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.
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 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.
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.
"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....