Slashdot Mirror
UK Government Wins Villain of the Year
Anonymous Cowpat writes "The BBC is reporting that the UK Government, or rather their six month presidency of the EU, has been awarded the Internet Villain of the Year award by the Internet Service Providers Association for being the driving force behind the new EU data retention laws. These require that ISPs and other telecomms providers keep records of the time\date & recipient of every communication made by their subscribers."
Wouldn't using something like Tor make all logs worthless?
Sweden's Minister of "Justice" has also been pushing for the retention laws.
Film at 11.
We're number one, we're number one, we're number one
If this were really happening, what would you think?
is that I should probably stop using all those "proxies" from over there...........
[Insert Witty Sig Here]
And, of course, they won't need to as they'll merely pass the savings (sic) to their customers. While politicians might be willing to merely call this the 'cost of doing business in the age of terrorism' I call it yet another stab into the heart of freedom and liberty.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
If all the companies are required to maintain this extra information, that would force the hard drive companies to produce higher capacity hard drives while driving down the unit cost. Who wouldn't mind paying $50 USD per terabyte?
It would appear that if you want to get legislation past PM Blair - just add a terorist threat - or say your name is Bush (guess who with have the extradition agreement with with).
I'm not even starting to list domestic issues (well I guess id card is domestic) and will completely skip Iraq itself.
Muslim extremists.
Excuse me where are my manners... Have you met the RIAA and the MPAA yet? So how about that internet, talk amongst yourselves.
what makes them get the villan of the year award!? do they have friggin' sharks with friggin' laser beams?
making laws. ha! in my day villans knew how to be evil.
I've been following consumer and privacy rights issues for quite some time now. The issue that ISP's are REQUIRED to log personal information is an interesting one.
First and foremost, I consider the Internet to be a type of "public" space. I am reasonably certain that anything I do on the Internet can and probably will end up in someones log file. Whether or not such information can be used against me is what really concerns me.
Second. It is reasonable to expect that ISPs do in fact keep logs of information. What they log and how they do it is generally up to them. Requiring the ISP to log information does not make sense as they probably already do it. Again, what should be of concern is whether or not the ISPs are required to share that information. Interestingly, the whole issue may actually involve the ISP's right to claim they don't have any logged information -- which is probably a lie -- or that they could delete it and thus not be legally responsible for it.
Third. Spoofing is most certainly a "real" concept and these laws may, in fact, incriminate innocent people. Certain "dangerous" individuals may actually be able to LEARN how and what required logging is and use this to their advantage; effectively covering their tracks.
In conclusion, I find it interesting that there is such a hoopla over laws that threaten privacy in general when they can't be that effective to begin with. Perhaps there should be a commission that limits the forming of useless laws. If things continue the way they have been it may soon be illegal to even touch a computer.
I wish I had more time to distill and clarify my thoughts, but this will have to suffice. I hope that the readers will look past the disorganized nature of this argument and consider some of the actual points.
Matthew Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com/
I'd like to accept this award most humbly.
Some have said "You can fool some of the people all of the time."
Luckily for us, it turns out all you have to do is just go up to a queue of people, put on a stern face, say "Terrorist", and they'll all happily give away all the rights that people died to gain in just a quick nip of time.
Now, on behalf of us and our ally Oceania, I'd like to thank you all, and ask you please show your papers and salute with stiff arms as we play our national anthem, "Brittania, Brittania, Uber Alles!"
Thank you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Anyone else find it incredibly ironic that many conservatives in the US enthusiastically support him? I'm constantly amazed, as a libertarian, by the number of conservatives who cannot separate his support of the invasion of Iraq from his general policies. Blair and his labor party should serve as a reminder that socialism is not all about fluffy welfare states. Rather, the socialist state can also be very intrusive, and rather often is in fact rather intrusive on the basic rights of the public.
With all of that, the EU wanting to make sure data is kept, not forever, but just long enough for most normal criminal investigations to take place doesn't bother me much. If they did other stuff with it, that would be a problem, but just making sure it's there seems prudent.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
... that Blair did fuck all during the presidency except giving away a billion pounds of tax payers money to French farmers. Turns out he managed to find some time to implement more of his fascist laws too! How does he do it, eh?
First they took your guns, and you sat in the pub and said it was for the good of the people.
Then they effectively took away your right to self-defense (they took away the means in step one), and you locked yourself in your bathrooms when the burglars break into your occupied house.
Then, they sent letter to the shopkeepers telling them not to bother reporting thefts of less than 75 pounds and not to detain thieves.
Linky:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006060516,00 .html
You have cameras installed in every orfice, officious busybodies poking noses into your every affair.
Your medical system is refusing treatment to patients who are over weight (gasp) or smoke (the horror) in order to save money. An un-assimilated population of immigrants is holding up signs saying "wait for the real holocaust"
What will it take to push you over the edge, the banning of cricket?
Wake up, it is already too late, and you better get cracking on fixing things.
Our government is a group of spineless, traitorous wimps willing to sell our country down the river for anything that their Bush friend wants - including making Britain a policed state. Mark my words, that's what we're becoming, all in aid of international terrorism that simply isn't really happening.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
http://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/staf/nova/blog/2005/0
The problem for all 'governments-of-the-day' who enact stupid legislation is that there is always a way around the 'problem'. There is also clandestine high frequency high speed RTTY.
/me gives them some ex-lax...
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
UK government is scared by that they don't understand, Islam, Internet, anything that has passed their arts education by. They don't understand and therefore they need 'more information' to feel that they have 'kept on top' of the problems that confront them.
You know that feeling when you are swimming, but its not working out and you are getting lower and lower in the water, swallowing more and more water? That's the UK, and when they realise it, the US governments.
