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.'"
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.
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?
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.'"
An of course, once they are in power, they will stop the data logging? - or will they conveniently forget and keep it going?
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.
"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?
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.
We are all just people.
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.
Or just wants to admit its already happening by making it 'legit'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
"When Metascore implementations form within communities, they will periodically ask the existing government (or other authority) to cede power to the open source communities pertinent to their region."
Yeah, the State and Federal governments are really gonna respect that. There are two scenarios that could realistically happen, One is the perpetual ineffectuallity of something like The Second Vermont Republic. Where it is just ignored until it becomes a joke, or you get The Montana Freemen, where a belief in individual sovereignty is repudiated by Federal Agents with big guns and armored vehicles, while any valid claims for secession are ignored by the media in favor of painting you as nutjobs. You don't actually think that government owned voting machines are ever going to show a vote in favor of secession or major government restructuring do you ?
We are all just people.
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/
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!
I was born in the UK and moved to the USA in '95. One of the reasons I do not wish to move back is because of this type of thing. They already have cameras everywhere, and can track you in your car from one end of the country to the other.
When I talk to people in the UK about this, they almost always shrug their shoulders and say that you shouldn't speed, although they do think that it's getting out of hand.
I'm not sure how the people will stop this, as it looks like the Labour party has gone nuts, and an election is years away.
I'm still proud to be British; I'm just glad I'm not living there right now.