A TV ad for a smartphone claiming to be the world’s thinnest has beenbanned in the UK for objectifying women. The ad for the Kazam Tornado 348 shows a woman in her underwear getting dressed, pulling on a pair of jeans and ironing her shirt only to discover the smartphone in one pocket. After receiving complaints about the ad, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned it, ruling that it was “sexually suggestive” and “likely to cause serious offense.”
The ASA’s ruling said that “much of the ad focused entirely on the actor in her underwear, including scenes that featured several close-up shots that lingered over her breasts, buttocks and lips.” It added that the sexual nature “was heightened by the suggestive nature of the music and voiceover and further reinforced because the focus on the woman bore no relevance to the advertised product.”
Kazam argued that the ad was simply illustrating a well-known scenario, that of ironing your clothes in your underwear before going out. It added that the ad’s message was that its smartphone was so slim that the actor did not notice that she was ironing it. Leaving aside the plausibility of this (or indeed the fact that the Tornado 348 is not even the thinnest smartphone on the market), the advert itself is clearly ridiculous. For the fifty seconds that the actor is on-screen the smartphone only appears in ten of them, and the focus on her body (who doesn’t take the time to sexily touch themselves while getting dressed?) is egregious and just plain dumb. The tech market has a bad reputation when it comes to objectifying women because it’s a real problem — ads like this don’t help.
Edward Snowden revealed vast troves of information about surveillance activities by the NSA.The Guardian/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
A top UK intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, engaged in unlawful spying until late 2014, a tribunal ruled Friday.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled Friday that the GCHQ's use of intercepted data collected by the US National Security Agency for its own investigations was illegal. The tribunal found that through its partnership with the US agency and sharing of data through the NSA's widely criticized Prism and other programs, the UK agency accessed personal information on individuals and violated their human rights, specifically to privacy and free speech.
Since December, however, GCHQ has been in compliance with disclosure laws, detailing to authorities the data it's receiving and how it's using it, the tribunal said.
The IPT, which has never ruled against the intelligence agency in its 15-year history despite being one of the few courts to have that power, said Friday that the GCHQ for years failed to provide adequate disclosures on what kind of information it was obtaining.
The case against the GCHQ was brought by several human rights organizations, including Liberty and Privacy International. The charged were leveled after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden two years ago began exposing details on the US agency's widespread collection of user data on the Internet through its Prism program.
Launched in 2007, Prism was initially designed as an antiterrorism tool that allowed the NSA to access Internet information from technology companies and analyze that for possible threats. The program, according to the leaked documents, allowed the NSA to collect everything from emails to chat information to photos. Practically everything that is shared on the Internet is collected through the program and subsequently swept by the NSA. That data, according to the reports, was then shared with the GCHQ to help that agency in its own efforts.
While government officials in support of the NSA and GCHQ have argued that data is collected only with a warrant and for use in antiterrorism activities, critics have said that Prism provides an unimpeded opportunity for the government agencies to collect whatever they want, whenever they want, from anyone they want.
The ruling may not amount to much more than a slap on the wrist. While the IPT found the GCHQ in violation of human rights in previous years, the tribunal said that the agency is now in full compliance with the law. In a statement, GCHQ says that the "judgment focuses primarily on a discrete and purely historical issue," adding that it believes the ruing shows that its agency was actually in compliance with guidelines on privacy.
At issue, according to the GCHQ, was its initial unwillingness to share certain information on its activities to the public. By not sharing that "two paragraphs" of information, which the GCHQ did not identify in its statement, the IPT found the agency "in contravention of human rights law."
The intelligence agency emphasized the positive aspect of the tribunal's Friday ruling.
"We are pleased that the Court has once again ruled that the UK's bulk interception regime is fully lawful," a GCHQ spokesperson said in defense of the agency.The person continued:
Today's IPT ruling re-affirms that the processes and safeguards within the intelligence-sharing regime were fully adequate at all times - it is simply about the amount of detail about those processes and safeguards that needed to be in the public domain. We welcome the important role the IPT has played in ensuring that the public regime is sufficiently detailed.
By its nature, much of GCHQ's work must remain secret. But we are working with the rest of Government to improve public understanding about what we do and the strong legal and policy framework that underpins all our work. We continue to do what we can to place information safely into the public domain that can help to achieve this.
