Slashdot Mirror
Will Britain Log All Communications For 7 Years?
psychohorsie writes: "The BBC are reporting that the British intelligent services and the police want all of the telephone calls, e-mails and internet traffic in the countr to be logged and kept in storage for [7] years. If this comes to pass, this is a major blow to democracy in my opinion. They may have good intentions with this stuff to begin with ..."
Hian Bosu also points to this
story in The Observer . The shape of things to come?
Even if politicians would be exempt from this law, there is no way to know who would be elected in the future.
If such law is passed, consider what could happen in just a few years: One of these secret agencies who have access to this data wants a larger budget. A politician is against, but meets an "anonymous" person in the street that tells him to change his mind, or the story about him visiting a prostitute would leak to the press.
No way this politician could prove he is being blackmailed by a government agency, and he would have to vote for a larger budget to avoid his political future being ruined.
Given how little opposition we see about this proposal, I wonder if such blackmailing is already happening...
Well, Britain is now the world's fastest-growing police state, so I'm looking for somewhere to move to in the next couple of years; New Zealand was looking good for a while, but they've now got the RIP law, Canadian taxes suck, and America is degenerating rapidly, so anyone have any suggestions? Or should we just get together, buy up an island somewhere, and declare independence?
Yet another reason to use strong crypto, even for stuff you may not consider "secure" but merely private. I mean what happens if this stored database gets h4x0r3d? Point fingers of blame all you want but your personal info will have already been compromised.
Except of course, you can never actually be sure that the three superpowers Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania exist. The only information regarding the political structure of the world if provided by The Party, who manipulate information for their own ends.
1 98 4ch1.txt
...MESSAGE TERMINATED...
Infact it would seem likely that the three superpowers did not exist. Considering the amount of resources spent keeping citizens in line, the Government of Oceania would be unable to effectively engage in war against one of the other superpowers. What is hinted at is that the entire thing is set up by the Inner Party to make the rest of the population work harder, and in worse conditions.
A copy of the book can be found:
http://kulichki-lat.rambler.ru/moshkow/ORWELL/r
Also how can you say it will never happen. It might have already.
What is even more disturbing is that I seem to remeber that the book was slightly critical of the labour party and socialism. Now we have a labour party in Britain we have TV shows such as 'Big Brother' and 'Room 101' which are trivialising what is a very current and very important issue. For example
Should have get while the gettin' was good.
The voice daya itself is stored for something like a week or something, unless you're the object of some ongoing investigation.
Of course, as far as civil rights and protection against unwarranted investigation by the police are concerned, the Brits have a special attitude due to the troubles in Northern Ireland.
I saw a report on this way back, on the BBC sometime.. It was suggested that the US do the same thing with their incoming and outgoing international calls. Constitutionally, those calls aren't American if one of the parties is outside of the US..
And what exactly is this "British national identity" you're so proud of?
Because anything that's moral and "British" really can't be outlawed by these dangerous free-thinking European types.. espeically them damn "Frenchies"...
How exactly can Europeans ruin our national identity, apart from frowning on our xenophobia and stopping our hooliganism?
London is already one of the most under surveillance cities around the globe.
There are about 50000 cameras all around the city hidden in old lampposts.
They have 6DOF movement and the operator can move them with a joystick.
They even have their own air conditioning system inside the little glass bubble so in winter the glass won't fog and block their view.
Basically the brits are already fucked... Anywhere in the city you can be followed by a camera.
The telcos in the UK have been aware they may be required to do this, and many of them already have such data warehouses.
What the article does not say very clearly, is that the telcos will only be required to store details about the phone calls, not record the actual conversation. I have worked on such a project, building and maintaining a data warehouse for a UK telco. Initially we were told that it would be used to customer care purposes, but when the system was live we discovered that it was only being used by the police.
In some other comments I saw some estimates on the number of calls made and the storage required. A fairly accurate rule of thumb is that each account makes about 6 calls per day. Also for each phone call you will need up to 1kB to record all the call details (this is to allow a number of indices to be built in order to be able to search the phone calls - otherwise it is of little use of storing the data. Also you will be surprised at how much information is generated for each phone call). In the UK there are about 100M accounts (yes more than people, but just think of all professionals who have home phone, work phone, mobile etc). This translates to about 360GB per day.
For some quite-upsetting material about the USA's becoming a police state (illegal to wear gas masks...) see The Utne Reader (Nov.-Dec. 2K, Page 30). Thanks, guys, for allowing anon posts!
Where in the USA is it illegal to wear a gas mask? Can you post a link to a story on this or were you just making that up?
About 12 years ago the UK gvmt got a new 'office' system (you know, email, word proc, spreadsheet etc) that could cope with security classifacitions of individuals etc. So some one with 'secret' access could get to stuff classified as 'top secret', but could get to 'unclassifed' and so on.
This system is called CHOTS.
The idea was to log ALL access and keep the records for 25 years, just like paper access records for the paper versions of the documents.
Now some clever chap did some maths and found out that even using the best storage technology of the time they'd need a warehouse the size of the Isle of Wight (ie about 147 square miles or 38,000 hectares).
I wonder how much storage room they'll need to this exercise, esp given the growth rate of every sort of communication system?
British citizens were never disarmed. They never had arms. They also don't really want arms, nor need them. Do you have any idea just how low the figures for shootings are in the UK?
Regards
We (Brittish subjects) have the right (for a small fee) to inspect any information about us stored on computer for veracity.
To fuck up a system like this completely all we'd have to do is demand that they show us all the information that they store about us. If a couple of hundred thousand people did this as a hobby every week, the system would collapse.
Simple.
Deleted
This is particularly disturbing. 3 years in jail for refusing to give out a PGP, say? Would anything like this work in the US given 5th Ammendment rights? (I'm Canadian, but sadly my knowledge of law is quite Americanized.)
A jail term even applies if you forget the password? So if someone who is being investigated sends me a PGP encrypted email, and I happen to have lost my private key I can be jailed?!?
If Canada ever did that, I wouldn't think twice about moving to a different country. Maybe we ought to start focusing more on encryption with plausible deniability (like steganography) to avoid this obvious violation of privacy.
Jason.
Who exactly in the British press has this opinion?
Well done to you too - the indignant responses are as funny as anything.
People get way too paranoid about this sort of stuff, and are ripe for gently taking the piss out of.
Ha! No, but I just want to know who in the British press has this particular opinion.
I do try to keep abreast of the press in the UK and am well aware of the bias inherent in 99% of the stuff I read but this particular view seems a bit too much like a cartoon character.
I'm as ex-pat as someone who has lived here my entire life ie. not at all.
:-)
Most of the broadsheets do NOT have a bias towards government. The Times and Telegraph are right-wing and The Telegraph is practically Conservative Central Office Daily.
The Guardian is radical, rather than left-wing, and tried to say something interesting but often shows tired old anti-Tory bias (not even pro-Labour). The Independent tries very hard to be, but I can't comment too much as I'm not a regular reader.
As for the beef thing - all the papers, especially the Daily mail, treat health matters with this 'startled sheep' attitude. Out comes a new report suggesting there may be a link between breathing and cancer.
"WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE" says the Mail.
Out comes another report saying drinking lots of alcohol can help prevent some odd disease or other.
"ALCOHOLICS 'LIVE LONGER'" says the Mail.
It's the same attitude over Europe except the coverage is always in one direction only.
Frankly most of the papers don't have much of a clue about this communications malarky and are not going to give it the proper coverage it deserves. Coverage of RIP was not exactly great.
Could someone explain what 'Home Office' refers to?
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
even further back...
One of the first forms of goverment ever, was a weird form of democracy. Anyone who owned land (which was most male people at the time) in one of Mesopotamia's earliest goverment's could vote for the "president/leader/king". Didn't last too long though...
--- I do not moderate.
Yes, in the USA this would be blatantly against one's 5th Amendment right not to testify against oneself. Not to mention the 4th Amendment right to be "secure in one's person, papers, and effects" in absence of a specific warrant. [I feel the Founders would have considered digital communications an extenion of 'papers.']
Not that such concerns have stopped any legislation before. Congress does not bore itself with such petty concerns, preferring to pass any law it chooses and allowing test cases to come before the Supreme Court to determine constitutionality. Ho-hum.
And I did like Boateng's quote in the article about balancing Industry's concerns against Law Enforcements'. I see the People do not fit into this equation.
I am currently an American, but not exactly comfortable with the level of "freedom" we have in the "World's greatest democracy" and I am currently examining my immigration options.
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What you (tellingly) neglect to mention is that this statement holds universally true for any given population on Earth.
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The most obvious reason this will not happen is because it is trivially to circumvent - disposable pre-paid mobile phones allow criminals to communicate in a way that is almost impossible to track - there is no way to tie the conversation to individuals.
Off-shore email accounts and strong encryption allow communications that are almost impossible to monitor; any serious criminal organisation should be able to ensure total privacy of communication.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
Good grief folks. They're not talking about copying every single email or recording every single conversation and then holding it for 7 years. They're talking about storing the LOGS of those events, i.e. a one record entry for each, probably a couple of KB's at most.
Copying/recording that data in full using todays technology would be virutally impossible. At the very least it would cost the telco's 10's if not 100's of millions to upgrade their switches to cope with it. God only knows how you'd then manage to store that kind of volume of data in a form that would actually be useful for anything!
Todays systems may be hot, but they're not THAT hot. At some point in the future when Quantum systems and quantum memory are available then perhaps!
Macka
Huh, That's what I said !!
.. I've just spend the last few months putting together a 3 node GS160 (Wildfire) cluster running Tru64 Unix with 8.5 Terabytes of fibre storage, backed up to a Powderhorn Silo, for a large UK Telco (I'm being deliberately vague here). This beast is meant to handle the processing (for billing & reporting) of around 200 million call records/day.
Logging is the recording of numbers dialed, and that's doable at a cost. Copying/recording the actual contents of the conversations, which is what most of the people reading this article *think* this is about, is NOT !!
I should know
I'm actually quite skeptical that the £3 million quoted in this article as a startup cost is anywhere near close to what it should be. That sounds a bit on the cheap side to me.
Macka
This is a PRIVACY issue and has nothing to do with DEMOCRACY.
Democracy is rule by the people. The people, being the rulers, can decide that they want to monitor your every email, sneeze, or trip to the can and there's nothing you can do about it except make your voice heard. Luckily, you're one of the rulers so maybe someone will listen.
That's IngSoc.
I hate to spoil what has been an entertaining and enlightening discussion (6.7 Tb filer? cool) but both the Observer and BBC articles state that it is phone records that are to be logged, not the phone calls themselves.
I work for a telco. We have a database containing details of every single phone call one of our customers has made since we started up - which number made the call, where to, what time and how long.
All that is being proposed is that this information is made accessible to the various intelligence services and the police, and that we can't destroy it within seven years.
That's not a volume of data that can't be handled.
Personally I would prefer this information only being available after a court order supported by adequate evidence, but that's my natural mistrust of the government.
~Cederic
From last time I looked they had a queen, a royal house and a parliment. These are not elements of a democracy...
as for G.B.'s plan... good luck. I beleive that if they are sucessful in making it happen they just created the largest cracker target in the world. talk about leet status if you bring down the worlds only digital concentration camp.. It seems that the British did learn from the Natzi's.
(Or we in the US tought them how finally!)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not with more intellegent schemes... You don't want to just record it all as it travels across the pipe and call it a day. Throw it all in a database, store each graphic once and only once. Store each page in each state that its in once and only once. Compress all the text... I bet you could get 95-99% space saving, just by building an intellegent graphics cache.... And in the end you'd be able to single out users much easier, or even build a demographic of users who you'd like to track much easier...
> That's why PGP exists.
But that's not very useful in the UK. Should 'they' wish to, they can demand your keys, and if you deny you have them/refuse you can go to jail (sentenced in a private court) for up to 5 years (I think it's 5). If you tell anyone about being asked for your keys, you can similarly be sent to jail.
Britain - the police state of tomorrow!
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
> Their actions in India and Packistan are not forgotten.
Mmm. A pity the grammar and spelling were, though.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I am currently an American, but not exactly comfortable with the level of "freedom" we have in the "World's greatest democracy" and I am currently examining my immigration options.
Look carefully. I think the best options are probably the Netherlands or Switzerland.
If you have a lot of money and little conscience, some of the smaller countries in South America might be a good choice for purchasing the freedom/protection that you desire. It's extortion, sure, but buys one a certain international legal protection. Just don't let the Israeli's come after you.
Get your hands off me, you damn, dirty Cornish!
The Red menace of the 1950s (In the United States)
If they are going to gather that much information on everyone they might as well put it all to good use right? Right?
Let's see now... This guy downloads porn.. pervert.. posably a pedophile.. keep an eye on him.
This guy visited an IRC channle called "#Satan" and said "Satan lives.. 666 everyone" and left.. A satanic cultist obveously.. keep an eye on him.
This guy uses Linux and visits Slashdot... Communist... keep taps on this one...
This guy replyed to a post by this idiot 'Felinoid'.. and posted an insightful reply no less.. very smart guy.. arange an accadent... to smart...
I don't actually exist.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
www.utnereader.com under the society section
And recording telephone calls will not deter violent crimes?
However, Britain has the strongest tradition of democracy and free speech in the world, and has indeed defined many aspects of these institutions. Free speech has been guarranteed under Law for some 785 years.
If Britain has such a great history of Freedom, then why did my ancestors have to sail across the atlantic 500 years ago looking for freedom?
