she had lost confidence in him.

The publication of a government Telecoms Supply Chain Review, whose terms of reference were published last fall, has also been delayed — leading to carriers to press the government for greater clarity last month.

But with May herself now on the way out, having agreed to step down as PM back in May, the decision on 5G supply is on hold. It will be down to either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, the two remaining contenders to take over from May, to choose whether or not to let the Chinese tech giant supply UK 5G networks.

Though whichever of the men wins the vote they will arrive in the top job needing to give their full attention to finding a way out of the Brexit morass — in a mere three months, with an October 31 extension deadline looming. So there’s a risk that 5G may not seem as urgent an issue as Brexit, and a decision once again be kicked back.

In its statement on 5G supply, the ISC backs the view expressed by the public-facing branch of the UK’s intelligence service that network security is not dependent on any one supplier being excluded from building it — writing that: “The National Cyber Security Centre… has been clear that the security of the UK’s telecommunications network is not about one company or one country: the ‘flag of origin’ for telecommunications equipment is not the critical element in determining cyber security.”

The committee argues that “some parts of the network will require greater protection” — writing that “critical functions cannot be put at risk” but also that there are “less sensitive functions where more risk can be carried”, without specifying what the latter functions might be.

“It is this distinction — between the sensitivity of the functions — that must determine security, rather than where in the network those functions are located: notions of ‘core’ and ‘edge’ ate therefore misleading in this context,” it adds. “We should therefore be thinking of different levels of security, rather than a one size fits all approach, within a network that has been built to be resilient to attack, such that no single action could disable the system.”

The committee’s statement also backs the view that the best way to achieve network resilience is to support diversity in the supply chain — i.e. by supporting more competition.

But at the same time it emphasizes that the 5G supply decision “cannot be viewed solely through a technical lens — because it is not simply a decision about telecommunications equipment”.

“This is a geostrategic decision, the ramifications of which may be felt for decades to come,” it warns, raising concerns about the perceptions of UK intelligence sharing partners by emphasizing the need for those allies to trust the decisions the government makes.

It also couches a UK decision to give Huawei access a risk by suggesting it could be viewed externally as an endorsement of the company, thereby encouraging other countries to follow suit — without them paying the full and necessary attention to the security piece.

“The UK is a world leader in cyber security: therefore if we allow Huawei into our 5G network we must be careful that that is not seen as an endorsement for others to follow. Such a decision can only happen where the network itself will be constructed securely and with stringent regulation,” it writes.

The committee’s statement goes on to raise as a matter of concern the UK’s general reliance on China as a technology supplier.

“One of the lessons the UK Government must learn from the current debate over 5G is that with the technology sector now monopolised by such a few key players, we are over-reliant on Chinese technology — and we are not alone in this, this is a global issue. We need to consider how we can create greater diversity in the market. This will require us to take a long term view — but we need to start now,” it warns.

It ends by reiterating that the debate about 5G supply has been “unnecessarily protracted”, pressing the next UK prime minister to get on and take a decision “so that all concerned can move forward”

Posted on

Negative? How a Navy veteran refused to accept a ‘no’ to his battery invention

Decades ago, a young naval engineer on a British nuclear submarine started taking an interest in the electric batteries helping to run his vessel. Silently running under the frozen polar ice-cap during the Cold War, little did this sub-mariner know that, in the 21st Century, batteries would become one of the biggest single sectors in technology. Even the planet. But his curiosity stayed with him, and almost 20 years ago he decided to pursue that dream, borne many years beneath the waves.

The journey for Trevor Jackson started, as many things do in tech, with research. He’d become fascinated by the experiments done, not with lithium batteries, which had come to dominate the battery industry, but with so-called ‘Aluminum-air’ batteries.

Technically described at “(Al)/air” batteries, these are the – almost – untold story from the battery world. For starters, an Aluminum-air battery system can generate enough energy and power for driving ranges and acceleration similar to gasoline powered cars.

Sometimes known as ‘Metal-Air’ batteries, these have been successfully used in ‘off-grid’ applications for many years, just as batteries powering army radios. The most attractive metal in this type of battery is Aluminum because it is the most common metal on Earth and has one of the highest energy densities.

Think of an air-breathing battery which uses Aluminum as a ‘fuel’. That means it can provide vehicle power with energy originating from clean sources (hydro, geothermal, nuclear etc). These are the power sources for most Aluminum smelters all over the world. The only waste product is Aluminum Hydroxide and this can be returned to the smelter as the feedstock for – guess what? – making more Aluminum! This cycle is therefore highly sustainable and separate from the oil industry. You could even recycle aluminum tin cans and use them to make batteries.

Imagine that – a power source separate from the highly polluting oil industry.

But hardly anyone was using them in mainstream applications. Why?

trevor battery 2

Aluminum-air batteries had been around for a while. But the problem with a battery which generated electricity by ‘eating’ Aluminum was that it was simply not efficient. The electrolyte used just didn’t work well.

