UK Government Wants To Kill Net Neutrality In EU

Glyn Moody writes "Not content with snooping on all Internet activity, the UK government now wants to introduce changes to the contentious EU Telecoms Package, which will kill net neutrality in the EU: 'Amendments to the Telecoms Package circulated in Brussels by the UK government, seek to cross out users' rights to access and distribute Internet content and services. And they want to replace it with a "principle" that users can be told not only the conditions for access, but also the conditions for the use of applications and services. The amendments, if carried, would reverse the principle of end-to-end connectivity which has underpinned not only the Internet, but also European telecommunications policy, to date.' To add to the irony, an accompanying text cuts and pastes from Wikipedia, without attribution."

Comments

Another brick

[Renraku]

Just another brick in their wall they're building to further close them off from the rest of reality.

I've had this thought for a while now, but now's an appropriate time to say it: Will there be a day when a British tourist visits America and remarks that our cameras must be hidden really well, because they can't see them at all!

Re:Another brick

[hannson]

I just don't have anything to hide

Wrong!
 
  Everyone has something to hide from someone.

Re:Another brick

[EdIII]

Wow, people see you in crowed areas. Oh my god, humans (including some in the government), seeing you in public places. Your privacy has been violated, go hide and whine on Slashdot.

Way to troll. Hide and whine on Slashdot? You act as if the desire for privacy is unreasonable. Far from it. Privacy and Anonymity are basic human rights. The founder fathers in the U.S had exactly that in mind when they created the 4th amendment.

Guess why?

Governments abuse their people. Always and inevitably. It's just human nature. You mention "including some in the government". Well that is exactly who we are worried about. You think I give a fuck about the pizza dude in a public place? Of course not. I care about the state official hundreds of miles away that looks at databases to predict my movement patterns. When he uses programs to analyze my relationships with other people and corporations. When there is a rating to determine whether I am a "subversive" or a threat to a current political regime. It's not like that is a paranoid or unreasonable position right? It's not like situations like this have not happened in various governments right? Hoover did not have an agenda against MLK right?

You do have a point though. If I a am good little productive unit, don't rock the boat, vote for the right party, and know my place, it's a good chance that I won't have any problems with the people that are in government.

Of course, if I am a political activist and make public statements that go against those in power I just might have to worry. If I am in the right place and right time without the required skin color, eye color, and religious affiliations, I could be in even bigger trouble.

That's the point. People in government should be denied the ability to watch and collect data on citizens. It's just not a good idea and lends itself inevitably towards abuse.

In the real world what we do affects other people more than it does on the internet; therefore behaviour in the real world must be regulated more than on the internet.

That's a logical fallacy. Just because you don't understand how "things" work on the Internet and you cannot see the people causing those affects, does not mean that the Internet has less of an effect. Both the real world and the Internet needs to be regulated within reason.

You can't kill someone, or rape someone over your internet connection,

Now that's just factually incorrect. One of the greatest concerns about devices connected on the Internet is that it can be abused and have fatal affects in the world. What about municipal utilities? Water supplies? Manipulating police agencies to get SWAT called out to a house fraudulently and they kill a 90 year old grandmother? Aside from fatal situations, there is plenty of damage that can occur to people, corporations, and countries from simply manipulating the Internet.

so the double standard is entirely justified

Double standards are never justified. Not ever. A double standard means that we are not being treated equal. You are trying to make the point that they are fundamentally different and therefore different rules and considerations apply. That's a reasonable argument, but incorrect. We must approach both the Internet and the Real World with the same concerns for privacy and anonymity.

We should have complete privacy on the net, but not in the real world, because we must be held accountable for our actions in the real world, while holding people accountable for their actions on the net doesn't really matter. If it's on the internet and you don't like it, don't look.

We should have complete privacy both on the Internet and in the real world. Especially from the government. Now I mean privacy by default as

Re: Another brick

[Logic Worshiper]

I've been a political activist (hell, I've been intimidated by the government for my political activities), and I can tell you first hand that anonymity is no friend to activists. The thing that gives you power in political activism is your publicity, the same thing that attracts the government's attention. Publicity is the opposite of privacy. You can't change the world without standing up and putting yourself on the line for what you believe in.

We can't set a double standard for government because it's impossible. The government will always have the same access to a you a random stranger does because the government is made up of people. On the topic of double standards, it is perfectly reasonable to hold a double standards for different types of behaviours, especially when one type of behaviour presents a greater risk to others than another type of behaviour. For example, walking verses driving drunk; driving drunk is a great way to kill someone else, while walking drunk will hurt no one but you (so a double standard is justified). Claiming there is no double standard that can ever be justified means you don't understand the use of the term in context. The term "double standard" can also mean "where the analogy fails", or "why the principles you're applying there don't work here".

Some people love the anonymity they have in crows that they find in places like New York, London, and lose in the suburbs or in rural areas. In some ways the best privacy you can have in the real world is to be one among millions, unnoticeable to anyone.

You can only commit property crimes online (and there are many measures in place to prevent you doing even that), you can't rape or murder over the internet, and those crimes are much worse than any property crime.