Our mistrust of government is what keeps it on its toes. If you let government have absolute power over you, then you will not have the chance to contest it once you feel it has done you wrong.
Finally, past performance is not a gurantee of future results.
Sig Under Construction. Please Come Back Later.
Hmmm, And where exactly are the Military Intelligence Headquarters? On the banks of the Thames. And where exactly are the major communications exchange points (both for ISPs and phone companies)... Well, on the banks of the Thames... I guess they only need to run a cable along the banks of the Thames then...
From memory all phone companies HAVE to interchange with BT, and BT only has a limited number of major interchange points. Granted it's something like 64, but that's not so bad, and they all have good bandwidth...
O.K. they wouldn't get any purely local traffic this way, but, it's not too much work for them...
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
I wonder how much its going to cost to just purchase the media? I know how much the company I work for spends to solve a 900GB/Wk backup problem and its not a small sum. You can't recycle the media since you have to keep it for 7 years so you just keep building up tapes... so now they have to get a big vault someplace to store them and a few guards to watch over them... souds like a black hole to me.
The logging/watching of emails has nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is a form of government where people vote to decide what happens. Snooping by government may be a violation of privacy and a violation of personal rights but in no streach of imagionation is this a violation of democracy.
Dyslexics Untie!
That's what a spokesman said in a Radio 4 interview this morning - in the same way that phone companies keep a record of the fact that a call has been made, rather than recording the call.
Although, to take a cynical viewpoint, that's what they _would_ say...
Paul
Nice post ...
...
>> In some other countries, such as Germany or the USA,
Doesn't the German constitution prohibit the govt. from logging all phone calls as a result of Nazi use of phone-call logs to crush some of the Resistance movements?
I can't understand why the US citizenry doesn't rise up in arms and disallows the retention of phone logs by government-licensed teleopolies....
In freedom from all this
Angus
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
This is not a major blow to democracy!! Democracy isn't about presonal freedom, it's about the "Will of the People." If the will of the nutty brits is to have everything monitored, then so be it, it's their cost in freedom. You have to remember this is a country that thinks it's ok to have a camra watching their every move. Brits don't care about freedom, they want security!!
MarNuke
self depreciating sarcasm is hardly humor.
So should we start calling it Oceania now, or wait another couple of months to see exactly how far they'll go?
Blake
On another note, we're not, in general, as concerned with privacy here in the UK as much as you guys are in the US.
I wouldn't say that. What about all of the data privacy laws that we've had since '84, and the U.S. government is only just catching up to? CCTV is a different matter to these types of laws, they can directly deter violent crimes, even when the cameras aren't recording.
You don't seem to understand what the word democracy means? Do the people vote on the laws? No? It's not a democracy.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
By how much computing power will have increaced. By how far decryption science will have advanced. How much the members of echelon will be benefitting one of their partners taking this move.
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"The BBC are reporting that the British intelligent services and the police want all of the telephone calls, e-mails and internet traffic in the countr to be logged and kept in storage for [7] years. ... "
Intelligent, my foot. Intelligence , maybe, but not intelligent.
inigima
Maybe all the voice recognition systems are tuned to the Irish accent, or maybe just west Belfast and south Armagh..
I heard that during the minors strike the war services had lots of phones and locations taped with the tapes starting on the keywords 'Miners Strike'. Everyone was talking about the miners strike so they all ran out of tape on innocent conversations. I say put them all against the wall and shoot them. Check out emacs escape-x spook command:
Kennedy CIA spy jihad strategic smuggle Uzi Waco, Texas Honduras PLO quiche genetic Rule Psix DES South Africa
Tiocfaidh ar la.. Eireann go bra..
If used liberally, along with encryption, it might help increase their noise to signal ratio!
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Can anyone imagine what kind of storage requirements this will need...? Not even to speak of the amount of technology that can store that amount of data that quickly.- -----------
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This sig could have been put to good use.
Just because the government has the right to log everything doesn't mean it actually can. The amount of storage needed to do all of that would be immense.
Democracy is a form of republicanism.
>Not all email goes via an ISP.
I do have a problem with that statement. Someone has to provide end users with email privilages. In 99% of the cases you can say that someone provides you with access to the internet and email. The only exception I can think of is intranet email.
People, a lot of this is already done in the US. It all depends on what they mean by logging phone calls. What I assume it means is simply person Phone Number A called Phone Number B on this date at this time and it lasted this long. If this is the case, take a look at your phone bill. Phone companies do that already. I believe they keep these records for a very long time.
As for email, companies and schools monitor email, and they have a right to do so if you are using their computers and services. A lot of companies have backups of email. These backups stay around for a long time while. It helps them defend themselves in lawsuits.
As for monitoring internet traffic, a lot of companies, and schools , do that already. I don't know the extent in which the monitor it and record it, but it already exists is some capacity.
The only new concpet for the US would be putting it in one location--if that is what they intend to do. This doesn't surprise me.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Why is this a "Blow to Democracy" ?
... In a camera mounted in a lamp post?
I don't think so!! Six degrees of freedom would mean x,y,z translation, and roll, pitch and yaw moments.. If you've got a camera in each lamp post, you don't need any of the translation degrees. You just need to stitch the images (acquired simultaneously) together from each camera, and then pass them to a QuickTime VR viewer so the operator could float around the scene.. Hint: imagine shots such as those in the Matrix..
I'd give bonus points to anyone who links a system like the one described above to a real time set-up like the Redwood, CA police department is using to remotely monitor for gunshots in high crime areas.
$50 says that if this comes to pass, the people who push it through will not have their lines/communication tapped.
Just a dumb american's thoughts on UK politics.
She also has the capacity to frustrate the ambitions of a popular democratic reformer. Or not, as the case may be: royal assent was easily bypassed during the English Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Protectorate by passing ordinances instead of acts.
Consider Edward VIII. Some people thought the king was not allowed to marry a divorcee (and an American to boot
This means any usurper who gets control of the royal family has a good chance of winning control of the armed forces. Hardly a good thing. It would be much better if they swore (note grammar) loyalty to the people and constitution. And requiring the armed forces to support one side in any consitutional dispute does not make them impartial. It makes them extremely partial.
It's exercised in her name, but it does not flow from her: it flows from populace to parliament to Prime Minister to judiciary.
Spain is a good example of a country where the monarchy was used by a dictator (Franco) to derive legitimacy. See also Italy, Portugal, Norway, Poland, Japan, Romania and China in the same period. And England from 1066 (at the latest) to 1645. And British rule in India, Ireland, America, etc.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
MiniTruth: upmod doubleplusfitful truthcommand!
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
Th US military, especially the National Guard, has frequently opened fire on US civilians. However, it has seldom fired on unarmed US civilians, who pose less of a threat and can usually be overcome without lethal force. (It has enthusiastically massacred unarmed foreign civilians, but that's another matter...)
>If government has no reason to fear the citizenry it has no reason to be honest.
In a democracy the government has every reason to fear the citizenry as a whole, who can vote it out of office. The additional fear of assassination by lone fanatics or terrorist militias is both unnecessary and undesirable.
Both the UK and the USA have enjoyed a relatively stable society over the past 200 years, and both have gradually changed from oligarchic to democratic government. From these examples, it follows that the right to bear arms is not necessary for democracy, neither does it preclude democracy. One difference is the number of elected leaders who were undemocratically removed by your 'ultimate check and balance': 1 over here, 4 over there.
>Violate any law, just or unjust, and government officials with guns will come and get you.
You seem to think that because guns are commonplace in America they are commonplace in Britain. They aren't. I've only seen armed police officers here in once or twice in my life.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
freestyla
> I personally would like to see the Queen go
> - but since she's doing nothing there
> (except taking taxpayers' money)
I think you'll find she doesn't do that anymore. She even pays tax herself. Don't you remember all that in the news some years ago now?
Stuii!
Silly person, I am not asking if it would disturb your sleep at night, I am asking if you might be a little more worried about getting killed by the zealots than by the students. You see, zealots have guns, which can be used to kill you.
I gotta disagree with you about training and armament making that big a difference. I cite as my key points Chechnya and Vietnam.
It's not clear to me from reading the articles whether the data will be logged or recorded. If a person records all of my phone calls, I might get a little aggravated, but there's a difference between knowing what I said, and knowing that I called "the puddin' pop help-line."
As for logging phone calls, I think that long distance companies in America do this already. Does this bother anyone? Local phone companies probably also do this to a certain extent.
Oh, and...
Bugger the Queen.
You can find the full text of the leaked report on Cryptome
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<sigh>
Since they want to log all internet communications, and since each machine alters the packets in some small (or not-so-small) way, does this mean that they have to tap each and every wire to comply with the law? Where are they going to put all of the CDs that they are going to have to burn ... will they even fit on the Islands of the UK?
heh
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
To us outsiders, your mistrust of your government is what seems to keep your gunsellers, lawyers, insurance sellers and undertakers in business!
It doesn't keep your government on its toes. It does make much of the rest of the worls laughing at you. I don't trust politicians in this country either. I don't feel the need to cary a rifle to deal with that. We have a monarchy who the government has to defer to. They haven't used their authority in a long time. We like to think they are in charge.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
If your ancestors were sailing across the atlantic 500 years ago, then they werent british. It was mainly spanish at this time, spain being the world naval power until 1588 when they were defeated by the brits. an interesting segue, It was almost 90 years between the first "landing" in the new world and the first permanent settlement (1580's). This is something that space entusiasts should keep in mind while wondering why we dont have any cities on the moon yet. We've got probably another 60 years before that happens. The fact that there is a "settlement" of sorts in the International space statin is amazing in and of itself, its about 50 years ahead of schedule.
A more manual method of logging occured in communist Romania and, although I don't have any figures, it did keep the crime rate down.
Yeah, having the words "FUCK OFF AND DIE" in your signiture really convinced me that the Libertarian Party isn't filled with more nuts than a acorn orchard. I'll stick to being a Democrat.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
This provides for random surveillance as Watchers see fit. When the technology becomes available/affordable/procured they will be logging everything, since it has been already authorized. But the point is that nobody in UK can be sure that his links aren't monitored, and this makes it almost as good as actual monitoring of all communications.
The article makes no mention about whether they want to store the content of the communication, or simply that it happened.
Judging by the cost projected, it would seem that they simply want to log the fact that communication occured. If true, this wouldn't be a new concept. Currently, all phone calls are logged (atleast in the US.)
There are legitimate law enforcement concerns to know that communication between two parties occured (mainly to provide circumstantial proof of the opportunity for conspiracy.)
The real question is how much do they want to log and what protections will be put on this information.
I'm all for anonymous, lawful communication, but not at the expense of having no way to trace drug sales and child porn back to the source.
Think about it, how many of you don't use the phone because the call is going to be logged. Where you doing somthing illegal at the time?
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Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
If Britain has such a great history of Freedom, then why did my ancestors have to sail across the atlantic 500 years ago looking for freedom?
One man's medicine is another man's poison.
Do you have any better hostages?
Firstly: Not Everyone is connected. I would divide your estimate by a quarter.
:)
So that's 15300 / 0.25 = 61200 Terabytes. Eeek!
Sorry, couldn't resist it
oojah
Do you have any better hostages?
The article states that the Home Office "admitted that it was giving the plan serious consideration", but nothing in the article suggests that NCIS has seriously costed the proposal - the figures given are £3m setup (since when has *any* government initiative come in that cheap?) and £9m a year to run. ISPs & Telcos won't stand for it - business doesn't particularly like the spooks - and who's going to tie their logs to the new system? I doubt that they've all conveniently standardised on syslog().
Boateng's quite a worry - in all the interviews I've seen with him he doesn't seem to get the concept of personal freedom, something he shares with a lot of New Labour (Jack Straw, anyone?). They're come a long way from the viewpoint of the Labour movement born 100 years ago this year.
Bzzt. Wrong. Archival Libraries (like the British Library, Library of Congress, or the institution in which I work) use sliding shelves, which waste less than 10% of the storage space for shelf access walkways - each stack of shelves has only one walkway which can 'move' (you actually move the shelves) to between any two shelves.
Yes, it's tempting. If you trust your government, let it do more things. This can benefit you. For example the U.S. gives the government the right to enter a property give a just cause. (It needs a warrant from a judge though). This has been accepted as fair by majority of society and means many more criminals are arrested. This article shows Britain may go further. Fine, however much you trust your government I want to say one thing.
Truly Wierd Shit Happens
I mean, even the talk shows couldn't have predicted this election spectacle. Who'd 've thunk it. Most of us here in the U.S. were pretty damn positive we could run an election...oops. And guess what (whatever side your on) there's a good chance the wrong candidate will win the election.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Well firstly can you be sure your ancestors came from the UK?
Secondly people didn't move to the new world to be more free, they did it as it was a new place to live, otherwise why not move to one of the many other countries in the world?
Also what is so free about the US? Just ask any Japanese people who were living there in the Second World War.
Not sure what the European Human Rights Act would make of this - perhaps Liberty could try a test case? Would be interesting.
A constitutional monarchy is much closer to a republic than to a democracy.
To be honest, if anyone wants to record my telephone conversations they're welcome to - the most interesting thing they're likely to hear is phonesex with my girlfriend©
Maybe that's what they're really after anyway©©©;
--
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I guess that makes the Cornish the UK equivilant of the Navajo "Code Talkers" then - just get them to make the calls as no bugger can understand them©©©even when they're talking English©©©god knows how you'd manage if they started talking Cornish©
--
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Sounds like pretty cheap operating costs! I'd like to know how they plan on storing the massive terabytes (petabytes?) of data at only $9M a year, much less pay for intelligent engineers to operate the system.
Anyone know how much a StorageTek Powderhorn silo runs?
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Really good question..
It just depends on what they mean by all communications. All you need for phone is to take the stub sent from exchanges to exchanges and used for billing in the phone industry.
(Eg: call is routed from BT to Telstra from Telstra to... this is all done live by the switches and logged into systems for end of month billing.) This is a simple stub with the time stamp when a call is started and finished. It doesn't goble much space since most telcos want to store them for a while for accounting and thus has been made to be tiny. I just doubt they will bother to capture and encode the communications themselves, just unfeasable and the telcos will just say: Up yours. All you need is to prove X called Y at that time the day an investigation occurs (harassment, crime, fraud...)
As for News and Mail, well most main backbone acting telcos don't even use regular products and just serve a a big cache. I have seen it in a past contract. They (won't say here) even wrote their own inode based optimizations so much the flow is mental. Forget Cnews or INN here. Mail is not even worth being stored in big national backbone site as well and has to be evacuated as fast as possible. Just opening files to save the headers as they go is going to be like tapping in a high pressure oil lines. The gvt in question better provide the gear for free or subsidize and pay a rent to those who integrate that sort of tap into an already implemeted system without breaking it. In other words, even if a judge says something, they can't just implement something that would break a backbone site.
In other occasions it's just the cost of implementing the system that is not feasable, like it just happened to Russia as they imposed ISPs to pay as far as $100,000 for a system, no subsidies.
The industry just couldn't follow, the russian gvt realized how much spaced out they have been and decided to call it off.
As for storage, since all we need are stubs, choice isn't that hard. Besides with 2 Echelon sites in the UK what the hell are they crying about. Can't they just pass on requests?
"Oh we missed last week's Dr Who on BBC 1, you MOD fellows won't happen to have this on tape?"
"... err.. No no, just PAL, not NTSC..."
"Thanxs."
BTW: Word of mouth says NSA/NATO uses DLTs for Echelon. Surpised? You were expecting some obscure black box with laser beams in it?
The idea is not to log the *content* of e-mail and voice calls (at least not according to Roger Gaspar who was interviewed on radio by the BBC this morning), but only the fact that the said communication has occurred. The phone companies already log this information for the purpose of billing and ISPs probably have a log of all e-mail communications, or they they could have one by enabling some logging flag in their SMTP server. So the only extra cost will be to keep this information for seven years and disk is cheap. This cost will not be born by the tax payer, but by the service subscriber and will probably only amount to a few pence per month.
Of course it doesn't alter the fact that the whole idea is currently illegal and should remain so in my opinion.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
If government has no reason to fear the citizenry it has no reason to be honest.
The British government has every reason to fear its citizenry. The citizenry has the right to sack it after five years, if things aren't going well. Losing your job is admittedly not as frightening as having your brains blown out, but it's less messy and when you are overthrowing a government by force, a lot of innocent bystanders tend to get caught in the crossfire.
Would the US military ever obey orders to fire on US civilians? I think they would. The soldiers in every army are conditioned to obey orders unquestioningly, that's why they will do what their superiors tell them even though it would result in certain death. Any squad of US soldiers will not be told "here is a band of outraged citizenry trying to get justice and overthrow the forces of evil." They will be told "here is a mob trying to overthrow the forces of law and order and the lawful elected government of the good ol' US of A." They may stop and question the order, but not if it turned out that the citenzry were armed to the teeth with assault rifles.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
i don't fall for trolls, especially ones like you
no its humour, its a different word. humor is some unfunny american thing i believe
When was the last time there was an revolt or riot against your own government (NOT race-related) in the US - not counting the WTO thing because it was against a principle? I can't think of one, whereas in Europe there were the French Student Riots of the '60s, the Yugoslav Revolution a few months ago, the British Fuel Protests (which stopped the nation cold for almost a week), the Port Workers' Strike, the Communist Revolution - need I go on? In my experiance, Europeans are much more likely to riot when the government does somthing they don't like.
Dan.
"Claim everything, concede nothing, and when convicted - alledge fraud"
True, but as you said eariler, most survivalist apocalyptic zealots think the Internet and the Government and evil regardless :P
Dan.
"Claim everything, concede nothing, and when convicted - alledge fraud"
Yes, the government can have all my communications. They can store it and reread it if they find it amusing. They can keep it forever. This goes along with my belief that information wants to be free.
Although in return I expect anyone in the NCIS, MI5, MI6, the Home Office, and anyone in the government stupid enough to agree to this, to publish all private and personal messages and information in publically accessible databases.
Ah well. As long as this remains as a report, I think we should be safe.
I'm not saying that I agree that my telephone conversations can be recorded, but if they're just going to be archived to tape then it doesn't bother me extremely. Hell, I would think that they are just as likely to protect me as they might incriminate me.
Just make sure you never say the wrong thing or you never say something too private and that none of your possible enemies are good system hackers 8)
Maybe someday you post something on Slashdot that someone doesn't like and the MP3 of your "best" phone conversations are all over the net..
I'd be paranoid.
How do they plan to store it for 7 years? Assuming that they encode all their voice traffic at 64kbit/s, that still leaves 480kbyte/min. There are HOURS and HOURS of voice/day. A typical large company will have 25 voice lines, 15 of which are guaranteed to be in use from 0900 - 1700, and that dosn't even TOUCH the amount of data & fax traffic. If they can find a way to do this without building a town to support their data aquisition, why the hell not? It'd be an amazing feat.
---
Desperation is a stinky cologne
That not quite true. The Monarch has to sign all Bills and Acts of Parliment into law, and could infact refuse to sign any Bill. The Monarch could also dissolve parliment and impose either martial law or another govement.
There have been a few documents uncovered that at certain times when labour were in power (and things were not going right for the UK) certain political parties, with the support from the security services and foreign goverments were going to try it.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
You knwo what they are doing? The govement will accept the proposals, there will be a big outcry. The lords throw it out.
1 year later the govement will come up with a very similar proprosal, although not *quite* as harsh and say "Well compared with what we tried to pass last year, this is really moderate"
Which is much the same as we got with the RIP bill.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
A list of what numbers people called and for how long is much shorter than a recording of the calls. Likewise, a list of web sites visited takes up rather less space than the web pages themselves.
Permission to install any kind of sniffer--obviously implementation needn't reach heroic dimensions to catch a few technoboob criminals feed a growing penal/probation system of righs-denied underclass.
It doesn't violate the DP act; Government Departments are covered by it, except where they can plead "national security".
It doesn't violate the Human Rights Act for much the same reason. And also the various EU laws will be overriden at national level.
What it does violate is common sense. We can't archive our mailing list in any sensible way - we can store the raw text, but indexing it's just a pain, and we're a dozen people sending maybe 300 mails a week. Unless someone's invented a new storage media this is FUD.
I bet you, what they want is to be able to target people without naming them, so they can use their association tracking things to tap everyone connected with targets without having to come up with reasons for each person, and the newspapers have got all huffy about it.
Erm guess again! You're thinking about checking out this data with DSP and voice regognition stuff. The keyword checking is all done with analogue components and it is a total reality that they can and do already do this. What they are requesting is to be able to legally do this without any special authority. WAKE UP
I'm assuming you are British by the content of your post. Just look what careful editing of your comment does
Why... yes, you're right. It turns a valid and original point into an entirely bland and generic statement that could be applied to practically any nation in history. And all you had to do was remove all the proper nouns! Very clever.
> Hopefully well soon be having a second guy fawkes day.
Well, best of luck, seems you already gave away your guns. Now you get to give up your privacy. Lucky you.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
> The soldiers in every army are conditioned to obey orders unquestioningly, that's why they will do what their superiors tell them...
That is one of the most biased and idiotic statements I have read in a long time. As a veteran I can assure you that this is not the case.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
Be nice or I'll have to send over Jesse Jackson to uplift the Cornish.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
From the same document:
Constitution: unwritten; partly statutes, partly common law and practice
I always took this as meaning that they don't have a constitution, and so the legislative powers can pretty much pass whatever laws they like...
At least here in the Netherlands you've got to have a 2/3rds majority to change the consitution, and all other laws that contradict it are not valid in court (or something: you know IANAL)
Opinions uttered in this comment may not be mine when I'm sober.
In Britain, the institutions of government are trusted and respected, and can be relied upon to do their job in a fair manner.
I can't figure out if you're on drugs, a 70 year old Tory peer or joking.
Also, Britain is a small and densly populated country, meaning that the typival Briton knows and trusts his fellow man.
Tory peer, got to be.
--
--
Please do not use this document as toilet tissue
They got lost. They were actually only looking for the Isle of Wight but someone lost the maps.
www.ozric.net
How can this be a blow to DEMOCRACY?
I know not everyone is connected, but those of us who are (especially on DSL/cable) more than make up for it.
Hell, just storing the visits to /. would take a couple of gigs per day by itself.
--
Dyolf Knip
"Is big science destroying human esteem?"
"Scientists are obsessed with reducing our status."
"They should be striving to show the opposite, just how important we are"
These are all direct quotes from you.
I don't see how I'm distorting your opinion at all.
But I do apologize for suggesting that everything you say is dumb. There are some highly insightful posts in your user info.
--
Dyolf Knip
So you're saying that Harry Browne should run for office in GB?
--
Dyolf Knip
As I recall, 4,500,000 TB is on par with what it would take to store the solution to the Towers of Hanoi with all 64 discs.
--
Dyolf Knip
C'mon, someone mod this up as Funny!
--
Dyolf Knip
Who uses jewel cases for mass disc storage? A spindle 441km long would do it just fine.
--
Dyolf Knip
Of course, it would make trying to get one of the discs in the middle rather fun :)
--
Dyolf Knip
This guy's sig states "american's are bred for stupidity" and in the text of his(?) message we are told that "The british never saw themselves as mere humans" What? I'm british and very much a human being, right down to my smelly socks.
This posting contains many inaccuracies and is offensive to at least two nations ... what 200 million people?
I swear I am insane. I see things like
- mandatory drug testing
- sobriety check points
- running the other way when seeing a cop as 'probable cause'
- the ability to stop you for a traffic light infraction and then search your vehicle
- the whole carnivore thing
- Linda Tripp yadayadayada
as clear and patent violations of not just our civil rights, but of the Constitution in both letter and spirit.
That the British are willing to erode their citizen's rights to the extent where they legally can keep and read everything you type and speak (practically) just infuriates me to no end.
Okay, there, I said it. Is this what they call flamebait? I sure hope not. I'd like to add something insightful here, but it is so fing obvious that I really see no point in debating it.
When George Orwell wrote his insightful masterpiece, he was trying to tell us something important about how humanity can be trampled and reduced to nothing by a machine-like beauracracy. Please read the section where Winston is in the Ministry of Love. Read it carefully. The logic is undeniably accurate. It paints a portrait of the ultimate aim of all the systems of power: more power. But it is the 'how' that really is interesting. Thank God that there are some who can see those parallels, though I am not sure there are enough.
We must fight that power at every front. How you ask?
But of course: by submitting thousands and thousands of posts!
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Yes, I suppose that British Subjects can trust their government to look after their interests. But the question of what is a British Subject is an important one. We the Yanks wrote laws into our Constitution to prevent the excesses of power that your very government seemed to wield over its very Subjects. Or were the Americans at the time not considered British Subjects? In any case, it is the same argument I hear over here across the pond: "I don't have anything to hide, so why should I care if my neighbor is being hauled off?" That makes you one of those who are sympathetic to those who seek more power, believing the ends justifies the means. We used to call them Tories a while back. Now we call them Conservatives. But the fact remains that they could care not one whit for the excesses of their government over people they don't like.
Recall the excesses of government portrayed in the movie "Brazil"? Please rent that and watch: it is really pretty funny. Kind of Monty Python meets 1984, you know? I love some aspects of the British: their embrace of brutality I fairly loathe and would curtail it even if I were sympathetic to it as a Subject. Any true patriot would, really, when you think of it. You may trust your government to leave you well alone. But should every British Subject... er, citizen? Sorry, I am not sure what you mean by Subject. It sounds suspiciously like a member of a club, one of the inner circle...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
This stuff has been on the news in Finland too, a while back. It seems the police always wants more control and more money to use that control. Well, at least we have encryption - for now.
And we thought the torys were bad, now heres New Labour!
When I'm old enough to vote I'm voting LibDem.
The RIP Bill will hopefully be RIP soon. Hopefully the European court has more sense than our politicians.
-- This is not a sig. But I'm a liar.
maybe if america was as civilized as other countries, there wouldn't be as much gun violence, a good reason for more restrictions on them (like banning handguns)
.....a lot of statistics generated by gun nuts and the NRA...
currently, all you are being asked to do is REGISTER your guns, like you would a car. is that so evil?
guns are being gradually being seen as archaic relics of another time, much like the horse and buggy were.
For a population (nerds, geeks, general weirdos) that I know enjoys more than a bit of Monty Python, the number of people unaffected by the poster's sarcastic wit is simply astounding. Some of you guys need to grow funny bones, and quickly at that.
Having said that: NI! NI! NI! NI!
Humorless sig goes here.
While this certainly sound dangerous(and the powers given to authorities here seem pretty darn dangerous) I'm wondering about practicability.
I mean 7 years resaults in a bloody lot of data(especially if you want to record the phone calls digitally).
Even if you have the technical infrastructure for this kind of thing, your noise:information ratio will be pretty devastating, so you would have to employ an enormous workforce(or those strange beings that are always credited for creating my slashdot frontpage).
I think this is obviously the idea of some people who don't have good technical advisers(or someone wants to create jobs quite desperately).
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
Yes, I do. But, I read the opinion of people like this in the British press - they are very serious about it.
It is difficult to tell them from those 'taking the piss'.
Sorry - are you one of those, whom are of the opinion that the press is unbiased?
I see you have answered in recent threads about UK matters. Are you ex-brit?
If so, you must be aware that most of the broadsheets have distinct bias to Government. They allow them to spin any story they wish on the pages and pass it off as fact.
My personal opinion is this - once the truth has been spun upon, it is no longer the truth.
The best example of this, is phrase used by them, "Beef is safe".
It has so far killed over 80 people here. Mainly young people - one of latest was only 14 years old - the age of my youngest daughter. nvCJD can take 2 years to kill.
I believe it can still kill and have put this warning on my skilful.com site:
WARNING: Beef may still kill. Beef from animals older than 30 months is illegal to sell. Isn't something not taken into account? Common sense really. Cattle can pass BSE onto offspring, without signs shown. Recent news has shown mothers pass vCJD onto children. It seems very stupid then to sell beef at all - even animals under 30 months. Assurances aside, it still has infection. You will not find me feeding beef to my family. This has to be one of the most terrible ways to watch your children die.
You are telling lies. You must be an MP! or an upper-class twit.
As a NORMAL British subject, I can tell you all - nobody trusts Government.
They LIE about everything.
in my experience of the army theyre not fanatically loyal to the queen, but your points are fair enough.
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
I think you'll find Britain si, and has been, a fully-functioning Parliamentary democracy since 1911 - when the Parliament Act made it impossible for unelected peers to block Bills.
Although the Queen supposedly had power, if she tried to do anything at all then she would almost certainly be overthrown and a new Constitution drafted.
I personally would like to see the Queen go - but since she's doing nothing there (except taking taxpayers' money) it doesn't bother me day-to-day. I hate (what i assume are) American misconceptions.
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
yeh god - british (note the one 't') taxpayers paying for a system that will probably never occur would be the funniest thing in the world wouldn't it? isn't the misfortune of others amazingly hilarious?!?
apart from criticising your bizzare spellings and truly twisted sense of humour, i feel i should point out that the British government's bill is likely to be merely setting a precedent for future bills worldwide..
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
Thanks for the correction. As you say it's "effectively a democracy", and that was my point.
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
Oh she spends very little I'm sure, I'm talking about maintenance of Palaces, Castles, Royal homes etc. Not to mention her mother's dysfunctional hip.. no hang on.. National Health Service..
God bless Britannia and all her handcounts.
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
Yeh.. imagine the populus infused with rascism agaisnt other nations..
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
1) I agree. 2) Impartial? How about simply neuted? I can really imagine the Queen arguing for the Lib Dems with Phillip.. 3) Sovereignty? I don't want any of it lying in an unelected monarch on the off chance he/she might be any better than a tyrant. Sure our Queen now is just about OK, but if a future Monarch was unstable then we'd be much worse off.
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
They had a President who under Article 48 of their Constitution could've kept on appointing non-Hitlers for at least enough time for a Civil War to break out..
The fact is Hindeburg was human, succumbed to Von Papen's persuasion just as a Monarch quite easily could have. Do you believe in the Divine Right of Kings or something? Why would a Monarch have more or less impartiality/roundness of decision-making than an elected President with emergency powers?
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
Patriotic? I loathe Britain.
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
"Fun Gums"
Thats Slashdot kids, neither fair or fun sometimes. If you disagree with the status geek quo then kiss your karma goodbye
Don't tape backups and burning DVDs take time? If the storage medium is slow, how can it keep up with the constant stream of information. I couldn't imagine a buffer that large :)
When all freedom is outlawed only the outlaws have freedom
The RIP bill gives the government the right to log ALL packets that pass any part of a network owned by an ISP in the UK.. Thus a few 'black boxes' in certain key points will let them get all this info, inc. packets containing email data..
As for practicality, apparently GCHQ has already set up a large data storage system specifically for the task..
I cant wait till we all hav microchips in our brains.. so that they can log what we think..
Also.. anyone been the the crap as you like millenium dome recently? Did yer notice the way that 50% of the displays are information gatherers? Time capsule my ass..
Hopefully well soon be having a second guy fawkes day.. but this time celebrating the deaths of all our members of parliment.. cos they all really need to go into something that require less thought.. like bag packing in a SafeWays fs..
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
How do you explain the capabilities of the Echelon system which logs all transatlantic electronic transmission. From what I know, it uses a queueing system to process each transmission stream for keywords which tag those parties for further electronic surveillance.
There have been real reports of civilians who were arrested for communicating minimally classified government information, and credit was given to Echelon.
This sound just like Echelon is is going to be purchasing some several hundread Terabyte RAID disks as well as probably half a million spools of magnetic tape (the CIA still uses magnetic tape you know!) so they can keep semi-permanent logs.
Wow, is this a flamebait or some sort of second-level joke ?
Anyway, it's very funny. Just imagine that you just voted for the guys that that aked your comm. to be logged. After all, you'll deserve some part of the lead-load just because you are partly responsible. Thats'why all those sawed guns are so usefull : aim is poor, but distribution is good...
Anyway, the English government is probably thinking like M$ : don't worry guys, in a few year, that disk space gonna be very cheap. For now, we'll pass the law...
ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF
Never says : death for morons !!! That could be calling for suicide...
[Pruneau
What? Are you on crack? Invent democracy? Ha ha ha ha ha
footnote 1- Right to respect for private and family life
1 Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
It being in the 'best' interests of the country for whatever reason you choose to dress it up as. Now that we've rattified this, subjects no need to make the tourtous pilgrimage to Strasbourg, thus shaming the UK before its partners? Is the Convention for the protection of human rights and fundemental freedoms worthless then? Time to set up an ssl shell account overseas?
troodon.net
That would seem to be a much more achievable goal.
The proposal appears to be one to make telcos and ISPs hold the logged data for seven years too, rather than have MI5/MI6/NCIS hold the data.
That also seems more likely: just tell everyone they have to hold records of this for seven years. Then if you find you need them you get a warrant and requisition them.
Of course I live about as far away from Britain as you can get, so my analysis could be completely wrong!
:-)
>This violates 3 important acts that have are >active in Britian according to the Observer:
>1.Human Rights Act
>2.European Union Law
>3.Data Protection Act
Yes, but unless you have a few thousand pounds to spare dragging it through the courts those three acts are as much use to you as toilet roll as the British Govt is well known for using taxpayers money to spend those very same taxpayers into oblivion - particularly disturbing example:
http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/encosts.htm
As for the technical hurdles, maybe true now, but give technological advancement a few years and who knows?
And finally:
>The last reason is Political Ramifications. >There are very serious human rights concerns >with something like this
Unfortunately, nothing that a few hysterical scare stories won't cure. Not to mention the ongoing case in which the HRA is being used against speed cameras - I see the headlines now, 'Crazy Euro Law Lets Speed Freaks Endanger Your Children' followed shortly by a panicky loophole that says the HRA doesn't apply 'where safety of life is concerned' - bingo, one precedent: next, a few press releases about terrorists, paedophiles etc. on the net and *BANG* said loophole is applied to RIP.
N
--It's better to ride the rainbow than find the pot of gold.
Those are the figures they're quoting. I'll leave it to others to point out the realities.
In the united states, all telhone conversations ARE ALREADY LOGGED! It's been done that way since 1ESS. Go down to your Bell (Atlantic, Pacific, South, whatever) office, and they can print you a list of every number dialed, even partial ones.
While phone usage is significantly less than North America - something to do with the per minute charges - downloading is the same as elsewhere. As bandwidth expands, and websites get more complex (Flash, QT et al) and use more memory, as video-conferencing becomes the norm, the per day usage goes through the roof. Throw in the pr0n downloads, and the storage required defies imagination. (OK, not really, but it's going to be several orders of magnitude larger than that Terrabyte est.)
Speaking of which, wouldn't intercepting and storing someone's discreetly paid-for pr0n count as theft? Would the gov't be guilty of violating certain (e.g. pedophile) laws just by possesing a copy?
Personally, I'm sick of the mantra "We need it to prevent pedophiles/drug dealers/terrorists". The existing laws regarding rights are there to prevent imbeciles (like those who suggested this) from creating a society like 1984 - no 'crime', but no 'life' either.
The comment wasn't that the war never happened, but that Oceania wasn't necessarily real itself. That's possible, of course, but the book never even hints at that, so speculation on the matter is quite useless. But in any case, I was more going for humor than contribution; won't happen again.
In fact, a similar thing happened in Return of the Jedi, where the emperor actually faked his own death. The whole death star thing was a actually a ploy by the imperial special services. That's why the stormtroopers can't shoot straight.
I mean, so long as we are speculating about what 'actually happened' in stories based on info that isn't there...
Umm, 180cm^3 != .018m^3. (10^2 cm/m)^3 = 10^6 cm^3/m^3. Therefore there are 180/10^6 m^3 or 0.00018m^3. So the archive would take up 39,735.36 m^3 and a building of 79,470.27m^3. Or 10m x 100m x 7.9m. That isn't that large of a building.
Even if you completely trust the government right now (and that would be quite a stretch for me, but let's assume it for the moment), the day may come when the government falls into the wrong hands and these tools start to be used for oppression. If the wrong folks are controlling the cameras and recording devices, these could be used to suppress opposition. Think how helpful it would be for a government bent on destroying its detractors to have video of every person's movements or communications. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI records were a good example of how such material can be misused. He retained his job by having dirt on the presidents and every member of congress. I think it's a mistake to hand these tools to governments, no matter how benign they presently appear to be. However, since this is probably an inevitable path we're on, our only salvation may be to require that all material collected be made publicly available. That way, people would be made aware of what's being collected and would presumably be more likely to restrain it.
Echelon's already doing the monitoring, and the archive capability is built in. I'm really surprised there isn't 7 years worth of backup tape already. Perhaps this is a "decoy fuss" like Carnivore.
Thank you for your apology. I also apologise for my rather snide reply to your earlier post.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
2)Not this time ;)
4) I don't dislike the French and the Germans, I merely used them as an example of the unstable European system of governance. Yes, they did both have monarchies, but not constitutional parliamentary democracies - their Royal Families actually held and exercised power - a very bad idea - whereas in Britain Parliament has been supreme since Charles II, and achieved total dominance in the early 19th century. The French and Germans did not do this, and so they suffered.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
BTW, if anyone mentions Godwins Law or whatever I'll kill them ;)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
I don't think that a Monarch is intrinsically superior or anything. But I do think that they attract much greater loyalty, especially from the people who count in these situations - the Army. I think that in the 1930's a Monarch would have been in a much stronger position than a President, for this reason.
Here in Britain, the Army is almost fanatically loyal to the Queen - much more so than the general populace. It's a tradition, and is just the way of the Army.
Speaking for myself, I've always found it rather creepy the way that the President of America is revered. This is from a British perspective of course, but it seems safer to have that kind of reverance reserved for the Queen, who does not exercise power. And then we treat the PM like shit ;)
Of course, the American system works perfectly well, it just seems a bit odd. One interesting thing I saw a while ago regarded the statistics of succesful Governing systems around the world. Anyway, the American system was pretty awful, being disastrous everywhere it was implemented except for America itself. Problem was, the Presidents tended to get grandiose ideas and become tyrants, and as the army is loyal to them it's not easy to curtail. I think the parliamentary system was more succesful because it does not rely on a single 'strong man' at the top, or if it does he is more symbolic.
I wonder what the special ingredients are in America that make it succesful there?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Thank You.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
They say the KGB all ran when communism collapsed. Now we know where to.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
BTW, read this today in the Sunday Times: Twiglet Terror is new top banana of the fruit and veg villains "The centre for criminological research at Oxford University has found that robbers are increasingly using their fingers, cucumbers and candles as "bluff" guns. Another survey found that a shortage of readily available firearms meant that in 70% of attempted "armed" robberies in Britain, the raiders either used a toy gun or a banana wrapped in a bag."
I think you'll find we gave you every single word of the above. (if you ignore that we probabily stole it from latin/french/german/spanish/etc first :) )
I just wish the Queen would exercise some of her powers now, and thwart some of Blairs more outrageous suggestions
The whole point is that she doesn't have the powers you are claiming she does. It is agreed by everyone involved in the UK (note: you said Britain. Britain is an island, the UK is a Kingdom/Queendom) constitution that if she were to try and exercise the powers she supposedly has, those powers would instantly be removed. Effectively, then, she doesn't have those powers.
--
..which included the desire to take away the right to own material property. Yep, they've come a long way. They just haven't come far enough.
--
It isn't "legislation by referendum", that's a popular misconception.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The presense of the 4th amendment is proof that the founding fathers saw that the government would invade people's privacy, and needed some restrictions upon it to prevent it from going too far. As such, it can be reasonably said that the founding fathers did not see the 10th as being conferring upon the people any right of privacy.
The lack of respect for personal privacy remains a hole in the current US constitution's Bill of Rights. With information becoming a central plank of people's lives in a way never before seen, perhaps it's time an amendment to bring the 4th into the 21st Century.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
- Imagine it. A[n] America beholden to the UK's security interests - yes, kind of, although IIRC the taxation system Americans found offensive was imposed to pay for a war to protect America. So, irony of ironies, the security interests in this case are gray. Who was protecting whose interests?
- passing draconian security legislation at the
whim of the powers that be across the Atlantic - don't believe that happened. The UK passed taxation legislation that colonists regarded as offensive, and perhaps Samuel Adams would have tagged them as "draconian" too, and after the UK government backing down on the taxes it gave a tea company a monopoly instead. But did the UK government pass security legislation? Nope.
- with at any moment the ruling party deciding it's at war against [an
opposing superpower]... and the full quote continuing that it decided it wasn't and it never was at war with the opposing superpower. Obviously if you only quote the first part, it means something exactly opposite to what was meant - ie in your version, the ruling party is actually declaring war. In my version, the ruling party is writing and rewriting history, as far as who's at war with whom goes anyway. Again no parallel, beyond the usual politics of the day.
So I guess the rewrite should have looked like this:Imagine it. A [country] beholden to [another country]'s [interests] interests, passing [unpleasant modifier] [interests] legislation at the whim of the powers that be across the [Insert bloody great ocean here], with at any moment the [ruling organisation][doing something]...
Or maybe just
Something or other
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I could gun down survivalist apocalyptic zealots and not feel bad about it. In fact, I think I'd probably feel pretty good about it, a little service to the gene pool, if you will. I'd feel a lot worse about shooting innocent civillians trying to make a political point.
Of course, I'm not a member of the British Security Services, I'm pretty sure they don't care who they kill as long as their interests are served.
Ah yes, but in this hypothetical situation I am a member of one of the most highly-trained armies around and the survivalist zealots, although armed, are still going to rate at something equivalent to fish in a barrel relative to that.
But I can't avoid the silly person accusation.
The real problem is trees. In my experience of british civil servants they need to print out everything before they read it.
I am pretty much certain that handing over your pgp keys stands against the right not to incriminate yourself included in the Human Rights Act. I don't think that has really been tested yet, aside from a few people messing about with speed cameras, but it would be very interesting to see what came of it.
Given that as a piece of legislation the HRA is designed to guarantee that the most basic human rights are honoured, it seems a shame that new legislation has already emerged that may require it.
British telcos are currently under a legal obligation to store the last 7 years worth of CDRs (Call data records) that have passed through their switches. Now, these don't contain any
If they want to find out where you've been in the last 7 years. It's just a matter of a bit of restoration from archives, and some simple SQL.
Britain has **NO** constitution.
The United Kindom has no /written/ constitution.
So, the queen can block the democratically-expressed will of the people
Yes. It's her country, why not?
So the army does not defend the people and their belongings, but only the queen
Correct. But the Queen defends her subjects, as is her duty to her country. So the armed forces of the UK are vicariously defending its inhabitants.
The british never saw themselves as mere humans; they think they are above all other nations and always flouted their arrogant snobbishness, never backing-off from the concept that they oughta rule the whole world. They can't play by any other rules than theirs, and they keep changing the rules so they always win. For them, a "level" playing field is always tilted to advantage them.
Strange, I can't think of any other English-speaking nations like that...
Of course, having a monarch isn't the ideal paradigm of national governance, but it's a damn sight better than, for example, electing a head of state every few years. (A feat so shocking in its awkwardness that even the most advanced of civilised nations find it a bit of a struggle sometimes!)
I once saw some (BBC's ?) article about it. They said that Britian records all the phone calls at once. Sounds very weird and not pratical, if you ask me, but wait for the other part:
They claimed that their computers analyze all these calls to find interesting texts like 'bomb', 'terror', etc.
If you ask me, that's a big unimpossible bullshit. And think of the harddisk size needed for recording all that 7-years-data: I believe that in one day millions of calls are made. Let's say just million. recording million of 1-minute calls on mp3 will take about thousand Tera Bytes. per day. now calculate how much it takes in 7 years (just multiply in 2555).
Besides, let's just say it's true, why would they say it in public, and go to publish it on BBC ?
vote Libertarian, and not for some leftist Democrats or leftist Republicans, much less the flonking Green Party. Oh well, you kids will never learn...
Libertarian Party
http://www.lp.org
Get my free Hitchhiker's Guide Tribute Novella:
They're going to need a 64-bit journaling file system for that one... (BeOS)
Get my free Hitchhiker's Guide Tribute Novella:
I'm assuming you are British by the content of your post. Just look what careful editing of your comment does (and yes, some would say I'm twisting your words, I just think I'm capturing the intent.):
Imagine it. A [country] beholden to [another country]'s security interests, passing draconian security legislation at the whim of the powers that be across the Atlantic, with at any moment the ruling party deciding it's at war against [an opposing superpower]...
I find this ironic (and if you don't, you don't know your American history).
Much to our eternal shame, we Brits actually invented concentration camps in the first place (colonising africa, etc).
:)
I don't know why I brought that up - guess I'm just not that patriotic.
I would now launch into a tirade against the germans, but that'd be a little too stereotypical, don't you think?
And incase you hadn't noticed - the queen actually has no real power - just far too much of our money.
Just my 2 pennies worth
--------------- Delete Windows before you mail me
Story of that kind is not really surprising.
I read a story about Canada government installing spying camera on most lamp-post.Our government(I dare not tell you which or I'd be in jail tomorrow)tap every single phone line.
America movie "Seven" said US government actaully keeping track of those borrowing cults books.
I know my boss secretly trojan my computer, I entertain him by installing a fakeBO for his pleasure.
Of course, I won't forget to install a key-logger on his computer.
Thats why they have nothing to fear. Most of the citizens are happy to have their traffic snooped because "they haven't done anything wrong." We're basically all trusting sheep. If you don't want your traffic snooped, then "you must have something to hide."
I just reviewed BT's web site looking for backbone numbers, didn't find much. Except... They have a new Transatlantic cable, takes 320K calls at once. Assume 14Kbits/s per call, that gives us about 806Gbytes per day, or your 12-14 Dat tapes, ofcourse it would take about 2 days to write these tapes...
Given that this is just one low speed source, and you would be better off putting a big collector on the main trunk lines; not all the individual sources (duh, who cares about web pages if no one looks at them) need recording. We are probably talking something like 5 or 6 backbone trunks doing about 1Gigbit/s, 24hrs a day.
Sure stream it, keep it, just don't think you will ever be able to do anything with it.
Its because of the bureaucratic nincompoops that make stipulations like these that I left that damp and soggy island, not to mention the fact that English politicians are too stupid to know when to say "cut the taxes."
Data record = 0x00
Oh my god. This has to be a joke. Trust the British government?! TRUST ANY GOVERNMENT?! When will people realise that such a small group of people in such a supreme position of power over their fellow men and women is inherently untrustworthy? We *need* people not to trust government, we *need* people not to be complacent, we *need* people to constantly question the motives and the political ideology of those who control our everyday lives!!!
"So you're saying that when the police come and say "Can we have your PGP key please?" you should blow them away? And exactly how would that help?
"
I don't advocate violence, but an unjust law, particularly one that is immoral and illegal (as per the UK's membership in the EU, RIP contradicts it's charter) is no law at all.
So far the US and UK governments are set on violating their own laws to impliment spyware on citizens so...
If violence is what it takes, if a few government stormtroopers start biting the dust when they illegally invade a private residence, so be it.
My American ancestors once started killing British "law enforcement" for much the same reason.
Read the US Declaration of Independance. It WAS passed into law by the US Congress, and thus is law in the USA.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"The right to keep and bear arms is the ultimate check and balance on government.
Wow, is this a flamebait or some sort of second-level joke ?"
No it isn't. If government has no reason to fear the citizenry it has no reason to be honest. This is clearly the REASON for the 2nd Amendment, if you read the Federalist Papers and other writings by the Founders, particularly Jefferson.
The battle of Lexington and Concord, and thus, the revolution, started when the British tried to seize the weapons of the Masachusetts Minutemen.
No government can stand against an outraged armed citizenry. Particularly since in the case of the US, the military would likely refuse to ever obey orders to open fire on US civillians. Hence the reason why the fascist types have been heavily arming and militarizing the police forces.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
This is scary stuff. One way that you can be safer with your ISP is if they delete their logs, or not keep any. This places a tremendous cost burden on smaller ISP's as well, as storing all of this crap will take TERABYTES, or more.
The scariest thing is that good ol Algore is ideologically aligned with Blair.
There is a solution, however. Offshore and international companies can offer E-mail and web proxy services to residents of the UK that hide the IP addresses, and not keep logs.
If there are no logs, there is nothing to subpoena.
With the coming of DSL/Cable broadband, I think that there is going to be an explosion of popularity of running your own personal mail server, to bypass "1984" esque Carnivore and RIP. If you also use encryption, passing e-mail between two machines that are running their own POP and SMTP server, it effextively bypasses any monitoring that can be done at the ISP level, except probably logging the IP addresses.
My biggest question is this: Why do so-called "democratic" and "free" governments need this kind of draconian power to spy on citizens? Just as governments have secrets, the citizens have the right to KEEP secrets from the government.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
" the Clinton administration trashing of people's reputations using 'confidential' government records as prime evidence of just how this sort of thing can be abused."
Yup. Governments always act politically, not matter what. Clinton was able to abuse over 900 FBI files to get "dirt" on his political opponents with impunity. They also tend to send the IRS after political opponents too.
I dont' want the government being able to tap, monitor, record every communication I have. They have no reason nor any RIGHT to, unless they have probable cause to suspect me of a crime.
What's next, requiring everyone to record all conversations with anyone and keep them for 7 years just in case the police or some politico may want it?
This proposal is tantamount to the same thing.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"And a written constitution is no guarantee against attacks on privacy without clauses protecting privacy and/or a seperation and definition of powers that would prevent government from doing that."
You are correct. The US Federal government has been blatantly disregarding the 9th and 10th amendments that limit the power of government since 1933.
How do they get away with this? Apathy and laziness. Only rarely do American public educational institutions actually teach non-Marxist civcs anymore. People are ignorant of the Constitution and the Feds take advantage of this, and for this reason, I don't think public education will EVER improve, they don't want it to. Ignorant people who don't know their rights are a lot easier to fool.
Also, there is a growing permanent underclass that depend on government, and vote for the candidates that will give them the most "bread and circuses".
"Interestingly, the US constitution, probably the best known of the written constitutions that has a bill of rights written into it, has no direct, blanket, protection of privacy within it, beyond basic protections against unreasonable searches, which is probably why the US government feels it can get away with systems like Carnivore."
Actually, it IS there. It's the 10th Amendment that forbids the Federal Government (and that includes the FBI, CIA, BATF, Janet Reno, et all) from excercising any power not SPECIFICALLY granted to it in the Constitution.
Also, the 4th Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant, and the 5th Amendment which grants the right against self incrimination would seem to make any such systematic wiretapping of e-mail illegal.
The Founders couldn't forsee a time where technology would enable the types of searches and seizures that can happen today, but these protections ARE there. It's just that our ever more corrupt and self-serving government won't obey it, because We, the People have become too ignorant or dependant to make them.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"But that's not very useful in the UK. Should 'they' wish to, they can demand your keys, and if you deny you have them/refuse you can go to jail (sentenced in a private court) for up to 5 years (I think it's 5). If you tell anyone about being asked for your keys, you can similarly be sent to jail."
This is what you get when you let them take away your guns. The right to keep and bear arms is the ultimate check and balance on government. After all, ALL government power, irregardless of how minir flows from the barrel of a gun. Violate any law, just or unjust, and government officials with guns will come and get you.
Same thing, the only power the CITIZENS actually have to make government obey it's own laws flows from the barrel of a gun. If the government doesn't fear it's citizens, then there is no need to obey the law, or even respect the outcome of an election. Something like this is happening in the USA now, and I think this kind of thing is going to be a growing trend in elections.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"What a load of proposterous bullshit. I'm sorry, but the typical Briton knows and trusts his fellow man? Bwahahahahahaa! "Britain has no need of written constitutions, freedom laws etc etc. In Britain, the institutions of government are trusted and respected, and can be relied upon to do their job in a fair manner." Oh yeah, and pigs will fly"
Blindly trusting government is as foolish as trusting a 16 year old with booze, your car, and your daughter.
In 1933, the Germans trusted Hitler, and look what it got them?
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"This ignorance appears to cover a large number of US citizens, including those directly involved in law enforcment. How often has a US judge thrown out a case invalid due to the US constitution and jailed the prosecuter for contempt of court?"
Never. But then the judiciary is part of the power grab. Since the 70's, the federal courts have been in the business of making law, not in their Constitutional role of evaluating the constitutionality of laws.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
You are sadly mistaken.. Try http://www.keepandbeararms.com/images/gunfacts.pdf
This a alot of reports from the BATF, Police Departments and the U.K. government. If you really think that crimials will stop using guns because they are banned, then you are as stupid as Al Gore. Wake up!!!!
As of right now no one has to register all of their guns, only handguns. If you register all guns, then the next step of the government to look at that list and take away all guns that honest citizens have. (There has not been a governemnt in history that didnt take that next step ... U.K. Canada, Nazi Germany, Austraila, etc) Now I am not saying they will get rid of the 2nd amendment, but they want to reword saying its a "collective right" instead of an "individual right ". Those facts off the .pdf having nothing to do with the NRA. I don't why little girls like you are so scared of guns! Archaic relics? Those archaic relics will be used by crimials to rape/murder/rob people until the end of time, (unless they invent a laser gun!) so why keep honest people from having their own guns to defend themselves? I quess under your view it is wrong for a honest citizen to carry/have a gun, but its ok for the crimials to have them. You take away guns - you take away freedom, you take away freedom and the government can do whatever they want. It has happened too many times already.. Look at U.K., their crime has risen since they have banned guns, because the crimials dont care! So if you support the views of banning guns/hanguns/whatever, then you are supporting crimials and more crime. I'll be damned if I watch someone rape my 14 year old daughter and can't do shit because they have a gun and I don't. Fuck that.
For all of you people who voted for Gore - Its your fault if he is elected. His idea is to mirror everything the U.K. is doing, starting with gun registration and the ban of guns in civilian hands. So whats next after that? Well lets just watch U.K. and find out... I feel sorry for anyone who voted for that bastard .. Our country is FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE .. not FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE GOVERNMENT .. I didnt vote for a person this election, I just voted against Gore and everything he stands for. God help us if all of his crying gets him in office...
-- What part of
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED
do you not understand???
Gore is so fucking stupid .. have a nice day!
What a load of proposterous bullshit. I'm sorry, but the typical Briton knows and trusts his fellow man? Bwahahahahahaa! "Britain has no need of written constitutions, freedom laws etc etc. In Britain, the institutions of government are trusted and respected, and can be relied upon to do their job in a fair manner." Oh yeah, and pigs will fly.
Sounds like Britian is trying to bust out "Enemy of The State" style on everyone. Peace, TankDawg7
Does that mean that all internet traffic that runs through Britain gets logged or just that British people using ISP's get their traffic logged? Personally, I'd want to send any internet traffic around Britain if this goes through.
We could have just encrypted all our e-mails in and out but as the government can now demand our passwords, there doesn't seem to be much point.
I wonder what compainies with offices in Britain think? Maybe they should start moving e-mail servers out of Britain and have users log in using IP tunnelling to make it secure. Surely you can't demand encryption passwords for a server that is outside your country.
More than you ever could imagine.
:)
For us people down under, the Southern Cross is the biggest, fattest pipe we have seen... If this can transfer at 120Gb/sec - the media says thats about a full length DVD every second or so...
lets just assume for a second that GB has the same size link... that's a DVD of info every second...
now, thats 86,400 DVD's of data a day, 31,536,000 DVDs per year, 220,752,000 for the intended archive period...
say the average for the DVD is 5Gb - that's a total of 1,103,760,000 Gb that needs to be archived over a seven year period...
I know this assumes a pipe utilisation of 100% over that time and is probably hugely flawed - but it gives you an idea of how utterly hopeless this idea is
The whole idea is that no matter whether you trust or do not trust the Crown to save up your kiddie porn, your choices are restricted.
the typival Briton knows and trusts his fellow man.
Allow me to express my intellectual amusement about this sentence.
Are you saying that British subjects never really had a need for the Magna Carta?
Okay, now I'm gonna crawl off into the corner and die. :) When I read the post, I brain almost burst. It tread on the other side of the fine line.
1> It is true that for a Bill of Parliament to become law, it has to be signed by the Queen, just like bills in Malaysia are signed by the sultan, and bills in Australia are signed by the Governer-General. This however, means nothing. The Queen is no longer part of the checks and balances that are part of the parliamentary system. Can you imagine if she refused to sign the Parliament Act? Or the Australian Federation Act?
2> I do hope that this is more of that warped humour of yours.
3> Hahahahah!
4> Although you don't seem to like Germans and the French, you forgot that they both had Royal families. Many, in the case of Germany. The Bourbon kings were no impediment to the french revolution, and certainly didnt' serve as a rallying point.
If the Queen exercised her power, she would cause a parliamentary crisis.
How is God's name could this information EVER be used to help you?!! REMEMBER: Information / Knowlege IS POWER "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutly" I fear the temptation to use this information "for the good of the [insert pathetic pseudo-cause here] would simply be too great.
ARE YOU [insert expletive here] insane?!!! Firstly, you are not a democracy, you are a monarchy. secondly, your nation has imposed ITS Authoritarian _Bullshit_ on most of the rest of the world for centuries. If I were you, I wouldn't trust them any further than you could throw them.
What does the archival of communications has to do with the form of government? Even though pulling a thing like this off means to have a way of listening in on said communications, which is a bad thing. But still, this has nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is just a way how the people of the governing entity is elected.
And what truly bakes my noodle later on is when I try to imagine the amount of data storage they need. That's one megalomaniacal shitload of storage! Is this even feasible or just some right-wing conservative fanatic's views or right and wrong imposed upon the rest of the population?
The document admits the moves are controversial and could clash with the Human Rights Act, which gives people a right to privacy, European Union law and the Data Protection Act, which protects the public against official intrusion into private lives.
We admit we're doing the wrong thing, and not honoring our citizens, or the acts that we pass..... but its for your own good. Do politicians ever really care?
Have you read my journal today?
Would the combined effect of logging, encryption, and the RIP bill leave us better or worse off than we are now, in terms of privacy?
I haven't really made up my mind, but I see some arguments for "better": You'd be sure that only the government could read you communications and only by getting your passphrase from you. That way, anyone who had not been forced to give up their passphrase could be sure that their communications had not been read by their government, their ISP, industrial spies, foreign government spies, or script kiddies.
Of course, this assumes an impossibly strict definition of "correct" and "unbreakable" above.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
That they are not already doing this. They just want the power to do it in law. The technology already exist to do it. Nothing really stops them from using it.
We log all incoming and outgoing email, although we only log headers, not content. We deliver all mail ourselves if we can, dispatching it directly to the MX for the domain, which seems to work out a little faster than letting Demon Internet do it.
Some ISP's in the UK, particularly FreeServe, force all outgoing port 25 connections to connect to their own mail servers, so you don't have an option to route mail yourselves. Because FreeServe use dynamic IP's, this may well be justified, as a number of sites are particularly unwilling to take mail from any IP which is listed in the ORBS Dialup list, and quite a lot of SPAM gets sent that way.
Try it for yourself. Telnet to the MX host for a domain, such as punt-1.demon.co.uk, port 25.. i.e.
$ telnet punt-1.demon.co.uk 25
If you don't see
220 punt-10.mail.demon.net Server SMTP (Complaints/bugs to: postmaster@demon.net)
then your connection has been redirected, and your ISP is probably logging all of your direct transfers too.
There were moves underfoot to make ISP's log all transfers to and from their customers. I don't beleive Demon Internet implement that at this time, but I'm sure they could, if they wanted to. At the end of the day, who is going to pay for the storage.
When space gets tight on the mailserver, the logs are the first thing that nuked. We only keep them incase there is a problem and we need to trace back.
thats 86,400 DVD's of data a day, 31,536,000 DVDs per year, 220,752,000 for the intended archive period...
.018 m^3) then the entire archive of 220,752,000 discs would take up 3,973,536 m^3. Assuming about half on the space in the library is given to walkways between the shelves (a guess based on paper libraries), that requires a building with a volume of at least 7,947,027 m^3. Imagine a square building 1.0 km on a side, by 7.9 m high, packed with DVDs.
Extrapolating your calculations well into the range of the ridiculous; if the hypothetical DVD archive is kept in CD style jewel cases (15cm x 12cm x 1cm or 180cm^3 or
0 1 - just my two bits
BBC 3.12.00 reporting bigbrother doubleplusungood refs doublethink thoughtcrime rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling
Actually in 1984, the UK is called Landing Strip One, which is part of Oceania. Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
300Gb/2000users=0.15Gb/person
0.15Gb/7days=0.02Gb/dayperson
Now How many Brittish subjects has The Matrix? One hundred thousand? More? Well let's pick one hundred thousand and 7 years.
Oooooohhhh myyyyyyyyy
>5,000 Terabytes.
Now let's pick up your filer. How much does it cost? Let's pick it up for US$100,000. Yeah things will cost lesser in time, but there is also maintenance, replacements and many things more. But let's just now consider that each unit will go this way as experience shows such huge systems getting up to such levels. Soooo...
We get only on ONE storage not less than 500 million greenies (oh btw I'm not american). That's a Hell of a Space project... Going to Cosmos?
~50 million - damn my speed typing
Not exactly. Because whatever bill you may shot out of the Parliament, one should also consider the aspects of technology and resources. And that's the point where, no matter patriotic feel you may have for being Brittain (note the two tt's) a pioneer, the bill will fail in life. And no one in his good mind will try to overcome financial resources for a "ideal" scheme. Overweighting people with a resource a state needs for itself, may turn this same state into an outlaw. How many times overtaxing turned into revolutions and revolts? Or something even bigger? Let us remember the Boston Tea Party...
Now I'm not taking things just out of the hat. I'm telling facts. And the one fact is that doing such things overcomes every other possible expenses. And besides this does not mean 80% of what you pay now. Add more than a dollar to what you pay BY THE HOUR (local calculations, i don't know you prices in Brittain).
And on what concerns my spellings... Well you are Britts in our language. It may not be correct in english. But I can't remember all correct spellings among several languages in 5-6 seconds... I know you care for the correctness of your language. But some have been naming you this way for longer than you created english... So I think I also have a right to be "wrong".
That's why the britshit are considered little more than troublemakers in Europe.
A poor analogy. The "macho"/scatholic national character found in latin countries is biased towards such things, which doesn't happen When was the last revolt in Germany? Were there any?The french adapt to changing circumstances. The french are also unencumbered by the fallacies you find in trashy tabloïds (a british specialty) such as the magna-carta. They don't have revolutions by barons who rebel against their kings so they can have more power. Rather, their revolutions have an habit of giving more power to the people (see below)
For the french, all power flows up from the people and is exercised by the State and the Government in it's name. The french will put most of it's trust in the State, and since no one believe that the State will screw the people, the State is careful about NOT doing that.
And if it evers does it, the people just have another revolution. At least, one one gets gray hairs thinking about what the State (which is improperly called "the government" in the US and other anglo-saxon countries) will do next.
Hopefully more democratic. Who's that queen, usurping the people's power? Who does she think she is? And you'll see the queen being de-monarchized faster than you can say "beefeater", so she'll flee to seek refuge in Canada, and she will end her days in a Toronto low-income housing (there was actually a theater play with that story, some time ago)...--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
That's just Usenet, doofus, and Usenet is a drop in the bucket. A tiny drop in a huge bucket.
Look at my next post, on the real numbers.
And, for the record; I don't use a 10Mb hard disk, or a 10MB hard disk. At work, I use multiple 9 Terabyte raw capacity EMC arrays, larger Hitachi arrays, and enough 3590 tape to back a lot of it up for 7 years.
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I did, it's right there in my message, or you can follow the link from my original post; JANET's linked to there.
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Traffic doubles as the cost of off-the-shelf technology gets less. For you to be able to apply this you have to assume that the rate of technology advance in the network will outstrip that of data storage.
And you, in turn, are assuming the capacity of the existing equipment will double. You'll have to replace it to accomplish that, and since you'll need to retrieve data you'll still need the old hardware lying around, so basically you'll be spending the hardware costs over and over.
At least double or triple my numbers to account for this.
I think this is unlikely as moving traffic around inherently requires somewhere to store it at the rate that it is being transmitted.
Yes, but it's stored on hundreds of millions of individual systems, with individual disk drives. You could model that instead of using tape, but then you'd thousands of times as much money.
Instead of $80US for your 35GB DLT tape, you'd be buying 35GB disk drives.
Instead of buying a $250,000 tape array to store 11.8TB, you'd be buying 337 35Gb hard drives and enough computers to run them. That's about $176 bucks a pop for the drives, assuming EIDE. Then you need (in order to keep up with the data transfer rates) no more than two per computer, so that's another $300 computer (I pulled that number out of my ass, unlike all the other numbers I'm using, so forgive me if it's off by a bit) for every two drives, so now you're spending $59,000 for the drives, and $51,000 for the PCs.
So you've saved money, but now you're replacing PCs and hard drives CONSTANTLY, and losing data when you do.
So you've got to add more PCs, and more drives for redunancy, and pretty soon you've tripled or more this cost. Boom, it just got cheaper to use tape, which is why Sun can still sell those things, even at $250,000 a pop.
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> how does logging transactions act as a serious blow to democracy?
Ask Martin Luther King, Jr. The FBI tapped his phones (because of his "subversive" activities) and discovered that he was having affairs. They used this "evidence" in an attempt to blackmail him.
By definition, a protestor wants his government to alter their course of action. They may protest peacefully and legally, but they are still going against their government. Giving this type of power to the government gives them the ability to disrupt and destroy anyone who opposes them.
Wether it be opposition to Civil Rights or just an old-fashioned Final Solution, governments have a pretty bad history when it comes to abuse of their power.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Logging all phone calls... well the exchanges probably do that anyway (at least the numbers not the actual calls... you'd need shitloads of storage to do that).
Logging all emails? Huh? Not all email goes via an ISP. You can't make everyone log all their emails themselves - I don't believe this part of the leglislation is practical or indeed possible.
These investigations made wide use of unintentionally recorded emails and logs. Pretty much a wash- leaves a lot open to interpretation on both sides.
I presume between the NSA monitoring programs, commercial record keeping and marketing research, the equivalent is done in the US. Its just dispersed among a number of organization takes a little more work for someone to aggregate.
I'm hoping to get ***FIRST CALL*** in....
Nope. It's a constitutional monarchy.
Effectively a democracy in all but name.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
I refer the honourable gentleman to this site (which is not based in the UK) for a brief description of the ins and out of the British Constitution. It evens includes examples of written documents that relate to what you would find in the written constitution of other countries.
I will, however, also post a quote from the site (for those who cannot be bothered to click on the link).
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
That's why there's no light coming through my bedroom window anymore!!!
