Both stories raise the issue of ethics and whether it’s appropriate to publish a news stories based on information sourced by dubious means. But as Broadstuff’s Alan Patrick spotted there’s another issue in play that threatens confidence in businesses services delivered via the internet.

If you store your data in The Cloud, you are far more at risk from these sort of occurrences. Especially if it’s free, as we have noted before the only Service Level at zero cost is zero service, and that if you ain’t paying, you ain’t the customer.”

The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones has advice for advocates of cloud based computing on his blog.

Companies promoting cloud computing – from Google to Amazon to Microsoft – are all confident that their systems just cannot be hacked. But if you allow your employees […] to send confidential information on cloud-based e-mail then you’d better make sure their passwords are super secure.

Tighten your passwords and pin codes. You have been warned.

Arts, business, science, technology and smart thinking – on-the-Tyne. Have a look. I’ve booked for 2010.

Thinking Digital Conference 2009 Highlights Film from Herbert Kim on Vimeo.

It’s a long post. But I make no apologies. Bozier’s frontline views on the Labour party, the Afghan election, LabourList and the forthcoming UK General Election are well worth reading.

Thanks to Mark Hanson for the introduction.

Q. The Red Narrative brand implies a left of centre leaning. What’s your background?

I’ve been a Labour member for just under three years. I previously worked at Labour HQ, advising Tony Blair and the wider party on strategic online communication, and since then for other centre-left politicians here and abroad.

I believe in the [Labour] party’s values, of society looking after everybody, and I want my work to help socially-minded politicians around the world to be able to communicate effectively.

Q. There are two prongs to your strategy for Dr Ashraf Ghani: raising awareness and raising funds? Can you describe how it will be delivered?

A. Raising awareness by running the best website of the whole election. Our content is updated daily, is available in English and the two local Afghan languages. We issue regular press releases via an email group of journalists. We also have a large list of email subscribers, mainly Afghans from around the world and in the country. On top of this, we send regular messages to our Facebook groups, and use Twitter to spread the word.

Donations are solicited through the website, and have so far been very successful (in the tens of thousands of US dollars). Anyone with a credit or debit card can log on to the site and make a donation in just a few minutes.

Q. How will you measure success of your campaign for Dr Ashraf Ghani beyond a successful election win?

A. I hope Dr Ashraf Ghani will win the election and if so the group of supporters we have created online can then be channelled into raising awareness of issues inside Afghanistan, and encouraged to take action themselves. Often when people leave their home country it’s hard to stay connected to the national political scene – we hope that through the Internet, and with this campaign, we have inspired the younger Afghans abroad to take an interest in the politics of their country at this turning point in their history.

Equally, whoever is running Afghanistan after August, they need to be kept honest; the Internet is perfect for this. I hope that the people that have been inspired by the Dr Ashraf Ghani campaign feel that they can organise online to promote political developments in the country and ensure that the government is as transparent and efficient as possible.

Q. How does Red Narrative win clients and can tell us about a campaign that you are proud of?

A. I personally meet a lot of politicians and people working for politicians and people running for office. With the success of the Obama campaign last year, the vast majority of people either seeking or already in public office now recognise that the Internet and new media are crucial parts of any communication or campaign strategy, so to some extent my work is already done.

Red Narrative is also pro-active in lobbying certain politicians or groups of politicians to consider carrying out specific projects which are of benefit to them, and then we work with them if they are interested.

A campaign I’m proud of – tough question. I’ve worked on so many interesting projects, from the first online consultation, to web-based inter-cultural dialogue programmes, to putting Tony Blair on YouTube and now helping Afghanistan to run modern campaigns in the post-Taliban era. I’ve also done a lot of domestic work with little-known politicians who are working hard for the people in their constituencies.

I wouldn’t want to single out one campaign, but the Dr Ashraf Ghani for President campaign is certainly the most though-provoking, and the one which could have the largest potential impact on a nation and society.

Q. What’s your view of  the LabourList project?

A. Initially I was sceptical, and Derek Draper is a divisive figure. But before he left, and to his credit, he succeeded in getting the whole Labour community to recognise it as a viable outlet and place for internal dialogue. Politicians and activists from across the board have written on a plethora of subjects there, and it’s something to applaud. Alex Smith is doing a great job in keeping it going, and there are some interesting developments since he took over, such as the partnership with the Huffington Post.

However, LabourList’s big drawback is that it is just an internal talking post. I know Derek initially saw it as something wider, something that would engage “millions” of non-political British folk. I don’t think it’s the platform for that, and it’s sad that Labour as the governing party hasn’t yet come up with that kind of national political forum. But as a Labour platform, I think it’s great.

Q. What impact do you expect social media to have on the 2010 UK election?

A. I’m sure there will be a tangible impact, but not as profound as I would like. Unfortunately the political system in Great Britain is not one which will facilitate a ground-breaking, election-winning online/social media campaign such as the Obama campaign. Our system doesn’t allow insurgent candidates to come out of nowhere and take the stage, which means that the Internet’s ability to rally hundreds of thousands of people around an “underdog” candidate are redundant here. That’s not to say that parties shouldn’t take it seriously, and I hope Labour puts social media and e-campaigning more central to its strategy and structure as an organisation.

