Blockheads

Image via Wikipedia

"The regulations over Internet have a dynamic structure and necessary legal changes are made when problems are detected in implementation."

The above, rather marvellous sentence, was blurted out by a Turkish official when he was responding to the OSCE's strongly worded call for Turkey to reform its Internet legislation a couple of days ago. The call came as the OSCE published its report on media freedom and Internet censorship in Turkey.

If you thought we had it bad in the UAE, spare a thought for the poor old Turks, who have been at various times forbidden to access YouTube, a number of Google sites including Blogger and others, including sites like MySpace and Last.fm. A number of Turkish language news sites are also blocked, particularly, notes the report, those dealing with South-Eastern Turkey. The Turkish government has also blocked Farmville, which is probably no bad thing.

Hitting the old nail on the head, the OSCE's Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haratzi, said: "Even as some of the content that is deemed 'bad', such as child pornography, must be sanctioned, the law is unfit to achieve this. Instead, by blocking access to entire websites from Turkey, it paralyzes access to numerous modern file sharing or social networks."

The issue is not, let us be clear, pornography. There are a number of provisions for blocking access under Turkish law (stuff like child pornography, incitement to suicide and illegal gaming, for instance), including crimes against Kemal Ataturk. It was, in fact, the existence of a number of videos on YouTube defaming Ataturk that led to the ongoing block of the website.

Along with a worrying rise in the number of sites being blocked overall, the OSCE report also notes a rise in the number of sites being blocked outside of the scope of the Internet law, identifying some 197 sites that have been blocked outside the law in the past year. Blocks were instituted against a number of gay sites, sites like Indymedia Istanbul and a number of news sites as well as advocacy sites for socialist, muslim and Kurdish organisations.

It's a worrying time for the poor old Internet. The increasing ubiquity of the medium and the many ways in which people are finding to use it (including, and I want to be quite clear here that I disapprove, Farmville) appear to be spooking a number of governments. It's not just a Middle Eastern thing, although the recent news from Jordan is a worrying indicator of a tide of thought and opinion among more traditionally minded legislators in our region - the Australians have been going on about instituting wide-ranging blocking powers. And we all know what's been happening in China.

It's all very well slapping freedoms in a constitution. But when people start taking 'freedom' too literally, it appears they need a little help from the law... or even outside the law, in Turkey's case...

Green and Greener

Image by Sky Competition via Flickr

I know I'm a bit hard on Gulf News occasionally and it does, believe me, make me feel guilty. But sometimes the chaps over at the Newspaper That Tells It Like It Is do stuff that has me shaking my head in incredulous disbelief.

Today's 450g slab of papery joy contains a shiny supplement titled 'Go Green'. It's one of those special supplements so beloved of newspapers here - the ones where you get a page of the uncritical, slavish blether of your choice printed about you as long as you advertise. The ones nobody in their right minds reads. Ever.

In fact, 54 pages (including covers) of shiny, high-ceramic glossy paper are dedicated to the green message - and, of course, not even a nod to the concept of carbon neutrality or perhaps the advantages of not wasting something like 11 tonnes of paper (if my calculations are correct, 100g per supplement, 112,000 claimed run by GN) to produce something that is purely a vehicle for printing advertising for profit. Its informational value or the fact that it is in fact a genuine attempt to educate and inspire people is something I would love to see someone try and defend.

This next bit isn't going to make me popular among a number of people, including those I count as friends.

The same issue of GN (which, incidentally, also covers the IRENA summit in Abu Dhabi) also illustrates its tabloid section with the headline 'Green Day' and a cover image of a Toyota FJ Cruiser churning up the green desert like a little blue plough, following in the tracks of many others that have destroyed the delicate plant life on the side of the dune. This car would have been one of the thousand or so cars that annually plough a great scar of tracks through the desert in the name of the Gulf News Fun Run.

The desert here is a delicate biome and never more so than when it greens after rain. To show it being destroyed by hundreds of cars, the carpet of tentative life torn up and mashed into a muddy gash next to the words, 'Participants... enjoyed the unique sight of the desert in bloom.' shows a most definite lack of understanding of the word irony.

Now I have to admit I'm deeply conflicted here. A long term resident, I often drive in the desert and have done so for many years in parties of varying sizes.

I have always had a mild aversion to the idea of a thousand cars churning up the desert, believing (probably wrongly) that smaller parties of drivers would have a lesser impact than hundreds at a time. At the same time, the Fun Run is a much-loved annual event that brings a large number of people together in their enjoyment of the outdoors - and I have to record that the marshals do ensure that litter and the like are not left behind.

But today's Gulf News gleefully slaps the word GREEN on two activities that are most definitely negative in their impact on our environment. I guess it's one thing to proselytise in naggy 'go green' editorial campaigns, but quite another to truly practice what you preach.

No Comment

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Hetta e-magazine court case (reported by Gulf News here in case you hadn't heard of it) is a worrying precedent.

A judgement against Hetta (Hetta is a headscarf or Keffiyeh) has been reached by the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeals in the defamation case lodged by the Abu Dhabi Media Company (the owners, interestingly, of a number of media outlets, including newspaper The National) . The case centres around a comment made on an article by a reader. This is the important bit, the article linked here (you'll have to spikka da Arabi) attacking Abu Dhabi Media Company's hiring policies, is not the issue - the alleged defamation came as a reader-submitted comment posted against the article.

That precedent would potentially mean that any online site (including, *gulp*, blogs) in the UAE would be held legally liable for any content posted by commenters to the site. That would have an immediate and drastic effect on any form of open or free speech (no, I'm not interested in arguments about how little of that there is). It would also make us all moderators, or 'censors' of content posted on our sites by the public.

“The decision taken in this case against an independent news website is clearly disproportionate,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement, in full here. “Why close an entire website for a month when only a few comments posted by readers were at issue and only its editor was being blamed? And before going to court, why didn’t the plaintiff ask Hetta.com’s management to remove the comments in a spirit of conciliation?”

Why indeed. And a media owner, at that.

Hetta's lawyer is taking the case to the top, a final appeal is to be filed with the Federal Supreme Court, according to GN, so the fat lady hasn't sung. Let's hope she's got a reasonable tune when she does.

If you add to this the result of the defamation case in the UK against Gulf News a while ago, you also have a precedent that anyone who has business interests in the UAE and considers themselves defamed in the UAE by any commenter on any global medium accessible here, they could possibly launch a case in the UAE court. Far fetched? Oh, do I hope so.

This alarming judgement, by the way, comes a week after Jordan's decision to apply its press and publishing law to online activity. That law, similarly, would hold bloggers and other online sites responsible for user comments made on articles - treating them effectively as letters to the Letters Page of a newspaper - an editorial responsibility.

But here - this is possibly the really interesting bit that affects millions rather than a raggle-taggle bunch of bloggers and online publishers - we reach the edge of gibbering insanity. If I'm responsible in law for what you write on my blog, am I just as responsible for a comment you leave on my Facebook page?

Both of these moves are subject to a final decision, so there's a chance for reason to prevail. But it's never been more likely that those cautious little green shoots of commentary and dialogue could well be snuffed out in the Middle East.

The GeekyFesto

I put this together with Saadia as we prepared to 'export' the idea of GeekFest to Beirut and then popped the file over to Alexandra Tohme in Beirut - Alex is UNorganising GeekFest Beirut. She promptly, to my mild horror, posted it up on the excellent Google Group that they started over there in order to put together ideas and collaboration over the event (it's perhaps notable that the Lebanese approach to GeekFest has been a lot more collaborative than the Dubai one. Don't ask me why, it just is).

And then I thought about it a little and realised that, well, what's to be so coy about? This is, after all, The Event With Nothing To Hide. So here, at least in part to be a perennial answer to the many people who ask "What's GeekFest?", is the Idea.

GeekFest
GeekFest is intended to be an offline social event for online people and should be interesting to anyone who's involved in the online world and in using technology to create, educate, entertain, inform or just play around.

