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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.'"

38 of 785 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That's it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fuck the US!

    No, fuck the THEM!

  2. Re:That's it by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ultimate, absolute proof, that despite having given the world George W, we did the right thing by sticking it to (the other) King George. Woohoo! Suckas! No taxation without representation, and no email retention without representation either!! The sad thing is they actually have representation now. Hope that doesn't pass. Dang, I'm gonna go buy me a pistol.

    --
    Qxe4
  3. This makes me proud to be an American. by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    Joe the Plumber is laughing his ass off at you Brits.

    1. Re:This makes me proud to be an American. by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah it does but we did it first.

  4. Gotcha! by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you're using snail-mail you must have something to hide!

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:Gotcha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      If you're using snail-mail you must have something to hide!

      True, in all these years they have never guessed I am smuggling Escargot!

    2. Re:Gotcha! by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you're using snail-mail you must have something to hide!

      That you can't use a computer?

  5. Revolution? by theNetImp · · Score: 2, Funny

    I would have thought that the British would have learned not to piss off their citizens in the late 1700s. ;-)

  6. Morales no longer employed by UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  7. Re:Unbelievable by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is the UK government and authorities completely without morales?

    Completely. And I won't hesitate to mention that if you think a Mexican could break into politics in the UK, you're raving mad.

  8. You have suggested... by nacturation · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  9. Re:This article is misleading by Rod+Beauvex · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe I'm just an ignorant American, but you got elected officials, chosen by the working classes, against the population in general, and the House of Lords, who are 'appointed' working for the general population? How does this work? :D

  10. look at the positives by natergj · · Score: 4, Funny
    1. when that intern you hired accidentally deletes all your users' emails, you can reassure everyone, "Don't worry, the government now backs that up for us"

    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

  11. A Letter by CynicalTyler · · Score: 3, Funny

    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

  12. Re:That's it by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 3, Funny

    Venus! That's where I hear all the chicks are from.

    --
    You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
  13. Re:That's it by vawarayer · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm out of here!

    Fuck the UK!

    Could you please send this comment to me by e-mail?

  14. Re:Unbelievable by Amiralul · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's Eurasia, not Oceania, check today's newspaper.

  15. So what about me? by JimXugle · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  16. Re:Police state bullshit. by e9th · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you're still posting a week from now, it will be informative. If you're never heard from again, it'll be insightful.

  17. crossing the authoritarian line by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 4, Funny

    *self-censors the comment I was thinking of making*

  18. Re:Police state bullshit. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1, Funny

    hmm

    bomb labor bomb labor bomb labor nsa bomb labor cigarettes bomb pentagon september 11th world trade center bomb labor bunny bomb bunny bomb bunny bomb bunny bomb haircut.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  19. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    cute Asian mailwomen will backflip off of walls to get your letter to grandma.

    I could see the population of /. mailing stuff to themselves if that were the situation.

  20. Re:That's it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Wait.. so is runaway global warming a good thing?

  21. Re:Ineffective as well? by Patrik_AKA_RedX · · Score: 2, Funny

    Offcourse not! Why do you question the intellect of the UK government?

  22. Re:That's it by RLiegh · · Score: 4, Funny

    Me too. Big hair, spandex and uncomfortable rashes. At least Madonna was still a hottie, though.

  23. Re:In other news by easyTree · · Score: 2, Funny

    tl;dr: cute Asian mailwomen will backflip off of walls to get your letter to grandma.

    And all we need to do is accept a totalitarian state into our lives? Sign me up!

  24. Re:Bankrupt them ! Problem solved. by n+dot+l · · Score: 2, Funny

    How do you figure that? Say you need 1000 servers (7TB each) to store the data. At say $3000 a pop (overly generous) that's only 3 million dollars a week or 156 million dollars a year. Chump change for any industrial state.

    Yes, but when you add in the cost of all the laptops, cell phones, PDAs, and USB thumb drives they'll have to copy this data onto, and the salaries of the people who will then have to go out and find creative new ways to lose those laptops on the metro or at a bar, then the costs become truly astronomical...

  25. Tie it in to the CCTVs with speakers by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  26. lemme try this out myself... by drueffni · · Score: 3, Funny

    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)

  27. A Musical Message to the British Government by bds1986 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  28. Re:Police state bullshit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Parent is inaccurate: you can't bomb along the M25 (unless 15mph counts as bombing)

  29. We need more spam! by StoatBringer · · Score: 2, Funny

    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
  30. You are doing it wrong by Exanon · · Score: 2, Funny

    When you said you wanted to be like the USA, we didn't think you would take the worst parts!

  31. Re:That's it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    are you proposing Anarchy? When do we meet to discuss this....

  32. Re:That's it by something_wicked_thi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Totally irrelevant but, speaking as a pendant

    Somehow, I doubt you're that pretty.

  33. Re:That's it by Linker3000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Any time you fkn like, at a meeting place of your choosing - that's what the rest of us will be doing. Screw the herd mentality or conforming to someone's imposed time/location.

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO
  34. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    That gives me an idea...

    Pay a spammer to send tens of thousands of emails with randomly encrypted text with a date in the future to various government officials..
    It'll keep them so busy decrypting it they'll never get any proper spying done.

  35. Re:wtf by kimvette · · Score: 2, Funny

    With the current value of our dollar, they won't care to lose your patronage. :(

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50