Slashdot Mirror
UK Outlines Plan For Internet Black Boxes
RobotsDinner writes "In what sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot, the Home Office has made public plans to outfit the country's Internet with upstream data recorders to log pretty much everything that passes through. 'Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database. The vision was outlined at a meeting between officials from the Home Office and Internet Service Providers earlier this week.'"
If they store all the raw data, they'll be downloading movies, music etc. Then they'll have to sue themselves... out of existence!
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has hailed spectacular, record-breaking public demand for identity cards and will allow people to pre-register within the next few months.
"I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they have nothing to hide and want me personally to have every detail of their lives and pressing ten-pound notes into my hands for their very own precious pink and blue card," she said, taking another hit of her pipe.
The first biometric cards are being issued this month to foreigners who can be forced into it. They will be issued to young people on a voluntary basis from 2010, per every teenager's dream of having their every movement tracked.
People applying for cards and passports from 2012 will have to provide fingerprints, photographs and a signature, which Ms Smith believes will create a market worth about £200m a year by the "mended windows" theory of economics. "It takes money that was being wasted on food and rent and puts it into circulation for the betterment of the whole economy, particularly our dear friends at EDS Capita Goatse."
The Home Office is talking to retailers and the Post Office about setting up booths to gather biometric data. "We're sure everyone would be happy with having their fingerprints taken at Tesco when they get their shopping."
In her speech, Ms Smith rejected claims handing enrolment over to private firms would compromise security. "We're introducing new certification authorities and so forth, which will mean that masses of data never leaves our offices and the BNP never gets a database of every immigrant in the country or anything like that."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Never underestimate the bandwith of a bus fully loaded with hard drives... ;-)
Hadrians Firewall??? Getting more like China over hear everyday :(
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
You're using The Register as a measure of accuracy? Hey, I have some land I want to sell you .... and a bridge .... and I can transfer £6,000,000 into your bank account that was left on a train by a government employee if you'll just ....
It probably should read more like "Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database. It will subsequently be copied onto laptops, USB flash drives, portable hard drives and DVDs. Which will be left in random locations, including pub car parks, petrol stations, trains and taxis."
"But who's going to install it? people of a political bent who oppose your wiretaping. The sort of people who will be first against the wall when the military coup comes."
Curiously enough, an edition of Slashdot that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future listed the people who installed such software as "a bunch of people of a political bent that opposed the governments wiretapping who were the first against the wall when the military coup came."
Can you imagine how much pr0n they're going to have? I'm jealous.
This sounds like a new backup system.
1. Put a laptop in the UK that deletes every file you upload after a 5 min delay.
2. Upload all info you want backed up. The government mirrors it, but doesn't delete it.
To recover you sue the UK in a court case, get copies of your data, then drop the case. Kinda expensive with the lawyer time, but for a unlimited backup it probably isn't too bad.