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.'"
"Hackers of the world unite... HACK THE PANET!"... 'nuff said?
Where's the CdC when you need them?
Here be signatures
use it. it won't be long before every communication is encrypted and signed
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
Dupe! Oh, maybe not. I thought the UK already spied on everything? And Australia censored everything? And the US tasered everyone? And Italy ate all the pasta?
The cookie told me to.
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.
The eternal optimist in me feels some will see this as a step too far.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
But then they showed how well they had learned their mistake under Blair by keeping Labor in power. Truly, to paraphrase Mencken, they are getting what they want and getting it good and hard.
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.
http://www.gnupg.org/ - The GNU Privacy Guard
http://getfiregpg.org/ - FireGPG, "encrypt, decrypt, sign or verify the signature of text in any web page using GnuPG" (untested by me).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3424 - another Firefox extension, also untested.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3208 - another one that may be useful (untested).
http://www.gpg4win.org/ - something for MS Windows
Remember folks, even if you aren't in the UK, this still affects you! If you communicate with people in the UK, if you have email based in the UK (I have a Yahoo.co.uk email address, in addition to my 50 other email addresses...), etc. ...
It is as simple as installing Firefox, installing GNUPG, and installing that extension that lets you encrypt text fields when you are emailing...
And don't forget TrueCrypt http://truecrypt.org/ though it isn't strictly relevant in this case, it is always relevant.
I wank in the shower.
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!
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?
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.
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.
I wank in the shower.
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.
... When the fucking TORIES are the voice of reason?!?
That's OK, we hate ourselves, too. That's one of our characteristics. In fact, I'm hating myself even for thinking this, let alone typing it in and posting it.
Dear Americans.
We have gone through all the data, and we've found that your President Bush was a great guy with no faults.
Sincerely,
Tony Blair
What the hell is up with the UK Government that they constantly are all about shitting all over peoples' rights to privacy (perceived or otherwise)? It's like every few months there's some new story about the insane ideas they've come up with most recently about how to become as Orwellian as possible or something. These tards of narrow perspective need to take a step back and stop making national unilateral decisions (or proposals) based on their power-centric views that are endlessly apathetic/indifferent towards the thoughts and feelings of "the people". Even though I single out the UK government here because it's on-topic to the story, this seems to be a trend that's just about constant with the so-called "civilized world". I can see it doing no more than alienating the crap out of the general populous.
if your mail server ate everything and you'd like your backups from the gov't?
Or just wants to admit its already happening by making it 'legit'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Including all the spam?
What disturbs me about this is that it's my taxes that pay for this crap. I'd prefer them to spend it on something that's worthwhile, something that may be to my benefit - like roads, sewers, hospitals and ambulances. Instead Gorden Scunner Broon and his unelectable cretins (aka MPs) do this in the name of "National Security". This won't make an iota of a difference to national security.
They're also proposing to give us all biometric ID cards to improve national security. Sorry I meant force us to pay nearly a hundred quid each for a Gov't issued piece of useless plastic. That won't make an iota of a difference either.
They'll have a national database with stuff about each one of us. That won't make an iota of a difference for national security. It'll just be another expensive white elephant and another opportunity for them to lose a couple of CD-ROMs in the post.
I won't vote for Broon. I'll be voting for anyone other than Broon and his cronies. I won't have an ID card. I don't want email snooping.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Sure they want to spy on us, but what happens when you put a camera on police and record there actions? They don't like *that* very much do they.. people who *do* record the police often find themselves arrested for --insert bogus reason here-- and their camera blank when they get out of jail in a few hours with no charges filed against them.
If the state can record and monitor the actions of the people, but the people are unable to monitor and record the actions of the state.. then who exactly is master of whom?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
If this goes through, it will not take very long at all before the data is being used, whether by an authorized user or otherwise, for any or all of the following:
Slippery slope and all that. This one should die.
Considering all the stories you hear of UK government IT projects going massively over budget, failing in spectacular ways, and often getting canned completely, i seriously doubt they will be capable of constructing a system capable of doing this that actually works.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
"This will include an awful lot of banking data" and "I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end"
... "The main reason for it is to assist in the investigation of crime," says a Home Office spokesperson. "Each local council can make a decision for themselves on what is the most interest to them."
Its an interesting idea, but it would never be allowed to happen, as the people in power make the laws and so they will always create new laws to keep covering up what they do. They would cover it up by implying it was to protect the country, but it would actually be protecting people in power, from being removed from power by other people who seek power. People in power are power seekers who constantly seek more power and so more importantly, they also fear any loss of power. Its their fear of the loss of power which drives them to constantly close off ways in which they can be undermined by other power seekers.
The people who want power don't want an open and equal world. They don't want equality at all. They want to be higher up than others. They want to be the centre of attention. They want more money than others. They want more power than others and that power allows them to make the rules and laws by which everyone has to work. Throughout history the rules have been biased in the favour of the people in power and that will never change. So the idea of a totally open world is a scifi only utopian world, that cannot ever exist in a world that has some people who also seek power and that will never change. Plus these people who seek power ultimately make the rules, so they will not allow it to go that far, where everyone becomes equal.
What I find fascinating about this news, is how open they are becoming, about their goal of creating literally a total Big Brother police state. Its when they said this
The problem is, they make the laws and so they decide what is a crime. They are behaving with incredible self-righteousness. They always have this attitude of "trust us, we are only trying to help". What the fools constantly fail to see, is that they can ignorantly ignore the harm they are doing to groups of people, as they close mindedly seek to do various new things. (Like e.g. destroy a village of peoples homes to make a new runway). Yet in Big Brother police state, like they want to create, any attempt to speak out and so stop them doing what they are doing, will be see and labelled as a crime by them, as they are already doing with the protest law changes. There will be no way to stop them being unfairly to groups of people, in a world that automatically builds up a profile of ever persons attitudes over the course of their life.
The argument that's often used against this idea that they would bother to build up a profile of people is based on the idea that individuals are too unimportant for the people in power to want to record and profile them. While its true the people in power don't see most individuals as that important at all, what the people in power actually fear is large numbers of people moving together and against the ones in power. Its groups of people forming is what people in power fear and they always have throughout history. This is why people in power want to profile everyone to workout which groups of people can move against them. Power seekers fear groups of people moving against them, to block their ideas and stand against them and all large countries are governed by groups of power seekers using the same methodology. Its a methodology underlying all political systems, because its driven by the the underlying psychology of the the people who seek power.
So the idea of using the same Big Brother monitoring methodology against a government, to stop it behaving unfairly isn't ever going to work, as the people in power will simply keep changing the laws to keep protecting themselves and outlawing any attempt to monitor the government (For example, its
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.