Slashdot Mirror
Every Email In UK To Be Monitored
ericcantona writes "The Communications Data Bill (2008) will lead to the creation of a single, centralized database containing records of all e-mails sent, websites visited and mobile phones used by UK citizens. In a carnivore-on-steroids programme, as all vestiges of communication privacy are stripped away, The BBC reports that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says this is a 'necessity.'"
I'm out of here!
Fuck the UK!
Snail mail no longer the subject of jokes.
I thought the cameras were bad enough, but this goes far, far beyond anything remotely reasonable. If they do this, they should have no problem listening to every phone call, opening up every piece of mail and package. In fact, they should just put microphones in every house, restaurant, bus and automobile.
Next year, they'll want to plant RFID into every person.
Is the UK government and authorities completely without morales? Or are they this > close to being destroyed by some threat? Or are they incompetent? Or all of the above?
Hey, Britain. What's going on over there?
PGP.
Assuming email messages in the UK are actually sent using clients and servers in the UK, it seems that this would be a great time to start working on getting a newer fixed up protocol ready to completely replace the easy to snoop on SMTP.
How about this. Lets start a movement for false positives. If you know someone from the UK, email them saying "Hey, dude, dont forget to plant that bomb at the government building on 231 baker st. Oh yeah, and remeber the time we agreed on. 11:15 on tuesday the 21st. " Police state or no police state, they cant arrest us for doing nothing, espically people outside of the UK sending emails to the UK.
This is quite misleading. According to the linked article, the program will only log traffic information, not message content. This may not be good, but it is a far cry from stripping away "all vestiges of communication privacy", and it means that it is not comparable to Carnivore, which actually would log message content.
And Instant Messengers... And the web-based Email clients... And encrypted mail... And..
Hang on, they'll need to take record the ENTIRE Internet!
Seems to me now's a good time to buy shares in Seagate and Western Digital.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
I wonder whether the UK govt will have the money to implement such a grand plan after the Zillion Quids Great Gift to the banks.
:(){
Made worse by UK statute giving the police the authority to order the disclosure of encryption keys or the decryption of encrypted data.
Yay fifth amendment and subsequent interpretations equating disclosing cipher keys with self-incrimination!
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.
Joe the Plumber is laughing his ass off at you Brits.
If you're using snail-mail you must have something to hide!
No sig today...
If this database were publicly accessible, and could be used by anyone to monitor the communications of anyone (like in David Brin's The Transparent Society) then I might not object to this sort of system. It could just as easily be used by the people to find government corruption as it could be used by the government to prosecute individuals.
However, if the database could be used only by a few to monitor anyone, then this is clearly incompatible with the concept of a free country.
How long before somebody thinks it's "necessary" to see the content as well?
No sig today...
I would have thought that the British would have learned not to piss off their citizens in the late 1700s. ;-)
Does none realize that there is no way earth for them to read even a fifth of all email? The key word to remember is spam, spam, spam, spam, sure they could use some form of filtering, but we all know how effective that would be. I'd take five minutes for the "bad guys" to disguise their "bad guy" emails as spam, just like the other 90 percent of email traffic. .
"People should not be afraid of their government, instead a government should be afraid of its people."
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Q: Is the UK government and authorities completely without morales?
A: Lead Programmer Jose Morales left the program recently for a position at Yahoo China. Many pundits claim that without him the implementation of the Communications Data Bill will fail as no one can read his code and his commenting mostly consisted of rambling diatribes against the IMF.
"I want this to be combined with a well-informed debate characterised by openness, rather than mere opinion, by reason and reasonableness," she told the IPPR.
Good luck with that!
People already have there mind made up over how they feel about this issue. However, to me this seems like not a big deal. This information is already stored for long period of a time. It's administration is just changing hands from private to public sector. As long they keep the promise to not allow trawling of the database without probable cause or whatever equivalent they have across the pond, I'm not seeing the big deal. The actual context of the e-mail is off-limits still. I definitely see a distinction between something like this and say COINTELPRO or MI-5 tapping your phone and having you under 24 hour surveillance.
I got a catholic block.
So I'll get it out of the way now... [INSERT NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR REFERENCE HERE] No matter how accurate it may be, it still shocks me that it is *the* go to source for OMGTHEGOVERNMENTRULESUSALLL!!!!! stuff... But it is really scary how accurate it is...
Orwellian down to the doublespeak:
There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the phone or online.
Translation: We might build one now, we might build one later. We might already be building one, just without a plan.
See? No lies, just no plans!
Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation.
In other words: There's going to be a database, but only available to those sufficiently high up in the government. Not to local authorities. What a relief!
If you think I'm being too harsh, read again. If there's not going to be such a database, why would she go on to talk about who should have or not have access to such a database?
Some of the commentary on the speech is at least as disturbing as the speech itself:
The raw idea of simply handing over all this information to any government, however benign, and sticking it in an electronic warehouse is an awful idea if there are not very strict controls about it.
How'd you fall this far, Britain?
So, to translate: It's actually a fine idea, so long as there are sufficiently strict controls. I wonder who gets to decide how strict those controls should be.
And who controls the controllers, so to speak?
More of the same:
The government must present convincing justification for such an exponential increase in the powers of the state.
Again: A giant database of every email ever sent, from now till forever, in Britain, is alright so long as there's sufficient justification.
At least someone has the balls to take a stand:
These proposals are incompatible with a free country and a free people.
Amen.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Your post advocates a
(*) technical (*) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting terrorism. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from dictatorship to dictatorship before a bad federal law was passed.)
(*) Terrorists can easily encrypt their email
( ) Other legitimate email users would be affected
( ) It will stop terrorists for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
[...] anybody feeling ambitious? :)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Does Britain actually have problems with terrorism?
Or is this just a power grab?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
2. I'm sure it will take just a few petabytes of Viagra ads for the UK government to develop a foolproof SPAM filter for us all.
3. Just think of the decline in crap emails from management. No more wading through piles of pointless CC'd emails once they become paranoid.
4. Did someone just approve my budget for video phones for everyone? Try archiving that traffic, UK!
I think we all need to look at the glass being half full on this one
...it's called "The Last Enemy." I caught an episode and the thrust of it seemed to be that these powerful surveillance tools become an instant menace once *one* person uses them for the wrong purpose.
So, apparently some people in the UK care enough to get the word out. These tools are being entrusted to people who don't get it.
It's like giving a nuclear-powered car filled with laser-armed sharks to your local branch of Neo-Nazis. (Sorry, had to get the triple analogy in there)
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ... promised that the content of conversations would not be stored, just times and dates of messages and calls.
I don't trust her any farther than I could throw her, but even if I did, promises mean jack squat. Even if she happens to be the most honest, unabusive
person that exists, there will be someone that abuses this.
That's why the American Founding Fathers had it straight on. If men were angels, there would be no need for government. If angels governed men, there would be no issue.
But since men govern men, this fact must be acknowledged, and governments given as little power as possible over people.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Dear Everyone in the UK, When emailing me, please be up front about the fact that you're emailing me from the UK so I can promptly not respond. Yours, Joe Sixpack The United States of At-Least-We're-Not-Yet-as-Fucked-Up-as-You
Won't criminals simply avoid this measure by using other ways to communicate?
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
Get together a group of 500 similarly frustrated people.
