Slashdot Mirror
UK ISPs Refuse to Monitor Users
An anonymous reader writes "The internet industry has refused to sign up to plans to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to the records of British web and email users, throwing David Blunkett's post-September 11 data surveillance regime into fresh disarray.
In the latest of a long line of setbacks for the home secretary's data retention campaign, the Guardian has learned that internet service providers have told the Home Office that they will not voluntarily stockpile the personal records of their customers for long periods so that they can be accessed by police or intelligence officers."
Summary:
Statewatch's analysis shows that there are "grave gaps in civil liberties protection":
- there are no grounds for refusing to execute a request on human rights grounds
- there are no limits as to what data can be exchanged where member states allow for the retention of data on all crimes, not just the 32 listed
- there is no reference to supervisory authorities on data protection
- there is no reference to the individual's right to correct, delete, block data nor compensation for misuse or for related judicial review
- no reference to controls on the copying of data
- no rules for checking on the admissibility of data searches
So, while it's nice that the ISP's showed some common sense and backbone, it's not really going to get them very far.
Blunkett has gotten rid of trial-by-jury and double-jeopardy protection (no "Things only I know for $200 Alex", please). Hard-and-fast civil liberties have gone, so something simple like e-mail usage doesn't stand a chance. The Home Office is not an exemplar of efficiency, so how he'll enforce data stockpiling remains to be seen.
I guess the biggest difference between the UK and the US is that the media isn't privately owned to quite the same degree in the UK as it is in the US, right?
Perhaps, but to the best of my knowledge, the only publicly-owned media in the UK is the BBC. All other TV and radio stations, and all newspapers, are privately owned.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Blunkett has no time for libertairians. He is achieving everything the Tories can only dream of.
Remember, this is the man who is trying to remove the right to trial by jury. This is the man who is thinking of revealing a defendant's past convictions, which will bias the court even further against the unfortunate. This is the man who persecutes people crossing the channel with their car boots (trunks?) yet allows big corporations to get away with tax evation and theft on a colossal scale.
"New Labour - Same Old Tories"
That may or may not happen in the land where the incoming president appoints all his oil business buddies to top government positions, but it sure as hell doesn't happen in the UK. We have a little matter of a Data Protection regime. This may be avoidable by the government when they pass primary legislation such as RIPA, but corporations can't just opt out of it.
If the data protection registrar discovered that corporations were receiving identifying personal information from non-legitimate sources, their databases would be closed down the same day.
Really, this is a paranoid red herring.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Note also
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
The question is, WHY did they refuse?
As the article notes, apart from the cost, it is very likely illegal to retain such data. European privacy law prevents you holding such logs longer than necessary to run your business (billing, handling net-abusers etc. - about 1-2 years, tops).
As the monitoring code isn't statutary yet, it might not afford ISPs a defence against a prosecution under privacy laws.
Blunkett used to be the leader of Sheffield City Council, which is the city I came from.
He was the person who plunged it catastrophically in to debt to finance the World Student Games - an event we were told would attract massive world interest. Hmm. It attracted just about none.
The reason he did it was that he was convinced Neil Kinnock was about to win the next election and so provide a free bail-out to his pals. Remember the infamous Labour Rally in Sheffield, just before the General Election of...err...sometime in the late eighties/early nineties? When Labour acted as if they'd already won, when in fact they lost for a third straight time with Kinnock as leader?
Blunkett jumped out of the council as fast as he could, leaving some non-entity (Clive Betts, never achieved anything of national note) to take his place and hence the blame. The city finances were trashed, with huge amounts of debt due to a failed event.
I'm amazed more people don't bring up Blunkett's political history when interviewing him. It's almost as if the past just never happened.
Cheers,
Ian
What's the big deal? Slashdot groupthink has been saying (correctly) for years now that standard network protocols like SMTP and HTTP are very easy to sniff, and if you want privacy you should use encryption. There are people (govt or otherwise) sniffing network traffic right now, all that the British minister has done is bring the issue into the open.
You should assume that whatever you send over your network link is publicly readable (if not always modifyable) and encrypt accordingly.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Speedometers are already regulated so that they are allowed to read 10 percent over the actual speed, but not a jot under the actual speed. So most speedos read 10 percent high. So to be caught doing 65 in a 60 zone (the UK doesn't have much in the way of 50 zones, but out of town single lane roads are generally 60 limits), the speedo would probably be reading 70+.
The ISPs rejected it because of economic reasons not because of some high moral stance. Also HMG has had the power to track your internet usage and read (before you do) your emails for some time.
Also the difference between the US and UK media is two small enties known as the 'Constitution of the US of A' and the 'Offical Secrets Act'. The US Constitution gives the right of free speech to US citizens, it also prevents the US Gov from banning any kind of publication (ie can't tell the media what to say). It is slightly different in the UK as it doesn't have a written constitution, the Official Secrets Act allows the UK Gov to prevent the publication of certain information that may be adverse to UK National Security, an example of this is during the Falklands War when the UK Gov prevented the invasion of the Falklands from being reported for a number of days, this allowed UK forces to be readied without the Argentines knowing about it be watching the BBC.
It is NOT the PEOPLE that have complained about this - it is ISPs - they are worried about being arrested for failing to log the smallest amount of data (even accidently) and, possible more importantly, they don't see why they should pay to do the governments work (of course WE actually end up paying as users).
The population of the UK are dullards, sad, boring people obsessed with entertainment and celebrity. They don't know or care who is in charge and a vast majority of them don't vote anyway (9% turnout in the last council elections round here).
They are too stupid to understand how law affects them and generally don't care anyway.
People go to work like zombies do the bare minimum to get a pay packet go home and plug themselves into the nearest drug supply (TV or booze usually).
They people of the isle are sheep - they do as they are told - innovation is dead - long live the service sector.
Nobody ever sees the "big picture" and the greatest threat to our nation is (apparently) paedophiles.
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
An easy misperception to make. Actually, the BBC is not owned by the government, and certainly isn't run by the government (although the government is a stakeholder which sets the broad regulatory (and funding) environment in which it operates, as is the case for all broadcasters).
The BBC is an independent, self-running organisation, controlled by a board of governers which has a license to collect a license fee from television owners to fund itself. It is not politically possible for the government of the day to direct the content of the BBC, although it may from time to time pass statutes which control all broadcasters (such as the act which prevented the broadcasting of the voices of leaders of defined terrorist organisations. This act didn't actually accomplish anything as the broadcasters simply dubbed the pictures with the voices of actors).
As the BBC is seen as broadcasting in the public interest, any move to bring its output under government direction would be seen by the population as the strongest movement possible towards a dictatorship.
It would be easier for the government to revoke/reallocate the license for a commercial operator than the BBC. And the government has done this before when in the 80s it invited the incumbent ITV companies to reapply for their own licenses, including the level of cash they were to pay for the priviledge.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
"Traditional communications did not include the same reasonable expectations of privacy that we have today."
What do you consider traditional? In the UK you needed (The RIP act made that past tense, hence why I will never vote for whichever party Jack Straw is in) to have a court order to be allowed to read somebodys mail or to tap their telephone.