The Times: Tech column - Google timesavers/911 scams/DVD pirates

By David Rowan

Some day soon, the human brain will evolve a direct link into Google's peerless search technology. In the meantime, here are six time-saving or otherwise useful new ways to Google your way around the Internet. Get to know them and you will understand why what began as a research project at Stanford University will probably go public in the next year with a multi-billion-dollar valuation.

Talk to it. Last week, the California company launched Google Labs (labs.google.com), a "technology playground" for testing its latest innovations. The highlight is its new voice search: you call its automated switchboard on 001-650-318 0165, say what you are looking for, and visit a given page for the results. From "Beckham" to "the Royal Opera House", it came up trumps for us.

Use it as a dictionary. Type a word or phrase into the new glossary finder (labs.google.com/glossary) and you will be given definitions of varying degrees of relevance, as well as synonyms. The early results are patchy, with technical terms faring best.

Read the news with it. Plenty of websites let you search newsfeeds for keywords. This one, at news.google.com, wins for speed and for the way it groups together related stories. But too many sources are American - and where on earth is The Times?

Use Internet Explorer more efficiently. Download the Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com) and, while viewing any Web page, you can search the database for other pages, images, newsgroups or news. The toolbar also disables many of those annoying "pop-up" browser windows. Translate foreign pages with it. Click on Language Tools from Google's home page and you can automatically translate selected text or whole Web pages from one European language to another. As ever, translation software has nothing on human beings, but you should be able to work out what a page is intending to say.

Chat with it. At groups.google.com, you can search current news-group postings, plus a 20-year archive of 700 million messages, and post your own thoughts. You can search messages by author and subject.

With such a strong culture of innovation, it is not surprising that Web giants from the BBC to Yahoo! are licensing Google's technology. Its long-term business model may still be unclear, and some are starting to question whether one company should have such dominance in its field. But whatever you are searching for, Google is an excellent place to start.

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Many of us heard from the Nigerian diplomat offering a share if we help to launder a £25 million "contract fee". Now meet Bradon Curtis, a US special forces commando currently on a covert mission in Afghanistan. "Last week," Bradon e-mails, "my group of four agents successfully overran a hard-drug processing enclave and recovered a booty cash sum of $36 million." Fortunately for us, Bradon has hidden the sum in a Kabul left-luggage office while seeking our help in exporting it. "Needless to say," Bradon continues, "we are willing to offer you an agreeable percentage of this funds." Thanks, Bradon, we admire your generosity, if not your grammar. We'll be passing your kind invitation to the fraud squad, but good luck in finding Osama.

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Here is bad news for Asian copyright pirates: Britain's criminal underworld has decided to go it alone. Now that DVD burners have fallen to just a couple of hundred pounds, the pirated Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones DVDs doing the rounds are more likely to have emanated from Hampshire than Hong Kong. Last week, trading standards officers in Farnborough raided a factory where 31 DVD burners were churning out thousands of copies. They seized goods worth £2 million, the biggest home-made haul since the days of VHS. Now you understand why the film industry is so jumpy about new technology, especially cheap digital recorders that anyone can pick up from their nearest electronics store.

(The Times, May 29 2002)

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Evening Standard: Matthew Freud and Angus Deayton

By David Rowan

AFTER 10 days fending off the media onslaught - 600 calls, according to office logs - a rare joke swept through Matthew Freud's Fitzrovia office last night: "Now that Stephen Byers has gone, it might be a good time to sneak out some more revelations about Angus..."

Even for London's notoriously manipulative PR king, the raucous laughter suggested a palpable relief that the convoy was finally moving on.

For ever since the News of the World exposed Angus Deayton as a cocaine-snorting philanderer, it has been Freud - Deayton's friend and "emergency" publicist - who has been straining to shape the message. All he has done, he claims, is make it easier for Deayton and his partner, the writer Lise Mayer, to cope with the intense public scrutiny about the presenter's "drugs romp" with a call-girl. But has his firefighter PR role, as a Daily Telegraph leader claimed, merely "ill-served" his friend through excessive spinning?

There is little doubt that Deayton benefited from coverage slanted towards his "incredible lovemaking", barely mentioning his long-term partner and young son. As "vice girl" Caroline Martin told the News of the World: "He may be 45, but he did things to me I only wish more men knew how to do. That made me groan for mercy."

Coincidentally, the Murdoch-owned paper's editor, Rebekah Wade, also knows Freud socially and - with Deayton - attended his wedding to Elisabeth Murdoch last year. Many in Fleet Street believe that a deal was struck between friends to suppress further damaging revelations in exchange for cooperation.

"The News of the World handled it as kindly as they could have done," says a PR source who has talked to key players this week. "It could have been a lot heavier, especially over the drugs involved." Freud insists that he learned of the paper's scoop only at 4pm on the Saturday, and so could not possibly have influenced its coverage. It is, he suggests," nonsense" to suggest a deal could be done to water down a genuine scoop.

The paper itself says it had "a classic sting", which resulted from an approach from Martin to its Manchester office several weeks ago that culminated in Deayton's entrapment. Freud then spent the following week updating the tabloids that "it's a bit frosty at home" and that "Lise's opinion of Angus is unprintable".

By last Sunday, he had persuaded Deayton to tell his story to the Sunday Mirror, and Mayer to talk at length to the Mail on Sunday. No money changed hands, and both interviews were sympathetic to Deayton, "a broken man oozing with guilt" whom Meyer described as "an absolute hero".

By common consent, Freud's strategy worked. "It was effective," admits rival publicist Max Clifford, who last week received a "matey" call from Freud alerting him to other possible approaches from those seeking to profit from revelations about Deayton. "He said,'If anyone phones up about Angus, could you mark my card?' I hadn't spoken to him for years."

Mark Borkowski, another celebrity PR, sees Freud's response as "just bloody good common sense", notably the use of rival tabloids in week two to ensure that the News of the World would need a major new angle to stretch the story to a third week.
"Matthew's great skill is he that he can talk, and has relationships with editors," Borkowski says. "They had Angus bang to rights - so he did a fantastic job to show he was good in bed."

His widespread influence makes it difficult to find colleagues or even rivals willing to speak on the record about Freud. Anonymously, they describe him as something of a bully: free with threats and manipulative,"too full of himself ", and "very clever but too big for his boots".

Freud himself does not enjoy being part of the story, dismissing pieces like this as perverse. But if Angus Deayton's career survives this very public humiliation, he will owe his old friend Matthew big time.

(Evening Standard, May 29 2002)

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The Observer: Chatham girl, the first Chavs

Goodbye Essex girl, hello Chatham girl. By David Rowan

You can spot them by the gold hula-hoop-sized earrings, the chunky clown medallions and the tribal cry of 'Naa wot a'meen?' as they sacrifice a week's dole money on glittery Moschino shoes or figure-hugging sweatpants.

It is lunchtime along Chatham High Street in Kent, and a wave of scrunchee-topped pineapple hairstyles ebbs from the burger stand towards any of 13 jewellery stores, their Diamonique dangling-ball earrings irresistibly luring Kent's answer to the Essex Girl.

Meet the Chatham Girls, known as 'Chavs', whose fashion sense and reputation for easy virtue have earned them a global following as worthy successors to their northern neighbours. For years, Essex Girls, typified by actress Denise van Outen, held the monopoly on short-skirted peroxide-blonde stereotypes, prompting questions in Parliament and essays by Germaine Greer.

But today the costume-jewellery crown has passed to their rivals from Chatham - young women, it is claimed, whose forebears were kicked out of Essex 'for being too tarty'.

Last week a cult website that exposed the phenomenon collapsed under the weight of international traffic, as curiosity about Medway's tackiest tribe spread from Brisbane to Baltimore. 'If I look at it positively, I suppose we'd been complaining for years that Medway and Chatham were never on the map,' reflects Bob Dimond, editor of the Medway Messenger. 'Well, the Chatham Girls phenomenon has made up for it big time.'

According to the official Chatham Girls website, a tribe member wears the largest possible number of gold necklaces to display huge gold charms such as clowns and flying dolphins. The bigger the clown and the more imitation precious stones it contains, the higher the Chatham Girl in the hierarchy.

'As earrings, they wear hoops big enough to put your foot through, and enough gold chains to set up a stall,' says Sirkka Huish, who sees them walking down the High Street. 'Look for gold shoes, gold skirts - they even give their kids gold blankets when every other baby does with wool. They start having them from the age of 12, little "mini-me's", all with piercings as early as possible.'

Chatham Girl has refined her own dialect of English. The local diet revolves around the 'buuurga' or, for those on a higher social plane, the 'chaaz buuurga'. Money is 'bar', anything good is 'sweet', and most sentences seem to end in 'innit'.

If Chatham Girl has a place of worship, it is the Goldrush jewellers, just along the High Street from the Gun Shop. 'They're a bit too thick to realise they're having the piss taken out of them,' reflects the owner, Jill Archer, who sells 6in earrings and nine-carat gold charms large enough to count as weight-training equipment.

So intertwined is jewellery and Chatham Girl culture that one Maidstone jewellers, Mr T, considered it a shrewd business move to sponsor the website www.geocities.com/chatam-girls.

Paul Godwin, of Chatham Council, condemned the website as 'offensive and sexist', and the local MP, Jonathan Shaw, blamed the phenomenon on 'obvious web heads who can't get girlfriends'.