Have each person send everyone on the list a 1GB non-compressible, encrypted message titled "Iraq Iran Afghanistan Islam and North Korea"
This would generate 250TB of data per day that they would need to store.
In a month this would create more than 7 Petabytes of data to warehouse,
which is physically impossible with current technology.
So in short, 500 determined people could bring this system to it's knees in less than a month.
The public consultation on proposals for new laws has ended - the Government will now be considering the responses received Government - Proper Noun Governator - Proper villain
Miss the memo?
Warrantless surveillance of American domestic communications has been going on for years.
Not only has it been comprehensively abused (to exactly nobody's surprise), the spying infrastructure has no legal reason to exist.
That sinister sound you hear is Nixon laughing at you, wearing a Dick Cheney mask.
you had me at #!
It brings me no pleasure to see other countries chipping away at the USA's leadership in totalitarianism.
--
make install -not war
How many ways to get what you want
I use the best
I use the rest
I use the enemy
I use anarchy
I'm a Dual US/UK National. Will these new wiretaps be incompatible with the preexisting NSA taps on My AT&T Cell phone?
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
As long as all internal government emails and website visits are made available to the public. People should not fear their governments, governments should fear their people.
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
*self-censors the comment I was thinking of making*
I mean, OUR government here in the U.S. has gone unquestionably gone bad, but yours is far beyond the pale.
If I lived over there, I think I'd probably start stockpiling some guns... oh, wait... that's illegal now, isn't it?
Terrorism? Check.
Protecting Children/Child Pornography? Check.
Looks like it's got everything that would be needed to pass it were it introduced here in the US. Plus, it has Murder and Drugs as bonuses. (And before someone misreads my post, yes I know this is happening in the UK.)
Of course not. You can trust the highly trustworthy, never corrupt Federal government to keep the corrupt local government's fingers out of that database and to never misuse that database itself. Suuuuure.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good."
Mohandas Gandhi
--
Gandhi's idea was a nationwide protest against the Rowlatt Acts. All offices and factories would be closed. Indians would be encouraged to withdraw from Raj-sponsored schools, police services, the military and the civil services, and lawyers to leave the Raj's courts. Public transportation, English-manufactured goods, especially clothes would be boycotted.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".
--
The underground economy or black market is a market consisting of all commerce on which applicable taxes and/or regulations of trade are being avoided. The term is also often known as the underdog, shadow economy, black economy or parallel economy. In modern societies the underground economy covers a vast array of activities. It is generally smallest in countries where economic freedom is greatest, and becomes progressively larger in those areas where corruption, regulation, or legal monopolies restrict legitimate economic activity.
Obviously, this massive conspiracy will allow Big Brother to see every email sent in every possible manner (webmail out-of-country, SSH, all conceivable indirect manners).
It doesn't sound like a Good Thing(TM), but it doesn't signal the end of times either.
This seems a little extreme.
This is fucking amazing.
Not only does the UK have the most extensive network of CCTV surveillance of its citizens of any country in the world, now every single electronic means of communication will be monitored, intercepted and stored for an in-definite period, with access granted to an unspecified range of bureaucrats and snoops.
WTF for? What evidence is there that this kind of massive untargetted domestic spy effort - against the 99.999% of the population who never commit ANY crimes - can be justified?
It's like fining everyone who uses the freeway just because one or two people might be speeding, or jailing everyone just because one or two people might be murderers.
The UK has NO basis to ever criticize China or any other 3rd world despot or totalitarian state ever again for any abuse of press freedom or censorship or human rights, since now they set the benchmark for over-the-top Govt abuse of power.
As a businessman, I also don't like the idea that if I travel to the UK all my commercial-in-confidence business communications will be recorded by the UK Govt and possibly used to benefit UK companies who may be my competitors. Grrr.
sarin bomb pipebomb anthrax dirtybomb terror terrorist koran allah jihad capitalist imperialist western devil virgins democracy republic america infidel destroy justice doomsday judgment jesus rapture israel jew wall street new york can you believe its come to this
****************
It's a joke. What legitimate terrorists would say anything useful in an e-mail? There is no secure communication again. Security through obscurity is the only option.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm worried about the nutjobs.
But there's one thing I learned in 12 years of using the internet, it's that arguing with gun freaks is like arguing with jeesus freaks, anti-vax freaks or creationist freaks.
Anyway, here's my argument:
4th > 2nd
And:
4th is dead (heck of a job, Georgie!)
If you think your toys are going to be of any help against gov't abuse, well I have a bridge in Wacco, TX. to sell you.
The trouble with big brother sort of things like this is that these programs get out of hand, go out of control, and end up making everyone's lives miserable. And do we really want to live in a world that is so full of cameras and government spying that we can't fart without being caught? And since I'm already on a rant about this sort of thing then what the hell, check out my new web site at this place where I'm going to write about my thoughts about the upcoming election and how I think government should be. Let me sum up by saying that all this government spying over the excuse of doing it to keep us safe well that is not the way I'd solve the security situation around the world. Because you have to find some kind of balance. If you have a government network of ten cameras on every street corner, then, well, you're going to receive so much video data that there won't be enough people in the Universe to watch all of it, much less to pay attention and look for activity that is really suspicious. It just won't work. There is infinity amounts of information in the world. The trick to figure out is how you reject nearly all of it in such a way that most of the remaining information is a positive hit on something suspicious. Unfortunately, governments do not know such boundaries or limits. They pass a law saying there will be fifty cameras on every intersection. They don't stop to think that it will cost millions or maybe even billions of dollars to do it. What do they care anyway? The tax payer will pay for it. This is no way to run a country. It's only a way to take away everyone's liberty without gaining any benefit from it at all. Because governments don't know limits or boundaries, and so they don't know how to do something in moderation. It's too much, too late, ineffective, expensive, and it will accomplish nothing. If only I were running for President right now. Everything would be okay.
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Hopefully it won't take someone in a Guy Fawkes mask who's amazingly good with knives and a subway train full of high explosives to get them to change their ways, hopefully it'll just take the Brittish people standing up and saying Bollocks, piss off! In the meantime, SneakerNet, paper letters, and Tor will have to do, I suppose. Good luck, Brits!
What did you really expect from a country whose #1 anti-social behavior concern is the carrying of hand tools that have been in common use for tens of thousands of years (knives), to the extent that public possession of a tiny lock-blade toenail trimmer is considered a felony? These people are absolutely nutters! But then think on the fact that the English at least are being culturally displaced, such that they no longer live in London. Their own capital city has become a hostile Islamicist enclave (see Edgeware Road, aka Little Arabia). Maybe selective enforcement of rules in a police state is their only option for national survival?
Geez, this makes me wonder how well that ParanoidLinux project is coming along. This sort of story really shows why it's such a good idea—having anonymity and encryption is good, but having them auto-configured and applied seamlessly to your online presence is better, especially since privacy is everyone's right, not just techno-geeks'. With undirected, warrantless government monitoring going on, even non-technical users should start asking for good privacy tech. (Disclaimer: Auto-configuration and seamlessness are not necessarily goals of the ParanoidLinux project, but I anticipate that it could be done if enough developers get involved. I am not involved in the project.)
Hmm, turns out they made their first alpha build earlier this week. That's good news; I've been worried that it would turn into vaporware. (Although in the spirit of the article I suppose I should spell that "vapourware".)
for you guys to get down off of your high horses? The US doesn't look so bad now, does it?