It’s purposefully kept organic, free and easy. We truly hope that expanding GeekFest regionally will bring new ideas, offshoots and events to the whole thing. However, one thing must be clear from the start. GeekFest must never actually matter to anyone. If you’re holding a GeekFest and five people turn up, you should be able to shrug your shoulders and have a chat with the five people rather than die a million deaths that your attendance was low. If people don’t come, they don’t want it and we’ll simply stop doing it. If that all makes sense!

We are very proud of the fact that GeekFest is, as far as is practical, UNorganised. There are no officials, gatekeepers or people telling attendees what to do. There are no rules beyond the ‘no corporate behaviour, selling and stuff’ one. The only reason there is a start and finish time is that people insisted.

However, there are some guiding principles that we’ve established, mostly by trial and error.

GEEKFEST ELEMENTS

Guiding principles
No corporate stuff, no bossing people around, no gatekeepers, no hassle, no drama.

GeekFest consists of three elements – GeekTalks, TechnoCases and ArtStuff. Other than that, it’s just a big room full of smart people who have stuff that is interesting, engaging and even possibly visionary to discuss. Oh, and good fingerfood. The fingerfood is more important than the idea stuff.

GeekTalks
These have evolved as a series of four 15-minute presentations on areas/issues of interest to the audience and are not limited in any way by topic - they could be 'Why I love my iPhone' or 'A lion tamer's guide to Zeppelins'. They take place in an area separate to the main area (in The Shelter we use the private screening room, a 30-odd seat cinema) and can be wide-ranging but should be interesting and intellectually engaging.

The speakers are responsible for sorting out their own technology requirements between them (we provide an LCD projector and screen) and for their own time-keeping. Nobody tells them when to start and stop talking or stands around tapping watches. They are also responsible for bringing their own audience – there’s nobody to tell people they have to attend a talk.

GeekTalkers are expected to suggest a successor to speak at the next GeekFest.. This way we, the UNorganisers, aren’t always the gatekeepers to a speaking slot. We will find a speaker if GeekTalkers don’t want to for any reason.

Holding a TechnoCase at GeekFest absolutely DOES NOT include, ever, a talking slot. Talks are user views and never sales pitches.

GeekTalks typically take place from 8pm-9pm at GeekFest Dubai.


TechnoCases
The Technology Showcases give companies a chance to interact with the attendees at GeekFest. They’re not an invitation to scream slogans or brand the event, they’re a chance to show funky stuff and engage with an audience of highly influential online thought-leaders in a dialogue.

Companies can bring a bunch of laptops, a gadget or 15, a display case or free-standing display. Whatever is sensible, really – and doesn’t dominate the event, get in the way or otherwise act as an irritant or eyesore. People that can talk with authority about the product/idea are probably more important than any branding.

Within those sensible constraints, companies mounting TechnoCases can use areas within GeekFest as they see fit – but they are actually asked to sign a contract agreeing not to hassle the Geeks.

Mounting a Technology Showcase at GeekFest does NOT confer the rights of sponsorship. We’ll include companies generally in promotional stuff and try to take care of them when we remember to, but there are no branding elements, logos or other promises made. They’re coming to the party to talk to people interested in engaging with them and that’s the deal.

GeekFest Dubai started charging companies $1,000 for a TechnoCase and subsequently has increased this to $1,500. The venue partner raises invoices and manages settlements.


Art Stuff
The art stuff at GeekFest has happened spontaneously but we’re now careful to include an element of art ‘happening’ at each event – wherever possible of a digital variety. This would be a graffiti artist, a digital artist, a photographic display, an installation or some such – the more the merrier – and accessible to everyone, too!

GeekFest Dubai has a back-beat, a funky soundtrack selected by Shelter DJ Simone Sebastien.


Food and Drink
We use the TechnoCase revenue to subsidise/fund the food and drink (pass-around food like quiche, kebabs, pastries, sandwiches, cakes and fresh juices) at the event. One of the UNorganisers keeps an account of incoming/outgoing revenue.

We don’t have alcohol at GeekFest Dubai in deference to Muslim attendees. Each GeekFest will have its own cultural environment, however.


