One of the interesting debates that surrounded today’s story about the BNP was what to do with the data once it got out. So far it’s pretty clear that the names and addresses of members of the BNP are way out of bounds in a legal sense. The political party, whether you agree with its far-right, largely racist policies or not, is still considered legitimate by the authorities, even though members of the Police force are banned from becoming members. BNP members remain private citizens under the law. So taking the data from the list and mashing it up with Google maps is, to use a technical term, pretty damn dodgy.

Even more problematic is using the default Google Maps pin image, which literally pinpoints a spot on the map as being the house of a BNP member. Obscuring the location of the pin by moving it around turned out to put it slap bang onto someone’s house who almost certainly had nothing to do with the BNP, as the original mapper found. As I said on Twitter, I was starting to see some really evil shit being done with the BNP list (in terms of data mashups) and implored any geeks out there to think twice and stop.

The debate was also raging on the list run by MySociety, a non-governmental organisation which has built mashups using government data before, often sailing close to the law in the interests of creating more transparency to the democratic process. One poster said they should do a mashup, but the suggestion was convincingly slapped down by MySociety’s Tom Steinburg:

“…the moment you sacrifice the values and compromises that hold together liberal democracies (such as a presumption of innocence and a right to privacy for people who’ve not actually been convicted of crimes) for the sake of humiliating your political opponents, you’re starting on a path far more likely to result in ruination for us all than a bunch of marginal wing nuts.”

Aside from that, MySociety has stayed clear of the data not least because the Information Commissioner has yet to pronounce on its use. Anything anyone does in the meantime could probably mean fines, and maybe some sort of knee-jerk legislation. Most likely the ICO will recommend all copies of this data should be destroyed.

The trouble is, the data (or at least, what we think is the data) is already out there. It’s too late.

And ominously I hear it’s being added to. There are already whispers circulating that “amended” copies of the BNP member list are doing the rounds on Bitorrent. People are settling scores with neighbours by adding them to a bogus BNP list. The potential for abuse is sky-high.

Now there is yet another Google mashup map which has used the data, still illegally under the strict letter of the law. “John Doe” and his (or her?) crew at BNP Near Me have obscured the actual addresses and aggregated BNP members into clumps around the main postcodes.

So instead of saying, effectively, “A member of the BNP lives right on this spot, we think, so feel free to go harrass them,” the result is “X BNP members in this postcode district” with a smudged red circle rather than a pin.

Even The Guardian newspaper has now wayed-in with a mashup plotting the data against constituencies.

However, I think most would agree that the entire episode has opened a complex can of worms that will still be crawling around for weeks, possibly months and years to come.

Following today’s news story about the far-right British National Party losing its member database, which was then mashed with a Google map, at least someone is retaining a sense of the absurd about the whole thing. Enter LOL Griffin, another mashup site of sorts, but this time between the LOLCats series on the ICanHasCheezburger site and Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP. Enjoy.

BREAKING NOW:

Creator of the Map, Ben Charlton, removes it from his site. Here’s his post explaining why:

Update

I have decided to take down the map. Many people have commented that the map does give a false impression of accuracy, despite my making this clear, and I’m tempted to agree. I do not want to single anybody out and by removing the accuracy from the map it is possible that it ends up incorrectly implying a property contains a BNP member. It has been suggested that an inaccurate map that doesn’t make that clear is worse than publishing the list itself, and I think that’s a reasonable comment.

[More coverage on this story here and here.]

[Updated: Please see further updates below]

Original story:

As news about the leaking of the membership list of the far-right/racist British National Party broke in the UK, it quickly became a headline story in the mainstream media. But the chatter amongst geeks on Twitter this morning was about the possible “mashup” that could be done of the members’ postcodes with a Google Map. As soon as that idea had propagated, it was bound to happen, since the list has been available on Bitorrent and on Wikileaks for around 24 hrs now. Frankly I thought it would take a little longer, but as I debated the issue on Twitter this morning, someone sent me a link to an already-built map.

And it’s scary.