There are many people to whom the UK's system is perfectly reasonable.
Earlier tonight, I had an argument tonight with this woman who favors censoring YouTube. It went like this:
Her: I can't believe people put videos of woman being raped up on YouTube. They should stop that.
Me: Well, they'll take them down, and they're usually taken down pretty damn fast.
Her: Thousands of people can see the videos on the meantime. YouTube should screen all videos before putting them up. If they won't do it, they should be forced.
Me: Ugh. That would break YouTube. The expense would be huge. It'd drive YouTube out of business. Would you really rather have no YouTube at all?
Her: Then we'll have the government pay for it, or even set up an agency to review the videos.
Me: The cost to society would still be astronomical. And doing that would provide a very easy avenue for the government to censor anything anyone finds offensive. It's dangerous. If you want to go down that route, why not pass a law stipulating some huge fine for posting videos of rape? Then YouTube will at least be forced to comply on its own.
Her, crying by this point: I don't care. Fines aren't good enough. People might still see the videos. We have to filter them all.
[cut argument about my supposedly not knowing when to stop debating]
Her: It's not about 'cost to society', it's about protecting women. I'm appalled that you would put not being censored ahead of that. I don't know if I can care about someone who doesn't want to protect women. You should go.
Keep in mind this woman will have a doctorate in less than a year. *sigh*
Finally, the UK government has lent its support to the open access movement by throwing open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. It now encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society. I hope other governments follow suit.
I felt a little sick when I read the headline. Reading the above comment made me feel much more sick. I expect the government to try to do bad things. What is completely dismaying is the general public throwing up its hands and saying "what are you gonna do?" I far prefer political action than waiting for it to get bad enough for revolution.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
My fellow americans:
Guess what? This is as much our burden as it is the UK's. There is an american agenda being pushed here. We already know that the USA's biggest survelliance post is the UK (See NSA's menwith hill listening post). We already know a large amount of traffic is routed through the UK. Finally, we already know the US does not spy on its own citizens, it tells the UK to. In return, the US spies on the UK citizens. That way we're not breaking laws right? This is not a UK only thing. The UK is being used as a world wide communications filter. Let's see average person on earth is connected between 6 hops to any other person on earth. 5 more of these setups and that should have enough data to cover every connected individual, on average. Please check my stats and references and correct me if I am wrong (I recalled them from memory). *sigh, The sad thing is just by knowing your being watched you lose a degree of freedom.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
By strapping magnets to George Orwell's corpse, and surrounding his coffin with wire coils, this law will enable the generation of near limitless clean energy as Orwell spins in his grave!
Excuse me but:
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as stated by the UN.
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
...it's just all legal-like now.
I mean, not only shrug it off or complain or joke about it, but effectively put these measures out of use?
I know we're your wayward cousins from "across the pond" So you can be forgiven if you didn't get the memo. Allow me to quote the most relevant part:
What? You were aware? You just don't care. You like establishing a culture of fear for political purposes, and don't care about what us eggheads say? Oh sorry. Keep calm and carry on.
The National Academies.
that John McCain changed your name from "Joe Sixpack" to "Joe the Plumber" last night, actually.
Read Pynchon.
my, my. another country goes off my vacation checklist. looks like they won't be getting their tourist income from me. oh well. good thing I've got no relatives in the UK, or I'd have to, like, break with them. see you in a few years, um, Brits. the thing is, my country could be the next victim in this war on fear. and YOUR country as well. perhaps it is high time to overthrow this stagnant, repulsive system, and once again strive for global freedom and unity for every man and woman on this planet, so that our race can break the bonds of ignorance, and seize the future for all people. no, I am not the president of the United States. :-]
Holy Shit
truly muffins with orifices
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
It will be very handy to be strolling down the street and have a helpful government man spot you and say "You've got mail".
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
select count(*) from ukmail where content like '%terrorist%' or content like '%bomb%';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
5 gazillion |
+----------+
1 row in set (in 82 years 3 months 18 days 3 hours 18.2 seconds)
The BBC reports that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says this is a 'necessity'
Necessity is not determined by mandate. If this shyte were attempted in Canada, I would not hesitate to drive the 4500km to Ottawa to let them know just exactly what necessity means.
I pray that there reside the requisite folk to achieve the desired effect within 4500km of London.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Free open source super easy to use encryption anyone?
http://getfiregpg.org/ - I can't believe we're on comment 213 and I had to say that.
p.s. If you're using Windows of any kind, your firegpg encrypted emails are probably off limits to casual mass snooping but don't forget your operating system has a back door specifically for this purpose:
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5263/1.html
Get FireGPG NOW, Linux in the long run.
Now what.
If this plan comes into effect I will be ashamed to be a British citizen. Thankfully I live elsewhere.
I'm writing my friend a message
In plaintext for you to see
His name it is Osama
And his last name starts with B
My friend he makes explosives
And possibly anthrax
He sends it via envelope
And tiny little sacks
He doesn't like some people
He calls them infidels
He mentioned he was going
To send them all to hell
This message is sarcastic
I know no terrorists
But it's got a lot of keywords
That are on your danger lists
Your policemen may not like it
But to them I will scoff
I don't like in England
So you can just f*** off.
These days, with so much email spam, the SNR for your actual emails will be pretty low anyway, so you don't really need to worry much about your privacy as they will have to sieve through tonnes of spam to locate your actual emails. :-)
The BBC reports that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says this is a 'necessity'.
Looking at the devastating acts of terror done to the city of Manchester in April 27 last year, and the continued threats to Edinburgh these weeks with potential bomb raids by the agressor, this is absolutely necessary. No, wait... What?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
https://yro.slashdot.org/.... Why can't I browse slashdot with https ???
Right now they are just going to record who sent something to whom. So send only SMALL messages and send a lot of them. And use a lot of different email addresses so every possible combination gets recorded. And be sure to reply. Drown out the spam!
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I would imagine a couple of approaches to either stop this or dilute the effectiveness of this.
1) Ask your MP how they would vote for or otherwise support this, if they support it, tell them they don't have your vote.
2) Create applications that randomly trawl the internet, send emails and make phone calls to hide any real use within the noise of the other activity, rendering the database useless, a sort of fuckem@home application.
3) Set up offshore company to wash communication transactions, I pretty sure the Russian Mafia have the money for this, though how much better than a government database that would be I'm not sure.
All I can say is "Viva PGP/GPG!" Encryption is your friend.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
From "the official government website for citizens":
This email snooping bill is meant
to ensure strict safeguards continue to strike the proper balance between privacy and protecting the public.
Since there is no privacy in Britain anymore then this should be rather easy to accomplish,
As a person who does not live in Britain how can I ensure that the British government is not reading the email that I send to my British friends? The British government already said that they will insist on people giving them private keys to encrypted materials. It's about time that I started sending suspicious emails to police offers in Britain. We need a good "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" (Ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street) scenario to happen in Britain.
How is this different from what is already in place? Phone companies and ISPs already keep logs and records of these things; how else would the phone company be able to send you a itemised bill? Tne new thing is that they want to collect it in one, central database for convenience.