This round anyway. We Americans must admit our defeat, but we'll get you twats next year when we convince google to hand over those logs.
Anyone else find it incredibly ironic that many conservatives in the US enthusiastically support him? I'm constantly amazed, as a libertarian, by the number of conservatives who cannot separate his support of the invasion of Iraq from his general policies. xx-Blair-xx Bush and his xx-labor-xx Republican party should serve as a reminder that xx-socialism-xx conservatism is not all about xx-fluffy welfare states-xx lower taxes. Rather, the xx-socialist-xx conservative state can also be very intrusive, and rather often is in fact rather intrusive on the basic rights of the public.
Yeah, I find it incredibly ironic.New Polish fascist government wanted 15 years of retention.
Hopefully people will bother to watch the program on Channel 4, I'm crying in my Victory Gin already.
We're all taking it up the backside, and only because the governmental powers are actually being clever enough to lubricate things fully enough that we simply don't notice it's going up there; I digress, there is undoubtedly a large number of the public who are completely unaware, but until a large enough uprising forms, I don't see a hell of a lot happening.
Picture it; if a paramilitary organisation was formed, something with the sort of strength of the IRA, and with public support, didn't ultimately etch away at this sort of Big Brother crap, I think I'll change my name Winston Smith for the hell of it.
How do they propose to keep all traffic for 6 months, that's a lot of hard drives right there, ad if I was an ISP, I can't say I'd go out of my way to put that into a RAID config, I bet it ends up being packets logged on the default ports for services like POP3... ooh looks like we don't even need to bother with encryption anymore boys.
that's my lunatic rantings over anyway.
So what? They have to keep logs they were probably already keeping anyways. The big deal is going to be what they are required to do with them BEYOND just keeping them around. If the powers that be can demand access to all of them, or only demand logs involved in whatever they are investigating, etc. Given the ammount of real problems on the net, I'm not entirely convinced that making it easier to track people down for doing these things is all that bad. I certainly would like to see a reduction in the number of idenity theft cases, fraud, online predators, botnets, script kiddies. It all boils down to how they are used.
Ultimately, while this could be very slippery slope if not handled well, I really fail to see how this is anywhere near the most villianous thing done this year. I would venture to say that Yahoo! helping track down chinese dissenter journalist and throw them in jail is a far cry worse just as a small example.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
with email providers giving more and more space to store all "your" email doesn't it you wonder what they are storing? what about cashed web pages? everything online is being stored
I read TFA & elsewhere the word "retention". No-where does it mandate that information not being captured will suddenly have to be.
I do not expect ISPs will have to log all TCP/IP traffic (ala tcpdump). They'd need massive new firewall logging servers. Insteady, they will just have to keep their sendmail and login files for two years. And phone billing info likewise. Many probably already are. AFAIK, US telecoms have been required from pre-PC days to keep this info for at least one year.
The US Postal Service is now required to keep records of every letter and parcel delivered to every address in the US for 6 months.
The fifth of November. Coincidence anyone?!??!
Clearly, this is part of a vast righ-wing conspiracy. Karl Rove is trying to divert attention from the Chimpler's Cabal of Evil (TM), and their complete disregard for even the most basic of human rights, by intimidating the ISPA into calling Britain the villain of the year, when that title should obviously be awarded to Bushitler. QED. BTW, if you need to be reminded that this post is sarcastic --- well, you know you've spent too much time on Slashdot when...
The RIP act (remember that one?) predated any such 'threat'. At this point, the threat of rabid Islamists is on a par with the 'nukes to hit us in 45 minutes' we got to hear about when the war on Iraq was looming. It's an excuse, folks.
It doesn't matter if you were shot or stabbed, dead is dead. I didn't ask for the total gun related deaths, the total homocides per capita.
s p?More=Y
i me/State/statebystaterun.cfm?stateid=52
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/xsdataset.a
http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Cr
in short:
England ~13 per 100,000
U.S.A. ~6 per 100,000
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They may have to keep all that information, but at least it's legal to keep it in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, "Beware of the Leopard."
At least I think so.
Unless the penalty for noncompliance is very large, it may be cheaper to ignore the law. Also, complying with the law would probably expose an ISP to more legal risk than noncompliance would.
Oh well, what the hell...
Damn, no mod points! This post deserves them though.
:-)
Had me laughing out very loud!
No really: http://www.nme.com/awards
The thing that worries me, is actually, what kind of information (kept by ISP) can be used in what capacity? As proof in court??
Since it is generally so ridiculously easy to insert or completely rewrite anything that is kept in logfiles, this places a tremendous responsibility on (especially) the sysadmins taking care of that information. Which seems to be something that the data retention doesn't care much about.
Where there is paper involved, there can be copies made, and any actual changes can be examined for forgeries.
With logfiles, if law enforcement asks me eg, for webmail activity logs of person X, I can just copy/paste any log of another person, modify a bit, delete the info, replace the logfile in backups, and in fact create an entirely different usage pattern than what really took place. And I bet nobody is going to check that, and even if they did, they'd have hell of a time proving I modified anything.
They have to save all metadata. So, all urls, time stamps, IPs, basically everything except the content of the packets. And yes, they'll need 'massive new firewall logging servers', for wich they'll have to pay themselves.
Americans won't have to be jealous of our high-speed low-cost connections anymore, prices will certainly go up.
Running a full capture (minus content) will not be possible on most current equipment. Crisco will be selling a lot of new routers. There are very few 100baseTX hubs out there (most are switches) so sniffing traffic will take new [router] hardware as well as the new beefy logging machine. And I don't have any idea how intra-ISP traffic can be captured.