Tories Attempt To Delete All Pre-2010 Speeches From The Internet

[kjw]

Oh, I can't for the life of me think why?

[White Craw]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24924185

The Conservative Party has deleted speeches and press releases published on its website between 2000 and the 2010 general election.

The archive has also been hidden from search engines.

It also prompted the Internet Archive to take down its copies of the pages, according to Computer Weekly - although some of those copies have since been re-instated.

A Conservative spokesman said: 'We are making sure our website keeps the Conservative Party at the forefront of political campaigning.

"These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide - how we are clearing up Labour's economic mess, taking the difficult decisions and standing up for hardworking people."

[R K]

They were years ago, like Michael Green and Corinne Stockheath

[tinker]

George Orwell — 'He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.'

It's pretty outrageous isn't it? Truth is fluid when no longer needed it is washed away.

Guido is on the case pointing to the British Library Archive.

They are all as bad. The difference might be between 'evil' and 'pure evil.'

[btl_hater]

"These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide - how we are clearing up Labour's economic mess, taking the difficult decisions and standing up for hardworking people."

Why the ****** do they keep peddling this line? You ain't doing jack shit you toff *****.

[wonderpup]

The most interesting thing about this story is that they seem to think they can edit the web- it implies their understanding of it is limited in a way I would not have suspected.

The material they are trying to delete must have quoted and reposted in multiple locations.

[zugzwang]

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/pre-election-pledges-tories-are-trying-wipe-internet

1. No cuts to front-line services

2. "We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT"

3. Cameron on child benefit: "I wouldn't means-test it"

4. NHS: "no more top-down reorganisations"

5. On Education Maintenance Allowances: "we don't have any plans to get rid of them"

6. Cameron on Sure Start: "Yes, we back Sure Start. It's a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this."

7. On the Future Jobs Fund: "no plans to change"

8. Cameron on green taxes: "[they] need to go up"

9. Osborne on bank bonuses: "totally unacceptable"

10. And finally...Cameron on transparency in 2007

"It's clear to me that political leaders will have to learn to let go. Let go of the information that we've guarded so jealously."

Speech at Google Zeitgeist Conference, 11 October 2007

[zugzwang]

The most interesting thing about this story is that they seem to think they can edit the web- it implies their understanding of it is limited in a way I would not have suspected.

The material they are trying to delete must have quoted and reposted in multiple locations.

They're not the sharpest tools in the woodshed.

[Parkwell]

The lack of a link was a little too ironic for me.

http://news.sky.com/story/1168043/tories-try-to-remove-speeches-from-internet

If anyone out there needed a reason not to vote for these lot, this is enough for me. No integrity.

[Bradbury Robinson]

OK, two betting markets now open.

1) How long before they backtrack?

2) Who will they blame?

I'm going for Monday and a junior web developer.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Bradbury Robinson

[DeepLurker]

OK, two betting markets now open.

1) How long before they backtrack?

2) Who will they blame?

I'm going for Monday and a junior web developer.

I'm going for junior web developer (probably "someone's nephew who's good at this web stuff") and Hanlon's Razor.

I mean - these speeches will be recorded in various formats in various places (e.g. newspapers stored at the British Library!) so I doubt that even the tories are so techno-dumb that they thought they could erase all copies all them with a simple robots.txt directive.

[R K]

OK, two betting markets now open.

1) How long before they backtrack?

2) Who will they blame?

I'm going for Monday and a junior web developer.

I think Michael Green has already blamed it on some lackey in IT who was out of the office when the call to explain came in.

That's what happens when the ruling elite is run like a dodgy internet marketing scam.

The spokesman would not say on whose authority the scrubbing had been done. He said it was handled by the party's digital team.

http://www.computerw...nternet-history

Mark Ballard's original Computer Weekly article

The Conservative Party HQ was unavailable for comment. A spokesman said he had referred the matter to a "website guy", who was out of the office.

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2013/11/conservatives-erase-internet-h.html

Edited November 13, 2013 by R K

[Dorkins]

Pretty sure I can manage without ten years' worth of Conservative Party propaganda.

[Balloonist]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/13/sorry_the_tories_didnt_make_the_internet_disappear/

[billybong]

Apart from the reneged on promises it's because they offered so little opposition during NuLabour's time.

It doesn't tie in with the current theme of they're trying to sort out ‘the mess we inherited’ . They didn't try then (and were even complicit) and they're making a mess of it now.