Outside the Casino Rooms on Friday night, Sarah Rose, a store detective aged 20, does not seem too bothered by the slanders. She wears large hooped earrings, a heavy Nefertiti necklace charm, and scrunchee-capped hair. At first, she says, the accusations caused outrage, but local girls soon learnt to laugh. 'When you tell people you're from Chatham, people look at you as if to say, "Aha - you're one of those slags." I'm certainly not.'

(The Observer, May 26, 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Xbox Live/Child tracking/EU data retention

By David Rowan

WHEN Sega first launched its Internet-enabled Dreamcast console, it advertised itself as suitable for "up to 6 billion players". It was an over-optimistic hope. Online gaming attracted only a few million people. But things are different now.

With new consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo it has gone from being a cult pastime to mainstream industry. On Monday Microsoft announced Xbox Live, an online games service designed for its Xbox console. When it launches this summer, subscribers with fast Net connections will be able to compete online in an enclosed community of adventure that the company compares to Disneyland. Last week Nintendo released its plans for online gaming via the GameCube, requiring a £25 adapter and a monthly fee. And Sony plans to sell a £30 adapter to connect the PlayStation 2 to the Net for a service due to launch in August.

In the world of gaming, a world that earned Britain £1.6 billion last year, this is huge news. Since the Web arrived, online games such as Lineage and EverQuest have attracted up to 100,000 simultaneous players, their loyalties burnished through membership of thousands of "clans" and by making home-made digital films known as "machinima". But now the big boys are betting that multiplayer gaming will entice the entire family. Microsoft is investing $1 billion in its new service, hoping that enough of us will pay around £35 for a game's software, on top of the monthly subscription fee. You need not play to enjoy the benefits of the online gaming revolution. Eventually, every PC user may be grateful for the by-products. Sony, for example, has developed a webcam that negates the need for a mouse or joystick for online communication. You move your hand over a screen, and the camera - on display at the Barbican's GameOn exhibition - interprets the movements as commands. Still, it is a huge financial risk, and Bill Gates knows it. Sega, the pioneer, dropped its Sega.net online service long ago and it will be a while before the newcomers get close to making a profit. Nintendo is focusing on the US market rather than Europe, where it thinks poor broadband penetration makes an online service unviable. Sony is limiting itself to Japan. Britain is left behind again by its laughable progress towards the "broadband future".

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MISSING children are often in the news, so a California company is launching a product designed to play on parental worries. The Wherify GPS Personal Locator for Children is a digital watch that tracks them wherever they may be, using the global positioning satellite system. For about £300, plus an £18 monthly subscription, the system, initially just in the US, lets anxious parents monitor their children's movements via a website. It advises you to "choose a standard street map or custom aerial photo", then zoom in and assuage your fears. You can also phone the firm's HQ to check that the child has reached a pre-set destination. In these anxious times, the market for personal-location trackers is looking up - but do we really want to burden our children with the technology that tags paroled prisoners?

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Newspapers often warn of threats to our liberty. Here is another. Next Wednesday the European Parliament will vote on whether to force telephone companies and Internet service-providers to monitor e-mails and phone data - and to store the information for years, just in case the authorities ever demand to see it. Unless MEPs vote to throw out this proposal, it could be goodbye to data-protection laws because we would all be susceptible to continuous surveillance of our online activity. It is worrying that there has been little debate in Britain on such a crucial matter, but if you value your freedom from state snooping, you might wish to visit www.statewatch.org to learn more before lobbying your MEP. Unless, that is, you are happy for European governments to know who you choose to e-mail or phone for years to come.

(The Times, May 22 2002)

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The Times: Technology for children

Toys are becoming increasingly high-tech. But as parents rush to buy 'interactive learning aids', would their offspring be better off with wooden blocks? By David Rowan

They are sold as "educational learning aids", "IQ enhancers" or "interactive learning tools", but children's computers certainly are not mere toys. As competition in the billion-pound-plus educational market intensifies, companies such as Oregon Scientific and Tomy are scrambling to package the latest technological innovations for consumers who are barely out of the crib.

In the UK, 62 per cent of homes with children contain electronic toys with an educational premise, according to Research International. This is a higher proportion even than those with computers. This year alone, VTech, the market leader, will launch 40 new products, ranging from the £40 Discover Handheld computer for five- to six-year-olds to the £130 Researcher Notebook laptop aimed at nine-year-olds.

Both, naturally, can beam data using an infrared port and can synch with a PC to send and receive files over the Internet. Yet, as with their adult equivalents, today's must-have item quickly becomes obsolete. On average, VTech manufactures a product for just two years. Coloured bricks never presented that problem.

"The next generation of products will be Web-enabled," says Andrew Dickson, UK managing director of VTech. "And just as you are starting to see cameras integrated with mobile phones, children's PDAs will soon have cameras, too."

Junior hand-held computers will offer video streaming, and allow children to talk to each other using Bluetooth wireless networks. And, as chips accommodate ever-greater volumes of voice data, the toys will also talk back to you in any number of languages.

"Software is central to the development of a lot of our products," Dickson says. The company is working on toys that attempt to teach children "lifestyle" skills - from good manners to techniques for managing stress, and even their pocket money.

Traditionalists may dismiss such developments, but the Bermuda-based company wields huge influence in the nation's playrooms. Each year it sells 200,000 copies of its battery-powered Nursery Rhymes Book, offering three-month-olds "friendly phrases and sound-effects to enhance play", and 100,000 of its First Steps Plus baby-walkers ("includes flashing lights and melodies to stimulate baby's senses").

The company insists that its toys develop a child's imagination and teach new skills in a safe environment. Some educationists, however, are concerned about children's playthings becoming increasingly technology-focused.

Diane Levin, an education professor at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts, who has studied how children respond to electronic toys, believes that such products can hinder a child's healthy development. "Children make sense of the world through play," she says. "But an electronic toy controls the agenda. It impedes children's own exploration and discovery and mastery of their world, leading to children with shorter attention spans and a need to be entertained."

Levin's research suggests that the more high-tech toys a child owns, the more frequent the complaints of boredom. She cites another company's Teletubbies cot toy, which plays music and projects a light pattern on the ceiling to comfort and soothe the baby. "They learn that you get comforted by passivity," says Levin. "Compare that with a baby who discovers his own toes when he is upset. There is this sensory motor experience, and he learns that when he feels bad, he can chew on his toes. The baby is in control."

For all their digital bells and synthesised whistles, electronic toys have yet to convince critics such as Levin that they offer more than technology-packed appeal to parental anxieties.

"They play on parents' insecurities," she says. "And what parent does not want to give their child a head start?"

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Discovery Handheld (VTech). £39.99.

Reviewed by Claudia Rowan, 4

"This is green and has orange buttons and an orange pencil to draw with. I have lost the pencil, I think. I did not like it because it was too hard to understand what to do. I think it is for older children. You can carry the little computer in your hand and plug it into the big computer, but I do not know why. It is hard to fit them together. It make silly noises and a man talks to you to tell you to choose something."

Parent's comments: "A PDA packed with features that are way beyond this four-year-old, for whom concepts such as 'docking with the PC' and 'infrared beaming' might as well be Latin. Too clever."

Verdict: 4/10

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Pixter (Fisher-Price Toys). £50approx.

Reviewed by Claudia Rowan, 4

"I liked this the best because it let me draw. You have to copy houses and trace the dot-to-dots with a special pen on the screen. Drawing faces was the best part. It was hard to work out how to get rid of a picture, and I didn't understand the little pictures that it made me choose from (icons around the screen) - but Daddy told me I could rub out my pictures and choose new things to draw. It makes too much noise. You don't need music when you are drawing."

Parent's comments: "An effective expansion of the magnetic drawing pad with plenty of scope for a child's imagination."

Verdict: 8/10

(The Times, May 22 2002)

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The Times: Child labour 'used to make World Cup footballs'

CHILDREN as young as six years old have been employed making footballs bearing the Fifa World Cup logo in an apparent breach of the organisation's regulations, investigators have found. By David Rowan

The footballs, which also feature the names of sponsors such as adidas and Coca-Cola, were stitched by children in Pakistani villages for around 70p a day, according to a campaign group based in Delhi. Although many of the balls appear to be destined for sports shops and company promotions, including one for The Economist, the group claimed that some could find their way on to the pitches in Japan and South Korea next month.

Adidas-Salomon said that the company did not believe that its official footballs had been stitched by children and past experience showed a very strong possibility that the balls in question were counterfeits.

Coca-Cola GB said: "This is the first we have heard of these allegations, which we are certainly going to investigate. We do not condone the use of child labour. Anyone would be extremely concerned and very disturbed indeed if these reports were true."

A spokeswoman at The Economist's London headquarters said that the company would be looking into the allegations. She said the magazine had for many years dealt with a reputable wholesaler in the region and had asked them for about a hundred balls for World Cup promotions.

Researchers for Global March Against Child Labour, who have just spent ten weeks in the Sialkot and Sangla Hill districts of Pakistan, found more than 50 children working up to 14 hours a day producing Fifa-branded footballs. They filmed children working from home or in local stitching centres for between 10 and 20 rupees (14p to 28p) a football.

