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UK Government To Outsource Data Snooping and Storage
bone_idol writes "The Guardian is reporting that the private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary. Also covered on the BBC."
colonies and not suspected to so much snooping.
At least it's less lightly to be left on the train, if it's not in government hands.
Cruise TT
Hardly surprising, considering the public sectors long and colourful history of IT debacles. See El Reg and Private Eye ad nauseum. One more reason to SSL all my traffic to a proxy somewhere (anywhere) else.
[FUCK BETA]
The US does this now. There evidently are quite a few companies out there that specialize in gathering intel for nations.
I think I was listening to someone on NPR talk about this not too long ago.. Maybe the guy who wrote Shadow Factory?
Senior Whitehall officials responsible for planning for a new database say there is a significant difference between having access to "communications data" - names and addresses of emails or telephone numbers, for example - and the actual contents of the communications. "We have been very clear that there are no plans for a database containing any content of emails, texts or conversations," the spokeswoman said.
Pretty slip indeed.
And as Jacqui drafts the invitation to tender document in Word - up pops clippy...
"I see you are outsourcing Government IT requirements. What level of cock-up and overspend do you want?
Shall I insert the address for:
a) EDS
b) Capita
c) SAP
d) IBM
"
AT&ROFLMAO
Yea I bet you love having neighbors like Sir E. Coli and Countess Linda Cielo der Himmler just around Pink avenue. At least in the states, Hillary Rosen is reduced from the Music Ministry of Recording to be an incorporated dyke in the RIAA Navy.
Don't be concerned at who is holding the data rather be concerned that the data is actually being collected.... (it's probably safer if the government isn't managing this anyway)
It just amazes me how STUPID our governments are nowadays. I mean, we used to put up posters about how "loose lips sink ships" and now we want to trust our "intelligence gathering" to "private" firms that'll inevitably end up in India?
This reminds me of the article about how China is salvaging old consumer microchips, relabeling them as military grade, and selling them to the pentagon as "brand new." I hope it makes people feel better knowing that those lethal weapons and bombs we have cached everywhere have the reliability of your worst gadget ever.
Intelligence and military manufacturing MUST stay within the borders, period.
I'm afraid this is standard practice. Outsourcing allows those in charge to blame the company or corporation for any theft or data loss, not government ministers.
What the hell is wrong with that woman? More to the point, what the hell is wrong with us? In any sane society a person like that would've been strung up from a lamppost a long time ago.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
TPB's new year celebration is more true than ever :-/
@neonux
Come one now Wacky J., a joke's a joke, we've had a laugh, a few giggles, when are you going to do your job properly?!
Has anyone, from a sane country, got any room left? I want to leave the UK now, please?
less... makes perfect sense
or not... I mean it might not make perfect sense and it might actually cost more... oh well, politicians.
Its called snoopernet. No joke.
Everything will be fine. Whoever it is will have to be ITIL certified. And a good certification guarantees a perfect outcome.
...so we are going to insist that you do it to yourselves.
I wonder when the British people will realize that the cost of non-compliance will be nothing if no one complies.
Isn't this pretty much text book facism? replacing the govenment aparatus with that of comercial interests.
[hums the imperial march]
Hasn't privatisation gone just a little too far this time? I mean it's bad enough that the UK is planning to spy like this on all it's citizens, but to outsource it to contractors?
If they outsource it to anyone, they should outsource it to google. They already know all our personal stuff anyway!
sudo mount --milk --sugar
What the UK sorely needs is Impeachment to deal with people like Smith.
Short of monitoring and recording all tcp/udp socket connections between every internet connected device worldwide building such a database remains a deluded paranoid propaganda excercise.
Since I'm running my own TLS capable mail server and personally use a console based reader via SSH, the only way they get comprehensive data is by asking me for it. Likewise any web page I wouldn't want turning up in a local council fishing expedition will be requested via a SSH tunnel with an endpoint outside the UK. I have a legitimate reason (work -- I'm self employed) to be connecting and transfering data to and from such machines.
We call our home secretary "Wacky Jaqui" for a reason.
The thing about this whole database, is that it will only be able to log activity of people who don't think they have anything to hide, in other words, you and me. The average person.
Criminals can just SSH tunnel everything through a server in some far away country. They will have no idea what those people are doing.
So forgive me for seeing this as just an invasion of privacy as opposed to any serious way of fighting crime.
This was given to the slipshod Guardian hacks precisely in order to provoke this reaction. They haven't understood what they were being told, which is that some outsourcing (not "a private sector company to do it all") would be one of the options in a consultation document to be issued later. This could mean no more (and probably doesn't mean any more) than forcing ISPs and Telcos to do archiving themselves in standardised searchable form, as a hopped-up version of the new Data Retention Regulations.
Of course the lefty hacks (who despite being notionally specialists in Home Affairs are twisted round the Home Office's little finger) get excited about "privatisation"... and divert all their energy, and that of their readers, into whining about that, rather than the principle involved of doing it at all.
Meanwhile the shadow of that 'option' is a great way of getting the Telco's and ISPs to actively support another option - the Home Office using Carnivore-like probes to suck up all the comms data, and having total control over access - because they don't want those costs and hassles. So the Telcos and ISPs (portrayed as practicality) are on the Home Office's side when it comes to the fight for this prize of power vis-a-vis the intelligence services and the cabinet office.
The object of the whole exercise is that the Home Office can get anything it wants whenever it wants it, without any third party CIO's raising questions and without any other independent oversight, AND that everyone in Whitehall or the police or quangos or town halls who wants to get at communications data will have to ask the Home Office for it. Just like the ID scheme makes the Home Office the supreme department by giving it the key to tracking citizen interactions with the state for the official file (and gives it the whip-hand over the Treasury in particular), this would put the means for tracking citizen associations entirely within the Home Office.
It is well over Smith's head.
Don't worry... all we have to do is type in 'Lucius Fox' to self-detonate the tracking system!
No one should have that much power.
(... wow I feel like a loser)
Man! I could make billions! And get paid by the government too!
This is a total waste of time, money and energy. Once the government announces it is going to snoop on anyone, anyone who knows they are up to no good will join all the other people using VPN connections terminating in less draconian countries.
I've been using Relakks for a while now, just to do my everyday surfing and emailing. I'm not hiding any illegal activity, I just value privacy. Posted anon for obvious reasons.
Former Journalspace employees should start a data hosting company for opportunities just like this. If they can lose data that we don't want lost, they should have no problem losing data that we do.
Too early?
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
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will be Israeli. They've been infiltrating this sort of government program everywhere. At one point an Israeli company was in charge of the wiretapping software for the FBI and other US government agencies - until they got caught selling wiretap info to drug gangs in LA. The FBI threw a fit and now somebody else in charge of CALEA hardware.
Israel is a major supplier of security products to the world - because they decided decades ago that the best way to spy on the world is to be the world's supplier of anti-spying and spying gear. Many, if not most, of the Israeli security companies are funded by and have direct ties to the IDF and the Mossad.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yea! Jobs!
I'll be able to make butloads-of-pounds per second blackmailing UK Gov Ministers and their hired prostitutes (mostly male boys -- they don't like sex with girls) and drug-runners.