The map is a sea of red pins, indicating that there are in fact BNP members spread pretty widely across the UK. London is barely visible under the map. Zooming out means that the map can no longer render all the data points adequately. It’s worth remembering that Britain is in fact one of the least racist, most tolerant nations in Europe, but the map looks pretty scary covered in these large red pins.

Ben Charlton, owner of the site Spod.cx has created the map here.

He writes:

As various news organisations have been reporting, the membership list for the British National Party has been leaked online. It seems a court injunction kept this quiet for some time, but the list has well and truly escaped - currently hosted on bittorrent and the always excellent wikileaks site.

Curious about the list, I managed to find a copy and after checking it for the obvious odd family members or people you know and think might be members, I thought it’d be cool to make a Google Maps mashup of the data. I extracted the postcodes from the member list and converted them into latitude and longitude co-ordinates, which are then plotted on the map.

The map is a bit slow to render, especially if there are a lot of data points, but it’s interesting to see the distribution of members. As I’m only generating a list of latitude and longitude points, I’m not revealing any of the actual list data. If you want to find out who the hate-filled racist that lives near you is, you’ll need to find and look through the list yourself.

The implications of this action are pretty big. I speculated on Twitter this morning that a mashup which identified the actual locations of BNP members would be highly problematic, and possibly even subject to vigilante attack. However I still believe that a map which showed more general areas, like towns and cities, could actually be helpful to local authorities for creating policies to tackle attitudes towards diversity. If you were a local councillor and had been made aware that there were lots of BNP members in your area, you may be able to do something about the attitudes which lead to support for such a far-right political party.

But now this more accurate map is out of the bag, and others are probably planning similar maps, the implications are far reaching. What no-one would wish is for a witch-hunt to begin. Plotting this map will make the data available to just about anyone. My personal opinion is that in this, quite accurate form, it should be taken down. On the one hand the BNP has a notorious history of violence. On the other, it also has a history of attracting disaffected young people who later regret joining - their lives should not be tarred by their actions as naive youngsters.

UPDATE 1: I emailed Ben Charlton about the map and emailed him some questions to which he has now responded.

He says the map is not as a accurate I feared: “I deliberately only pulled out postcodes from the file, converted those to latitude/longitude, then stripped a chunk of precision off the end. It gives a vague location, probably to street level, but it’s certainly not accurate by any means.”

1. Why create the map?

“I thought what I’ve seen a lot of people say - it would be interesting to visualise the data in a way that makes sense to people. It’s all very well being able to look for people in your home town, but it’s nice to see easily how that compares to membership in other locations.”

2. How accurate are people’s locations? Would someone be able to work out they lived next door to a member.

“The original list is very specific - listing addresses and names. I deliberately only pulled out postcodes from the file, converted those to latitude/longitude, then stripped a chunk of precision off the end. It gives a vague location, probably to street level, but it’s certainly not accurate by any means. Of course, there’s nothing to stop people then looking on the proper list - it’s not hard to find now.”

3. Do you plan to maintain the map?

“It’s based on the leaked list. If there’s a new list leaked I might update it, but for the time being it won’t change.”

4. Are you worried about BNP members identifying you?

“It’s always a concern, but I deliberately kept my app vague so as not to directly identify anyone as it’s not my intention to cause upset. I’d hope I’m not a target for too much abuse - especially compared to what a lot of other sites are saying.”

Update 2: However, an inaccurate map could be more dangerous than an accurate one. As others point out in comments below, the Google pin can, and perhaps should, be changed to something more like a “circle with fading semi-transparent edges” to prevent someone getting the wrong idea about their neighbour.

Update 3: Map creator Ben Charlton has now posted a heat-map of the data here but it largely shows what you might expect - that BNP membership roughly maps to urban centres of population.

Addendum: Others are making interesting use of the data, such as this graph by region.

And at least some can see the funny side now.

FineTuna is a rather nifty web app from Irish-based Spoilt Child Design that allows you to upload, comment and share images from around the web. Spoiltchild were also the creators of other web apps such as Toddle.com.