In the village of Gujranwala, they visited a household where they found girls aged six and seven making holes in pieces of leather, which were then stitched together by their eight-year-old sister. The promotional ACME Enterprise footballs carried the World Cup 2002 logo and had the appearance of officially licensed merchandise.

The children told the researchers that they received 13 rupees (18p) per ball and stitched an average of four to five a day. Fifa, which with the International Labour Organisation has tried to establish a monitoring system for the stitching industry, sells officially branded footballs on its website for $91 (£64). In three neighbouring villages around Sangla Hill, investigators found children aged eight to 14 making balls bearing the logos of Coca-Cola and The Economist.

"Many suffer from eyesight problems from focusing intensively in dark rooms for long hours," the investigators reported. They identified children with "twisted fingers from pulling on the string" and back problems from sitting in the same position for long periods.

An adidas spokesman said: "A local monitoring body in which we participate has been operating successfully for more than three years in the area and our Sialkot operations team also checks compliance with the code of conduct that prohibits the use of child labour in the manufacture of our products. Our football production in Pakistan is conducted only in registered centres, which are visited regularly by us and by independent external monitors. But as soon as we see the report, we will investigate."

Philippe Roy, who led the investigation, said: "I am sure companies like The Economist are not using child labour on purpose, but a lack of monitoring ensures that the practice continues. The balls go through about eight middlemen, so it is unclear at which stage children are employed. In the village of Gujranwala, I found an adult stitcher making an official adidas ball of the type being used during World Cup matches and he was under no kind of supervision. This was just one ball, so there's no way of knowing that other adidas balls being used on the pitch have not been produced by children."

Investigators tracked the manufacturing process in the city of Sialkot, where, through an arrangement with a local middleman, large bags containing the football pieces and stitching instructions were sent by train to the Sangla Hill railway station. At that point the pieces were distributed among households in different villages. Once finished, the balls were sent back by train to Sialkot, from where they were delivered to established sports goods companies for export to Asia and Europe.

Pakistan and India are among the main centres for the manufacture of footballs and, according to the India Committee of The Netherlands and the All-Pakistan Federation of Labour, thousands of children are employed in the industry. Campaigners are concerned that they often earn less than the legal minimum wage and are denied basic employment rights.

An earlier team from Global March found child employment widespread in Jalandhar, in the Indian state of Punjab, and photographed children as young as ten years old stitching footballs. "I have been stitching footballs for as long as I can remember," its investigators quoted Geeta, a girl from Jalandhar, as saying. "My hands are constantly in pain. It feels like they are burning."

After child labour became an issue at the 1998 World Cup, Fifa said that it would ensure that it was not used in products bearing its logo. The organisation had not responded to a request for comment last night.

(The Times, May 22, 2002)

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Evenign Standard: Infiltrating the football hoolligans

By David Rowan

JASON Williams is a man with a secret. For a start, Williams is not his real surname - but the quietly spoken 31-year-old becomes jittery when pressed. Nor will he reveal anything about his private life, beyond owning a house "somewhere in the Midlands", having a partner of seven years, and studying film and media "at a new university" before starting a career in television. He is concerned, a colleague later calls to drum home, that any location more revealing than "the Midlands" could place him in immense personal danger. Jason Williams, you see, is television journalism's invisible man.

Over the past two Sundays, Williams's disturbing 10-month-long expose of Britain's hooligan underworld has made compulsive viewing on BBC2. Unlike Donal MacIntyre, whose own foray into the Chelsea Headhunters three years ago sent two men to jail, Williams does not relish a starring role in the year's most gripping documentary. Working with a hidden pinhole-sized camera and a microphone sewn into his Stone Island jacket, he is never actually seen on screen throughout Hooligans, which concludes on Sunday at 9pm. He remains a disembodied voice who befriends the hard men of Millwall and Cardiff and stands by as they kick down rival supporters or set fire to pubs.

"That's not to say I haven't gone through the full range of emotions that Donal experienced, such as when a south London mother runs screaming into the street with her baby to confront rioting Millwall fans," he says. "But maybe I'm just a bit old-school, and think it's better just to show the bare bones."

Since he began infiltrating hooligan "firms" last August, Williams has feared reprisals from those he has exposed. He would always stay within feet of his Special Forcestrained bodyguard, and although he has rejected use of a BBC safe house, he is at pains to retain his anonymity. In part, this is because a previous investigation into Yardie gangs helped convict gang members for firearms offences. Another surveillance project involved international drug smugglers.

Williams knows there are quite a few people out there who would like to find him. "If any of the hooligans knew where I was, I can't imagine they'd be rushing to buy me a pint," he says. "I took the rubbish out yesterday and noticed myself looking over my shoulder."

The series does them no favours. We see Lennie, bad boy of the Wolves Subway Army, in action: "I wanted to do the f-ing Old Bill. I f-ing hate them." At Millwall, we watch from inside the police cordon as fans attack a police horse and set fire to a van. From the back of a private hall, we see Cardiff City's controversial owner Sam Hammam deep in discussion with known hooligans who have links with far-Right groups such as Combat 18. All Williams needs - beyond their trust - is his £2,000 Sony camera kit, comprising a tiny lens linked to a 2in by 1in circuit board inside his jacket lining, with the on-off button hidden in his pocket. "It's just stuff you can get in Dixons nowadays."

Filming undercover, he says, combines excitement with extreme danger - feelings also identified by hooligans who unknowingly shared their own motivation with the camera. "It's exciting because of the complete adrenaline rushes it gives you," he says, "and dangerous because of the fear of exposure." He never forgets that the wrong judgment could imperil his physical safety - or, worse, waste months of filming.

The infiltration process proved rather easier than that practised by MacIntyre, who had himself tattooed in order to fit in. Williams merely went designer shopping."If you've got a lot of face and you look the part, they accept you," he says.

This meant buying into the uniform: a Burberry or Lacoste shirt, Stone Island jeans, Camper shoes. "That's all you need to be seen as a lad. It's funny, but on their internet chatrooms, the hooligans seem to be praising me for having a lot of bottle. They're saying we've told it like it is, and rather like the programmes."

On the underground In The Know website, where his subjects are debating whether they had suspected his deception,"BoroBhoy" declares in a typical comment that "it was a quality programme, can't wait for next week".

During the past season there were more than 50 serious incidents of fan violence involving English clubs, many of them unreported in the press. Williams's achievement is to document just how well-organised are the gangs, comprising as they do working men (and very occasionally women) mainly in their thirties and forties.

USING intelligence from the police and antifascist groups, Williams befriended gangs such as Cardiff City's Soul Crew and the Wolves Subway Army so that he could be there to witness violence first hand. "I'd get as close as I could without showing my hand," he says. "It meant being a lad down the pub with them on match days and showing I knew enough about the scene. But I was also filming, so I had to see myself as a human tripod, tracking people as they came down the street. In the pub, that meant keeping my back against the window so the picture wouldn't be bleached out."

There was no shortage of shocking material. We see Millwall supporters throwing missiles at police as the chant in support of a convicted murderer: "Harry Roberts is our friend - he killed policemen."

We are there when Sam Hammam boasts at a club dinner: We'll take anyone. We're f-ing sheep shaggers." We hear Darren Wells, hooligan and Rightwing extremist, lament: "It's a sad day when you get families at football. In the old days, it was much more fun."

At 5ft 11in and weighing 11 and a half stone, Williams is not, he admits, physically imposing. He faced some close calls, most commonly when the police confronted a gang he was travelling with. "I was searched six times, and that got scary. I was travelling with the Millwall hooligans - the most dangerous - from Euston to Nottingham one morning, and as we got off the train we were surrounded by a group of police officers who sent us towards others wielding metal detectors. I had to play a waiting game - I'd have been in serious trouble if it had beeped and they'd found my camera."

He whispered to the police that he was an undercover reporter and asked to be searched round the corner. "They did what they had to do, and then told me to go out and large it."

Unlike Donal MacIntyre, whose visibility makes covert investigations ever harder to pull off, Williams - credited merely as a humble assistant producer - intends to continue his quiet but effective form of journalism: he is about to go undercover for another yearlong BBC project. So does he seek to topple MacIntyre - in defensive mode yesterday in an article berating his critics - as the face of BBC investigations?

MacIntyre has his respect, says Williams, but his personalised form of investigation is "just not my style". "Donal takes the audience along a journey with him, but I wouldn't be comfortable with that. I'm just a broadcast journalist."

(Evening Standard, May 22 2002)

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The Times: The Big Issue's struggle to survive

The Big Issue has more than 1.1 million readers and has given thousands of homeless people the chance to earn money legitimately. But now, after a disastrous launch in America, staff cutbacks and talk of a 'financial crisis', the magazine faces an uncertain future. David Rowan investigates

The Big Issue, according to its cover, stands for all that is "Coming up from the streets". On the streets around Euston station last night, the talk among vendors was of the magazine's own uncertain future, amid redundancies, editorial cutbacks and the virtual closure of the London office.

"It's totally out of order," says John, who has sold the magazine here for two-and-a-half years, and now worries about what lies ahead. "I sell 40 copies a day, and people buy it to read. These cutbacks will make a real difference to the quality, and I know who's to blame."

