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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.
We're number one, we're number one, we're number one
If this were really happening, what would you think?
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.
Strange, I thought most members of the House of Commons and House of Lords weren't Muslim.
Good thing I'm a Jedi, then. Like most brits.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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! --
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.
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.
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.
Tony Blair is not a Socialist. His government is more right wing the the Conservative one that preceded it.
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.
Blair and his labor party should serve as a reminder that socialism is not all about fluffy welfare states.
Blair and his Labour party are nothing to do with socialism. The abolition of Clause 4 and granting tax breaks to businessmen (even though it was later revoked - at least our judges have balls) don't sound very socialist to me.
What we essentially have in today's Labour is the old conservative party only slightly less rabid.
I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure banks are legally required to keep a transaction history (beyond just not wanting to upset their customers). The lawmakers would be the ones to tell them they have to keep it. That doesn't mean the lawmakers can just come in and grab everyones transaction history just because they want to. They have to go through a process to gain access to the specific transaction histories they want for their investigation, and have to show why they need them.
The "AAHH LOG EVERYTHING" as well as "OMG THEY ARE TRACKING US ALL" are both kneejerk reactions, and to me labeling this fiasco as a villianous thing, let alone the MOST villianous thing, just makes the side trying to prevent it look stupid.
I said I don't have much of a problem with the idea, not that I agree with every aspect of the way they are going about doing it. The problem here is reactions like "So you want us to all stay in our homes" just makes your case look bad. If you want to get things done in a sane manner, you can't react with insane behaviour. I don't want it to be a huge draconian thing, but as long as people respond with such innane comments and "awards" there will be no meaningfull opposition because they will be laughed off.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
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