So how does FineTuna work? Well, remember that drunken picture of you and that person you don’t know? Upload that image file and FineTuna will present you with a unique URL. This is where the service comes into its own, as you are then presented with the ability to comment on parts of the images. Maybe not the most practical example of what you can do with the service, but the feature set is definitely there to help you along the way.

Not content? Well FineTuna offers up a very handy FireFox add-on. Install and right click on an image, or even an entire browser screenshot. Upload to FineTuna and get the same services as before.

Now there are as many image sharing services on the web as there are fish in the sea. But FinaTuna is one I could actually see myself using. It’s simple, intuitive and an absolute delight to use.

(By Grant Bell, TCUK’s current intern)

Tweetdeck - the Adobe Air application which has taken Twitter addicts to a new state of nirvana - is due to be updated this week, and UK-based developer Iain Dodswoth emailed me with the new version.

It will appear at v0.20 and is quite different from the previous one. Now, Tweets are no longer stored for long periods as they were before. Dodsworth says the reason is that the sheer volume of tweets (his TweetDeck was storing 10,000 per day) was having a huge impact on the speed and reliability of TweetDeck. Now when, you start up TweetDeck, it will initially be empty and then all the columns will be populated from the live API data within a second or two.

The advantages are myriad. The maximum number of tweets per Twitter call has been increased from 20 to 200 - theoretically you can now get 200 tweets every 36 seconds in your All Tweets column. Twitter searches have also been increased, from 20 tweets to the maximum of 100 tweets per minute. The startup of TweetDeck is much improved. Column actions such as adding, moving or deleting columns are much faster (they were pretty slow in the older version).

However, these new features have a cost: The removal of local searches - since these were totally reliant on the local database store of tweets - but I won’t miss that. Group columns will on first startup look a little sparse - since groups are populated from the All Tweets data feed when you first open TweetDeck. There will only be 200 tweets in the All Tweets column to populate the groups, but of course if you leave TweetDeck running then it will hold all the incoming tweets and the groups will soon fill up.

You can also set things up so that Tweetdeck will auto-add someone to your friend list when they follow you, or remove them when they unfollow. You can track conversations better with the new “in reply to” link. You can also now delete tweets from Twitter from within Tweetdeck.

The most important for me is the new ability to click and “add to group” button the profile panel, which means I can track particular Twitterers better. Roll on Twitter heaven…

The new version of Trutap - the mobile social network and aggregator - has a slick new design which gives users live updates from all their friends on just about any java handset. The new application’s features include: a personal newsfeed, ‘who’s online’, status & location, extended profile, searchable user directory, private messaging, email, SMS, blogging, photo-sharing and mobile IM. See the video below. In October Trutap added more social networks to the roster of social networks it aggregates.

Trutap is targeted at mid-to-high-range mobile phones that make up 85% of the market and has its biggest market share in emerging markets like India and Indonesia, where the iPhone and Blackberry are still considered luxury handsets. The new version will be rolled out to over 450 mobile phones by the end of 2008.

Right now the London-based startup has 250,000 users around the world and is currently raising a Series B funding round. To download Trutap, go to http://trutap.com on your mobile or PC browser and it should auto-detect your browser version.

Trutap, the free mobile social network - video demo from Trutap on Vimeo.

Digital SMEs in the UK with their sights set on South by South West interactive should get their skates on; Chinwag and UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) are currently auditioning for 40 companies to take to the festival in Texas in March 2009. Those that make the cut for this Digital Mission will get the chance to reconnoitre the local market, make connections and pursue new business opportunities.

Chinwag and the UKTI are planning a few high profile networking events and marketing campaigns, and offering the successful companies exhibition space at SXSW Interactive as well as a masterclass to help British companies understand how to establish and develop their business in the US.

The slots are open to any SME working in the digital sector ranging from web application developers, widget specialists, game developers through to web agencies, e-commerce operators, mobile developers and analytics providers. The judging panel includes our very own TechCrunch UK editor, Mike Butcher, ex-Dragon Doug Richard and Codeworks CEO, Herb Kim.

