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."
The question is, WHY did they refuse?
Was it due to a principle, or was it due to the cost associated with the record keeping?
Sure, its easy enough to say "well done" and "finally some sense" - but do we really know what motivated them to say no to the voluntary retention of data?
I don't know about these last attempts, but the RIP bill wanted 7 years. I'd love to see some nice juicy ads from ISPs with "We want to triple your Internet bill. Love, UK government." or something like it. Maybe that'll get the public opinion with them.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I mean, the government gets whatever it wants, because it has all the power
I'm not so sure. There was talk a few months ago of the RIP Act being voided because of a new European law that had been passed.
Has anyone heard anything about this recently?
(-1 Hearsay, Suspicion and not a lot else)
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
IF they stick together then there isn't much that the gov can do, aside from switch off the Internet in the UK - and I don't think that's very likely. They know this has little to do with terrorism. If Sept 11 and Bali teach us anything, they should teach us that someone with no regard for their own life, and simple weapons (knives in the case of Sept 11) can do horrific damage.
They don't need to hack your computer, use strong cyphers, or any other "high tech" terrorism. Much more effective is blow something up with a lot of people nearby. These guys aren't rocket scientists, and the gov knows that - this is a cynical manipulation of human tragady for their own political ends. Personally it makes me sick. This is disrespectful of those who died on Sept 11 and in Bali, of course anyone who questions these new powers is accused of being "unAmerican", and "against the war on terror". This is just cynical political posturing. A better way to fight terror would surly be to remove guns from America society - I think that would save a lot more lives than reading my email or anyone elses.
Does Osama bin Laden even have an email address? It seems pretty clear that terrorists don't need such things, a bomb, a gun or even a knife are (tragically) enough.
Here in Iceland there are laws that state that isp must keep logs for 2 years at least. And if you are financial institute you must keep everything for 7 years, all emails everything. But we (the isp's) do not give logs away unless there is a rouling in court that says we must give the police or state the logs. But most isp dont keep the logs for more than 6-7 months, and this has not been enforced in many occasion. Until there is a definitive ruling by the suprime court that says we must do this, we don't.
Save the logs, dump them on tape and send a lorry round to MI5 once a week to deliver them. When you start to run out of tapes (and you will) start to burn them on CDs (which have less capacity than tape), when they run out it's back to paper tape and punch cards.
Do they have any idea how much storage space they will need for just one months worth of data!
- OR -
All we have to go is write some scripts to visit random sites and we can all swap emails. I have broadband. Just how many sites could a spider visit in 24 hours from my machine?
How many emails could I send in 24 hours?
David Blunkett has a habit of putting legislation into action that is far too heavy handed - think about his post-Sept 11 proposals, or his reaction to refugee housing. Thankfully most of it seems to get filtered out by due process.
He does seem to act a bit rashly, and seems to leap before he looks too often. I sometimes wonder if his presence is reverse-discrimination in action (he was blind from birth).
... and today's pet project has
I mean, the government gets whatever it wants, because it has all the power. It has all the power because it has all the guns, and that is especially true in the UK.
c oncessions citizen.
Not all the guns. The IRA still has a few, and the loyalist gangs have a load - oh, yes, and the Yardies tend to be well supplied, and the Tongs. But I guess you meant that the citizenry are not allowed to bear arms without a license, which is not routinely given.
However, I think that this is all but irrelevant in this case as (a) retention of ISP data records just isn't the sort of thing that popular revolutions are made of, and (b) as you say, most the of the people wouldn't even care (yes, sadly, the British population is just like the US population in this regard). You know the line "I've got nothing to hide, so why shouldn't they implant me with a v-chip?".
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? But that media which isn't owned by private entities is owned by the government
The only publicly owned media corporation is the BBC, which is paid for by television license subscription. It's not really owned by the government in the sense that you mean (ie, the government can't tell it what to broadcast, or not - though God knows they've tried time and again). The problem for the government is that the BBC carries more weight with the people that the government of the day ever will - so they have to watch their step. It carries more weight, because it broadcasts the soaps and reality TV shows that keep Joe Couch-Potato happy and fat.
And the rest of our media are owned by sundry groups - right-wing (mostly), left-wing (rarely), and a big chunk of it by Rupert Murdoch, who's an Australian/American/Chinese/whatever-gets-him-TV-
Anyway, to attempt to answer the question - will HMG just make the retention mandatory - I don't know. They've backed down before when it came to crapping over civil liberties (and at other times, they've just shit all over them). My guess is that there are a hell of a lot of people using ISPs in the UK right now, and there just ain't enough votes to be got by ramming this down the ISPs throats. On the other hand, never underestimate the power of the securocrats - the ridiculous mess that is the RIP Act was their handiwork.