Re: Another brick

[Ed Avis]

The government will always have the same access to a you a random stranger does because the government is made up of people.

Not really true. On the one hand, the government has the resources to wiretap your phone, for example, in a way that a random stranger cannot. On the other hand the government is constrained by various laws that restrict the information they can gather and use. For example in Europe at least data protection legislation restricts sharing of information between government departments, so even if the government as a whole knows several things about you it is unable to correlate them to reach conclusions. You can tell this data protection legislation is having a real effect because the British government wants to give itself the power to override the legislation.

Left wing credentials

[MrMickS]

This is the labour party exercising its left wing credentials. It wants total control of the populous. They don't like the internet as it is as it allows people to bypass the laws they set up to police it. They don't want to stop it being used, but they want to control what people use if for, and to have something in place that is sufficiently vague that they can use for any purpose.

The worst thing is that the general population is that ignorant to what the government is doing that as long as this is spun as a measure to counter terrorism, or catching paedophiles, there will be no objection. After all, how could any sane person object to such a thing.

We currently have a government that is ruled by conceit. They know what is best for people and if we ignore what they tell us to do then its because we haven't understood rather than us having understood and rejected the advice. Their next resort is to legislate to force us to do what they want us to do, for our own good of course. HMG has forgotten that they are there to serve the people, rather than the other way around.

Re:Left wing credentials

[arevos]

This is the labour party exercising its left wing credentials. It wants total control of the populous.

And right-wing politicians don't?

Re:Left wing credentials

[Chabo]

As a former resident of New Hampshire, I highly recommend it as a place to live if you're sick of over-reaching government. The west side of the state is left-leaning, the east side of the state is right-leaning, but the whole state has a very libertarian attitude.

I'm in California now (I took a job out here) and I can't stand it because of how willing the residents of this state are to let government of all levels control their lives. It's given me a very intense appreciation of what I had.

People (especially Europeans) forget how large and diverse the U.S. is. California and New Hampshire have twice as much distance between them than London and Moscow, and the two states have even less in common with each other than France and Belgium, two other "states" that also share most of a language.

Re:Left wing credentials

[Jurily]

This is the labour party exercising its turd wing credentials.

What exactly is this left-and-right BS you people keep saying? All I see is a bunch of politicians disconnected from the real world, and from the people who vote on them. Does it really matter what "side" they're on if they act stupid?

Re:Why?

[pete6677]

The subjects of the UK are perfectly willing to give away rights in the name of security. What's one more going to matter?

Re:thank you sir, may I have another

[digitalunity]

Politicians are corrupt. There is value(read: profit) in artificial scarcity. By reducing the consumer's expectations you can get them to pay more for the same service. Profit is good for the economy(in theory).

Soon, you'll pick your ISP or your rate plan based on the sites you want to see. The content producers and ISP's will share the revenue from the increased revenue. Sadly, I really think a lot of consumers will pony up the cash.

Regardless of what the laws say, ISP's can choose to allow universal access. If this new business model fails, they may eventually give up.

Re:And yet

[Chabo]

Nah. Governments have a tendency of giving themselves more power, whether they're left or right.

Partisan politics are the method by which the government gets us to argue amongst each other long enough so we won't notice that they're all colluding to strip us of our rights.

Vote for a more limited government, no matter what country you happen to live in.

Re:Why?

[Firehed]

I'm not sure that's the case. Politicians in the UK are perfectly willing to throw away people's rights in the name of security, but that doesn't mean the population is OK with it. That's certainly the case in the US, though thankfully the trend seems to have slowed a bit when it took a back-seat to the constant economic bickering.

This affects us all

[nightfire-unique]

Those against net neutrality represent the gravest threat the Internet has faced. The Internet routes around damage, yes. But if concerted, simultaneous attacks occur by various governments around the world, Internet freedom can be defeated.

Not to sound overly melodramatic, but our children's children will judge us based on how we react to these assaults, today. If we successfully defend the Internet from those who wish to corrupt it for political, religious or profit reasons, we will have provided the greatest gift humanity has ever received - a free, open, and entrenched global communication network. A step in the evolution of our species.

If we fail in our duty, and the Internet is globally subverted, becoming yet another one-way broadcasting network for advertisers and propagandists, we will have left our descendants to another hundred years of suffering and misery.

Consider some of the things the Internet threatens:

- War: The Internet connects people in warzones with people outside the warzone. This makes it difficult to perpetrate a war without upsetting the aggressor's citizenry, as they will be exposed to the consequences of the war. Youtube, blogging from Baghdad, and english.aljazeera.net are just the start.
- Police brutality: Videos can circle the globe within minutes. The watchers are now watched, and this has a powerful effect on their behavior.
- Propaganda: .. is far less effective when the citizenry can check the facts
- Financial scandals: Anonymous communications help whistleblowers uncover financial scandals-in-progress

Now consider some of the things the Internet enables

- Global scientific collaboration: For both amateur and university-scale scientists, the Internet permits the free exchange of ideas
- The liberation of "intellectual property": (not so good for the profit-seekers, but ultimately necessary for humanity)
- Force multiplication for sellers: individuals can sell their products with the same efficiency and legitimacy as a large corporation, enabling more competition and a true free market (ie. ebay)

All of this has a negative effect on entrenched players, explaining our current situation. And this is the reason we need to fight, and fight hard. Because if we don't, we, and our descendants, will lose.