The closing date for entries is 9am on Monday, 24th November. Further information, entry criteria and the application form is available through the Digital Mission website.

This is the second Digital Mission which Chinwag has organised for UKTI; the first saw 21 British digital firms visit New York City in September 2008.

Sometimes it pays to be on this side of the pond, especially if you’re a Facebook addict with a yen for mobile gadgetry and don’t mind switching to 3 if you’re not with them already. The network will be the exclusive carrier for the INQ¹, a Hutchison Whampoa handset launched in the UK only which integrates all the big social networking sites and services – Facebook, Skype, Windows Live Messenger and Last.fm – and also handily makes phone calls.

So far, so iPhone/G1/Storm. The killer USP may come in the price – 3 is firmly targeting the budget end of the mass market with a contract pricing plan that begins at £15 per month for unlimited web access and social media app usage, unlimited texts, email and 3-to-3 calls and 75 minutes of calls to other networks. The leap to the next rung up, which offers all that and 200 minutes to other networks, comes at a mere £5 more per month. The pay-as-you-go plans aren’t that much more expensive.

Already dubbed the Facebook phone, the INQ¹ is positioned as a ‘live contact book’, with friends’ online status and Facebook profile pictures displayed against their contact details. Early reviews suggest this phone will go a long way to helping newbs realise the potential of mobile social media networking.

The time’s probably ripe for this launch; 3 says it handles more than a million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls every day and Mark Zuckerberg reckons more than 15 million Facebook users access the site through their mobile devices (though it’s not clear if this is a UK specific stat).

The phone is named INQ¹ to distinguish it from the manufacturing company INQ Mobile, referred to as INQ. The name’s also good for confusing people who actually do use superscript to indicate the presence of footnotes.

British and European Obama fans, rejoice! Zazzle.com, the on-demand e-commerce shop that allows users to create and sell their own products has launched a UK site at Zazzle.co.uk, which now means you can get all the Obama branded stuff your heart desires without paying import duties though as TCUK’s eagle-eyed readers have pointed out, the goods will still be shipped from the US, so import duties will still apply. On the downside, you have to pay in pound sterling - no more exploiting the old GBP-USD exchange rate.

The UK site launched yesterday; to celebrate, Zazzle’s offering free shipping on all UK and EU orders over £30 until the end of November. This ain’t no sneaky pseudo-secret discount code either - it’s plastered all over the new website.

The launch means Zazzle’s effectively stolen a march on its closest US competitor, Cafepress.com and may yet shake things up for European counterpart, Spreadshirt. The company acquired its other major competitor, GoodStorm, last year. Founded in 1999 and backed by $16 million in VC funding raised in 2005, Zazzle.com won the 2007 Crunchies award for best business model.

As the downturn bites, VCs are putting more into the companies they feel most confident about rather than the spray-and-pray approach of the last three years. That, combined with companies that have proven models, and developing revenues. The latest example of this is the €15 million investment from the European VC Index Ventures into Be2, the Munich-based global dating site. But this is not your average dating site. This bases its business on an algorithm which identifies specific personality traits and characteristics and uses them to match potentially compatible partners. The engine draws its data from an in-depth personality test for subscribers, creating a higher success rate than humans could achieve left to their own amorous devices.

The test is mainly based on the “New York Longitudinal Study” about the five factor model of personality development and Sternberg “triangular theory of love” - if that floats your boat.

The user demographic of be2 is also slightly older, compared to other dating sites, with an age range of 25 – 69 years and a majority of users aged 30 – 49 years. Not a demographic well served by most dating sites. Perhaps as a results of this focus it now has 12 million members in 34 countries and was cash flow positive 6 weeks after a launch, despite having 225 employees.

be2 will use the capital to further international expansion. Angel investors and Paris-based Banexi Ventures were the company’s initial investors and Index partner, Dom Vidal, will take a seat on the board.

Coming out of Munich, the founders - such as CEO, Robert Wuttke - are mostly ex-Lycos Europe people from back in the day.