Nobody in their right mind would imagine that any government authority would be able to listen to all phone conversations happening in the UK or read all emails being sent - let alone analyse them and understand them. And that's just the meaningful emails - add SPAM to that; it just can't be done. So where is actually the big, bad surveillance? As far as I can see, the reason why they want this is because it takes too long to go and retrieve the records from individual ISPs and phone companies - it was a lot easier when there was only one phone company. Speed is of the essence in dealing with crime, especially since they can't get through with extending the period the police can retain terror suspects, and having it all in one database will make it a lot faster to find out who communicated with your suspect when and where.
So, is it worth making a big fuss about? Not to my mind. What does worry me is that this is yet another big project that a public authority will let EDS handle. That combination has in the past led to too many failures and I think they are going to waste a lot of money at a time when it would be better spent elsewhere. That should comfort those who are worried about this project - it doesn't have much chance of getting off the ground. Of course, it shouldn't take a competent database developer many months to make this work; perhaps they should have chosen to develop it as open source?
You can't trust this bitch. Anytime her office gets anything, they ask for more. They started out by asking for 14 days detention without charge. When they got that, they started the push to 28 days. Their last try was for 42 days.
If they get traffic information, it'll just be a matter of time before they go for content as well.
They'll just lose the data anyway.
Perhaps if they DRMed it that would keep it safe ... Until the RIAA sued them for accessing their own (copy of your) data.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Thanks God. They will have to monitor first millions and millions of junk email. Don't fight spammer, help them ;-)
How does this work for Brits who have hosts based in the US and who use SSL on their transactions (e.g. IMAPS and SMTPS)? If I email my family who I've given email addresses to then the email will go from the UK to the server in the US through SSL, and then my family will download the email via IMAP over SSL, so the only time it'll be plainly visible is in the US on the server.
Okay, so it falls down if I need to email anyone who isn't on my server, because emails to UK ISPs will still go through the UK, but given the price of servers and the ease of setting up SSL then it doesn't exactly seem like a difficult think to get around!
Neither the U.K. nor the U.S.needs to set up a database. I am sure Google could be persuaded to hand over their information at a price.
A very cheap alternative could be negotiated if the CIA and MI6 would be willing to accept advertising links in their intelligence reports.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/no-to-1984/
Please sign if you're a UK citizen and are against this bill. Even if you know that it'll run millions of pounds over budget, will clog up instantly with unusable amounts of data, and cause thousands (if not millions) of false-positive terrorism hits.
Terrorism isn't anything new, neither are things like gangs and organised crime. It just seems to get more attention now, or perhaps we are more influenced by it.
I remember reading about the days of the 'diligence' in holland, stage-coach for the americans, and the amount of violence in those days makes our age seem very peaceful indeed. When was the last time a train was robbed or even an aircraft hijacked? On the other hand, piracy (the real kind) never went away and seems to have a rivival of sorts with even a no-go area where the more powerful nations on the planet fear to go with their most advanced vessels.
So why do we need tools now to govern we didn't need before? Because the people breaking the rules got tools they didn't have before?
That leads to the question, do we need rules.
The answer to that is obvious, just look at a busy intersection when the lights failed. Chaos. Now imagine if ALL the rules for traffic were gone. No maximum width/height/length. No max weight. No max speed, no min speed. No drive on the left/right side. Remove the rules and not only will you have speeders trying to set new records down your street, you will have SOMEONE trying to move a 100ton bridge over the highway with tank threads and nuclear explosive propulsion without shielding.
So does the UK goverment need this new tool? Don't know. The UK goverment like all goverments faces the fundemental problem of trying to rule people who don't want the rules to apply to them but need the rules to apply to everyone else. I of course can speed, drive through red lights but if everyone else does it, I suffer for it so they can't. Just me.
Since the rest of the world isn't yet aware that I am the center of the universe the "Me me me" style goverment won't work and so the goverment must do the unpopular, applying the same rules to everyone, including me.
As for goverment surveilance. Would you spy on your neighbour? No? To 1984? Would you report a car driving on the wrong side of the highway? Why is that different? Do you think that camera surveilance in road tunnels to watch for problems so that lanes can be closed of is a good idea? Or should tunnels be anarchy, every man for himself, no surveilance?
Then how is this different from surveilance in other areas?
Should the goverment have the right to wiretap phones with court orders? Then why is email different?
I think the UK goverment is doing the wrong thing here. Not so much for privacy reasons although they are huge but because the tool won't work. They are just applying a band aid to appear to be doing something.
But I also think the typical kneejerk reaction of "surveilance == bad" is to short-sighted. We have had our phone records logged since telephones were invented, how else do you think they bill you. Why should email be different? Snail mail has gone through goverment hands for ages, why should email be different?
The question we as a society should ask ourselves is WHAT kind of society we want. We can't have our cake and eat it to. If you want traffic rules, you need someone to enforce them and give them the means to do so. Rules without means to enforce them and observe them being broken are meaningless. People often forget this last part.
So, do we want communications un-monitored with all that entails (and please anarchists, point me to a forum run by an anarchist that is TRULY open. No firewal rules, no moderation, no post limits, nothing.) or do we want a society with certain rules and the enforcement of those rules?
Either choice has its problems but you can't want it both ways.
If you want freedom of communication, then you must embrace spam and browse slashdot at -1. If you browse slashdot at higher levels then you have given the powers that be control of the communications send to you. Hell, since slashdot doesn't allow really small posts or really large ones, this is true no matter what level you read it at.
I think Douglas Adams still came to the right c
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Exactly. Ericcantona, the poster of this story is having a good laugh at the expense of the tin foil hat brigade frothing at the mouth over this. Especially considering what he posted is complete mis-information. Here's a quote from an informed article:
Only a fool believes everything he/she reads on Slashdot without checking out the facts first.
We have always been at war with $enemy.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Article 4 requires that the data is only disclosed to officials ONLY IN SPECIFIC cases.
So blanket data capture is not legal within the data retention directive and she cannot do it.
Anyone ISP who chooses to hand that data over to them will be breaking the law, regardless of what Jacqui says the law is. Any telecoms company that does will be liable for their actions.
Article 4
Access to data
Member States shall adopt measures to ensure that data retained in accordance with this Directive are provided ONLY to the competent national authorities in SPECIFIC cases and in accordance with national law. The procedures to be followed and the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain access to retained data in accordance with necessity and proportionality requirements shall be defined by each Member State in its national law, subject to the relevant provisions of European Union law or public international law, and in particular the ECHR as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights.
In Australia the government rightly fears the people. Try to pull this one on us would result in a whole lot of public outcry and would cost the government, whichever side tried to do it, the next election and the power for a very, very long time.
I for one would be bannering buildings with "Keep your hands off my email you dirty damned apes" and other such statements.
...this?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/11/0257222
She said: "Our ability to intercept communications and obtain communications data is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking.
Rather, the "War on Drugs" is a serious crime against humanity.
Oh for fucks sake.
The Gestapo rounded up and executed the political opponents of Hitler. Thousands of Germans were killed in 1942. These people were not resistance fighters but students, trade unionists, 'communists', etc.
The Gestapo had V-men in every part of German society and bureaucracy. To suggest that they respected anyone's privacy is absurd.
The Gestapo were part of the SS, who killed several old men in my village in reprisal for a stolen map.
Please maintain a sense of perspective. What Britain is doing is frightening and stupid, but it is not comparable to the Gestapo, SS, Stasi, Guoanbu, KGB etc.
Signed, a refugee from Britain now living in a house in France once occupied by the SS.
