UK Gov't Proposes Massive Internet Snooping, Data Storage

Barence writes "Big Brother Britain moved a step further today with the news that the Government will store 'a billion incidents of data exchange a day' as details of every text, email and browsing session in the UK are recorded. Under new proposals published yesterday, the information will be made available to police forces in order to crack down on serious crime, but will also be accessible by local councils, health authorities and even Ofsted and the Post Office. The Conservatives have criticised the idea, with the Shadow Home Secretary saying, 'yet again the Government has proved itself unable to resist the temptation to take a power quite properly designed to combat terrorism to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.'"

Comments

encryption

[timmarhy]

use it. it won't be long before every communication is encrypted and signed

Re:encryption

[Sloppy]

with a network of computers fast enough it is possible to decrypt the data using every possible encrypt key.

Even if that network were available today, and even if you didn't have the option of using a longer key, encrypting would still be a good idea. "A network of computers fast enough" is not free. Why not add to your enemies' expenses, especially when it costs you nearly nothing? This is an arms race that you can win. And if everyone does it, everyone wins (except the bad guy).

Re:encryption

[geekgirlandrea]

Let me know when you finish building this network. It's going to be somewhat larger than the planet and will still take a few trillion years to do the job.

Another good reason to encrypt your data.

[BPPG]

Most network encryption methods might not be 100% bulletproof, but if more people did it, massive data collection projects like this would be a lot less worthwhile.

Re:Another good reason to encrypt your data.

[Brian the Bold]

You're right, Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act does indeed allow for compulsion in dissemination of keys.

That's why it is important not to store anything sensitive in encrypted form, but to pass it about using methods where keys are ephemeral and are never in the possession of the person targeted. If intercepted data simply cannot be decrypted, the authorities will come to understand that they are unable to seize anything of value.

Perhaps this would be enough to get them down from their insane power trip and back to sensible levels of state vs individual power.

Let Them Try

[sexconker]

Humans have an annoying tendency to save things.
We fear our own demise, and we seek permanence in our surroundings and possessions.

We do the same with data.

We create far more data than we will ever be able to manage. In principle, it's a horrible idea. In practice, it's unfeasible. The only thing this will result in is harassment and inconvenience for people when the data is leaked/stolen/hax0red.

The government is NOT watching everyone - they can't. The government wants you to THINK everyone is being watched.

Re:Let Them Try

[Naturalis Philosopho]

One word, "panopticon". Jeremy Bentham was a man before his time...

The opposition say...

[catalupus]

The Conservatives have criticised the idea, with the Shadow Home Secretary saying, 'yet again the Government has proved itself unable to resist the temptation to take a power quite properly designed to combat terrorism to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.'"

An of course, once they are in power, they will stop the data logging? - or will they conveniently forget and keep it going?

Re:Nothing to hide == nothing to fear

[apathy maybe]

So you don't mind me watching you have sex (wait an anonymous coward posting shit on Slashdot, you don't have sex)? Masturbate? Bathe? Shit?

How about we set you up in a glass cage for a week in the middle of (say) Times Square?

Or, how about you read this article http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 linked to by another Slashdotter at one time. You have to register to download it, but a fake email address works just as well.

But more to the point, you have got something to hide, everybody does. Who hasn't broken the law at one stage or another? Speeding? Jaywalked? Partaken of some illicit substance? Blasphemed? (You know why Mary was a virgin? She only had anal sex.) You get the idea, everyone is guilty of something, and that means everyone has something to hide from the government.

Re:Open source it

[Original Replica]

Seriously, though, if you want to solve the problems of government intrusion, you gotta open source the government.

To make any significant change to the deeper power structures of any large government you need a revolution. People in positions of global scale aren't going to give up that power just because you have a lot of signatures on a petition. You cannot vote high ranking bureaucrats and lobbyists out of power. But for ordinary citizens to attempt to use force to uproot those currently in positions of power would require them to be "terrorists" (gasp!) The only way to take down a large modern government without warfare is to wait for it to collapse under it's own bloated weight like the USSR did.