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.'"
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.
I really do hope this drives people to make encryption ubiquitous. All of the egregious US programs have failed to make the public use crypto, but this seems to be well publicized enough that it might make a large chunk of people install and use good crypto.
GPG plugins for Mail.app and Thunderbird are at the point now that it's basically set it and forget it, come on folks. (I don't so much like the GPG Outlook plugins, but maybe I haven't messed with it enough)
I like music
It really disturbs me that the plots in various movies, video games, and books that would have been considered "out there" or "couldn't happen" are gradually becoming true.
Obvious ones (which I've mentioned in a related post a few weeks ago): V for Vendetta and 1984.
Disturbingly accurate: Mirror's Edge. From the Mirror's Edge Wikipedia Article:
The game's name derives from the mirror-like aesthetic of the city of tall, gleaming skyscrapers and Faith's existence on the fringes of that city along with other dissidents, who have been pushed to the edge.
Though set in a seemingly utopian city environment with low crime, clean streets, and sterile architecture, it is ruled by a totalitarian government regime that conducts unbridled levels of surveillance on citizens. [emphasis added.] In this world of communications monitoring, the only way to deliver confidential information between parties is to employ couriers (called runners) to physically deliver the information.
Granted, it's more likely that drivers, bicycle messengers, etc. would be used in our current era, but I imagine even vehicles will eventually be surveilled and controlled. "We need to be able to watch people in their cars so we know they're driving safely." "We need to be able to remotely shut off cars in case it is stolen or if someone is driving drunk." etc.
I wonder how they'd handle couriers delivering information to circumvent this system.
tl;dr: cute Asian mailwomen will backflip off of walls to get your letter to grandma.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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 #!
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.
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*
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.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
https://yro.slashdot.org/.... Why can't I browse slashdot with https ???
Unfortunately, in the UK they already have the power to demand that you hand over your encryption keys. The solution is not just encryption, but genuine random data sent between your encrypted emails. When they demand your keys simply, and legally, show them that it is random data. The system will not be able to cope with masses of data that _they_ will still believe is encrypted but for which no keys can be produced. Perhaps they will make an example of a few by taking them to court. Well, let's see what happens when it gets bounced to the European Court of Human Rights. The crime has not been committed unless it can be _proven_ to be committed.
When they (eventually) find some way of closing this loophole, then you start sending binary dumps of data. It is not encrypted but, to all intents and purposes, it is meaningless to anyone looking at it in transit. Will they then make sending binary data illegal? Can you imagine the economic and industrial fallout of such a law?
To those that think that this is pointless, I disagree. The first thing that will be apparent is the degree to which this monitoring is actually being conducted. No, not the hype that every email will be kept and read, but what can they _actually_ do with that much data? How many people will actually get a visit from the police? (My guess is none.) What I think will be apparent is that they will have a database that, once a suspect is identified, can be examined to find possible additional evidence. But they are not going to be reading everyone's emails everyday. That doesn't make the system any more acceptable but it will show that they are not going anywhere near the 'microphone in very home, restaurant etc' claim that someone posted earlier.
Then one has to think of all the data that they don't want. Spam, technical updates, forum summaries, OS binaries etc. Perhaps they will discover the ultimate filter for spam or, gasp, get tough on those that generate it - Heaven forbid that something useful might come from this ridiculous law. But, until that time, I sure there is someone bright enough on this forum to devise a piece of software that can hide a message inside something that appears to be spam, a technical update, or a forum summary. Flood the system so that the demands of storing and analysing this entirely innocent and legal data simply make the whole thing unworkable.
For the 'websites visited' database, that is even easier to flood. Google for a random word, and then have software visit every alternate link on that page, one every second, and simply discard the data. Hey, my broadband is already paid for, it will not affect my data downloading in the slightest. But the database that they have to hold is getting much bigger than they might first have imagined that it would. Out of all the sites that I might visit in 24hours (86400) they have to discover if one of them is actually a front for something more sinister. Before you howl about how one might download something that you wouldn't want to see anyway (pornography, terrorist website or whatever) my answer is that you might already stumble upon such a site anyway. The fact that you did no more that go to a Google link is not yet a criminal offence, and if they want to make it one then much of the internet advertising model is well and truly stuffed the minute they do so.
All of this is entirely legal but will get the public point of view across very quickly. And if the public don't want to do this sort of thing they perhaps they deserve the sort of Government that they seem to have. Yes, I'm a Brit but, no, I no longer live in the UK, by choice. Just my thoughts....
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view