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.
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.
What differs from country to country is how well the government knows what it wants. If the government in this case is determined enough to pass a law requiring that ISPs keep mandatory records, there's nothing the ISPs can do about it. If the population of the UK is anything like that of the US, the people won't even notice or care.
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, so we get right back to the issue of how much the government itself actually wants this.
No matter how this turns out, though, I have to give a hand to the ISPs for telling the government where to stick it...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
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 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.
US ISP's, in an attempt to match the actions of their UK counterparts, have anounced that they will only retain users records for 50 years insead of 100 and will ship their router logs only once a week to the NSA, instead of nightly.
Except for that whole cameras everywhere you turn thing...And that law forcing you to hand over crypto keys and passwords to the govt.
Which brings me to something I was thinking about before, Whats worse:
1) A govt that forces you to give them your keys when they ask.
or
2) A govt that dosnt ask or inform you in any way, but instead uses tools like Magic Lantern to get them?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
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.
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"
>Except for that whole cameras everywhere you turn thing
Hows the hunt for the sniper going? Any idea how many people he would have been able to kill in the UK before he`d have been caught?
Heard of David Copeland? He's the guy who bombed and killed/injured gays/blacks in the UK a few years ago. He worked alone but was still caught after `only` three attacks. He was the only consistant person on film in the three locations at the appropriate date/time.
Or do you think that it's worth letting people like him get away with it with no chance of arrest other than waiting for him to make a mistake (like in your sniper case), because the horrible loss of rights by people being..uh..filmed while walking in a public place outweighs the advantages?
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
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
There is no chance of my ISP every doing this in the UK. They can't arrange for the cable box to be fixed. They can't get my bill right after 12 months of me telling them that I do in fact pay by direct debit and they shouldn't be charging me a levy. They can't even pick the phone up after 10^6 rings...
What chance do they have of recording all my web page visits and emails?
http://www.nthellworld.com/
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Who's 'we'? If you're referring to the Washington situation, then you should be aware that the UK already has extremely tight gun control laws. Possibly the US might look to making those a priority, but the UK already has.
Cheers,
Ian
Note also
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
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.
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
And are you saying that you'd resent getting caught breaking two laws by a machine as opposed to a person?
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?
I see, so what you're saying is that you want to break the laws that you don't feel like obeying with impunity, while resevering the right to whine when the state can't enforce the ones that you think are important? I rather like that idea, and see that it's becoming increasingly popular with many US citizens.
You can keep the driving laws for yourself then, and I'll excuse myself from accounting and securities fraud, if that's OK with you? Who needs a pension anyway?
But woe betide anyone who breaches my copyright. Hanging is too good for them!
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
It's also the case that the media in the UK (private or public) can be considerably more critical of the governement and politicians than media in the US. Anyone who's ever watched Larry King interview a senator, then seen Jeremy Paxman do the same with a British MP will know that blustering Larry is a cream puff.
Also interesting to note that the BBC News website carried an interview with Noam Chomsky on 9/11 this year. No US network would ever have done that.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
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 ?
The problem is that the rapid proliferation of new technologies, i.e., Internet, wireless, PCS, etc, is leaving law enforcement and national security agencies in the dust. Without new laws they simply cannot address new threats or criminal activity that use those new communication methods. Is this a threat to civil liberties? Hell yes, but a little thing happened last year in September that pushed civil liberties to the background for the "Free World".
And which of those new technologies were used for September 11th, exactly?
That this event has pushed civil liberties to the background is not something to base policy on, it's something to fight against.
Increased surveillance on citizens does *not* prevent terrorism by people determined enough to do it kamikaze-style. Period. See 9/11, see Israel every day, see Bali. Forget it. The idea that it would is tasteless, perverse propaganda from power-hungry politicians that are not ashamed to abuse 9/11 to further their existing agendas.
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.
Without civil liberties it's not a very "free world" now is it? If we don't have freedom, what are we fighting to preserve, exactly?