David Blunkett did go on record as saying that there were some things that a governing party must not do, even if it could steamroller any opposition (the Labour party has a huge majority in Parliament). So, who knows - maybe they'll just decide that without the co-operation of the ISPs, it ain't a fight worth having.
Watch out for the low-flying pigs though.
--Ng
My initial reaction when reading this story was to stand up for the ISPs - say something along the same lines as most other people here...
HOWEVER, if I had a choice between another attack on the scale of Sept 11th, and my ISP holding my logs (and the chance that someone might look through them), I'd be quite happy to let anyone look at the logs.
I have nothing illegal to hide, and while I'd rather people didn't look through what I've been doing, it's all down to what's more important....
Hugh Macdonald
Clearly though the idea that Echelon can hoover up phone/emails and record/scan them is just so much hooey, as I always thought it was. Reassuring in a way.
I mean, the government gets whatever it wants, because it has all the power. It has all the power because it has all the guns, and that is especially true in the UK.
The government has power because we the people give it power. The governments gets things it wants and we don't want because we the people do not stop the government from getting what the government wants before it is too late. I am constantly amazed by how the majority groups with in Nations, Trade unions and Political organizations neglect to make use of their democratic rights to govern them selves and get rolled over by a small but determined minority that makes excellent use of its democratic rights. I have actually seen unpopular legislation passed in an unnamed national assembly just because half of the majorities MPs were stuck gossiping at the watercooler when the vote was called and being absent they could not stand up and be counted.
If we keep expecting to exercise our democratic right to influence government after bills we dont like have been passed because we were to lazy to show up to vote or too brain-dead to speak up we will have a hard time ahead of us. It would be so much easyer if people opposed legislations that robs them of their rights BEFORE it is passed. Sort of like putting on the FLAK jacket BEFORE you get shot
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
"Do you want a ticket sent to you monthly cause some camera caught you doing 55 in a 50 zone without your seat belt on since they were hard pressed to reach thier violation quota for the month?"
The UK (or more specifically, London) is about to introduce `congenstion charging` - that is, charging drivers money to enter the centre of London in a bid to reduce unneccessary traffic. This is being done with cameras and number plate recognition. People are complaining because they don't want to pay, not really because of any civil liberty concerns - we've generally accepted that as being a price worth paying.
And don't underestimate the cost of speeding cars, either - it kills more people than many other crimes (ie terrorism, murder etc). Death/injury rises exponentially with speed increase (not linearly), so for example the difference between 30 and 35 mph results is many greater deaths. Given that only a tiny number of journeys are so important that the it makes the risk of death/injury worthwhile, I believe it's worth the inconvenience to drivers. And if you have to use cameras to enforce the law, rather than the quaint idea of employing thousands of police with speed guns, then so be it.
re: your Franklin quote - i don't believe that the use of cameras DOES infringe your freedom, as they do not stop you from doing anything - they just make it easier to see that you were doing it at a late point. Given that they`ll be used in court, in front of a jury, then if you can see a problem with any given piece of film now, then its rather patronizing to think that a jury member won't have a similar problem with it at a later date when its being used as evidence against someone. A second point on the same issue - i personally have increased security and freedom when walking in an area covered by security cameras. But perhaps you`ve not been robbed at knifepoint? I think you might feel differently if you had (like I have, in Brixton - the shittiest part of London, with a huge street crime problem). People feel (and statistically are) safer in areas with cameras - do you perhaps have any statistics showing that people have less security and freedom?
I don't know how possible or feasible this idea is, but something needs to be done.
Freedom of speach is at stake. I'm not sure of the details, but wasn't there a court case or a precedent that says that if you are scared about the repurcussions of you accessing information, your right to free speach is being hindered? Well if logs are going to be kept for significant ammounts of time, and the govt or private companies are going to have access to it, i'd consider this to be of concern.
This guy would lack both the cover and the alienation required to snipe strangers if the US wasn't dominated by low-density suburban planning. The American obsession with the automobile has shattered the older urban communities and scattered people to the suburbs, which are no substitue for a healthy neighbourhood.
People in high-density/pedestrian-oriented urban areas would probably a)have a stronger bond with people in their vicinity, b)play a more active role in policing their neighbourhood, and c)notice a guy setting up down the block with an assault rifle.