Edited November 14, 2013 by billybong

[jammo]

Going slightly off topic, but I was thinking about how we can make a lasting memory of our achievements should a new dark age come. What we have as example from the past is basically monumental stone built structures with carvings/ cartouches. This seems to be the only viable way to store (what at the time is perceived as) invaluable information for the long term which survives not only societal breakdown, but the millennia it takes to build up again after a fall. But surely we can come up with a more concise method of storage which will survive the lull? Anyway, back to this topic, my point is there is no point the tories worrying about deleting information since as time goes on, it's meaning and relevance dissolves unless it is truly great information. Because unless starved of information, only a fool would seek to look at the historical speeches of this government. Perhaps the f-wits have illusions of grandeur, it wouldn't surprise me. But if so they need locking up immediately as they are insane.

[billybong]

At least deleting the speeches will be adding to the sum of human knowledge.

[fluffy666]

They're not the sharpest tools in the woodshed.

Still, we can trust them go supervise GCHQ going through all your data and communications to look for anything incriminating,

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2013/11/conservatives-erase-internet-h.html

The Conservative Party has attempted to erase a 10-year backlog of speeches from the internet, including pledges for a new kind of transparent politics the prime minister and chancellor made when they were campaigning for election.

Prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne campaigned on a promise to democratise information held by those in power, so people could hold them to account. They wanted to use the internet transform politics.

But the Conservative Party has removed the archive from its public facing website, erasing records of speeches and press releases going back to the year 2000 and up until it was elected in May 2010.

It also struck the record of their past speeches off internet engines including Google, which had been a role model for Cameron and Osborne's "open source politics".

And it erased the official record of their speeches from the Internet Archive, the public record of the net - with an effect as alarming as sending Men in Black to strip history books from a public library and burn them in the car park.

Sometime after 5 October, when Computer Weekly last took a snapshot of a Conservative speech from the Internet Archive, the Tory speech and news archive was eradicated.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/13/cynical-tories-should-be-shamed-for-their-internet-trickery-4185614/

The Conservative Party is trying to delete its pre-2010 speeches from the internet, it has been reported.

It is about as outrageous a subversion of democracy as you can get.

That might sound a bit pompous. But it’s true. Democracy is about us voting people into power and then holding them to the promises they made. If they break those promises, they risk getting punished at the ballot box (as the Lib Dems will find out in 2015).

So imagine a party gets into government and then secretly makes it much, much harder to find out what they were saying beforehand. It’s sinister. It’s wrong. It’s completely undemocratic.

What the Tories have been doing, according to Computer Weekly, is getting a robot blocker on their website to politely ask search engines and even the Internet Archive to go away and stop storing old speeches.

They’re not denying it either. Here’s what a Conservative spokesman had to say:

We’re making sure our website keeps the Conservative party at the forefront of political campaigning. These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide – how we are clearing up Labour’s economic mess, taking the difficult decisions and standing up for hardworking people.

What this actually does, though, is make it much harder for the foot soldiers of politics to hold ministers to account.

Perhaps the Tories were persuaded this robot blocker was a good idea because they are in coalition, and so have had to be far more hypocritical in government than they might have been.

It's becoming more and more like 1984. Stalin was very adept at this type of historical erasure I do hope the Tories are taking notes from an expert.

[zugzwang]

At least deleting the speeches will be adding to the sum of human knowledge.

Brilliant.

[billybong]

Just to be clear.

It seems that they've deleted their speeches (or at least are making them inaccessible) on websites under their control? Such as Conservative*com etc.

Elsewhere on sites which they have no control over then any previously available speeches would still be available. They can "politely" ask for their deletion/removal but it's up to the site owner whether the speeches stay or not - so far and unless they change the law to make deletion/removal obligatory?

Edited November 14, 2013 by billybong

[billybong]

Brilliant.

Thank you zugzwang

[winkie]

Maybe they hope the elephants in the room will forget, or it didn't happen if they can no longer see it......

[feed]

They really are clueless.

I give it two weeks before people aligned to anonymous attack Conservative party sites, and start to post these documents drawing attention to how far from their pre-election promises they really are.

The one thing you absolutely never do if you’re trying to hide something, is try to delete it from the internet.

[Bruce Banner]

I was wondering why I couldn't find anything on Cameron and Osborne's references to the housing bubble. I distinctly remember both of them talking about it but can't find anything now.