Promo
We promote GeekFest Dubai using FaceBook, Twitter (an important platform, actually) and blogs – Alexander’s in particular, but also the UAE Community Blog (Thanks, Sam!). GeekFest isn’t about any one group (gamers, Twitterers – it’s NOT a Tweetup!, bloggers and the like) but about integrating everyone regardless of platform.

There has been quite a bit of media interest in GeekFest Dubai but we haven’t ‘pushed it’ or made formal announcements or anything – word of mouth has been very strong. We have done a number of interviews ‘on demand’ with media.

We’ve found that making announcements closer to the event is best – although we set the date early. GeekFest Dubai is now running on a steady two-month cycle, typically the last Thursday of the month or so – 2010 will be Feb, Apr, Jun etc – Ramadan and Christmas etc obviously require some judgement calls.

Last minute excitement runs quite high, particularly on Twitter. We tend to stoke this a bit by holding back speaker announcements and other stuff. Being tarts, basically.


UNorganising
GeekFest Dubai is UNorganised by a two-wo/man team – Saadia and Alexander. Alexander looks after promo and the geeks, Saadia owns and looks after the venue (including F&B etc). We will always have GeekFest at Dubai’s The Shelter – it’s the place that Saadia runs and it’ll never move from there – even though we already have logistical issues (the cinema’s too small for the talks, but the atmosphere’s electric in there). NOTE: That's changed now, The Shelter shut down and so GeekFest was untethered from its emotional 'home') If attendance spikes too high we’ll just move to registration or even first come first served. That’s cool because it limits the event to a hard core audience and doesn’t let us get all big headed or anything.

We put labels and pens at the door if people want to make badges for themselves. A quaint trend of wearing especially geeky t-shirts has started, BTW.

The best way to UNorganise a GeekFest, we think, is that two person team – someone to take care of the geekiness and someone to take care of the realities. UNorganising the venue isn’t hard – book the date, book F&B for the broad estimate of attendees. Arrange a speaker area and projector. Err. That’s it. We think the geek/blogger and venue owner combination is tops, but a geek/blogger and event organiser would do the same job, no? The F&B is a bit hit and miss, but we think it's better than having to put everyone through registration and stuff.

As we expand (IF we expand and it works!), we’d hope to bring our pool of stuff together and share platforms, ideas, presentations, communities and so on. We’re not sure where that’s going yet but there’s an interesting cloud over there that could turn into something really quite smart and regional. Or not.

Either way, GeekFest is there purely for enjoyment. Oh! And it's a resolutely not for profit event.



Alexander and Saadia

Nota Bene

The first GeekFest Beirut takes place at Art Lounge in Beirut on the 6th February 2010 - you can follow @GeekFestBeirut on Twitter, Facebook or mess around in the Google Group.

The next GeekFest Dubai has been dubbed GeekFest Dubai 3.14 and will take place on the 25th February 2010 at The Shelter in Al Quoz. You can do the Facebook thing, follow @GeekFestDubai on Twitter or just pop back here nearer the date for more information.

Is Google Done With China?

Google's stance on its ongoing business in China is outlined in a straightforward and clear fashion in this entry by Senior VP David Drummond, posted on the Google Blog. It's nice, by the way, to see a corporate talking this straight, clear and concisely.

The post is self-explanatory and follows the unearthing of a number of sophisticated hacks of Google and other sites. Those hacks appear to have been targeting the personal information of activists, dissidents and advocates of change in China - the implication being (although Google's language clearly avoids drawing any conclusions) that this move was the work of a government agency rather than a criminal organisation.

Google, it would appear, is pretty hacked off*.

It's clearly a shot across the bows for the Chinese government - Google has 'decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn' according to Drummond's post. The company has clearly made a decision about a situation it had always found uncomfortable (there has been much criticism of Google for its stance on China and censorship) - now we'll see how Google's negotiations with the Chinese government progress and whether this move results in access to uncensored search for the Chinese or Google pulling out of the country.