M-x spook
Can they possibly store all the spam that's sent ?
D
I thought Americans were suposed to be the stupid ones!! The UK is becoming George Bush's wet dream!!!
And I'm totally unimpressed that many people aren't upset over this.
Time to move over to https://www.hushmail.com/ I guess.
glad to know they'll magically filter out my packets, as I'm not yet a citizen
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
There is a 10 Downing Street petition setup against this bill, if you're from the UK and feel strongly against the bill you can sign http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/no-to-1984/
If the information in the database can be used to identify you (which it obviously can at the very least for emails & mobile phone communications) then you can send a Freedom of Information Request to the Government to be sent a copy of said information.
Now, in itself one request wouldn't really make them reconsider - but if a few tens of thousand or more people started making these demands - which the government has to comply to - then they might get so swamped with requests, that it becomes too costly to maintain the system.
Jacqui Smith
smithjj@parliament.uk
House of Commons Fax number: 020 7219 4815
House of Commons Phone number: 020 7219 5190
Constituency Fax number: 01527 523355
Constituency Phone number: 01527 523355
Additional Info: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/jacqui_smith/redditch
Home Office:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/contact-us?form=general
public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Tel: 020 7035 4848
Fax: 020 7035 4745
This drop down to 4.97 Mbits. Too much still ? Try to 20000 persons. That is 1 megabits, what most people in western europe have.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The ball of fascism started rolling a loooong time ago fellas. It is the natural progression of thinking you can change things in -this- world. Our physical plane, our beautiful sweet slashdot.org, is a world of outcomes. We will -never- fix these serious problems by attempting to adjust the variables in the physical world. We keep trying to sort, filter, and hide and show columns on our spreadsheet of Earth. Nobody is attempting to reprogram the query behind it... this is the only way. We need to adjust the query, the hidden mechanics behind the output you perceive via your five senses. All of us. Please, check out Bnei Baruch. It is a flowchart for how to fix these problems - not how to believe, or think, or feel, or any of that shit. Just pure, scientific methods to fix the problem in the mechanics. It's Kabbalah. It's not fucking red strings, Madonna and insurance salesmen. It's a flowchart for the most basic assembly you'll ever understand.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
I'm not posting this as an Anonymous Coward - My name's Chris Kennedy. And I hope someone mods this up so that anyone who sees this news article will look at this link:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/no-to-1984/
This is a link to a petition against this proposed bill, and while it only started today, and is still small, I'm going to be progressively posting it on every single website which mentions this story. Please, if you're a UK Citizen, click through and sign this petition.
I for one am not going to settle for an erosion of my civil liberties.
"To give up any amount of Freedom, however small, in pursuit of security - Is to give up the very idea of Freedom itself." - Benjamin Franklin
.... how the website part of this stands if you have an open wireless router.
I strongly suspect whoever is in charge of the connection will be held under equal responsibility if people do illegal things on that connection, which would probably mean the end of public wifi.
Could be wrong, just throwing thoughts around.
I'm hoping that I'm so terribly wrong, but give them time. Please, please let me be wrong.
One way to combat this stupid idea is to increase the amount of spam-mails on the net, filling their uber-database with endless crap.
Have an email client which silently replies to each and every spam you receive, while also junking it so that you never see it. When every computer is sending out hundreds of replies to spam every day the surveillance database will have to handle billions of messages.
Apart from the internet melting under the load, what could go wrong?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
I just have to pay for rent instead and I have to make my own meals.
If a policeman tries to kidnap me, I'll do my best to kill one.
This is giving me the tears... ...of happiness! I love you all!
Yours sincerely
Erich Mielke
So what about mail sent with web-browser clients of servers outside the UK - such as Googlemail, or Squirrelmail to a hosted server somewhere beyond UK jurisdiction (including treaties with other countries)?
What if you have your own SMTP MTA (getting rarer now, but some still roll their own). Messages could be intercepted by sniffing all SMTP traffic, but that _may_ require a warrant.
The content of mail is actually unimportant to the authorities - what is important is who you correspond with (which is the intent behind this). Anyone intelligent with nefarious intent knows this, and will use alternative channels of communication.
This is politicians posturing to be seen to be doing something.
The Gestapo was different from SS, which was different from SA.
Although Gestapo was "owned" by SS, it was administered by the Reich Security Service. Similar to all other dual-control organisations which Hitler in his inherent supreme paranoia wanted to be: fighting amongst each other.
The fact of German V-men has been a myth. Even in 1939, Gestapo employed only about 60-90 informers in Saar-Brucken area.
Iam not justifying Gestapo or Hitler's atrocities.
Am just stating facts: yes in wartime people do get shot for stealing maps. The same way iraqis are "collaterally killed" by US troops.
What Britain is doing is very very frightful. This kind of ALL-Seeing information falling into the hands of a paranoid like Hitler is enough to throw the country into chaos and war easily.
Plus why can't the government become more transparent? They seek to x-ray me, but stall investigations into their own incompetency or outright bribery allegations.
How come the State is more important than me? Am the State, and this is a Government for the people.
In every way this ruling is more dangerous.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
She (and previous home secretaries) insisted that 42 days detention without trial was essential too, but has just abandoned that after the recent defeat in the House of Lords. There's a big difference between what has already been passed into law and a bargaining position taken at the start of a legislative process. A bill is not will happen, it's what somebody in government wants to happen. Not the same thing at all.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
We can always hope... then again, being the cynic that I am, I believe the British are no more or less lazy slaves of media and commerce than the rest of us.
The times where a people could be roused to action by simple words are long gone, I think. So let me borrow from V for Vendetta too: It's going to take the shot kid to start the uprising. Whether it's going to take just the one or hundreds of them, that's the sad question in my opinion.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Governments are all about power and power means military power, but even more important is the power spend someone else's money to influence people. As long as people are not aware of the amount of money being taken from them to be given back to them for their votes, nothing will change.
The only real way to change anything is detailed here:
http://www.stopwithholding.com/
When you said you wanted to be like the USA, we didn't think you would take the worst parts!
Well... everyone has to start SOMEWHERE, right? -Naomi Wolf on Democracy. I'm not saying I agree totaly, but... makes you think, no? V for Vendetta is FAR away, though.
-Neurosis should be taken out in sex instead of politics and IT.
Although Gestapo was "owned" by SS, it was administered by the Reich Security Service.
The Reich Security Head Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) was part of the SS:
"The RSHA was the central SS-department; all official and secret police and security organs of the Third Reich were led by the RSHA"
The fact of German V-men has been a myth. Even in 1939, Gestapo employed only about 60-90 informers in Saar-Brucken area.
I don't find this statistic particularly compelling: Saarbrucken is quite a small place and 1939 was early the war.
Am just stating facts: yes in wartime people do get shot for stealing maps.
You misunderstand me. The resistance stole the map, the SS shot some innocent old men in reprisal. Because of this the resistance in the village were unable to operate in the area until after D-Day when they captured several tanks armed only with civilian weapons.
The same way iraqis are "collaterally killed" by US troops.
Reprisal attacks are not the same as 'collateral damage'. In fact the British RAF killed many times more French citizens in the area where I live than the Germans did: 14,800 in La Manche alone. That was 'collateral damage'.
What Britain is doing is very very frightful.
I quite agree, as stated in my post.
