Justice Dept data retention website

karlin

Hi folks:

The Department of Justice has launched (rather secretively:p ) a website on its data retention proposals, which will include an online discussion forum. You can find the site here:
https://justqp1.justice.ie/QuickPlace/dataretention/Main.nsf/h_Toc/fa4ecf10d1c9fd1680256ce70043cdf5/?OpenDocument

Rather oddly, the site is using a digital certificate for security (why, I do not know) that doesn't work so you end up being told the department is an untrusted source [hee hee].

I've put a link to some info on the site here: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/2003/03/24.html#a1840

Please do consider posting to the forum -- and also please do try to be civil as then your words and opinions will carry far more weight. (I note with some amusement that the Minister promises to post comments after the language has been cleaned up, assuming the worst in advance...).

Regards,

Karlin Lillington

Puck

*click**click**click**click*
God those certificates are annoying!
Eventually I managed to send in a mail and a civil one at that.

karlin

I got a very long email from the department explaining that the certificates are a bug that they can't get out of the system and etc etc etc. Which doesn't really address why they'd even consider launching a site so not ready for prime time. Or why they didn't just launch a nice clean site under a good memorable url, not connected to the buggy software.

According to some commentators over on my weblog (http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments?u=103966&p=1893&link=http%3A%2F%2Fradio.weblogs.com%2F0103966%2F2003%2F03%2F28.html%23a1893), the site also seems to work with very few browsers and even then only a couple of versions of browsers, meaning an awful lot of the potential users of the site are locked out.


The website is an excellent idea very poorly implemented. They won't get much activity on it, I think, unless they sort out the technical problems... *click, click, click, click* is four too many times for me to be bothered with every single time I want to see the forum.

Karlin

hmmm

Originally posted by karlin
I got a very long email from the department explaining that the certificates are a bug that they can't get out of the system and etc etc etc.
Karlin

Did they say what this "bug" was? It's fairly obvious that they're not using a cert with a recognised CA (Verisign etc) so browsers naturally don't recognise it. Solution is simple, use a cert from a recognised CA - hardly rocket science....

Puck

I had to do even more clicking than that actually. I was viewing the website using Mozilla and Galeon on Linux and that QuickPlace app kept throwing up JavaScript errors before I actually managed to view the page IIRC.

karlin

You can get the whole explanation from the Dept of Justice tech guy, Alec Dolan, in the comments section of my weblog, here: http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments?u=103966&p=1893&link=http%3A%2F%2Fradio.weblogs.com%2F0103966%2F2003%2F03%2F28.html%23a1893

They're blaming it on IBM [:rolleyes: ] though I do accept that this seems to be a known glitch with Lotus Notes. On the other hand -- browser compatibility, testing the implementation, and changing to some other workaround for a *public forum* seems not to have occured to anybody. Extraordinary -- this is 2003, not 1996, and it's just not acceptable to assume what hardware or software people are using or :eek: to expect them to go hunt down the equipment that will let them view a website! Sheesh!!

Puck

Beats me why they needed to use that app (or any special application) at all when the feedback section is basically just a mailto link and some emails that have already been sent in. :rolleyes: