Slashdot Mirror
UK Government Expands Spying Powers
An anonymous submitter provides the best write-up of this story: "Today's front page story of The Guardian covers an attempt by the UK government to expand the number of organisations entitled to demand communications data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). Previously only Customs and Excise, the Inland Revenue, various law enforcement bodies and intelligence agencies were able to demand this information. The list of agencies proposed in the new Draft Statutory Instrument authorises practically everyone from local councils to the Food Standards Agency to demand traffic data. Traffic data includes almost all information attached to a communication apart from the contents of the communication itself. The location of your mobile phone, for example. Who you called on it and who's called you. The URLs you've visited or IP addresses of people who've visited your server... and the list goes on. The two o'clock update has a quote from the PM's spokesman reassuring us how safe we're all going to be once the Department of Work and Pensions can check our phone records. There's also an editorial piece to emphasise that this is a Bad Thing."
You're a terrorist. You want to see just how much your enemy can find out about you.
Would you rather penetrate MI6? Or the Department of Work and Pensions?
I'm not saying I distrust any podunk agency. I'd much rather not particularly need to. Desperately.
--Dan
There is frankly little we can do. This is the direct result of democracy - the uninformed electing the uncaring. The labour government has an enormous majority within the house of commons, not because it is good or popular but simply because it's the better of two, frankly awful, choices.
The last election had almost 50% of the electorate not voting - it's not apathy, it's disgust for both major parties on the part of the educated and informed. We've been subjected to ridiculous, pathetic, bite-size policies that can make the evening news; attempts to score cheap points over rivals, and general contempt from those supposed to represent us. Those who lap this travesty up (and there are many) are sufficient to propogate the unfortunate status quo.
I have the chance to work in the USA in the near future - I'm going to jump with both feet. You may have the (spit!) DMCA et al, but the prospect of remaining in the police-state-once-called-the-UK turns my stomach.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Call it cynical perhaps - but you'd be surprised how often it is the case that people present themselves as being motivated by some non-political cause but are actually long-time supporters or even members of the opposition party.
It wouldn't matter one bit if she was a member of a political party - this is a woman who testified to a board of enquiry with her face held on by a transparent plastic mask, as a survivor of a wreck in which many people were killed! Surely you cannot mean that being a member of a political party other than the one in power means that you sacrifice your right to justice - because that really is Fascism. In rhetorical terms, trying to claim that an opponent has no valid case because of an unrelated personal decision is an ad hominem attack, and definitely unacceptable in such a serious matter. The Blair government has a history of "spin", using PR to deflect legitimate criticism - do a web search for "Stephen Byers", whose department used September 11 to "bury" news unfavourable to their party.