I just think that if you make statements which suggest the UK government passing laws (even as draconian as this one) is 'worse than the Gestapo ever was,' you undermine the credibility of your argument. The Gestapo weren't even subject to rule of law: the organisation was granted immunity from any judicial action by a law passed in 1936.
The Gestapo took people who had been denounced as enemies, and executed them without trial. By any objective measure that is worse than what the UK government is doing.
Napalm toothpaste.
What the hell is going on in the UK? I mean, shit, the U.S. is bad, but at least we have the EFF and the ACLU to slow this stuff down.
This is fucked up. UK citizens, how do we help? I mean, shit, if it happens in the UK, it will probably come to the U.S. (and vice versa)
Given the high-profile data "misplaced" in laptops and on CDs the past few years, I'm not worried about what the government's going to do with this as much as I am about what random guys buying my phone logs off the internet are going to do with it. Spammers would love to find out who your top 5 email correspondents are for address spoofing, for example, and this database would give them exactly that.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Set up a server in some god-forsaken 3rd world country with no cyber monitoring capability or laws, lease VPN accounts to anyone who wants privacy.
Once connected to the VPN, you use that for web browsing, email, and IM.
A petition has already been started on the downing street website (http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/no-to-1984/).
Feel free to express your views against this.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Am sorry for misunderstanding what you said earlier.
But tell me, how far is it going from this draconian law to becoming a Gestapo state?
Fifty years ago such laws would be have been shouted down by the press and people, not to mention the government itself, but today everyone is silent.
Plus, today if am jailed for forgetting an encryption key, tomorrow my neighbors may be jailed for not telling the government i encrypt my disks!
Freedom is a fragile delicate flower. Once lost, regaining it is a lost cause.
The more we allow government into our private lives, the more we will be pushed out of our homes.
Soon, the schools will be teaching that spying on parents for seditious thoughts is a necessity for security. They will also teach that Security over Freedom is more preferable and that in order to prevent terrorists it is necessary to spy on everyone's bedroom activities since if terrorists can be stopped from being conceived, then the State has ensured security for all.
Tell me where will it stop.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
As I use a US mail provider, and TLS/SSL to connect to it. They can't tell what email I get.
My Journal
Don't forget the telescreens, not just cameras. The UK is part of Oceania, ya know.
So, are you at war with Eurasia or Eastasia? I can never tell for sure.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Not that I agree with the governments intentions, but the measure that is proposed intends to collect data about communications, not the content.
That is the destination of every email, phone call and start and end time of every session with an ISP will be logged.
Some of this is required due to EU law, but other measure are UK only.
See the Register story or the actual consultation doc.
A surveillance program (not quite the same as the UK one, but still) was recently fought back here in Sweden. It was mainly a protest led by bloggers, both liberals and leftists, who forced the government into an embarassing crisis as big media and people in general noticed what was happening. The government finally was forced to make big changes, and more importantly, they were taught an important lesson. Perhaps now they fear us, the people, a little bit.
It is possible to fight someone like this. So why aren't people doing just that in the UK? Take it to the blogosphere and the streets. If you don't protest loudly, I'm sorry to say you deserve what you get.
How do you know I'm not using IP over letter carriers?
We all saw how much joy Jacqui had with her last foray into anti-terror legislation. This bill will similarly be shat upon from a great height by the House of Lords. That's assuming it even makes it through the Commons.
Jacqui Smith can fucking suck on it. Jack Straw was a twat as well - must be a requirement for the Home Secretary position.
C-x C-s C-x k
FYI Johnny "Rotten" Lydon is currently advertising butter on English television. I would call it a sell out, but the ads are quite funny.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrRccqnCb3U&feature=related
She said: "Our ability to intercept communications and obtain communications data is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking."
why don't they just nuke the whole world into pieces? that would stop terrorism, serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking once and for all!
always remember: the ermächtigungsgesetz (the law that gave hitler total control over germany) was an anti-terror law!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good."
Mohandas Gandhi
Gandhi's philosophy is pure hypocrisy. That motherf***er Gandhi also suggested British (and other forces) to surrender to Hitler and suggested Jews to commit suicide after 6 million of them were killed. Did you forget that?
...say, by emailing everyone in UK a copy of George Orwell's 1984 and a link to GnuPGP.
Yes I know, this is a fantasy. Where would you possibly get all UK email addresses?
---
jamei... is taking bets on how soon until this database is "lost", and appears on ebay :)
Relax, you can be assured that this data will be kept under "strict controls"
I for one welcome our new soviet overlords, and the birth of the great nation of soviet Britain! What will be the Queen's title from now on? Her Majesty Comrade?
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
If you feel strongly, write to your MP:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
60m silent seething people will achieve nothing. A good few letters written pointing out your issue with this bill may achieve something.
But don't put your real name and address, just to be on the safe side.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Dear Comrade Mohammed, regarding our meeting int Tehran this month I need to tell you that we provided the wrong manual. You need to connect the red wires of course. Hope this did not cause inconvenience yet. Long live the revolution! xxx P.S.: The London underground is really lovely in autumn, isn't it?
So if the Gestapo had not killed anyone that would have made them better? If they had just concentrated on shipping them off to the concentration camps it would have been ok? Not to mention the argument you are missing: The Britain's do not speak german, so they could never be like the Gestapo. Is there a line you must cross or a form you have to fill out? If I just torture people, am I better then a murderer? Is shipping people off to Guantanamo any better then shipping people off to a concentration camp? Not to mention the Gestapo is the wrong group. The former East-German StaSi is better. Compared to the StaSi, what the Britans and US are doing is worse by a couple of factors.
How are they going to collect that data? What if I run a Server/VPS outside of the UK and tunnel my traffic through that server using SSH? They can't possibly collect that data? The would only see me being connected to a server outside the UK.
If the information in the database can be used to identify you (which it obviously can at the very least for emails & mobile phone communications) then you can send a Freedom of Information Request [opsi.gov.uk] to the Government to be sent a copy of said information.
No you can't. Information held for 'law enforcement purposes' is generally exempt from such requests.
That's exactly what I thought, he's just selling out! In the end, everyone has to eat, or pay for their mansions, or whatever it is that rich and/or famous people do.
which is totally what she said
This is going to have a chilling effect on some people's hobbies. This government has shown a stunning lack of ability to secure or hold onto data.
Who wants their boss to know what kind of porn they browse ?
Now seems like a good time to tell you all about the book I read yesterday. It is called "Little Brother", written by Cory Doctorow, and available for free download, as well as in dead tree form. Very fascinating.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Every email needs to be encrypted and every web site needs to use SSL. That's the only way we'll beat all the control attempts by the various governments.
UK:
Does the proposal apply only to emails send from eu/uk based ((web)email)providers? Or any emails travelling through their networks?
One good campaign to try and fix some of that is http://thirty-thousand.org/ , where they want to have 1 member of the house for at most every 30,000 people. Considering the House hasn't been expanded since 1910 aside from Hawaii and Alaska, it has been very distorted from what it should be.
Uh, yeah, right... That would put the number of reps in the House at over 10,000. I think fair representation is a must, but pick a more realistic number please. Could you imagine the elections for that?
It's okay.. The government already knows them
They can only monitor what they can read? Nice vpn connection in another country and all they can see from me is encrypted traffic going back and forth! No access for them!!