If Google has decided it can no longer tolerate the censorship of the Internet, it will be interesting to see how it will defend its operations in other world markets where censorship - for whatever reasons - is in place. Differentiating censorship of dissident voice and censorship for reasons of morality, for instance, starts us down a long and rocky path that would have to be carefully negotiated with a finely tuned 'moral compass'. And that doesn't even bring in commercially motivated censorship (banning Internet telephony providers, for instance), muckle-headed censorship (banning social media platforms) or straightforward, good old fashioned censorship (A number of .IL sites for a start).

Will Google pull out of Australia if the government goes ahead with its plan to censor the Internet? Or does a government have to combine a policy of censorship with egregious hacking behaviour before Goog steps out?

*(Sorry!)

Five Books for Kareem

Kareem Shaheen is a journalist with Abu Dhabi based newspaper The National. Try not to hold that against him, he's a decent fellow for all that.

Kareem's New Year's resolution is slightly unusual but highly laudable. He's setting out to read a book a week for the year. Yup. 52 of 'em. Rather wonderfully, he's also reviewing them on this blog linked right here.

I gave myself the unenviable task of listing the five books I would recommend to him above all else. It nearly killed me, but here they are: five books for Kareem. Feel free to add your five penny'orth.

A quick note for those of you reading this on FaceBook, which includes many of my literarily inclinated pals, please pop over to the blog if you would like to add your recommendations. Cheers!


The Alexandria Quartet
Lawrence Durrell
I think I can say this is my favourite book of all time, although it's really a four-in-one recommendation. Durrell's Alexandria Quartet is a winner on all fronts: set in '30s and '40s Alexandria it's lush, evocative and rich, its vivid characters occupy settings described with a sumptuary's eye, everything touched by notes of the mystical and imbued with a smoky sexuality. The Quartet is just that, a tetralogy - four books that describe the same sequence of events, forming an interlinear which sees its events unfold from four narrative perspectives: Justine, Mountolive, Balthazar and Clea. Structurally, imaginatively, intellectually and lyrically brilliant, it's a book I have re-read many times with joy at every encounter. If I had an ounce of Durrell's genius, I would be a giant. He was, incidentally, an alcoholic who liked to beat women, but I suppose you can't have everything...


Seven Pillars of Wisdom
TE Lawrence
Thomas Edward Chapman has been something of a hobby for me: I have every book written by him or about him during his lifetime, each one a first edition. I don't have the famous 'subsriber's edition', sadly, but then I'd be sitting on tens of thousands of pounds worth of book if I did. Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt and his role in it makes for fascinating reading, let alone that it reveals old TE to be an author of considerable power and style. It's classical stuff written wonderfully and stands as truly a great work of literature - regardless of how you view it as history.

The Honourable Schoolboy
John Le Carré
John 'call me David Cornwell' Le Carré has to be one of my favourite contemporary reads. Often shrugged off by snotty, superior types as 'just spy stories', Le Carré's books are a good deal more literary than many suppose - he's a master stylist whose bleak landscapes are peppered with tragedy and human failure, increasingly so as he's grown older. The Honourable Schoolboy is set in Hong Kong during the fall of the British secret service following the uncovering of its head as a Soviet 'mole'. Using back-tracking techniques, basically going where the mole didn't want them to go when he was in place, Le Carré's famous Smiley and company start to buy their way back into viability by pulling off a major intelligence coup. It's unputdownable stuff at every level.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S Thompson
He hardly needs any introduction, but journalist Hunter Stockton Thompson invented 'gonzo', a school (if it can be elevated to that!) of journalism that celebrates the journalist as participant in the events being covered. And Hunter's idea of immersion is a Mach-speed plunge into the depths of drug-addled frenzy. Brilliantly played by Johnny Depp in the film of the same name, Thompson trod a constant tightrope of alcohol abusing, gun-toting, high speed drugged-up insanity in his quest to cover the Mint 400 desert race in Las Vegas. If Fear and Loathing doesn't make you laugh with manic glee and want to go out and commit a crime, you're not human.