I know not everyone is connected, but those of us who are (especially on DSL/cable)
:-)
DSL... hmmm that's why it's taking BT so long to process my order, they're still waiting for the tape library to arrive at the local telephone exchange
Ummm...
You did read the stuff about archiving it off to tape, didn't you? Hell - I wouldn't keep that stuff on on-line storage for long.
I wouldn't buy more filers as backup devices...
Oh - before you ask how you backup data that's constantly changing research the Snap**** technologies that the filer provides.
*Sigh*
No one seems to listen, it's possible, very possible.
From your own statistics
That is NOT JUST USENET....
*sigh* no one seems to listen....
it is possible.... very possible.
Can I ask that you put forward daily figures... putting forward figures for 7 years is pretty misleading.
We got to around 0.1bln UKSterling over seven years... or say 20mln a year...
£20,000,000 a year
Hey, perhaps I'm rich, but that doesn't look to me to be a hell of a lot of money... The National Lottery could pay for it, let alone the government.
*Sigh*
No one seems to listen.
It is possible....
very possible...
and again assuming traffic stops doubling every year.
Traffic doubles as the cost of off-the-shelf technology gets less. For you to be able to apply this you have to assume that the rate of technology advance in the network will outstrip that of data storage.
I think this is unlikely as moving traffic around inherently requires somewhere to store it at the rate that it is being transmitted.
If it can cope now for £20mln a year it should be able to cope in seven years for the same amount.
*sigh*
no one seems to listen... is it possible.... very possible...
oh get a life!
Are you looking over your shoulder every minute of the day?
Are you subversive?
Are you going to blow up the houses of parliament?
I tick "None of the above" for all those, seriously.
Well:
Firstly: Not Everyone is connected. I would divide your estimate by a quarter.
Secondly: With regard to downloads etc.. They only have to record the data you pulled off the web once, and then just store pointers to that data for each access across the population.
Thirdly:
Voice recognition can record conversations with much higher compression than storing the analogue sound.
Fourthly, whichever of the above you discount here are the number of tapes needed daily, nationwide:
16000 Terabytes = 6.26 terabytes a day = 90 DLT tapes a day
8000 Terabytes = 3.13 terabytes a day = 45 DLT tapes a day
4000 Terabytes = 1.57 terabytes a day = 23 DLT tapes a day
2000 Terabytes = 783 gigabytes a day = 12 DLT tapes a day
1000 Terabytes = 391 gigabytes a day = 6 DLT tapes a day
These are nationwide figures... Spaced out across multiple telephone exchanges, these are small daily numbers.
255.5 Terabytes... nationwide?
Do it with a cluster of Netapps an Sun Tape Libraries...
easy peasy. How many telephone exchanges do you think we have in our green and pleasant land?
Let me guess: you still use a 10Mb hard disk?
Sorry.... but look at my specs. I know you're only talking about Usenet, but I think my figures are pretty sound. Break the problem up to individual telephone exchanges and it's quite possible. 27.645 terabits world wide (for a 10billion population of which British would count for 0.6% of (1.6 terabits for Britain) divided by 250 telephone exchanges = 6.4 Gigabits. Hmmm - seems perfectly possible to me.
...just submit form KY-23 and the Ministry of Health and Records will let you know!
Don't you mean the Ministry of Love (1984 reference for those who Don't Get It)?
This is a great combination. They log everything. If you encrypt it, they kick down your door and take you to a secret court where you are forced to reveal your private keys. Who wants to bet that the next step is to "license" strong crypto or force key escrow?
Britain is dangerously close to becoming a police state.
Personally, and speaking as a British Subject, I have no problem with these moves. In some other countries, such as Germany or the USA, these moves would be unnacceptable;
The German's are unlikely to try this, whilst there are still people around, from the Stasi, who can explain why this won't work.
If Britain has such a great history of Freedom, then why did my ancestors have to sail across the atlantic 500 years ago looking for freedom?
500 years ago would have been the explorers, then the armies of people from Spain and Portrugal. The USA came after the Hispanic empire. As for it's founders some were criminals (who were transported) the others were religious extremists (the only ones who could have claimed to be looking for freedom, the freedom to force people to follow their religion.)
We the Yanks wrote laws into our Constitution to prevent the excesses of power that your very government seemed to wield over its very Subjects.
The problem with these safeguards is that they don't actually work. When was the last time a US politican was tried for high treason? This didn't even happen to the notorious senator McCarthy.
Ultimately, the gov't will use this to prey on the lazy or less well informed. Why? Because smart crooks (yes they exist) will be making massive use of strong crypto
If they are smart they won't use "crypto" any different from the norm. To do otherwise would draw attention to their communications.
The point of the above page is that everyone should be using encryption - even for casual stuff, as the sudden presence of an occassional encrypted document suggests you're up to something, an example of traffic analysis - if you can't decrypt the messages, watch where the messages are going.
And similarly should use the same type of encryption for everything. Rather than a "more secure" cypher for more sensitive communications.
And a written constitution is no guarantee against attacks on privacy without clauses protecting privacy and/or a seperation and definition of powers that would prevent government from doing that.
A written constitution is no guarantee of anything unless there is actually some method of enforcing what it says. In the case of the US constitution this might be police refusing to arrest anyone under an unconstitutional law or it might be public executions for politicans who attempt to pass laws which violate the constitution.
Only rarely do American public educational institutions actually teach non-Marxist civcs anymore. People are ignorant of the Constitution and the Feds take advantage of this, and for this reason, I don't think public education will EVER improve, they don't want it to. Ignorant people who don't know their rights are a lot easier to fool.
This ignorance appears to cover a large number of US citizens, including those directly involved in law enforcment. How often has a US judge thrown out a case invalid due to the US constitution and jailed the prosecuter for contempt of court?
I just wanted to be sure the authorities know I was sick, but I'm better now. Righthought is doubleplushappythought.
A good point --- us Merkins are lazy. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that if we *do* revolt, we're more dangerous. I mean, if you were a government peacekeeper, would you rather go up against a bunch of truckers or a bunch of survivalist apocalyptic zealots?
Factor in Moore's Law and the speed of bureaucracy. This will take a year or two to become a law. By then, the idea of at least logging all requested URLs and the headers of every email may not be unreasonable. Also remember the general belief that intelligence agencies have computing power and new tricks well in excess of what we common slobs may do (although that does seem a bit strange, given the pace of Silicon Valley innovation). Also consider the fact that Echelon apparently works and is useful enough for the UKUSA folks to keep it running.
It makes me wonder if one could push this through in the US. My thought has always been that one couldn't get sufficiently Big Brother here, mainly because the populace has guns, unlike most of Europe. Were I the government, I'd see an armed populace as something much more likely to start an active and effective revolt, and therefore be more scared of trying to abuse it. On the other hand, the same portion of the populace which owns those guns is the one that thinks the Internet is full of evil hacker pedophile terrorists.
I'm also wondering if there's anything beyond encryption that will help. On the one hand, there's the possibility of private networking, but this couldn't go over existing wires. Given that most of us can't afford to lay fiber or cable, that means wireless, which in turn means that anyone who cares about snooping can just grab packets from the air.
Perhaps there'll be a market for personal browsers... people who'll sit at the computer for you and read the subversive stuff that you want to read but can't because of a reputation.
I'm sure it's self evident that people with sensitive business data should use encryption - or is it? How many businesspeople do you know who carry out complex business negotiations via email?
One client wanted me to deliver them the source code to their product via the Internet. I refused to deliver until they got PGP.
The point of the above page is that everyone should be using encryption - even for casual stuff, as the sudden presence of an occassional encrypted document suggests you're up to something, an example of traffic analysis - if you can't decrypt the messages, watch where the messages are going.
Even people who really should know better may not keep their computer secure. CIA Director John Deutch was caught browsing porn sites from a home computer that contained classified data. There are numerous well-documented security holes in web browsers by which an rogue website can read documents off your hard disk.
Let's hope he didn't have any encrypted filesystems mounted when he was gazing at those titties.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
All messages are routed through the government's storage facility for, uh, security and convenience. Can't recall what you wrote to that collegue at work or that girl you just met? Not to worry, just submit form KY-23 and the Ministry of Health and Records will let you know!
The Home Office people would also be responsible for drafting this sort of legislation.
Suppose a government defines "seedy activities" as "voting for the opposition." I'd say that's a pretty big blow against both democracy and freedom. And what's the point of living in a democracy (which Soviet Russia TECHNICALLY was) if you have no freedom to associate with people without the government watching your every move?
-RickHunter
It seems to me that this will actually help UK citizens' privacy.
At first, all their conversations will be logged, so that "Anything [at all] you say can be used against you in a court of law." But, after that, UK engineers (and hackers, of course) will push encryption.
Uncrackable encryption, like RSA and blowfish. With Ghz processors now mainstream, what better use for them than encrypting your daily messages? The world will see a massive flock to encrypted services (like Jabber+SSL, HTTPS, ssh), and the British "Intelligence" will have no data they can read.
Not a very "Intelligent" move for the UK if they're actually *trying* to invade privacy, it seems to me.
|/usr/games/fortune
Unconfirmed reports that England has sunk into the North Sea continue to flood into the Paris EU disaster center. Speculation is rife that the British government's ill-advised attempt to record all Internet traffic, begun in 2001, was too much for the geology of the island nation.
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Yeah, a few people have mentioned 1984 and said it`ll happen soon. I`m interested to know which aspects of the book arent supposed to have happened yet? About the only thing i can think of is that we dont have obligatory in-you-house cams, although i`m sure the street-cams will soon be hi definition ones capable of being swivelled around and pointed through your windows!
There's a Kuro5hin story submission on this exact topic. I bet it will go to the front page soon. British Government considers interception plans more radical than Carnivore.
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
Basically what they are saying is that everyone might be guilty therefore we are going to record every connection made for whatever reason. It's like having a legally mandated tail on every man woman or child in the uk that is on the internet.
Lets look at what this means:
Access a web page on drugs? Must be a drugs user. Lets raid his house! We now have prior reason! Looked up a web page on the law?? Must have broken one! Lets find out which one! Does your wife know you access porn sir?
Still there is a distinction between recording the information and having access to it. Big difference. And knowing that a connection exists isn't the same as knowing what flows down the connection. (I'm presuming they are just recording connection IDs rather than contents, for practical reasons atleast.)
Still there are ways to circumvent this law. Set up your own proxy server for one, off shore. Make one encrypted connection to that; and that's all you need. The law is unworkable for catching criminals of any intelligence. For prying into the personal lives of ordinary citizens, and possibly trying blackmailing them, its great!
Paranoid? Moi? Paranoia doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Every telephone call made and received by a member of the public, all emails sent and received and every web page looked at would be recorded.
Does that mean every time I (that is, if I were in Britain) check /. it makes a copy of the page at that point in time? And are they going to be recording the phone calls? How about faxes? Attachments to emails?
60 million people * 365 * 7 years = 153 billion people-days of info. Lets be conservative and say it only takes 100K to store every phone call, web page visit, and email made by the average (not everyone is a /. junkie) person in a day, with compression.
100K * 153B = 15,300 Terrabytes.
--
Dyolf Knip
This bill is obviously a result of a conspiracy between all hard drive manufacturers in order to make a huge profit off of the British Government. There can be no other possible answer.
;-)
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
They just want to listen in on free porn calls.
Those bastards!
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No sig for you!!
Perhaps the most classic quote or freudian slip was Home Office minister Paul Boateng saying the government would strive to get the balance right between the demands of industry and the demands of law enforcement . No mention, then, of the demands of the citizen for privicy in that balancing act.
nal 11
I put an ADSL-like line into each ISP going to my bunker, and simply store it as a datastream.
I wouldn't go with ADSL... that won't be fast enough once we get to the frighteningly high-tech stage where normal people can actually *buy* ADSL. I'd go for a maximum-speed leased line. They go up to 512MBps - half a gigabyte per second. Two or three to every major ISP POP, and you're ready to go.
Suddenly, my program that generates random data, pgp-encrypts it by a (random) private key and e-mails it to a network of friends when I don't have my dial-up connection saturated doesn't seem very paranoid at all...
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Strong crypto applied to voice communications (phones) and to email, etc. (generally, to all point-to-point person-to-person communications) - this will probably make this "log" a little less useful for the government.
Ultimately, the gov't will use this to prey on the lazy or less well informed. Why? Because smart crooks (yes they exist) will be making massive use of strong crypto as will all the geeks who just have no interest in the government reading _THEIR_ stuff (be it pr0n, their sappy love letters, or hearing their telephone calls to 976 numbers).
And of course, one way to make this a royal pain in the ass for the gov't once you have broadband always-up access and crypto - send lots and lots and lots of useless traffic around. The gov't won't be able to differentiate meaningful and non-meaningful traffic in their logs... and so they will have to crack it all.
And crypto on voice systems will also serve to make the audio logs unintelligible without decrypt gear.
This is a retarded idea on several levels: It isn't wise to give the gov't this kind of power (even if it is rather benign like the UK gov't), it isn't technically feasible as things stand today without stupifying financial inputs, it is easy to compromise/oppose to render it even less feasible, and ultimately the only purpose one can define for it is to aide in the apprehension of the truly stupid (Anyone with any smarts won't be caught by it).
Taken altogether, this says "waste of taxpayers money" to me. Smacks of Empire building in the UK intelligence apparatus (but hey, Empire building is a UK tradition, eh?).