Why not start a revolution! Revolt. Don't settle for this. You should march down to Parliament right now and... Oh wait. They took your guns. hmm. good luck with that
This stuff was in place under Clinton. I know an Ameritech switch tech that set up OC-192s from every tandem switching office in Michigan to North Carolina, the OC-192s carry mirrored traffic off the tandem switch. The processing requirements to mirror traffic so screwed up the tandem switches that they split the four tandem offices covering Metro Detroit into seven tandem offices. In the case of the Pontiac tandem it handed over up to 60,000 calls at any time, now every tandem handles about 25,000 calls peak. So if you make a call outside your central office and it doesn't go over a DIOT (Direct Inter Office Trunk) you're call is being recorded.
So this predates the Bush Administration. It is so mind boggling that something this huge has been set up and it has taken over 12 years to be exposed. But hey, one single switch tech did this to every tandem office in one state, that means that as many as 50 people knew about this, plus the software guys at Nortel and Lucent.
On what do they "loose their position"?
I was planning to make a visit over there when I visit my home country in a few years. I wanted to try some "authentic" fish n chips. But if its a 'necessity' to spy on your own citizens like this.... well they can take their fish n chips and sit on them. PFFF. I'll take my lousy American dollar somewhere else. :B
Can all fish swim?
Protect it with DRM! No-one will ever break that!
(written in response to this fabulously awful idea)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
What Britain is doing is frightening and stupid, but it is not comparable to the Gestapo, SS, Stasi, Guoanbu, KGB etc.
Yet.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I find it interesting how your little website fails to point out that the majority of said NSA surveillance was monitoring satellite phones knowingly provided by the US government. The people who were supplied with these phones were even told they would be monitored. Granted, there are some 4th amendment questions about this practice, but it's not as sneaky as you make it seem.
That said, I agree the US government is getting a little too big for its britches in this regard and is certainly heading down a very slippery slope. Is it as bad as the UK? No, not yet at least, but I'm sure the US government will work hard to play catch-up to keep us all safe from them 'terrorists'
Don't be silly. It is well known they detect and ignore false names and addresses. They check the name and address you supply against the Electoral Roll, and as an additional check against RM's deliverable addressee database (not much discussed outside RM). Also, the petitions website is a waste of time because it doesn't change anything. I suppose you could use it if you like receiving one of those super persuasive emails from them afterwards where they try to explain how and why you were wrong to take whatever resolution was proposed in the petition.
If things ever get too bad, you can always take up arms and restore the government of the people... ...Oh, wait.
Well, you still have pointy kitchen knives....
Oh, wait....
Nevermind.
You should welcome your new overlords.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Even if passed, it would be impossible to enforce. Joe 6 Pack can setup an email server on any desktop computer with an internet connection.
"The draft programme proposes Bills that the government plans to introduce in the Queen's Speech later in 2008. Use the links below to read summaries of the Bills. The public consultation ended on 6 August 2008 and the government will now consider the responses received."
So if there was a public consultation, why is it only now coming to light in the media?
Every communication via device is monitored. Ouch, its starting to make V for Vendetta look more like a documentary.
ericcantona writes "The Communications Data Bill (2008) will lead to the legalization of the existing single, centralized database containing records of all e-mails sent, websites visited and mobile phones used by UK US, and Canadian citizens. In a carnivore-on-steroids programme, as all vestiges of communication privacy are stripped away, The BBC reports that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says Oppressive Orwellian government is a 'necessity'."
There, fixed that for ya.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: At least they're honest about it. If you don't think the US government already does the same thing, you're deluding yourself. They just don't tell us about it.
David, please stop spamming your blog every day on slashdot. You're not adding value to the conversations. Your comments seem like barely disguised ads for your blog. What would you think if everybody else started spamming their blogs in comments all over slashdot? What you're doing degrades the commons - our commons. So, please, stop. Okay?
Gestapo and SS were separate organizations - the first one was the Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei), so it was a government institution, the other - Schutzstaffel (Protective Squadron) was an arm of the National Socialist party.
Hopefully we got over that blowing up people from another religious viewpoint so our people from the "true religion" can run the country stuff years ago.
Actually, not that long ago in Northern Ireland but thankfully it seems to be stopping.
That was after all the reason Guy Fawkes and his friends went to blow up Parliament and the King - not because they wanted an anarchist freestate, or a republic, but because they wanted the protestant king and parliament out and replaced with their chosen catholic king and parliament.
You forgot to mention one important tidbit: she's running messages for "the criminal underworld".
A videogame like that only further solidify in people's minds the "you must have something to hide" myth. It would be admirable if she was running messages for everyday people who don't want the government reading their crap, but that's not as "sexy."
Please help metamoderate.
As the housing crisis shows, people tend not to do anything about bad laws (or lack of good ones) until something goes really wrong. We had Nixon, McCarthy, and J.E.Hoover in our history to remind us of the downfalls of unchecked domestic spying. The Brits have yet to be burned, it seems. (And we are ourselves are forgetting our history.)
Table-ized A.I.
Hack the government's stuff and expose as much as can of what they do, earn, steal. Make sure that individual government and parliament persons life becomes a hell.
.. as long as you feel the need to hang some contractors out to dry for one (1) human mistake whilst your government appears incapable of retaining ANY information given to them (or -digressing slightly- money) I think you lack the essential components: trust in you or other cronies (a) doing it REALLY for our benefit (it would IMHO be a first, so no thanks), (b) actually doing it right (you lack a bit of track record there too) and (c) ensuring access is controlled (given what the DVLA is doing without any restraint I think that's a no as well).
Meanwhile I recommend you start shoring up trust in government by answering FOI requests properly and make the process by which you (a) get these ideas (b) validate them and (c) finance them (including who is deepest in the pork barrel) fully transparent.
Given the quality of the proposals so far I expect item (a) to involve a serious quantity of illegal drugs, which may explain where they get to after being confiscated.
Have a nice year, as soon as you have left government.
Sincerely yours,
Guy Fawkes.
I dunno. My attitude is if I can't have one, no one else should get to either. Things like breeder reactors, and automatic weapons come to mind.. If they would let me fire a Tommy-gun, I would move, just to live in a nuclear-free area.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
And how, exactly, will this make the slightest difference to someone who buys a domain name, hosts it on a server in another country, and locates the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 services on nonstandard ports -- encrypted or not? Are they really planning to do deep packet inspection on every byte that flows through a government-monitored router in the UK? Or are they really just clueless enough to believe that everyone in the UK gets their email via their local, government-compliant ISP?
This isn't a rhetorical question... if the real goal is to fight groups like Al-Qaeda, this law will do absolutely NOTHING, because Al-Quaeda *specifically* happens to be run by individuals who seem to be quite a bit more technologically savvy than most members of the British Parliament and US Congress/Senate. If the "host the server elsewhere, on a nonstandard port, and encrypt it if necessary via SSL and/or PGP" solution occurred to me in ~3 seconds while eating breakfast and still slightly groggy after getting up, I suspect "the bad guys" would figure it out almost as quickly ;-)
On the other hand, if terrorism is just an excuse (like it's become in the US), and the real goal is to use it to let law enforcement personnel use email sniffing to fight far more mundane crimes ("d00d, what's your dealer's phone #, and how much is he charging for a dime bag this week?") committed by unsophisticated peons in this week's ${WarOnEverything}, well... it might have a shot.
