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.'"
PGP.
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.
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.
yes they can. theyve locked up the liquid bombers for exactly that sort of thing. conspiring to commit murder.
Three words for you (and people in the States, as well): "Making terrorist threats".
It's been used on people of all ages and colors. Yes, even kids:
* Middle School Kids have been threatened with being put on the Terrorist Watch List.
* A student was arrested for "Zombie Fiction" because the story was set at a high school. Not *his* high school, mind you, *a* high school.
* A Chinese student was arrested because he made a map of his school for a video game (probably Counter Strike or a similar FPS)
* Two boys were arrested for talking about shooting up their school, probably jokingly.
I miss the days when there were these petty requirements for things like evidence and probable cause.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
There are specific laws protecting normal post that the government must comply with. It requires a warrant to have that post intercepted inside the UK.
See my journal, I write things there
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
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Provisional_IRA_Actions - the numerous bombings by the IRA in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Then *one* incident in 2005 by "Actual Terrorists" and everyone goes ape.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
I left in 2007.
There wasn't one single thing that made me go, but the accumulative weight of paranoia and illiberalism.
Shamelessly ripped off from here:
Note that some of this predates 9/11.
The government is not-so-gradually putting in place all the mechanisms that a totalitarian police state needs.
What's sickening is that this is largely supported by or ignored by the public.
Every letter I wrote to my MP was replied to by a "we need it to keep people safe, and the public support this measure" fob-off.
In theory I should stick around to try and change things, but it's like staying in a pool that other people are shitting in.
The word is "bombs" not "firecrackers". Fifty odd people died in that attack as well as lots of people being injured. The casualty figures were higher than for any IRA attack on mainland Britain.
Apart from 7/7 there was a copy cat attack that failed a few weeks later, an attempt to drive a burning landrover into Glasgow airport and an attempt to blow up aircraft by using explosives disguised as soft drinks, all of which failed.
So, while the response by the British government has been totally disproportionate (including some monumental screw-ups by the police that would be funny if innocent people hadn't been killed), the threat is/was more serious than firecrackers on a few tube trains.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
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."
Hey, Britain. What's going on over there?
Nothing.
Yet again, Slashdot has confused "a proposal by a British government minister" with "a law which has been passed by both Houses of Parliament". The former has occured, the latter has not.
It won't happen for two reasons:
1. The upper house (House of Lords) is stuffed full of Conservatives who can't be removed (and won't support it.
2. The lower house (House of Commons) is up for election in less than two years. The Conservatives will win by a landslide and the intercept programme will be cancelled.
3. Nobody is stopping anyone from running their own mailserver with TLS. Whilst it is theoretically practicable to monitor email traffic from all UK ISPs, it is not theoretically practicable to monitor encrypted email servers in every household. Running your own mailserver is neither difficult nor expensive these days. Ditto using an offshore mailserver and connecting through encrypted POP/IMAP.
The real scandal here is that a government minister should suggest spending quite so much money on something that is so trivial to circumvent.
[Remember, in the UK, right-wing (Conservatives, capitalists, currently opposition but widely expected to win in 2010 by a landslide) = libertarian, left-wing (Labour, socialists, current government) = authoritatian. There are other significant parties such as the Liberal Democrats who do pretty much what it says on the tin.]
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com