This was important. An electrolyte is a chemical medium inside a battery that allows the flow of electrical charge between the cathode and anode. When a device is connected to a battery — a light bulb or an electric circuit — chemical reactions occur on the electrodes that create a flow of electrical energy to the device.

When an Aluminum-Air battery starts to run, a chemical reaction produces a ‘gel’ by-product which can gradually block the airways into the cell. It seemed like an intractable problem for researchers to deal with.

But after a lot of experimentation, in 2001, Jackson developed what he believed to be a revolutionary kind of electrolyte for Aluminum-air batteries which had the potential to remove the barriers to commercialization. His specially-developed electrolyte did not produce the hated gel that would destroy the efficiency of an Aluminum-air battery. It seemed like a game-changer.

The breakthrough – if proven – had huge potential. The energy density of his battery was about 8 times that of a Lithium-Ion battery. He was incredibly excited. Then he tried to tell politicians…

trevor battery 1

Despite a detailed demonstration of a working battery to Lord ‘Jim’ Knight in 2001, followed by email correspondence and a promise to ‘pass it onto Tony (Blair)’ there was no interest from the UK Government.

And Jackson faced bureaucratic hurdles. The UK government’s official innovation body, Innovate UK, emphasized lithium battery technology, not Aluminum-Air batteries.

He was struggling to convince public and private investors to back him, such was the hold the “lithium battery lobby” had over the sector.

This emphasis on Lithium batteries over anything else meant UK the government was effectively leaving on the table a technology which could revolutionize electrical storage and mobility and even contribute to the fight against carbon emission and move the UK towards its pollution-reduction goals.

Disappointed in the UK, Jackson upped sticks and found better backing in France where he moved his R&D in 2005.

Finally, in 2007, the potential of Jackson’s invention was confirmed independently in France at the Polytech Nantes institution. Its advantages over Lithium Ion batteries were (and still are) increased cell voltage. They used ordinary aluminum, would create very little pollution and had a steady, long-duration power output.

As a result, in 2007 the French Government formally endorsed the technology as ‘strategic and in the national interest of France’.

At this point, the UK’s Foreign Office suddenly woke up and took notice.

It promised Jackson that the UKTI would deliver ‘300%’ effort in launching the technology in the UK if it was ‘repatriated’ back to the UK.

However, in 2009, the UK’s Technology Strategy Board refused to back the technology, citing that the Automotive Council Technology Road Map ‘excluded this type of battery’. Even though the Carbon Trust agreed that it did indeed constitute a ‘credible CO2-reduction technology’ it refused to assist Jackson further.

Meanwhile, other governments were more enthusiastic about exploring metal-air batteries.

The Israeli Government, for instance, directly invested in Phinergy, a startup working on very similar Aluminum-Air technology. Here’s an, admittedly corporate, video which actually shows the advantages of metal-air batteries in electric cars:

The Russian Aluminum company RUSAL developed a CO2-free smelting process, meaning they could, in theory, make an Aluminum-air battery with a CO2-free process.

Jackson tried to tell the UK government they were making a mistake. Appearing before the Parliamentary Select Committee for business-energy and industrial strategy, he described how the UK had created a bias towards lithium-Ion technology which had led to a battery-tech ecosystem which was funding Lithium-Ion research to the tune of billions of pounds. In 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May further backed the lithium-ion industry.

Jackson (below) refused to take no for an answer.

PHOTO 2019 06 18 19 35 52

He applied to UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. But in 2017 they replied with a ‘no-fund’ decision which dismissed the technology, even though DSTL had an actual programme of its own on Aluminum-Air technology, dedicated to finding a better electrolyte, at Southampton University.

Jackson turned to auto industry instead. He formed his company MAL (branded as “Metalectrique“) in 2013 and used seed-funding to successfully test a long-range design of power pack in its laboratory facilities in Tavistock, UK.

Here he is on a regional BBC channel explaining the battery:

He worked closely with Lotus Engineering to design and develop long-range replacement power packs for the Nissan Leaf and the Mahindra Reva ‘G-Wiz’ electric cars. At the time, Nissan expressed a strong interest in this ‘Beyond Lithium Technology’ (their words) but they were already committed to fitting LiON batteries to the ‘Leaf’. Undeterred, Jackson concentrated on the G-Wiz and went on to produce full-size battery cells for testing and showed that Aluminum-Air technology was superior to any other existing technology.

And now this emphasis on Lithium-Ion is still holding back the industry.

The fact is that Lithium batteries now face considerable challenges. The technology development has peaked; unlike Aluminum, Lithium is not recyclable and Lithium battery supplies are not assured.

The advantages of Aluminum-Air technology are numerous. Without having to charge the battery, a car could simply swap the battery out in second, completely removing ‘charge time’. Most current charging points are rated at 50 kW which is roughly one-hundredth of that required to charge a Lithium battery in 5 minutes. Meanwhile, Hydrogen Fuel Cells would require a huge and expensive Hydrogen distribution infrastructure and a new Hydrogen generation system.