I think the space where the biggest potential for social media to impact the election is on its coverage and analysis. The blogosphere (and Twittersphere) will be alive from the second Gordon calls the election (in fact, I would like to see him announce it in an innovative way – maybe he could send a Twitter message to the Queen: “@QEII Your Majesty, I am now advising you to dissolve Parliament and call a general election. Cheers, your Prime Minister #ge2010″ – only 120 chars!).

There’s still a good chance that Parliament will be hung, which will provide fodder to the bloggers and Twits to create online drama. I’m sure we will see Tweets and blogs coming from result announcements all across the country, some of which will be dramatic, in the same way as the Michael Portillo 1997 loss was dramatic; this time they will be captured and uploaded to YouTube and Twitter.

Twitter has introduced a verified account feature. The beta-feature has been introduced for anyone that has experienced identity issues and will see a badge added to the Twitter page of accounts that have been verified.

“We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies).”

If you fall into this category complete this form on the site.

Twitter could use registration as a mechanism to drive revenue. Users would be will to pay a few dollars to verify their account. But the feature is free and limited to individuals and public organisations.

“We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.”

While there is no plan to open up account verification for business it’s clearly something that it is considering as it has asked businesses to register their interest.

“We’re not testing this feature now with businesses. However, if you’re interested in verification for your business, fill out this feedback form and let us know.”

Details of how the mobile phones of people in the public eye were allegedly “hacked” by journalists at News of the World as reported by the Guardian today remain undisclosed. But one of the questions any ongoing investigation will no doubt ask include whether what is claimed to have happened was hacking per se, and whether it broke any laws.

Without making any inference whatsoever on the allegations currently facing individuals at the News of the World, here are some possible ways that an individual could conceivably, if they were so minded, get information from mobile phone services:

• Bug on the handset – unlikely that anyone would go this far and difficult to implement en masse anyway
• An intercept during the conversation – difficult and expensive, requiring military-level expertise
• Phone company insider – paid to listen-in or record calls, or provide access to voice packets or voicemail files
• Voicemail hacking – each network has a default voicemail pin. If you don’t change your pin, your messages could be hacked anytime your phone is switched off or you miss a call. You could call this hacking, but it could be viewed as the equivalent to leaving a window open

Two things surprise me about this case: how quick other publishers have been to turn on News International, publisher of The News of the World, The Sun and The Times, and that journalists at the News of the World would risk using such a tactic after seeing a colleague and private investigator jailed for a separate but phone-related incident in 2007.

According to PR Bristol from January 2010 if you circulate a web page to a client both your agency and the client will need to pay the new NLA eClip charge. Clipping agencies will become liable for the cost from September 2009 and are likely to pass on the cost.

In the growing number of comments on the PR Bristol site an unnamed individual from the NLA defends its position.

“Licensing charges will only affect those client businesses who receive and use digital newspaper cuttings as part of their business. If a PR agency systematically monitors newspapers on behalf of a client, this is commercial use of copyrighted material and you need an NLA licence.”

“The NLA estimates that over 95% of PR agencies – if they copy digital content to clients – should see an increase in client copying fees for the inclusion of newspaper web content of less than £100 per year; while the agencies’ own license costs could increase by around 10%, entirely depending on what they do.”

I’ve long criticised the PRCA for its limp approach. But director general Francis Ingram has led the defence of the industry. And he’s having none of it. On his new blog he criticises the NLA for creating confusion and introducing additional cost at a time when the industry is under numerous pressures.

“[…] they’re talking about charging agencies and their clients for URLs. They’re talking about charging PRCA members for directing their clients to the newspapers’ own sites. And then charging clients too. That is simply outrageous. If the newspapers want to make their content available for free, and then live off the advertising revenue, then good luck to them. If they want to charge for web content, then – again-that’s their choice. But charging for links to publicly available, free material is utterly ridiculous.”

I’m all for protecting intellectual property but by any measure this move by the NLA is ill thought out.

At Speed we are increasingly sharing a digital monitoring dashboard with our clients. It’s an open source platform built on Netvibes that sucks in content from across the web – including national newspapers. Will this attract an NLA levy?

When I share the results of Google News search or a RSS aggregator that has pulled in content from national media with colleagues and clients will they need to pay per click?

And what of the future of the Guardian Open Platform? Will its commercial partners now need to pay to republish content?

I think the NLA needs to host a proper debate on this issue.

Advertising budgets will continue to decline and interactive marketing including search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, social media, and mobile marketing will grow from 12 to 21 per cent of spend.

The report is focused on the US but the headlines apply worldwide. The only surprise is that the shift to interactive isn’t more dramatic.

Flickr: One and Other, Trafalgar Square, London (left of shot)

I think he’s wrong. Twitter has fragmented conversations. Services such as Backtype allow them to be pulled back into one place.