John's anger, and that of other vendors in the area, is directed towards John Bird - The Big Issue's founder and editor-in-chief, who this week confirmed that six out of 13 journalists, including the editor, are taking redundancy (albeit voluntarily) in response to "a changing commercial marketplace". The magazine will now be produced from Manchester, with the main London edition losing its distinct editorial voice -all, Bird insists, to save money in a deep advertising crisis.

"Who's he kidding?" sneers vendor John, waving copies of the £1.20 magazine, of which he keeps 70p. "It's John Bird that owns it, it's him that's getting rid of the staff. It's all 'I','I', 'I' with him. If you ask me, he doesn't give a f***."

Bird, a charismatic if domineering figure, is used to defending The Big Issue, which since its launch 11 years ago has faced frequent attacks from hostile town councillors or disbelieving tabloid pundits. This time, though, the magazine's supporters say that its very survival is at stake.

"If it does move editorial to Manchester, that will be disastrous," says Andrew Jaspan, its former publisher and managing director who now edits the Sunday Herald. "The strength of The Big Issue is that it isn't a uniform, single issue publication, but is based round regional editions, with each speaking to its area. I'd be concerned if these reports are true: it would be a risky approach and I don't know how it would impact on sales."

In London, staff have let it be known that they are "devastated" by the news. "Whatever John says, he's closed the London issue," one insider says. "By getting rid of the editor and keeping just a couple of journalists here, he's neutered it. It's the end of The Big Issue as we know it, and it will become just a worthy magazine that social workers will read."

This "worthiness" recently claimed the editorship of Nicola Barry, who resigned from the Scottish edition after colleagues blocked her plans to make the magazine more lively. They were, she said, "the most difficult eight months of my life".

Of greater concern to John Bird is the suggestion that the "financial crisis" is linked to a disastrous attempt to launch a Los Angeles version of the magazine, whose first issue alone, a former employee suggests, may have cost as much as £250,000. "It's a distortion to suggest that we've run aground in the US and therefore cut staff in the UK," says Bird. "We haven't spent any money in the US for 18 months, and at all times we've protected the core business."

The truth is more mundane, he says. "The Big Issue, like most publications, lives and falls by the marketplace, so over the past year we have been looking for economies. We haven't replaced people and have focused on the costs. If we have a smaller editorial workforce, we can jointly commission articles with other Big Issues and share costs."

He dismisses as "crap" reports that the magazine is in financial trouble. "Six out of 13 editorial staff have taken the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy because of the changing market. None had been here for less than three years. We're not making the editor, Matthew Collin, redundant: after five years here, he wanted to leave. All the redundancies so far are voluntary; there are two non-editorial positions we do not feel we need to carry in the present circumstances. This is not a crisis."

He reinforced his message in 17 interviews on Wednesday, prompted by a newspaper report of a cash crisis. "I kept hearing 'So, The Big Issue is closing'," he says. "I replied 'You weren't around in 1992, when we spent more than we earned; or in 1995-96, when we were nearly driven off the street by the Government. We've survived crises when people have accused The Big Issue of having rapists in our ranks, and when one vendor killed another.

"We've even survived the deification of The Big Issue in the press. The truth is that, after ten years, it needed resuscitation. You have to go back to first principles, and make it an academy of new writers."

A former senior journalist on the magazine offers a different interpretation of Bird's strategy: "This is his pogrom, a chance to clear out everyone that he's wanted to lose for a while. It will be a backbreaking blow for it as a quality magazine. The consequence of a move to Manchester will be to make The Big Issue totally a 'pity purchase'; people will buy it because they feel they ought to, rather than because they want to read it."

Bird dismisses fears that editorial quality will suffer. "That's difficult to prove," he says. "How many people do I meet now who say they love The Big Issue, buy it, but don't read it? An astute editorial team can actually make more out of less. What we have to do is bring in younger writers. I'm convinced that it can work."

In its time, the magazine can claim some remarkable achievements. It now has more than 1.1 million readers in the UK, with 250,000 sales a week. The Big Issue has given thousands of homeless people an opportunity to earn money legitimately, which, the company says, "proves that business can do social good". Last year its charitable foundation helped 130 people to be rehoused, 58 to find jobs and 198 to obtain treatment for drug or other dependency.

The magazine was launched in September 1991, after Gordon Roddick returned from New York excited about Street News, a newspaper he had seen homeless people selling. With the help of the Body Shop, he recruited Bird to launch a monthly London version, but with a key difference: the editorial was to be written largely by professional journalists, rather than street people.

The timing was perfect: as recession deepened, The Big Issue could claim to be doing something constructive to help the most vulnerable. By 1993, it had gone weekly, and sister titles were launched in Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff, followed by editions in the Midlands and the South West. But Britain was too small for Bird's ambition: Sydney, Cape Town and Los Angeles started their own Big Issues, which run independently but retain links with London.

Editors have always sought to boost the magazine's influence through strong journalism. When George Michael broke his silence after his arrest in California, he chose to do so in The Big Issue, as did the Stone Roses when they announced their comeback. Most recently, it was The Big Issue that interviewed Commander Brian Paddick, the former head of Lambeth police, and tipped off Fleet Street about his views on anarchy. Former journalists have gone on to senior positions at The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday, The Express and The Daily Telegraph.

"The idea was not to launch the careers of lots of journalists," says Jaspan, "but as a byproduct it did, as we sought to hire the best people."

But former staff describe Bird's own role as often less than helpful. "It's founder's syndrome," explains one. "He set it up and couldn't let go, and really resented not being a good enough editor to run the magazine. As a result, he made his editors' lives absolute hell."

Another says: "John could be a complete nightmare -he would walk in ten minutes before press time and demand that the cover be changed. He can also be a bit of a bully, though he is immensely charismatic. He preferred us to be in a state of crisis, as he thought we'd be more cutting edge." A former senior journalist adds: "A lot of dictators know how to devolve to other people; John just can't."

Bird remains widely liked by staff and respected for his energy and ability to get things done. "The duty of anyone who has worked for The Big Issue is to be extremely supportive of it, and I hugely admire a lot of what John has done," says Jaspan. "As an organisation without a proprietor, the magazine gave you the freedom to follow your journalistic nose."

Another former employee says: "He's fantastic at opening all kinds of doors. He could address 500 angry vendors. There was John who would say that he had been a petty criminal, did time at the equivalent of Borstal, he'd roughed it. When he started talking to them he had enormous sway."

He is also admired for funding the magazine through what was at the time seen as a dangerous venture into property speculation. In the mid-1990s he bought a £1.4 million warehouse in Clerkenwell, which he sold for £4 million; he then invested £1.75 million of the proceeds in a King's Cross building that he sold for £3 million.

His big error of judgment, however, seems to have been his failed attempt, in 1998, to enter the American market. "John was restless and wanted something new to do," says a former employee. "The Roddicks had a house in Los Angeles, as did Lynn Franks (the PR guru) and the luvvies were keen for John to go there and work his magic. He went to parties where Hollywood people said they would support him, and he took his eyes off the ball."

Bird, charm to the fore as ever, has a robust defence. "Stars? I met Kim Basinger once and didn't recognise her," he says. "I went to one Hollywood party, for the Baftas, and only met a guy who had a part in The Full Monty. It was probably the loneliest experience of my life and the nearest I ever came to seeing a therapist. I never stayed at the Roddicks' house for more than one night, on three or four occasions -I just didn't have the time.

"If I did cock up in America, why is it that a number of the businesses we're working on have come out of it?"

What he gained, he says, is a faith in social business, such as the ethical venture-capital fund he is launching later this year. "Los Angeles was a speculation that didn't bring immediate results -we're still in the middle of an audit. But whether or not it works financially, it's still the sort of business we should go into. And any money we spent was protected from our core business."

Next, he says, he would like to start a political party designed to bring about a renaissance of community life. "It will be called the Street Party, and will be about re-engaging our communal ownership and making people take responsibility. I want to make people feel good about the roads they walk down."

But what of his core project, The Big Issue? Is it still a success?

"The jury's still out, to be honest. We need a year-long social audit on the impact of our work on the Exchequer -how much we have saved the Government. I met a guy a few years ago who had left the Army in 1967. Until 1992, he had never been out of prison for more than six months. Then he began selling The Big Issue. Now the average price of having someone in prison is £30,000 to £40,000 so there was an immediate saving of £160,000 in the case of one person.

"I measure our success on how many people we have stopped going to prison or having a premature appointment at the mortuary, how many people we have kept out of mental institutions or got out of loneliness, fecklessness, drink and drugs."

INSIDE THIS WEEK'S BIG ISSUE

Cover story: Interview with Badly Drawn Boy: "He is by some distance the scruffiest person in the bar of the Leicester Square Hampshire Hotel."

"Hunting the hunters": An anti-hunt activist's 20-year campaign to infiltrate the enemy. "The right clothes, right badges, right car stickers, right accent all convince the hunt that the newcomer is one of their kind."

Political column: By Chris McLaughlin in Westminster. "Racism in the Tory party is like the proverbial earthworm. Cut off its head and the body continues to live."

Street Lights: Contributions from the homeless."Boris was a pigeon married to Doris. They lived in a brown cardboard box."

(The Times, May 17, 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - RealNames/Saint Internet

By David Rowan

REALNAMES was one of those not-quite-needed ideas that nonetheless received $100 million of funding in the dot-com dream days. Its premise was simple and, once the frenzy died, patently unnecessary: by typing a word or company name into a web browser, rather than conducting a search, you would be taken to the website that had "bought" that word. But people soon learnt to type in URLs (Web addresses), diminishing the service's value. So it was no surprise that the business closed this week, after Microsoft failed to renew its contract to let RealNames work with Internet Explorer (IE). But amid bitter recriminations from the company's boss, Keith Teare, some fascinating detail is emerging about the domination Microsoft has over online developments.

Five years after starting the company, Teare has decided to "put the record straight" on his website before Microsoft offers its own gloss on the closure. Sure, he has an axe to grind. But his experience is very revealing about the domineering, monopolistic culture at Microsoft that is stifling innovation where it is not in full control.

Let's start with some numbers. To gain access to IE, RealNames had to give Microsoft a fifth of its stock and $15 million in cash guarantees last year ("more than 100 per cent of our revenue"). It also proposed a revenue share that, Teare calculates, would have been worth $200 million to Microsoft over five years. Still, despite continued growth (if not profits) at RealNames, Microsoft last week broke off the deal. Money, it claimed, was not the reason: "Even if you paid we would not renew," Teare was told.

As he sees it, with its 90 per cent ownership of the browser market, Microsoft no longer needed to share its platform with an outsider. Strange, this, for Microsoft is supposedly building an online infrastructure that will deliver other companies' applications.

"The only naming technology in the world capable of allowing non-ASCII characters to be used as Web addresses is being killed at birth, before it succeeds and becomes 'out of control'," claims Teare. "A small private company is being denied an audience, not because of money, but because of fear of losing control."

Teare concludes from his "pretty unhappy" experience that Microsoft " seems comfortable only at the application level, where it has control, not at the infrastructure level - and this ultimately keeps many innovations from happening". Meanwhile, Bill Bliss, the Microsoft executive who dealt with RealNames, has apparently just been moved to "Natural Language Platforms" to develop an in house version of - what do you know? - a system that uses names to find websites.

"The browser is now back under Microsoft's control," concludes Teare, "and it is possible that - having learnt much from RealNames - it will develop its own version of our resolution service." And you wonder why the judges like to give Bill Gates a hard time.

++++

AIR CREWS and midwives have them, and now the Internet is finally to be granted its own patron saint. The Pope, increasingly excited by the Web's potential for evangelisation, devoted last Sunday's Vatican address to this "new forum for proclaiming the Gospel" (clearly he hasn't yet read those "Amazing Sex Pill!!" e-mails clogging up his Hotmail account). The smart money is on St Isidore of Seville getting the job: the learned 6th-century archivist once managed to appear in two monasteries at the same time, suggesting an early awareness of video-conferencing. The Catholic Online website (www.catholic.org) has even posted a "prayer before logging on" in St Isidore's honour, beseeching God that "during our journeys through the Internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee, and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter". Not forgetting some net-filtering software, too, Your Holiness ...

(The Times, May 15 2002)

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Evening Standard: Tabloid price wars

By David Rowan

IT'S nothing new for The Sun's editor to denounce the "two-bit nobodies" running the Daily Mirror, or for the Mirror's editor to demand his "ranting" rival be held on mental-health grounds. This time, though, they are putting their money where their mouths are. In an extraordinary gamble, the Mirror this week slashed its weekday cover price from 32p to just 20p. The Sun declared war as it matched the cut - hours after its rival's announcement last Friday.

"If they pick a fight with us, we have to retaliate," explains Les Hinton, executive chairman of News International. "They miscalculated that we wouldn't respond."

It threatens to be the most brutal and costly price war since The Times shook up the broadsheet market in the mid-Nineties. With the Express now costing 20p and the Star at just 10p, you can buy four tabloids in the Carlton TV region for just 70p - half the cost of a cappuccino to drink with them, and a subsidy to readers approaching £200 million a year.

"The long-term goal is to arrest a 35-year decline in sales," says Piers Morgan, editor of the newly relaunched Daily Mirror. "I'm very confident that in a year's time we'll be selling more papers than we are now - and that's not dependent on what any of our rivals do. The Sun is clearly rattled. If you see some of the things that are being said there, it's white-van time - you might as well take David Yelland off and put him in the clinic."

YELLAND, The Sun's editor, made his feelings clear in an email to staff promising to "take apart the Daily Mirror's business and destroy it". This was, he said,"a full-scale declaration of war". Executives at Trinity Mirror had "made two massive, huge, gigantic miscalculations... First they have repositioned their paper wrongly - it is a dull product - and they have allowed the ego of their editor to dictate commercial policy. Then they have foolishly taken Rupert Murdoch on in a price war. Who do these two-bit nobodies think they are?"

Amid concern within Trinity Mirror that executives are underestimating the battle ahead, Mark Haysom, responsible for its national newspapers, insists that "price is the most effective way of building purchase frequency and circulation". The Mirror certainly needs to do so: in the year to April, circulation fell by 4.93 per cent.

Early figures for the first two weeks of May suggest that the relaunch has not reversed the decline: rivals gleefully point out that its ABCs are 6. 4 per cent below the same period last year. The question being asked this week is whether the Mirror panicked. "If the plan was to relaunch the Mirror targeted towards a more upmarket readership, then, had it been working, they wouldn't have needed to cut the price," a rival circulation controller says. "This company has spent an awful lot of money relaunching the product, and then found it hasn't got them anywhere."

A senior source at News International is "flabbergasted" at the cut, which he estimates is costing Trinity Mirror £1. 1 million a week in lost revenue."This may prove a pretty epic miscalculation for their shareholders and their readers."

But Piers Morgan proclaims himself "very satisfied so far" and denies as fatuous, claims that he was panicked. "The pricing was part of the plan four or five months ago. We announced some time ago that we would spend £20 million on our relaunch, which some commentators seemed to think was the cost of a black masthead. Anyone who thinks that mastheads and branding alone will drive hundreds of thousands of new readers to us doesn't understand newspapers."

Unofficial returns last night suggested that the strategy may be working, at least in the short term. The Mirror's circulation this Monday was up by around 160, 000, or eight per cent. The Sun sold an estimated 196, 000 extra copies, a rise of five per cent.

More telling is the Star's early result: at 10p it is up by 12 per cent in the Carlton TV region, but two per cent down elsewhere at the full 30p price.

ON the surface, the main beneficiary of the price wars has been The Express, which costs 20p in the London area on weekdays, 25p on Saturday and 50p on Sunday. But a closer look at the numbers suggests that Richard Desmond might as well be giving cash away to every reader. On weekdays, the circulation in the Carlton TV area has risen by an estimated 26,000 to 202,000; but each of the existing readers is now saving 15p a day, which the circulation department at Associated Newspapers (owners of the Evening Standard) calculates at a £136,000 weekly bill for Desmond."On Saturday, they're up by 18 per cent to 260,000, but that day alone is costing £55,000 in lost revenue. And that doesn't include what they're spending on promotion and advertising." The Daily Mail, which shows no intention of cutting its price, has maintained its sales over the period.

Survivors of the broadsheet price wars of a decade ago warn that there will be no winners. "Price cuts lower the worth of newspapers in the eyes of readers," warns Jeremy Deedes, managing managing director of the Telegraph Group, which fought a brutal battle with The Times from 1993.

"When we cut to 30p and The Times to 20p, after a period of time it ceased to be a special offer; anything higher risked being seen as profiteering. It's ludicrous: here we are today, selling the Telegraph for 50p, only 2p more than it was in 1992. That's seriously bad news." The Times price cut also led the Telegraph to launch a discounted subscriber offer that, even now, accounts for 308,000 copies of its 975,000 daily sale in the UK and Ireland. "Many of those readers would have bought the Telegraph anyway," a rival executive points out.

For his part, Rupert Murdoch sustained extraordinary losses in doubling The Times's circulation to around 720,000."I've heard a figure of £200 million," Jeremy Deedes says. "It's a very expensive strategy, though if you're getting ad revenue on the back of it, that takes out some of the pain. But the advertising recession that we're all currently in has made itself felt much more than 10 years ago because of the way we're pricing our papers." In 1992, the broadsheets typically depended for 45 per cent of their revenue on cover price and for 55 per cent on advertising. Today advertising accounts for 75 per cent, according to Deedes."You feel the cold much more now. The tabloids are in the same advertising recession."

Roger Alton, editor of the Observer, also blames the Murdoch-led cuts for the depth of today's slump. The tabloids, he warns, should not underestimate the damage they could cause themselves." The Nineties price war was like the First World War - you were slogging it out for minuscule movements of market share. This will be a very hard, attritional war, and there will be casualties."

(Evening Standard, May 15 2002)

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Evening Standard: The new paternity DNA-testing industry

By David Rowan

IN the next few days, the future of Liz Hurley's five-week-old son Damian will be determined by nothing more than a cotton bud and a flimsy piece of plastic. Steve Bing's name may not be on the birth certificate, but a simple medical test is about to prove beyond doubt whether the film producer is in fact Damian's daddy. On the result rests a possible multimillion-pound settlement - as well as Liz Hurley's reputation.