This reminds me of a quotation that seems to fit:
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aris
This is a classic example of the current snowballing tendancy to entangle ignorance of technology as a result of fear. Anyone can see that this is an unpractical and unethical idea (at least in the way it has currently been put forward), and witnessing numerous copycat attempts by countries to "catch up", many, frankly stupid false pretences have been made by governments and "Intelligence" services claiming they are in control of the situation, yet failing to realise the implications of their panicked reactions. IMHO, the fact that anyone could think this is going to work only re-emphasises their ignorance. However, if they even TRY and implement such a sick and ridiculous concept, I'll be the first to leave (not as a result of threat, but of despair).
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Dear Mr glebite. We here in the Government Surveillance Service noticed your presence at a rally that was called to protest the new Housing and Urban Development low-income housing in your neighborhood. Please be aware that HUD considers these sorts of activities to be discriminatory in nature, and under U.S. law you are subject to a $50,000 fine and a year in a federal prison. We will overlook your transgression this time, but any future participation in these sorts of activities will be dealt with in the harshest possible terms. We will be watching. Sincerely, the GSS.
Obviously the above is a parody, but HUD really did threaten some homeowners for organizing to oppose low-income housing. The nature of government is to use every tool at its disposal to get its way. Letting goverment keep records of your every movement and telephone conversation is just begging them to use them against you. I offer the Clinton administration trashing of people's reputations using 'confidential' government records as prime evidence of just how this sort of thing can be abused.
This fact is especially clear in a country like the US where they have a written constitution. If any legislation violates the constitution it is found to be illegal. But when was the last time Americans voted on whether to keep the constitution? They don't need to ever vote to keep their constitution because even though it can get in the way of democracy (by stopping elected reps from passing certain laws) it is there to guarantee freedom.
--
And a written constitution is no guarantee against attacks on privacy without clauses protecting privacy and/or a seperation and definition of powers that would prevent government from doing that.
Interestingly, the US constitution, probably the best known of the written constitutions that has a bill of rights written into it, has no direct, blanket, protection of privacy within it, beyond basic protections against unreasonable searches, which is probably why the US government feels it can get away with systems like Carnivore.
OTOH, Britain has just put a recognisable bill of rights into law with a condition that it override other laws where there is conflict, as I understand it. So these proposals should end up being ruled illegal anyway. Assuming they ever get to being legislated, which seems unlikely.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
" The lack of respect for personal privacy remains a hole in the current US constitution's Bill of Rights. With information becoming a central plank of people's lives in a way never before seen, perhaps it's time an amendment to bring the 4th into the 21st Century."
This will never happen. The marketing industry and law enforcement's lobbys will never let this happen. The US government is rotten with corruption, hence laws like the DMCA passed unanimously in virtual secrecy.
It's better to argue that because of the 4th, 5th and 10th amendments, plus the 14th (right to not be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law) already cover government snooping, which they actually do.
What would be the point of amending the Constitution anyway, when the problem is the federal government since 1933 has basically ignored any Constitutional restriction on it's power?
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Irony/sarcasm - The cornerstones of British humour. This is one of the biggest differences between the nations. The sense of humour simply doesn't translate too well.
I live near Cheltenham and know several people who have worked or are currently working at GCHQ. Obviously they never go into details, and I wouldn't want them to, but the issue of unfocused data trawling often comes up and is always laughed at.
In my opinion- and I do not work at GCHQ and nobody there would ever say anything as direct as this- GCHQ neither wants nor needs the ability to search archives of all emails ever sent.
GCHQ have never and will never get involved in an unfocused trawling excercise. Why?
What GCHQ and the police do want and already have is the ability to monitor particular network junction points for specific traffic to/from known individuals- namely those they have a reasonable suspicion are involved in terrorism, warmongering, child porn and economic warfare. For this they can already get a wiretap order signed by the Home Secretary.
If GCHQ have a good reason to want to read your email, they will pop a tap on your connection and be done with it. Maybe they might catch a few conversations between uninvolved people in the same premises, but that's it.
GCHQ do not wish to be forced to trawl through several billion useless emails to get to half a dozen important messages. If you're under the spotlight, they just want your messages, not everybody else's. No change in law is required to enable such focused wiretapping.
Every so often, some slack-jawed nanny civil servant puts forward the idea of unfocused data trawling. Every so often, GCHQ tell the annoying little squirts that they have far better things to be doing with their CPU cycles.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
A little more data:
JANET's US-to-UK transatlantic links transferred a total of 1803765.15 Megabytes yesterday.
That's 1.72 Terabytes a day, or 4.395 Exabytes in 7 years, and that's assuming traffic doesn't keep doubling every year, which it is expected to at LEAST do.
Someone was linking Sun's 11.8 Terabyte tape array. You'd need 373 of them to store all this online where you could retrieve it. Government pricing on those is about $250,000 a pop, you could probably get a quantity discount for ordering several hundred of them. Let's say you don't, so it's $250,000 apiece. That's $93.25 million US$.
Then you gotta buy the tapes; they hold 35GB apiece, so you need 128,589 of them. They're about $80 apiece, so that's another $10 million US, assuming none of them wear out and have to be replaced, and again assuming traffic stops doubling every year.
Even if you could store that, how many months would it take to run a query against it?
And that's just US-to-UK and UK-to-US traffic. UK to anywhere else isn't accounted for.
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Usenet traffic alone is over 100Gb a DAY.
They want to preserve that for 7 years.
That's 255.5 Terabytes, just for Usenet.
Usenet is a drop in the bucket compared to web traffic.
Columbia University estimates that Average data traffic for the year 2000 is 4.451 Terabits per SECOND.
By 2002, it's estimated to be 27.645 Terabits per second. That's worldwide, of course, not British.
I doubt there's enough disk and tape capacity worldwide to store a month of it, much less 7 years.
We're talking 298.566 Exabytes per day in 2002.
Perhaps these idiots should look at the statistics before they pass a law that they can't possibly fund.
-
English socialism
1948, the time was badly predicted. But the history not. It didn't happen 1984, but 2048 it will all have happened...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
people living in Cornwall
we have people living in Cornwall? I thought they were apes.
There's a use for the Millenium Dome when the tourist trade drops off: Archival Storage Facility.
It's not clear from the BBC piece, but it looks like they're proposing to log *connections*, not content.
/ st ory/0,7369,406484,00.html
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/internetnews
(not much better from a freedom point of view, but at least technically possible)
Even if they were to take on this mammoth enterprise, and actually get it to work, how does logging transactions act as a serious blow to democracy? I mean really, having the right to elect your officials has nothing to do with how they conduct the business and security of they country unless you are unable to vote again.
This is one of those silly statements that really irks me - the debate between freedom and security in a democracy. The real issue here is do you really want the government to know that you send emails or correspond with whoever it is that you correspond with.
Would these transaction logs be available to your company? Your estranged loved-one while you are going through a divorce? Could these be used in a civil court of law? Or are these STRICTLY used by the government in an effort and means to reduce seedy activities by seedy people?
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
Cool, no more need to do my own backups!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Technically I doubt it's a problem. I work in the video/film post-production industry. On a film shoot, you can get (say) 40 Terabytes of data coming in every day on DTF tape. All that happens is the tape is thrown into a robot the size of a warehouse. Now, to access that tape I just do something similar to 'cp /array/Scene_xxx/Shot_yyy/frame_zzz my.local.file'. What's my point ? IT WORKS BOTH WAYS. I can put a feed (hell, this is an ISP/fibre-forest location!) to a Petasite (that's what these robots are called) and transparently copy all data from the ISP line to my central location. All I need to do for maintenance is unload tapes that fill and load up blank new ones. Everything else is managed.
:-) Petasite running. I personally know of two in Soho. Budget 7 million pounds (*way* over the top, even including running costs) for the robots, and 13 million for tapes (100/day, #50/tape * 365 * 7). 20 million quid? pocket money!
:-) Government have just passed the RIP (sic!) bill specifically to implement this spying within the law.
:-) and using HTTP-uploads on that HTTPS connection to POST files to the webserver.At that point I think you could prove you didn't have the cryptographic key (and so avoid being sent to jail!). This is all IMHO of course, but I think we'll be opening a foreign web presence soon!
So say I have a capacity of 100 Pb (Petabytes) in a huge wartime bunker under Hyde Park (Central London, for those who don't know). I put an ADSL-like line into each ISP going to my bunker, and simply store it as a datastream. Petasites running SAM-FS use several Terabytes of disk as a cache onto the tapes - all you do is write the file to a disk, SAM-FS copes with archiving it to tape using a prioritised LRU algorithm.
Every tape holds (standard DTF) 42Gb. Every day I change (say) 100 tapes max. Get monkeys to do it. 100 tapes gives me 4.2Tb/day using DTF, significantly larger than 1.7Tb/day... Assume tape storage goes up roughly with bandwidth use, even if it doesn't you can employ more monkeys!
Store tapes ordered by date. Have a separate (small) robot for queries. Insert tapes for time period and employ (presumably custom written) query tools. All the tools have to do is pretend they're looking at a network datastream (netmon!) and have some query/report on top of that. Do datamining if you want, but it's not necessary.
As for costs, even smallish (40 people) Post-production houses can have a (admittedly single-robot
What you also have to remember is that the British (how would you like being called Ammericans?
It seems to me it should be possible to circumvent though. Should be pretty easy to adapt the ideas behind spread-spectrum wireless comms to wired comms using cryptographic signatures to verify the integrity of the request. Given a co-operating network of servers to which (using PKC) you submit requests (for the same page but different portions of it using Range: headers), which further split the requests between themselves and others, I don't see how they could track you down.
All they'd be able to say was that you submitted a request to a 'reflection-server' and it sent some data back to you, and during that time the 'reflection server' also visited all these porn sites '...'
I know I'm going to take a hard look at encryption technologies everywhere within my business now. I think you can get around the 'we can demand your keys' RIP clause by setting up a webserver with an HTTPS connection somewhere abroad (or in SeaLand
ATB,
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
wasn't 1984 set in Britain?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default, it can never be recovered.
-Dorothy Thompson
If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any less than slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?
-Herbert Spencer
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth ever afterward resumes its liberty.
-Walt Whitman
The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom.
-Anonymous
A man that would sacrifice his freedom for security deserves neither.
-Thomas Jefferson
We have the best government that money can buy.
Cool, I wanna see what Brittish taxpayers will say when someone will try to implement such thing... Because only two thingies will come out of this. First it will be impossible, technically and humanly, to hold up, control, process and manipulate such level of information. A week on logging more than 2 thousand users is enough to overkill your best servers (I'm not talking about this iXXX trashcan arch), fill up the capacity of your disks (reaching a good 300 gigs) and turn every channel into a 2400 bps link in the end term. People did this and came into the conclusion it is MADNESS to try hunting everyone and everything.
But what is more funny is the financial part... Such surveillance eats up to 80% of communication costs in the end... And it will be VERY FUNNY to see Brittish users paying for such...
First, if this actually stood, the stock of hard drive manufactures would jump through the roof. When East Germany did this kind of thing, they had very significant amounts of resources devoted just to storing the data. Even using recordable DVD systems from companies like Dictaphone still takes a lot of resources.
You have to be able to use the data. I know this sounds self evident, but it doesn't matter how much data you have if you aren't capable of using it. Such a database would quickly overwhelm anything else in the world, even WalMarts'. You have to get the important info to humans to analyze. Too much info, and you can't manage it.
This violates 3 important acts that have are active in Britian according to the Observer:
1.Human Rights Act
2.European Union Law
3.Data Protection Act
The Europeans are /much/ more sensitive on privacy issues than the US. After dealing with Communist goverments for several decades, can you blame them? This would be a particular problem with the German goverment, which is still going through data seized from the East Germans over a decade ago.
The bottom line, cost, the article in the observer claims that they will set it up for 3 million pounds (about $5 million) and maintain it for 9 million pounds (about $14 million). The amount of money they are talking about probably wouldn't even buy the hardware that they need. They also have to look at building space, lots and lots of building space, near a POP on the backbone (naturally very expensive land). People, this requires enterprise class database administrators. Not only are these people rare, but you have to get them to all pass background checks.
This also isn't practical on an infrastructure standpoint. You have to be able to support such a system in small towns and rural areas that have trouble supporting what they have. Such a system would probably require a carnivore like setup, and they just might use Carnivore if they went with it. There is a long history of cooperation between the Brits and US intelligence networks, why would this be any different? The amount of data collected by a system like carnivore has got to be enormous, imagine what it would be when you tell it to collect everything. This leads to the next point -
There isn't enough bandwidth. Assumably data collected at distributed points (like ISP's) would be forwarded to a centralized database (you do want to cross-index it don't you?). This isn't the kind of thing you drop in the post, or have Fed-Ex bring. Such a system would demand real time updating if it is going to be used for active monitoring of drug deals etc. They would have to send this over the Internet, and that would require a massive infrastructure overhaul by BT. The cost of the amount of bandwidth required alone would be exorbitant, far beyond the 9 million pound cost that is the supposed budget. Than you have the cost of overhauling rural and small town infrastructure. If you only have a single E1 going to a town, you can't just buy more bandwidth, you have to lay cable.
The last reason is Political Ramifications. There are very serious human rights concerns with something like this. Not only will the citizens of Britian be upset about this, but the EU will probably not be very happy either.
However, Britain has the strongest tradition of democracy and free speech in the world, and has indeed defined many aspects of these institutions. Free speech has been guarranteed under Law for some 785 years. Also, Britain is a small and densly populated country, meaning that the typival Briton knows and trusts his fellow man.
Britain has no need of written constitutions, freedom laws etc etc. In Britain, the institutions of government are trusted and respected, and can be relied upon to do their job in a fair manner.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no