The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
When he's not writing books, Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics (at Bologna University, as you ask), the study of signs and symbols, and his books reflect his intellectual engagement with the ideas of the dawning of human comprehension that took place as Europe emeged from the dark ages. The Name of the Rose is set in a monastery in Italy, where an English monk and his Italian apprentice attempt to solve a series of murders. Set against a backdrop of Albigensian heresy and the Inquisition, their quest for truth takes place among the mysteries of the massive library-maze and the scriptorium that the Monastery is famed for - and where truth is by practice kept hidden. It's a brilliant whodunnit peppered with ideas and explorations of human thought and symbology. Oddly, I also liked the film but then I'm a sucker for Sean Connery...


So there they are. My five favourite books of all time. I know in my heart of hearts that I'm going to regret this, that the others jostling just under will make me regret this - let alone those that didn't come to mind this morning. I could so easily make it 50 or probably even more. But it's set in stone now...

What are your Five Books for Kareem?

Computer Says No

The sheer horror was slow to dawn on me. I was looking at a laptop with a blank screen that should have been displaying gentle shades of blue and playing warming, cute peepy sounds to let me know I'd made the right choice in Microsoft.

But instead of lovely Windows 7.0, I've got a fritzed machine, an error somewhere in chipset land made all the more difficult to diagnose because it failed inconsistently before eventually going down with the finality of a fat drunk losing his legs.

This is why the shower head got replaced, the toilet seat repaired and the picture hung. I hadn't actually realised how much of my time the wee sucker was actually eating. Depositing the little slab of now-useless black plastic at the service and support centre this morning left me walking away feeling distinctly naked, I can tell you.

Yet, despite my black thoughts in the car on the way over to the office, my day hasn't been a disastrous void spent looking at a notebookless desk. I'm accessing my email using our remote access client, doing stuff in Google Groups and pulling the documents I need from the server. I got Twitter up and running on the spare machine I'm using and all my RSS stuff is on Netvibes. The same crash a few short years ago would have been a true horrow - everything I had was held on my local hard disk. Now a great deal of the stuff I work on is out there in 'the cloud' - accessible to me wherever I am, whatever machine I'm using. Device independent, platform independent and client indepenent.

I do realise the fact that I even paused to think about this, let alone wrote a post about it, makes me a deeply sad individual. But then I am temporarily bereft of my beloved Lenovo T61 and grief makes one inclined to behave oddly.

GeekFest Beirut is a Go Go!

Image via Wikipedia

At the last GeekFest Dubai, we forgot to announce that we'd decided to expand the project and go ahead with GeekFest Beirut. The wonderful Alexandra Tohme agreed to UNorganise the event, little knowing what she'd let herself in for (Bwaa haa haa) and now it's all pretty much all sorted.

The first GeekFest Beirut will take place on Friday the 5th February 2010 and will be held at uber-funky Beiruti hangout, Art Lounge, which is close to the Forum de Beyrouth. A location map can be found here, while other details about Art Lounge can be found here (including sexy pics of its uber-funkiness).

Saadia and I are planning to be there and a number of other Dubai Geeky types have expressed an interesting in pitching up if possible. It's going to be an absolute blast, without a doubt.

You can follow @GeekFestBeirut on Twitter or you can schlep along to the obligatory FaceBook fan page if you like, where we've started to post some silly stuff and will surely post some more.

Alternatively, if you have questions or want to throw money at us, you can email Alexandra, Saadia or myself - we're all listed on the GeekFestBeirut Twitter page (because it's a graphic and the spambots can't see graphics!).

Just a reminder - GeekFest is a not for profit thingy, we don't do sponsorships or corporate stuff and we remain resolutely, as much as is practically possible, UNorganised!

Cheque this out...

Image via Wikipedia

The new chequebook requirement is not just on the part of HSBC, as my landlord’s man thought happily last night when I passed over my rent in cash to him. He was shocked to hear me tell him that every bank in the UAE is likely to start rejecting ‘old’ cheques and he had no idea at all how to tell the difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ cheques. He is holding several ‘old’ cheques as PDCs preparatory to depositing them when the rents on other properties come due – I wonder how many other landlords are in a similar position.

In my humble opinion, this whole sorry episode is a case study in totally inadequate communications, a demonstration of breathtaking arrogance from banks and a clear sign that the UAE’s banks have a huge leap forward to make in customer service and communication. I might be overdoing it, but I doubt it: this is what I do for a living – communications. I might be useless at it, I might not. But I have never seen it so badly mismanaged in my life – and I have been working in the Middle East for over twenty years now.