This guy is sick, for sure. How did he get that way? Why doesn't every contry have a sniper killer? All I can say is: the conditions that created this individual aren't changing, so prepare for more. He won't be the last.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
And he'd still probably have a gun if they were more strictly regulated or completely illegal. Look at Schedule I drugs: US gov't says they have no benefitial purpose and hence can't be posessed by anyone. Doesn't really stop people from getting them if they want. Same thing with guns, except you actually need them in some form for law enforcement and such, making them more readily available.
One problem, as others have remarked, is that most people don't know that this is happening, or forget quickly.
The current UK government is very good a raising stealth taxes (taxes that are easily forgotten). One of these is an air-flight tax. The budget airlines don't like these as they can be a significant %age of the total price; so they quote these separately - which ensures that everyone always remembers that they are being taxes.
The ISPs should do the same: itemise cost to provide service + cost to record all your traffic.
This 'in your face' mechanism may help get this obnoxious intrusion removed.
Does the post office record the address of every letter that you send ?
Generally you're right, although it's worth noting that both your examples are BBC ones.
Sky News is pretty good from the now and then that I catch it, as is Channel 4 news.
All the broadsheet newspapers generally provide more challenge to the government than the present Westminster opposition do - even The Guardian which is nominally a Labour-supporting paper.
It's actually quite interesting that the one policy theme that the current opposition could successfully pick up on as a basis for the next election is the Libertarian agenda, currently being touted by The Daily Telegraph (which has been the Conservative Party's candid friend for a long time).
However, the Conservative Party has far too many internal interests who are bound to social authoritarianism despite their economic liberalism to go for this. It would be a brave step for them to refocus the party and lose a large part of the existing (small) support in the hope of gaining a larger support elsewhere.
They've started to recognise this - that their authoritarianism makes the country view them as the 'nasty' party - but they'll have to move very carefully to make the move effectively.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
A) I don't believe in seat belt laws except for minors. Seat belt laws are a regulation of personal safety. While it may be argued that wearing seat belts reduces the severity of an accident, and thus the cost of the public safety response, it does nothing to ensure the safety of other drivers. If I hit you, I've already hit you, regardless if I'm flying out of my front windshield or not. Should we not then make it illegal to run with scissors? Seat belt laws are a means of increasing fines to raise money for large beauracracies.
B) I also don't believe in fixed speed limits. There are times when the limits should be fluid. Why should I drive 50mph on a road which is empty of other vehicles or pedestrians? Why should I become an obstacle when the traffic flow around me is 5mph over the speed limit? The fact that I've been on the highway and had a police car draft me when I was going 10mph over the speed limit and then he didn't pull me over, he just wanted me out of the way, gives me re-assurance that many police officers feel the same way. I'd rather have the humanity of a policeman over the coldness of a machine. One which may not even be calibrated correctly.
To put my answer even shorter: the fact that human communication is used to plan terrorist attacks, does not mean we should fight human communication.
/any/ hijacked airplane or A-bomb.
We'd be trowing away civilization faster than can be done by
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
But "quite possibly" has not previously been a valid excuse for reducing civil liberties. The article qute clearly stated that, in the ISP's opinion, the govenment had failed to make the case that they data they wanted held would help in the fight against terrorism.
If it would genuinely, provably, help in the fight against terrorism, I would be happy for this sort of thing to go through. But what is happening is that the government is finding things that, in their opinion, might help in the fight against something - social security fraud, for example - and trying to bring that in under the umbrella of the "war against terrorism". And that random extension of police powers on only a vague suspicion that it might help is somethign we must fight against.
As a Brit, I am cheering this report. I don'tr want to be blown up, nor do I want anybody else blown up. But the government has to make a good case that these records will give a better chance of catching terrorists to justify both the infringement of liberties and the costs to the ISPs (which I, the ISP's customer, will pay).
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
AOL already does this. Their entire UK operation is run out of the USA. They use this neat little trick to avoid paying sales tax on their subscriptions too.
Although that loop hole will be closed next June.
What are you scared of? If your not doing anything wrong theres no problem. What people are afraid of really is LOSING THE POSSIBLITY/ABILITY to do something wrong if they want to without getting caught. People feel like sure I'm not doing anything now but maybe one day I'll want to look up how to steal cable or whatnot. There argument is the gov shouldnt be able to search for that. Why not?
I love the old well you were searching my house for Marijauna but all you found was Cocain and heroin so you should be able to hold that against me. Its not a game of let me try and guess what your doing wrong and if I get it wrong you go free.