But Jackson has kept on pushing, convinced his technology can address both the power needs of the future, and the climate crisis.

Last May, he started getting much-needed recognition

The UK’s Advanced Propulsion Centre included the Metalectrique battery as part of its grant investment into 15 UK startups to take their technology to the next level as part of its Technology Developer Accelerator Programme (TDAP). The TDAP is part of a 10-year program to make UK a world-leader in low carbon propulsion technology.

The catch? These 15 companies have to share a paltry £1.1m in funding.

And as for Jackson? He’s still raising money for Metalectrique and spreading the word about the potential for Aluminum-air batteries to save the planet.

Heaven knows, at this point, it could use it.

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UK gives Huawei an amber light to supply 5G

The UK government will allow Huawei to be a supplier for some non-core parts of the country’s 5G networks, despite concerns that the involvement of the Chinese telecoms vendor could pose a risk to national security. But it will be excluded from core parts of the networks, according to reports in national press.

The news of prime minister Theresa May’s decision made during a meeting of the National Security Council yesterday was reported earlier by The Telegraph. The newspaper said multiple ministers raised concerns about her approach — including the Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary, International Trade Secretary, and International Development Secretary.

The FT reports that heavy constraints on Huawei’s involvement in U.K. 5G networks reflects the level of concern raised by ministers.

May’s decision to give an amber light to Huawei’s involvement in building next-gen 5G networks comes a month after a damning report by a U.K. oversight body set up to evaluate the Chinese company’s approach to security.

The fifth annual report by the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre Oversight Board blasted “serious and systematic defects” in its software engineering and cyber security competence.

Though the oversight board stopped short of calling for an outright ban — despite saying it could provide “only limited assurance that all risks to U.K. national security from Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s critical networks can be sufficiently mitigated long-term”.

But speaking at a cyber security conference in Brussels in February, Ciaran Martin, the CEO of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) expressed confidence UK authorities can mitigate any risk posed by Huawei.

The NCSC is part of the domestic GCHQ signals intelligence agency.

Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity advisor and research associate at the Center for Technology and Global Affairs at Oxford University, told TechCrunch he’s not surprised by the government’s decision to work with Huawei.

“It’s a message that was long expected,” he said. “U.K. officials have been carefully sending signals in the previous months. In a sense, this makes us closer to the end of the 5G drama.”

“With proper management most risk can be mitigated. It all depends on the strategic planning,” he added.

“I believe the level of [security] responsibility at telecoms will remain similar to today’s. The main message expected by telecoms is clarity to enable them to move on with infrastructure.”

The heaviest international pressure to exclude the Chinese vendor from next-gen 5G networks has been coming from the U.S. where president Trump has been leaning on key intelligence-sharing allies to act on espionage fears and shut Huawei out — with some success.

Last year Australia and New Zealand both announced bans on Chinese kit vendors citing national security fears.

But in Europe governments appear to be leaning in another direction: Towards managing and mitigating potential risks rather than shutting the door completely.

The European Commission has also eschewed pushing for a pan-EU ban — instead issuing recommendations encouraging Member States to step up individual and collective attention on network security to mitigate potential risks.

It has warned too — and conversely — of the risk of fragmentation to its flagship ‘digital single market’ project if Member State governments decide to slam doors on their own. So, at the pan-EU level, security considerations are very clearly being weighed against strategic commercial imperatives and technology priorities.

Equally, individual European governments appear to have little appetite to throw a spanner in the 5G works, given the risk of being left lagging as cellular connectivity evolves and transforms — an upgrade that’s expected to fuel and underpin developments in artificial intelligence and big data analysis, among other myriad and much hyped benefits.

In the UK’s case, national security concerns have been repeatedly brandished as justification for driving through domestic surveillance legislation so draconian that parts of it have later been unpicked by both UK and EU courts. Even if the same security concerns are here, where 5G networks are concerned, being deemed ‘manageable’ — rather than grounds for a similarly draconian approach to technology procurement.

It’s not clear at this stage how extensively Huawei will be involved in supplying and building U.K. 5G networks.

The NCSC sent us the following statement in response to questions:

National Security Council discussions are confidential. Decisions from those meetings are made and announced at the appropriate time through the established processes.

The security and resilience of the UK’s telecoms networks is of paramount importance.

As part of our plans to provide world class digital connectivity, including 5G, we have conducted an evidence based review of the supply chain to ensure a diverse and secure supply base, now and into the future. This is a thorough review into a complex area and will report with its conclusions in due course.

“How ‘non-core’ will be defined is anyone’s guess but it would have to be clearly defined and publicly communicated,” Olejnik also told us. “I would assume this refers to government and military networks, but what about safety communication or industrial systems, such as that of power plants or railroad? That’s why we should expect more clarity.”