Barometer | 25 June 2011

Phreaks and geeks

Police arrested a 19-year-old man suspected of hacking into the government computers containing data from the entire 2011 census.

— Hacking evolved in the 1960s from phone ‘phreaking’, manipulating telecom systems to gain free calls. In 1972, one John T. Draper succeeded in accessing US telecoms systems by transmitting a 2600 hertz tone down the wires, obtained from a whistle given away with breakfast cereal. He was caught and put on probation.

— The first hacker convicted (for theft), was Ian Murphy, who in 1981 changed clocks in US phone company computers to make daytime calls on a late-night tariff.

Pirate gold

Three Britons were sentenced to 15 years in Somalia for the illegal import of £2.2 million with which they were trying to secure the release of a kidnapped ship.

Number of piracy incidents in 2010: 219

Approx number of pirates in action: 1,500

Ransoms taken in 2010: $75m-$238m

Pirate’s annual income: $33,000-$79,000

Most a pirate could expect to earn legally in Somalia: $500

Annual cost to the world of Somalian piracy: $4.9bn-$8.3bn

Source: Oceans Beyond Piracy

Infant formula

The average French woman has 2.0 children; in Britain it’s 1.6. But immigrants have some effect on the British figures:

Average children per UK household:

With mothers born in Pakistan 4.7

With mothers born in Bangladesh 3.9

With mothers born in India 2.8

With mothers born in the UK 1.6

With mothers born in East Africa 1.6

% of UK children born within marriage:

With mothers born in Pakistan 98%

With mothers born in Bangladesh 98%

With mothers born in India 98%

With mothers born in the UK 47%

With mothers born in East Africa 79%

Winging it

A penguin has arrived in New Zealand, 4,000 miles from its home in the Antarctic. Some other avian navigational errors:

2,000 miles off course: an olive-tree warbler which arrived in the Shetlands after trying to migrate from Bulgaria to Kenya

5,000 miles: a Northern Parula which lost its way on a flight from the US to Central America in 2010 and arrived in Tiree

8,000 miles: Albert the Albatross, who arrived in the Firth of Forth in 1967 and has spent 40 years trying to mate with gannets.