Paternity testing is a boom industry in Britain - and not just for the rich and famous. Studies show that at least a tenth of British children do not have the father they think they do, and more and more couples are discovering the truth - not least as fathers challenge child maintenance demands. As a result, dozens of private companies have sprung up to sell kits over the internet or via mail order, and anyone with a couple of hundred pounds can now discover a child's true biological identity - often with traumatic results.

FOR stars such as the Hurley-Bings, the test will be conducted by a court-approved lab working under a strict code of conduct. After Steve Bing demanded a paternity test to back his claim that Damian is not his, Liz Hurley agreed to submit her DNA, and that of her son, for laboratory tests. Within days, the three of them will submit a drop of blood or a swab of saliva in the privacy of a doctor's surgery.

Others simply turn to the internet to buy home-based kits with names such as "Dadcheck" or "Papacheck" whose results can seriously affect a child's emotional wellbeing. At least 20,000 paternity tests are now conducted each year in Britain - some sold by companies that stand accused of cashing in on family crises. The reputable companies organise tests through GPs. At University Diagnostics' labs in Teddington, demand for paternity testing has grown tenfold in as many years.

James Walker runs the laboratory that conducts thousands of tests each year, often on a court's instructions. It costs £390 to test three people to a 99.99 per cent degree of certainty. The sample - usually blood or cells from inside the cheek - is dabbed on to a stain card and returned to the lab in a tamperproof bag.

"Nowadays we can use any sort of body fluid that contains DNA, as well as hair," Walker explains. Samples are heated and treated to extract the DNA, before a cocktail of chemicals is added to copy the genetic code. Genetic material is dyed before being scanned by laser to produce a series of coloured bands. "We look for which bands match between the child, the mother and the putative father," Walker says. "You get half of your DNA from your father and half from your mother. We run at least 10 tests, and for each we see how closely the bands match. We can be certain whether you are the father."

For anyone who undergoes a test, it can be frightening to learn the truth. Robert Ross (not his real name), 50, learned that he was not Sam's real father during a bitter courtroom divorce battle."Suddenly my exwife stood up in court and announced that this seven-year-old was not my son," Robert, a computer engineer, recalls. "It was frightening - it made my mouth go dry. I was representing myself, so had to stay very unemotional, and the judge asked if I'd like to say anything. I said I wanted a DNA test, and was surprised when my ex-wife agreed." Sam also agreed to the test, so the three of them attended a registered clinic.

Four weeks later, Robert received a letter explaining that he could not be the boy's father. "It was a very unemotional letter, and it left me feeling absolutely forlorn," he says. "I went back to the court and asked to spend some time with my son, and we spent his birthday fishing. We sat on a rock by the sea and I asked him what it meant to him. 'You're still my dad,' he said. 'You're not getting out of it that easily.'"

SAM is now 12 and at boarding school, where he has been experiencing behavioural problems and was recently suspended. His mother has remarried and moved to Germany, although during school holidays Sam sees her and Robert on the Isle of Wight, where they both have homes. Sam has been shown a photograph of his biological father but has declined to meet him.

"I don't feel any differently towards Sam," Robert reflects. "In fact it's made me more protective towards him. He's got me, and knows he can trust me. I'm his dad, and that's it."

For Edward Kanauros, a computer salesman from Cambridge, a simple test bought over the internet was enough to change his life. Kanauros had always joked that his daughter Laura, now 21, looked nothing like him. But Laura stopped seeing the funny side during an argument with her mother last year, when she was suddenly told: "By the way, he's not your real father."

"When she was born, I had been suspicious that she wasn't my daughter - call it male intuition," says Edward. "I was now determined to find out the truth." Although he had divorced Laura's mother 15 years earlier, he had continued to pay £200 a month towards the girl's maintenance. He logged straight on to the internet and, without telling his ex-wife, bought a DNA testing kit.

"Laura and I had to send in photos, which the doctor signed to verify who we were. Two weeks after giving blood, we both got letters saying there was no way I could be her father."

They were thrown into emotional turmoil. "I realised that my ex-wife had spent all these years lying to me and to the children. It was so cruel to them. But I couldn't let the lies continue - however painful the truth was."

Laura confronted her mother with the test results. She then went to see her biological father, who had been unaware of her existence. Edward, now 54, is trying to recover some of his maintenance payments."I still love Laura, and though our relationship has never been very strong, she tells me I'll always be her dad," he says. "The truth can hurt, but it's better to know."

Robert Ross agrees that, for Liz Hurley and Steve Bing, any result will be better than not knowing. "I don't think Liz Hurley should be afraid of the test, though it could have been done away from the limelight, for the child's sake. You just know that as soon as he can speak, he's going to be asked what he thinks of X being his father. But all children need is a bit of love around them."

(Evening Standard, May 13 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Identity theft/Googling the BBC

By David Rowan

ARE YOU sure that's really you reading this column? After all, with identity theft now Britain's fastest-growing fraud, there is a distinct possibility that you are not all you seem. As we conduct more of our daily transactions over the Internet, and pressure grows for our personal details to be cross-matched across countless official databases, it is no surprise that fraudsters find it ever easier to steal other people's identities, for everything from banking to immigration crime. So how easy is it to pass yourself off as someone else?

Terrifyingly easy, as we found out this week. It took 15 minutes on a couple of dubious newsgroups to locate stolen credit-card numbers on sale for a few £("alternatives provided if already cancelled"), and barely longer to find customers of a large insurance firm whose personal details a former employee allegedly stole from a confidential database and offered for sale on the Net. Today's dedicated ID thief, armed with a few details about you, can easily trawl databases to discover more, and so open new credit accounts in your name. You may be none the wiser until an early-morning visit from the bailiffs.

With 53,000 cases of identity theft reported last year to the UK Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System, this crime is positively booming. The Government says it is costing the economy at least £1.2 billion a year, as more of us are using the Web and the phone to run our affairs. This is not simply a high-tech crime: often, thieves seek out personal details by raiding dustbins. According to a survey by the credit-reference agency Experian, one in every five bins contains a credit or debit-card number linked to an individual name. By the time you question your next statement, the culprit will have become somebody else.

The Government's solution is to make identity fraud a new criminal offence, allowing police to target suspected fraudsters even before a stolen identity has been used. It is also planning to create a database of stolen ID documents so that checks can be easily conducted online. These changes are important, and not before time. But the credit industry wants to go much further, giving private financial companies access to a range of official databases in the fight against fraud. It wants to cross-check credit applicants against public-sector databases holding everything from National Insurance numbers to social-security violations. Under the Data Protection Act, the Government believes that these records must be kept secret.

There are real risks in opening up these databases to a wider private-sector audience. The more people with access to your data, the greater the risk of it falling into unsavoury hands, as the former insurance worker has shown. The smart cards that the Government is planning to introduce will offer some protection, especially if they contain "biometric" information, such as your personal iris pattern.

Meanwhile, careful what papers you throw away or who you e-mail with your mother's maiden name. Someone out there may be trying to get to know you.

++++

GOOGLE, the most reliable Internet search engine, has found another taker for its technology: it now powers the BBC's new "family-friendly" web search, at bbc.co.uk, which has already got rival commercial services fuming about Auntie's latest encroachment on their turf. Actually, it's a useful interface which filters out the annoying paid-for listings that clutter up most search sites. It also helps to narrow down UK-specific sites more effectively than UKPlus's slow and overly commercial service, although results are still patchy. But the BBC's claim to filter out "pornography and other offensive material" ties it up into all sorts of knots. It blocks out anything about female dogs, blue tits or naturists, but happily led us to some raunchy babe galleries and the Ku Klux Klan.

(The Times, May 8 2002)

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Evening Standard: Donal MacIntyre profile

By David Rowan

HE has been shot at, mugged at knifepoint and faced a £50, 000 contract on his life. But can Donal MacIntyre survive the beating television critics have given him in recent days? His new series, MacIntyre Investigates, has been variously called "an absolute fiasco" (Daily Mirror), "ludicrous" (The Times) and "lame" (Daily Mail). To The Independent's Thomas Sutcliffe, the 36-year-old Dubliner has "all the journalistic impulses of a soft-shelled crab"; to the Daily Mirror's Jim Shelley, he is simply "the worst undercover reporter in England". That's not bad going after two programmes.

Meanwhile, BBC1's viewers have delivered their own critical verdict on his undercover exploits. Ratings are well down on the 7 million his first series achieved: 4. 1 million watched him lose his laptop to a Brixton mugger 13 days ago, whereas 6.9 million chose to watch Bad Girls on ITV1. Last Thursday's programme on the powerful drug methamphetamine attracted just 3.7 million viewers - 18 per cent of the audience. The question now being asked within the BBC is why MacIntyre is drawing barely more viewers than Panorama, while costing at least four times its programme budget.

MacIntyre has described his undercover work - most successfully in exposing football hooligans and abuse in care homes - as "exhilarating, dangerous and stressful". But resentment is growing within the corporation that his high-profile exposes are squeezing out serious investigations in favour of visually appealing stunts. A senior BBC currentaffairs figure dismisses Mac-Intyre's investigation into street crime in south London as "utterly predictable and trivial". "It's dreadful self-aggrandisement and a terrible waste of licence-payers' money. Some serious auditing is needed. There are people in other parts of the BBC with betterhoned skills, and you could get a much bigger bang for your buck."

