Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I've often wondered if there is a way to make disturbing draconian legislation like this and turn it around. I think that there is - radical transparency in government. Allow every government agency access to the public's SMS and email data, but in conjunction publish the SMS's and emails of every government employee, so the public has access to them. If there is no right to privacy, and they are doing nothing wrong, they should have nothing to fear right?
On another note completely - what is the over under on how long till this is abused (and they get busted)? I have 3 weeks.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
My friend in London is being snooped upon 300 times a day already by videocams. Now that her internet usage will be recorded we can only hope that authorities attempting to coordinate the two will use the Last Hope for Freedom: Windows.
At least the UK gov't has the decency to tell its citizens they're being spied on. I assume everything I do is being monitored by SOMEONE. The time is long overdue to build public key encryption into our devices.
I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?
I mean, obviously you'd want to avoid getting the public's data that the government is recording, otherwise they'd probably record you recording their records, and the feed back loop would cause BT workers to commit sepuku. On the other hand, would that be a bad thing?
What's the value of information that you don't know?
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.'"
The USA already did that, just not on the same scale.
If a law doesn't say "only to be used for purpose X" then assume it will be *(ab)used as widely as possible.
*is it really abuse if the law isn't limited in its breadth?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Seriously, though, if you want to solve the problems of government intrusion, you gotta open source the government.
The project is already underway, and they are looking for more programmers to help.
Wow, you are truly ignorant. Of the votes cast, 37% went to labour. Reread that number. 37%. The voting system is hoplessly biased, so naturally the people that it favours will never remove this bias. And how, pray tell, did a left-wing party that was dominated by a man who dragged your country into a war that was wildly unpopular get 37% of the vote? The Republicans were not as bad as Labor, and have gone from a fairly solid majority of our entire body politic, to being steadily ousted in each congressional election. Even long-time Republicans are starting to send a big FUCK YOU to the RNC when it comes rattling its tin cup in their direction.
Either labor is entirely supported by the dregs of British society that depend on the welfare state, or there is a lot of bullshit from leftists in Britain. Something like "OMG those Conservatives are teh fascist!" when it's obvious on both sides of the pond that Labor is the quintessential fascist party of the UK.
The eternal optimist in me feels some will see this as a step too far.
Oh, I would think that's a fairly safe bet. The Information Commissioner will be all over it, and the public profile of his department is rising every time he speaks these days. The courts will be all over it, since blanket surveillance is going to be just a little difficult to reconcile with article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Opposition are already all over it, since any sort of claims about adequate data protection by the government are a joke thanks to repeated media coverage of numerous major leaks in recent months. Speaking of the media, they'll love this too, as it's another good opportunity to bash the government while it's down. And all of those are before we even get to the practical issues like who is going to pay for all of this and the overheads it would impose on service providers, presumably at their own expense if historical moves are anything to go by.
Finally, of course, we have the guy in the street who gets to vote, and he's becoming a lot more aware of privacy and data protection issues at the moment. Fortunately, the government will probably be so busy looking for a new Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer after the summer recess that they won't be able to do much about this, and they're toast at the next general election anyway since it's pretty hard to find any major group of voters they haven't seriously upset lately in one way or another.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
How fast fashion moves. This new outburst of governments trying to legally spy on citizens have to stop! First it was Brazil , then USA, now UK... All in about 30 days! What is this? Some sort of disturbance before the dive? Are we really going to implement a worldwide 1984-like society?
A few years ago then Home Secretary David Blunkett tried something similar with the RIP Act, which would have given these kind of powers to bodies as obscure as parish councils. He said it wasn't until his son (an IT consultant) sat down and explained the problems this could cause that he dropped the plans.
Even if such a plan were possible as the one proposed it would run into massive opposition, not just from the other two parties but from ISPs, phone companies et al. With Labour as weak politically as they are now I hope this one will be a dead duck.
Bear in mind as well that these documents always over egg the pudding so that some areas can be dropped as concessions. Nevertheless I'll be writing to my old MP laying out the reasons why this is a stunningly bad idea.
This will never happen - it's just a ploy. They'll water it down after an out-cry and we'll all say 'phew that was a close call.'
But of course the real aim was to get the slightly watered version approved in the first place. Job done government.
"I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?"
This will include an awful lot of banking data. The most interesting banking data is doubtless that connected to gov't officials. ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It costs them very little to hold a gun to your head and demand "Hand over the encryption keys."
I wouldn't be surprised if encryption starts becoming the norm, that all encryption keys will be required to be registered with the government. Unregistered encryption will be illegal and the public will applaud as the government sends the men with guns to drag you away, because you will be a "dangerous criminal with suspected connections to child porn and stolen credit card numbers" *
* This is how it will show up on your local Evening News.
We are all just people.
modern encryption is robust enough to deal with anything you want to throw at me. the idea that you could compute my 27 character long pass phrase is stupid as well.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The point is that if everyone starts using encryption (or even say 5%), you're talking about millions of people. Do you really think the government is going to lock up a couple of million people? There aren't enough jails to hold them all. You'd end up with a situation along the lines of file-sharing. Is it illegal? Yes. Can you be punished for it? Yes. But is it likely? No. So long as the number of criminals far outstrips the ability to prosecute them all, people will continue being "criminals".
Fear the penguin.
It's not unfeasible for the government to start maintaining an SMS-text dossier on every citizen, for example - just try encrypting those. And that's just with current technology. The proposal will only become more invasive and far-reaching in its consequences as monitoring and data-interrogation technology improves.
To be frank; as a UK resident, this scares the shit out of me.
Meta will eat itself
Not quite ... if I understand the law correctly (and I hope I do, it affects me), failure to provide the authorities with effective keys to encrypted data when they request the keys, without lawful excuse, is a crime, with jail time for contempt of court being an option. That's immediate jail time.
I'm not aware that it's been tested in court yet ; the meaning of "lawful excuse" hasn't been tested (let alone appealed), the proportionality of detention hasn't been tested (that, for starters, can go to Europe). IANAL, but I can see holes in it. Not that I would like to be on the receiving end.
You don't have to give your keys before you start using encryption, only on receipt of a lawful request for them from a legally authorised person. Oh, there are two more undefined terms.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"