All UAE banks have to upgrade their cheques to conform to new guidelines mandated by the UAE Central Bank and so there is a very real danger that the vast majority of cheques held by people out there are now duds. And that the majority of cheque books out there are useless.
The UAE is a society where a cheque was previously regarded as ‘as good as cash’ because of the Central Bank’s ‘two strikes and you’re out’ policy. In the UAE, if you bounce a cheque, the person you have issued the cheque to can call the police and file a case against you and if you bounce a cheque twice, the Central Bank can (and, I hear, will) withdraw your access to banking services.

This has been an amazing deterrent to any form of ‘bad cheque’ and, in fact, there are no cheque guarantee cards here. A cheque is a man’s word and bond and respected as such.

The new guidelines from the Central Bank have been triggered by the introduction of a new automated clearing system, ICCS. This demands banks take extra precautions before scanning cheques and sending them to the Central Bank for clearing, hence the mandated ‘more secure’ cheque books.

HSBC and other banks started to refuse cheques without the new features on the 1st January 2010. I have no record of HSBC contacting me to advise me of this – I did, incidentally, search through the 33 junk and phishing emails that purported to come from HSBC that I have received since November last year, but they are all fakes. HSBC has not responded to my post yesterday asserting that the bank had not effectively communicated the vitally important new changes to me.

There is some confusion regarding PDCs. According to Mashreq’s FAQ:
Retail and corporate customers may have already collected cheques which do not comply with cheque security features prior to this deadline. In view of this, collecting banks will accept such deposits and process them as usual in ICCS till 31/07/2010. Any PDCs dated beyond 31/07/2010 must be lodged with Banks before 31/12/2009 for collection on the due date.

But HSBC’s FAQ is a little more clear (my bold):
Post dated cheques without the security features, which have been collected by customers prior to 31 December 2009, can be accepted until 31 July 2010. After this date no cheque without the security feature will be accepted.

Post dated cheques and discounted cheques deposited in advance without the security feature and already held by banks for any date will not be affected by this rule; however HSBC will not accept any new cheques without the security features post 01 January 2010.

In other words, PDCs will only be honoured if the bank already held them prior to 31/12/2009 – think about it, a cheque dated now and lodged now is just a ‘new cheque without the security features’, no?

I haven’t seen any news stories or advertisements about this massive change to the banking system. If other banks have contacted their customers, well and good – but nobody I have spoken to has been aware of this whole issue at all. I should point out that some people commenting to the last post I put up on this issue do say they were made aware – although some said they received emails as late as 28/12/2009.

By the way – as far as I can see, the ICCS rollout from the Central Bank has been done with remarkable care and some two years of trials, dry runs and suchlike. I remain amazed that two years down the line, banks seem singularly unprepared to meet the challenges of the rollout.

There has been no concerted awareness campaign on the part of the banks to ensure that customers know about this issue. I can gather evidence of, at best, cursory and almost derisory attempts at communicating what’s going on (mounting a FAQ on your website is not communicating with your public). And that strikes me as verging on insane – let alone highly insecure – given that this move potentially invalidates every cheque in the UAE that does not conform to a new standard that most people are unaware of.

So what does this all mean? Try this lot:

• PDCs held by landlords in the UAE that have not yet been lodged or discounted with a bank are likely not to be honoured by banks. They are potentially worthless documents as of 1/1/2010.
  

• Anybody issuing a cheque using the old style cheque book is potentially defrauding the person they are presenting the cheque to. And anyone accepting such a cheque (do you know what the new ones look like? HmmMMM?) is likely to have it bounced by the bank.
  

• Any payments, for instance mortgage payments, car loans or PDCs issued by businesses against scheduled payments, may well (probably will) bounce.
  

• Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between the ‘new’ cheques and the ‘old’ cheques issued by every UAE bank is in danger of accepting a dud cheque.
  