The BBC will not disclose the cost of the three programmes scheduled, plus any others that may follow, but a figure of more than £2 million has been mentioned in internal meetings. (A spokeswoman says the true figure is "nothing near £2 million" but will not elaborate.) An episode of Panorama, by contrast, typically costs £100, 000-£150,000. In return, Lorraine Heggessey, BBC1's controller, expects MacIntyre Investigates to deliver the ratings - a pressure that other investigative journalists believe undermines its editorial integrity.

Such "commercially driven decision-making" has placed MacIntyre in an untenable position, according to Nick Davies, the investigative writer and broadcaster. "Donal is a charming and good-looking man who's willing to put himself in situations that are exciting and sexy. That kind of programme should drive up ratings. The big worry is that it's really entertainment, not investigation - and because it sucks funds away from the more important factual programming, there's a real knock-on problem."

DAVIES, who trains other investigative journalists, worries that programmes such as MacIntyre's face pressure to deliver "good TV" - even if that compromises the story. "There's a reversal of journalistic logic in television investigations - Donal's team was scrambling around looking for something to infiltrate, rather than starting with the issue." Davies himself was twice approached by a production company working for Channel 4, which sought help in getting an undercover reporter into a brothel and then a strip club ."Guess what they have in common," he reflects. "There's no shortage of real stories that need investigating - but what Channel 4 wants is breasts."

For all the criticisms, MacIntyre's methods have faced in recent days - and tomorrow's programme, in which a prostitute walks out on his film crew, may bring more - he has solid journalistic credentials. Originally a writer for Ireland's Sunday Tribune and the Irish Press, he moved to television in 1993 and began working undercover for the BBC sports series On The Line.

He won awards for exposing cruelty in Irish greyhound racing, and then spent a year undercover as a bouncer for World in Action. This won him two Royal Television Society awards. His first BBC series, MacIntyre Undercover, made his name but with mixed journalistic results: the BBC settled out of court after the Elite model agency sued. MacIntyre, meanwhile, is suing Kent Police over remarks about the accuracy of his care-home investigation.

In this second series, it is his softer targets that have brought criticisms. Paul Foot dismisses his approach as "the Roger Cook form of investigation - it's just about getting a good piece of television". Foot believes MacIntyre was misguided to take on Brixton's street criminals, an easy target. "Fundamental to the idea of an investigative journalist is the notion that you go for the strong rather than the weak. If what you're really doing is grubbing down among the weak to find what no one would deny is wrong, you're just shoring up the existing operation. It's our job to challenge the existing order," says Foot.

As for MacIntyre, he dismisses his critics as "lazy, bitchy" journalists. "People who dismiss (the programme) as 'entertainment' fail to see the documentary point or the journalism behind it," he says. "Where else have you heard that stolen mobile phones end up in Africa? We addressed the connection between drugs and street theft, and the Del Boy culture that allows people to dissociate themselves from the crimes that lead to goods ending up on the street."

But Heggessey, who has commissioned him to front a £3 million series on extreme weather this autumn, may now be questioning whether MacIntyre can live up to his billing. His investigative peers, meanwhile, have already made up their minds.

(Evening Standard, May 8 2002)

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The Observer: The 'looted art' sleuths

After years of anguish, families whose treasures were stolen by German troops in the Second World War are winning back their rightful property - with the help of a team of British experts. By David Rowan

For 50 years Bernard Goodman, a London travel agent, scoured Europe for hundreds of artworks the Nazis had looted from his wealthy family. The vast collection - including works by Degas, Renoir and Botticelli - had belonged to his father Friedrich, a German-Jewish banker whose own father founded the Dresdner Bank.

After Friedrich was beaten to death in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and his wife was gassed at Auschwitz, Bernard and his sister Lili vowed to rebuild the family's stolen collection, now dispersed among unknown owners. This proved a forlorn hope: when he died in 1994, still tormented by his parents' death, Bernard had regained only a handful of minor works.

Then suddenly a few days ago, the Dutch Culture Secretary said he would be returning 233 of the family's artworks that had found their way to his country's museums. He admitted that paintings such as Aelbert Cuyp's Rooster With Hens - its former owner listed as A. Hitler - had belonged to Friedrich. 'This is a satisfying day for our family,' Bernard's son, Nick, said on hearing the news. 'Although nothing can undo the awful events of the war, I now look forward to the day when some of my grandparents' art will hang on my walls.'

But why, after decades of denial and obstruction, did the Dutch relent? Much of the credit must go to half a dozen investigators, art historians and translators who work from an elegant eighteenth-century town house in central London. For the past three years, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe has worked with families of Hitler's victims to locate, identify and recover their stolen artworks. Through detective work, negotiation and moral pressure the investigators have been winning settlements from governments, galleries and collectors from Austria to Argentina. Now, after years of pressure, they have persuaded the Dutch government to return its stolen Goodman artworks.

Surrounded by thick files carrying the last hopes of the Lustig, Glanville and other families, the commission's chair, Anne Webber, fields calls in her Gloucester Place office from elderly people seeking to retrieve family heirlooms - often a final gift from a murdered parent. 'In almost every case, the personal stories are very disturbing,' said Webber, whose team is working on about 100 cases, ranging from a lone sculpture to a library of 3,500 manuscripts.

'Eighteen months ago, a man in his eighties called from London in a German accent asking if we knew of a painting showing fields of red poppies. Aged 13, he had gone with his father to buy it from the local artist. I asked him how they'd lost it, and it transpired that every member of his family had been killed in the camps. We did a lot of research - we've managed to find three images of this artist's poppy-field paintings.'

In another case, a 'delightful' man in his seventies gave Webber a detailed list of missing paintings. The man, who has lived in England since the Forties, is one of two survivors of an Austrian family of 11. 'He was very upset talking,' she recalled. 'He later returned and said there was only one picture he would really like to see again - a three-quarter-length portrait of a woman in blue. I guessed it was his murdered mother. But a couple of weeks later he rang up saying he'd been having sleepless nights, and that we shouldn't do any further research - he found it just too painful.'

The commission, a non-profit body funded by donations, is regularly obstructed by auction houses refusing to name current owners. Even when it finds a painting, it can take years to reach a settlement. The team is in discussion with Polish, Swiss, German, Austrian, Dutch and American collectors. It has also negotiated with 12 governments to create a vast online registry of looted objects, due to go live next month.

There will be no shortage of entries. Art theft was a serious business for Hitler: even before occupying Holland, he sent an advance team to identify the most desirable collections. Some works were distributed among Nazi functionaries or sold at auction but many were stored: in 1945 the Allies found more than 2,000 repositories in Germany and Austria. They returned the works to the countries they were taken from and each was charged with setting up a commission for restitution.

But not all works went back to their rightful owners. In France, just 45,000 out of 60,000 were returned; the government invited museums to take a further 2,000 and the rest were sold. For years, governments told claimants that their works must be behind the Iron Curtain. Only in the 1990s did it emerge that this was not the case.

In Holland, the authorities kept 4,000 looted artworks, including Bernard Goodman's family collection, known as the Gutmann collection, after his father's original surname. When war broke out, Bernard was studying at Cambridge, while his parents were living in Holland. No matter that they had sent many of their paintings - including a valuable Degas pastel, Landscape with Smokestacks - to France for safekeeping: when the Nazis arrived, the artworks disappeared.

After the war, Bernard devoted himself to finding them, studying auction catalogues and exhibition notes. 'He never gave up, and was still writing letters to his dying day,' his son Nick, 56, recalled. 'I remember as a little kid, Dad was constantly on the move, going through a passport a year as he chased stuff all over Europe. He'd hear of a painting in Switzerland, and would spend three weeks trying to track it down. Sometimes he'd arrange a settlement, and we'd be flush for a few months - then that money would whittle away.'

To help finance their two sons' education at the French Lycée in South Kensington, Mrs Goodman worked as a beautician at Elizabeth Arden on Bond Street. The couple later divorced, and died within months of each other. Nick, a film production designer now in Los Angeles, recalled: 'Dad had grown up in the lap of luxury, in a beautiful house, was well-educated, went to Cambridge, thought he was going into the family banking business - then suddenly everything was gone. He could never talk about it - all his emotions had been cauterised. If the Holocaust came on television, he would have to leave the room.'

Only after Bernard's death did his sons learn just how much effort he and his sister Lili, now 82, had put into their search for justice. They vowed to continue the fight, and went in pursuit of the lost Degas masterpiece Landscape with Smokestacks .

After months in libraries, in 1996 Nick's brother, Simon, found a photograph of the Degas and the name of its current owner, a retired pharmaceutical executive named Daniel Searle. It had reached the US in 1951 via Switzerland.

Searle had bought the Degas in 1987 for $850,000, and was shocked to receive a letter from the Goodmans saying that it was stolen. Anne Webber followed the ensuing legal dispute in a documentary, Making A Killing; Searle later said that the film persuaded him to settle with the Gutmann heirs. They split the ownership, with the Art Institute of Chicago buying the family's share.

Webber was asked to attend an international conference in Washington on looted art. The European Council for Jewish Communities then asked her to help set up the commission as an independent centre of expertise. It takes on three or four new cases a week, some involving families based in England. It recently arranged the return of a sculpture from Austria, and expects to recover two paintings from Vienna for a British family, after discovering them on sale at an Austrian auction house. The paintings, by Norbert Grund, had been looted from Holland in 1941. Curiously, they turned up together in an auction last March, having been brought there by a German dealer. The law varies by country: in the US victims never lose the right to recover stolen goods, but in the UK if you buy something in good faith you obtain 'good title' after six years.