Also, the petitions website is a waste of time because it doesn't change anything. I suppose you could use it if you like receiving one of those super persuasive emails from them afterwards where they try to explain how and why you were wrong to take whatever resolution was proposed in the petition.
It's a way of indicating your opinion directly to the government. Doesn't mean it replaces other methods such as writing to your MP etc but it is better than doing nothing or complaining elsewhere where those in power won't hear ones voice.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
We're English - we do this sort of thing in a much more civilized and less efficient manner than the Germans.
Besides, it's still early days in this budding police state.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I've got my rifle and my pistol ready to go.
As if any of you is THAT important or interesting for the government to follow their email threads.
I for one, think privacy through unprivacy might be the solution. OPen up all your data, and the more open it is the less anyone will care to look at it. Haven't you ever lost something that was infront of you in plain sight? It was right there infront of your eyes but because it was so un-obfuscated, it was actually more so.
I brake for Osmosis Bin Ladels
I guess us insane Americans with our assault rifle fetishes aren't looking so crazy anymore, eh?
spookfodder
And this folks, is why we have Enigmail. http://enigmail.mozdev.org/home/index.php
if I were able to see further, it was because I stood on the shoulders of Giants -Newton
What is wrong with the Brits? They hit bottom, started digging, hit rock, and now are reaching for the explosives.
Peek-a-boo, we see you, Winston.
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
It happened in the US first and is yet another infringement on our rights by the gov't. Add it to the ever-growing list of violations:
They violate the 1st Amendment by opening mail, caging demonstrators and banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, Wikipedia and Facebook.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing at Gitmo.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting illegal wars without declaration.
Impeach them all (both parties) and save this great country.
Last link (unless Google Books caves to the gov't and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
Who the hell modded that informative?
In her speech Jacqui Smith made it quite clear that they do not intend to store the contents of the emails, just the who, when and where. It sounded to me like they'd store the envelope.
PGP won't help you at all in this situation. It only encrypts the contents of the message, but who it is sent to, when it was sent, and the subject line of the message are still easily available.
Now, I'm not suggesting that this turd of a bill might not later lead to even worse surveillance, with the contents being stored as well, but in its currently proposed form PGP won't help you at all.
There is currently a petition against the new bill:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/no-to-1984/
If more people sign, maybe the powers that be will take note. It's worth a try!
George Orwell was a Brit. He didn't come up with 1984 et al. in a vacuum.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Has anybody thought about creating only one webmail account and share the password?
No email sent, only drafts saved.
...free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commissioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.
The swedish parliment voted in a similar law earlier this year that will allow the civil agency FRA to monitor all traffic passing over swedish borders. See:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/05/037201
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/17/0126243
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/09/1930207
Are they going to be monitoring gopher activity as well? Could be time for those in the UK to go underground a bit.
the UK is the country that most, if not all, trends start from, at the last few hundreds of years. This total un-freedom will soon be coming to the USA, and to the rest of the world afterwards.
People were accessing Internet e-mail software remotely via text terminals across the world even almost before anyone had a networked computer on their own desk that could run e-mail software directly. And the standard protocol for remote terminal access these days, SSH, uses ad-hoc key encryption key negotiation so it doesn't leave anything behind for third parties to use to decode the traffic later. *Poof* No more monitoring.
But, more generally, the nature of the Internet means that monitoring of a couple of vanilla protocols in the small percentage of the world's Internet hosts that happen to be in some geographical area isn't going to catch communications between dedicated, thorough criminals who have time to prepare and learn things about security.
Make of that what you will; either 1) the powers that be in the UK don't understand the nature of the Internet, or 2) they feel this will be worthwhile even just to catch the few big fish that are sloppy, or 3) perhaps they don't care about "proportionality" at all and this net is intended for what it's obviously much better suited for: catching lots of small fish (unintentional, unprepared, or small-time crooks).
If I tended to think that legislators, when it came to technology regulation, were ignorant about the real world and often went off half-cocked, then I would favour the first theory.
If I tended to think that politicians were overly sentimental and/or spendthrifts, then I would favour the second theory.
As it stands I have trouble deciding between those first two theories. =)
That last theory is what usually feeds the big-brother paranoia of computer security people. Since it usually comes along with some kind of conspiracy theory about a secret organization, I don't usually give it credence. However, although I don't read a lot of news from the UK, it definitely caught my attention when it came out earlier this year that some local council was using RIPA Act criminal surveillance powers to vet three-year olds' school applications.
In my experience, one person's victimless crime is always the threshold of someone else's absolute moral inflexibility and vice versa, and while so many laws are loved and hated in different circles because of this, those laws' own unenforceability protects us from dealing with them or spending any time on their controversies.
The fallout of small organizations having access to espionage may be limited, but it will also be unpredictable.
"Secret Power" is a book that explains that. I favour living a sustainable, green lifestyle and not relying on the government. Let them become less important! Beyond that, lets invest in the future of the human species, an open ended space program that will provide clean fusion energy and propulsion (POPS polywell for example), and more resources so we don't need to resort to inhumane population control measures or covertly allowing starvation and diseases to spread without remedy! Then we might just solve all our humanitarian and environmental crisis, by binding together and exploring the rest of our universe, without killing each other or being the victim of some natural disaster.
Like onion routers but for email. Everyone sends emails to one of a few central accounts with the true recipient in the message itself. The central account sends the email along. Ideally the central account would be run by a human, not a robot. That way people could use complex non-robot-friendly riddles that are easy for a human to solve to hide the recipient (the population has way more manpower than the government, so the government must rely on bots). And if EVERYONE who participated could be an intermediate, then the system would be nearly infallible.
Use a real standard that practically every mail client supports out-of-the-box, not some stupid add-on hack that some Gomer invented in his garage.
How many billions of emails with videos of monkeys smoking cigars whilst riding trikes do the MI5 want to see? And how many links to youtube videos of people smoking magic mint do they want to know about? I think they will have to employ an army of high school kids who are good at pretending to do homework whilst surfing the net and chatting to their 'tarded friends to actually be able to filter through even a quarter of this stuff.
Personally, I believe this to be the main reason for all this moronic behavior: it is very useful to be able to snoop on foreign companies having offices in the UK. YOu'll be able to allow your own industry to outbid the competition, amongst other things.
Obviously, this is a kindergarden mentality, caused by politicians incapable of looking ahead: a lot of companies are going to leave the UK, never to return. Which will have rather negative effects, obviously.
And, hey, this has been done before: german ICE vs french IGV. The french chaps won through spying on the germans ;)
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Oh big brother big brother
how do you watch me?
Let me count the ways....
This is completely offtopic so I'm checking NKB and NSB, but I see I'm the only one on your foes list. I consider that an honor, thank you!
Not sure why I'm on your list but thank you anyway.
Free Martian Whores!
Over the past century, more people have been killed by their own governments than by ordinary murderers, foreign governments, and terrorists combined.
So do I trust ANY government? No. And especially not the American government and the British government, both of which are proud to have targeted me for genocide.
Go South, young man, ALL the way South, and perhaps you can escape the wrath of the fornication of the Great Whore of Babylon!
(Hmmm. Is that over the top? Sadly, probably not.)
I think it has to do with England not being a large majority Christian society, but being close to a minor majority. That invites extremists to start jihadic wars.