• The criminally minded punter can now have a field day – imagine selling someone some ACs, a fridge or suchlike. By the time the cheque has gone ‘thud’, what are the chances you’ll be able to find yer man? Yeah, zero.
  

• Cheques in the UAE are no longer as good as cash. They’re as good as junk until someone gets their finger out and clearly communicates what the hell is going on here. And that means, collectively, the banks that have so far stayed resolutely silent need to start taking responsibility.
  

Incidentally, the cheque that HSBC bounced on my landlord (a cheque for tens of thousands of Dirhams returned without even making a call to me, of course) came back marked as 'Irregular Signature'.

Cheque Book Fraud

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I suppose I should be angry that HSBC failed to communicate the changes in cheque book requirements with me, but I’m not – merely resigned. I had to find out about it from someone on Twitter in the end.

I should equally, I’m sure, be angry that the bank dishonoured a post dated cheque I had previously given to my landlord, doing so, as usual, without attempting to contact and inform me. But I’m not. I’m just resigned to the lack of communication or basic care for the customer.

The UAE’s central bank has made changes to the way it handles cheques and has therefore made it a requirement that cheques should have an additional level of security, including a tamper-evident watermark. These have been added to new cheque books and banks are no longer accepting cheques made out using old style cheque books.

What amazes me is that a bank could actually contemplate making such a move without any attempt to communicate this effectively to its customers. I consider myself to be unusually contactable – I am quite an online person and you can get in touch with me by telephone, mobile, SMS, fax, email, Twitter or Facebook. You could even leave a comment on the blog. In fact, HSBC has frequently contacted me using SMS, typically to let me know about a discount I can avail at Joy Alukkas Jewellery when I use my HSBC card. Strange they didn’t think of using the same medium, or in fact any medium of communication, to let me know they were about to dishonour my cheque.

But I’m not angry about that. Just resigned.

They could even have bothered to write to me. To enclose a new cheque book, for instance, or at least a letter explaining what was happening and how it would affect me. They could have put a mandatory screen up on the Internet banking system that would have made me click on ‘NO I don’t want the new cheque book’ or ‘YES please send me a new cheque book now in plenty of time before the changes take place.’ That wouldn’t have cost them a penny but would have avoided my landlord getting a bounced cheque. They could even have sent an email using their woeful little Internet banking messaging system, but records show no such communication since November which is as far as records go back.

Given that I am a busy little bee with plenty more important things to do than muck about with this stuff, they could have used several routes to get through to me and let me know I had to act and that there would be consequences attendant on my inaction. They could have written to me, put a screen on Internet Banking AND sent me a letter, SMSed me and emailed me/messaged me via their Internet Banking service. All of them. Just to make sure I knew what was happening. They did none of them. Not one.

It’s not a time thing, either. HSBC has had plenty of time to inform customers of the changes and prepare them for the new system. The first phase of testing ICCS, which appears to have been a thoroughly well managed rollout by the Central Bank, took place in July 2006. HSBC has known for over two years that the new system was to be implemented and therefore has had two years to prepare its customers for the new security requirements. As the global local bank, it would have had experience from other markets of earlier implementations of Image based clearing, surely?

In fact, the whole thing has been a world class shambles, managed with the usual complete disregard for the customer and leveraging the communication skills of a deep frozen wombat.

But what makes me angry, because yes, I am angry, is that my landlord is a decent man but a very sick one and he didn’t need to have to deal with a bounced cheque. That cheque was written and issued in good faith, drawn on the bank account that I am paying the bank to manage on my behalf and returned without any reference whatsoever to the account holder. What’s more, the cheque was written on the cheque book issued to me for that very purpose by the bank – the very same bank that had previously taken to bouncing my cheques because it claimed my signature had changed (it hasn’t). The very same bank that I visited personally in August last year to sort out that whole sorry mess and who did not even think to let me know then and there that I would need a new cheque book. Although they must, at that time, have known that these changes were taking place as they'd been working on them for fully two years since full trials of the new system had taken place.

The bank has at no time communicated to me the requirement for a new cheque book or that it was going to start unilaterally dishonouring my issued cheques for reasons that were completely unknown to me.

Bankers.