'Museums generally get "good title" to their works,' Webber explained, 'but they face moral reasons not to keep them.' The pressure is growing on British galleries and museums to return artworks known to be looted: last year the Government agreed to pay £125,000 compensation to three elderly Londoners whose mother sold a work by Jan Griffier the Elder when she fled the Nazis. The painting was later acquired by the Tate Gallery. According to the National Museum Directors' Conference, at least 600 artworks on display in this country - by Picasso, Monet and Cézanne, among others - may have been looted.

As further evidence emerges, the commission's workload grows. 'Last week's settlement would have been a lot harder to achieve without the commission,' said Nick Goodman. 'They've been doing a wonderful job.' Of the 233 items, nine are paintings by artists including Cuyp and Elsner, and the rest 'household items' such as gilt cabinets. The family plans to meet in Holland to decide how to proceed. Another 50 families are seeking the return of looted artworks from Holland.

'It isn't over yet,' Nick Goodman said. 'Our family knows of another Degas still missing, plus a couple of Guardis and a Van de Velde. They might be hanging over someone's fireplace in Argentina or Japan - but we'll keep looking.'

(The Observer, May 5, 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Electronic voting/Unpoetic domains

By David Rowan

IF THE politicians are to be believed, the age of digital democracy will finally reach Britain tomorrow. For the first time, English local councils from Sheffield to St Albans will offer electronic voting - through the Web or the mobile phone. In Liverpool, that means casting votes through home computers or text messages; in Bolton, it involves voting in electronic kiosks in libraries and polling stations. If these pilots are a success, pressure will grow for nationwide e-voting in a general election some time soon.

The Government - which has provided £3.5 million to fund tomorrow's trials - can barely conceal its delight. Nick Raynsford, the Minister for Local Government, is promising "an e-enabled general election some time after 2006". Robin Cook, the Leader of the House of Commons, goes further. He wants the UK to become the first country in the world to vote over the Internet, possibly at the next election. After all, he says, the Net is "a tool for participation without precedent in democratic history". Steady on, chaps. Yes, the Internet has promised new possibilities for voter involvement since it was first used in Arizona's Democratic primaries in March 2000, but no one, least of all the Government, has yet worked out how to make the process secure and free from abuse. If hackers can keep successfully targeting the world's biggest software firm, imagine how much fun they will be having tomorrow pointing out how easily they can influence e-democracy.

The Electoral Reform Society, for one, worries that the Government is pushing online voting long before it has been shown to work. "We're very dubious about people saying that the next general election should be online," says Alex Folkes at the ERS, which has called - without success - for "a couple of hackers" to be paid to target the councils' e-voting systems to prove that they are unbreakable. "Yes, it's worthwhile trying anything to increase voter turnout. But we don't believe that electronic voting is the big answer. It won't increase turnout by more than 2 or 3 per cent."

The cost, if something goes wrong, may be an immense loss of public confidence. And something will go wrong, sooner or later. "A secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application created so far in the history of computers," according to Bruce Schneier, a computer-security expert. "We know that we can't protect Internet computers from viruses and worms, and that all operating systems are vulnerable to attack. What recourse is there if the voting system is hacked into, or gets overloaded and fails?"

Rebecca Mercuri, an American online-voting specialist, warns that no electronic system is safe: "Fully electronic systems do not provide any way that the voter can verify that the ballot cast corresponds to that being recorded, transmitted, or tabulated," she says. "Any programmer can write code that displays one thing on a screen, records something else, and prints yet another result."

Until security improves, online voting should be limited to the Big Brother evictions. Although that system too has its flaws: remember when hackers boosted Paul Clarke's website vote last summer?

++++

AS THE Poetry Society found to its cost recently, an unrenewed Internet domain name can quickly fall into the hands of opportunist pornographers. But it has taken Ben Edelman, a student at Harvard, to unravel the scale of the problem. While clicking on a link to the Bicycle Bills website, he was surprised to be taken to Tina's Free Live Webcam. He decided to investigate, and discovered that the site's owners have registered 4,525 different domains that now point to Tina's naked exploits. These are not typically the "XXX" site addresses you would expect, but innocuous business domains that were once registered but allowed to lapse. So don't forget to renew your domain, unless you want your customers to meet an uninhibited 19-year-old New Yorker called Tina.

(The Times, May 1 2002)

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Evening Standard: Magazine cover stars that work

Kidman or Cruise? The right cover star can make or break a magazine issue. In an exclusive survey, we reveal who works and who doesn't Celebrities who deliver - and a few who don't. By David Rowan

WHEN Marie Claire runs its first male cover star in 14 years, and GQ abandons its lissom babes for the same family man, then something must be up in magazine land. David Beckham, after all, is reputedly Britain's coolest man - and as World Cup fever grows, editors are betting their circulations on his power to shift vast numbers of copies."I'd be very disappointed if Beckham turned out not to be our biggest cover of the year," says Dylan Jones, editor of GQ.

Marie Claire, meanwhile, took the unprecedented step last Sunday of reprinting an extra 60, 000 copies even before its June edition hit the newsstands.

But can a cover star really determine how well a magazine sells? According to an Evening Standard survey of last year's hits and misses, the right celebrity at the right moment can boost circulation by up to a third.

Nicole Kidman, Geri Halliwell and Kylie Minogue provided the year's top-selling covers for glossies such as GQ and Harper's Bazaar. Notable failures, meanwhile, included PenÈlope Cruz and the model Gisele Bundchen, who, between them, led the year's lowestselling issues of Esquire, No wonder that, according to the editors we spoke to, the choice of cover photograph remains an intensely debated matter.

"It's not rocket science, but it's definitely a science," reflects Jones, who spent £30, 000 to photograph Beckham for June's GQ. The most successful cover stars, he believes, manage to excite readers while remaining cosily familiar - qualities exemplified by Beckham, boosted next month by the national interest paid to his day job. "The principles remain the same, it's just the cast list that changes," Jones explains. "David Bowie can have a career for 30 years, Madonna for 20, then it can stop. When was the last time you saw Prince on a cover?"

For GQ, Kylie has proved a reliable bet: her October cover was its best seller of 2001, and an earlier cover featuring her in a minimalist tennis dress achieved its highest sale ever. Madonna also did well for GQ last year. But Jones admits that he cannot always predict the results. "Natalie Imbruglia, in December, was aesthetically one of our best covers last year - elegant and erotic. But it didn't sell fantastically well, to say the least."

Over at Esquire, rival editor Peter Howarth concedes that Beckham will prove "a good editorial decision" for GQ. "But Beckham's pretty much a one-off in their canon of men," he adds."It's more typical for them to use a girl in as few clothes as they can persuade her to wear. They'll get publicity for this, but, from our experience, publicity doesn't necessarily translate into sales."

ESQUIRE claims to have a "unique" cover policy among its peers: "We just choose what we want, be they male or female, young or old, blackand- white or colour," Howarth explains. "Fundamentally, we have a loyal readership, so circulation does not vary too much." His bestselling cover last year featured Samuel L Jackson - "a black-and-white photo of a 53-year-old black man smoking a cigarette", as he describes it - but he admits that he, too, cannot always call the winners. "Why would Jude Law (April) outsell Penelope Cruz (May)? That always surprises me. We've had a Gail Porter cover that sold bucketloads, and, another time, we had Donna Air, which didn't sell at all. That's one of the reasons I changed our policy - we were struggling to secondguess the 16-year-olds' tastes."

In the Standard's survey, actresses tended to outperform models - although for Eve, the umbrella given away free with May's issue made up for the unknown face. But some magazines, such as InStyle, refuse even to consider models. "The whole thinking behind InStyle is that the sophisticated woman, of average age 32, responds better to a celebrity - a model doesn't get to choose her own clothes," says Louise Chunn, acting editor, for whom Julia Roberts (last March) and Kate Winslet (September) are ever-reliable crowd-pullers."There's a lot of recognition with both for the readers - Kate is a muchloved local girl, seen as stylish but human, who goes out in jeans and trainers. Michelle Pfeiffer has also done really well. Some people thought she was not tremendously current, but it's a lovely picture - you think,'great looking woman', not'over the hill'."

One who failed was Cate Blanchett in December's issue, which Chunn attributes delicately to "it not being her best photo". It was clearly not Blanchett's year: she also featured on the worst-selling cover of W magazine.

Her stock may rise again, as Peter Howarth points out: "A magazine should be a document of its time, and you have to find the right person for the right month." At certain times, a celebrity may suffer from overexposure.

Perhaps that explains why Naomi Campbell proved to be Vogue's best-selling cover star last February, but had fallen to its worst by October.

OTHER factors are at stake, too. Cover-mounted gifts can boost sales, such as the T-shirt that helped Sophie Dahl become Elle's best seller last July. For some women's magazines, the catwalk calendar also makes a difference." February is traditionally very poor for the fashion magazines, but in March, with the new collections, almost anything will work," explains Rita Lewis, Marie Claire's publishing director.

Good fortune also plays a part - particularly as cover shoots may be organised seven months in advance. "You need good judgm