Re:This affects us all

[fractoid]

Excellent post. It's more than a little scary to think about how much the Internet has improved humanitarian matters through exposing abuses. It shrinks the globe far more than the airlines did - Iraq is generally way, way outside Joe Citizen's monkeysphere, but that guy in his WoW raid is definitely inside it, and when that guy says "sorry, I have to go, someone's bombing my block"... that has an impact.

Government propaganda likewise, I'm increasingly disgusted by the pile of steaming ad hominem and blatant misrepresentation in politics these days. I'm also disgusted by the fact that most of the populus just gulp it down through their TV straw and don't even check to see how it tastes, but that's another story...

That said, I don't think the 'net as a whole is under any long-term threat, simply because due to scalability requirements it will eventually turn into a wireless mesh system. As networks grow very large, they _must_ become increasingly decentralized and therefore increasingly resilient to attacks of the kind that net neutrality seeks to prevent.

Re:This affects us all

[SanityInAnarchy]

due to scalability requirements it will eventually turn into a wireless mesh system.

I would guess that'll happen because of the threat of censorship, and the relative cheapness, more than anything else. Fiber is pretty scalable.

As networks grow very large, they _must_ become increasingly decentralized and therefore increasingly resilient to attacks of the kind that net neutrality seeks to prevent.

Keep in mind, the Internet currently is very centralized in other ways as well.

For example: How do we find anything on the Internet? Google. How does eBay allow individuals to become sellers? By routing them through the corporate hub of, well, eBay. Who decides how to allocate DNS and IP? The IANA.

And yet, when you completely decentralize it, you open yourself up to spam. That is, if everything is defined by a consensus of peers, all someone has to do is control a large number of those peers, either by infecting real peers, or by fabricating them.

I don't have a good solution, and I have no idea what a good solution would look like, unless it went entirely peer-to-peer. But then we'd have to set about building a web of trust that spans the planet, and any one entity might still not have a good path to trust another entity.

Re:thank you sir, may I have another

[FooAtWFU]

There is value(read: profit) in artificial scarcity. By reducing the consumer's expectations you can get them to pay more for the same service. Profit is good for the economy(in theory).

In bullshit theory, sure. In real economic theory, however, this setup is horribly inefficient, as it significantly reduces the consumer surplus. Of course, the government can't tax something quite so intangible as such a benefit to society...

Re:thank you sir, may I have another

[AuMatar]

Supply siders and businessmen like to ignore things like consumer surplus- it doesn't fit into their worldview (the worldview where they deserve everything).

Re:thank you sir, may I have another

[Hal_Porter]

Umm, what? The police state in Germany happened after the Nazis had absolute power, i.e. after the Enabling Act. The slippery state argument, i.e. that introducing ID cards - which the government have been talking about for ages but never actually managed to implement - will somehow gradually lead to a totalitarian state is silly paranoia. Germany was rather libertarian before the Nazis took over, which of course is why they were able to take over. If anything the Weimar Rebublic should have been a bit more careful keeping track of wannabe totalitarians.

And the idea that the BNP is on a course to win an election is silly too. If they had seats in parliament and their share of the vote was increasing I'd be concerned. Actually they have no seats and even if they won one they would most likely not be able to win more. Do you really think if a Nazi like party gains power they won't just implement whatever leagal measures they feel necessary?

Maybe you've been smoking too much pot and it's made you paranoid. Best not do that 'across the Atlantic' though, I hear they have much more draconian punishments for drug users. I believe the phrase is "pound me in the ass prison".

Why is it that...

[AlgorithMan]

Why is it that every time I read "UK" in a news headline I instantly think "what stupid nazi-like decision did these idiots make this time?"?

And why is this sense of forboding always correct?

Re:What's up with England?

[AndyboyH]

We can't vote for the other team when the government won't call an election or referendum.

The opinion polls indicated (at least, last time I heard the stats) that the ruling party, Labour would be out in the next election, after some disastrous local elections (alas these local elections don't really have a great deal of influence on national politics) so they have nothing to win by calling for an election now - they'll just keep holding off as long as they can get away with it.

Promised referendums for EU membership and adoption of EU treaties regularly don't happen, simply because the government has it's own agenda, as you can see by the original topic.

Grassroots politics and small parties have no power in government to control, and even the typical sanity check of any new legislation having to go through the House of Lords has been neutered now that any law can be passed by the house of commons using the Parliament Act.

Another problem is that a lot of the UK populace really have no interest in politics - voter apathy is high, and polling booth turnout is low compared to a lot of places (iirc). This is pathetically the opposite of any major TV 'create a star/pop band/etc' phone vote, which receive millions of votes each week. They have no real understanding of the modern issues that are being raised in Parliament, and tend to vote based on how they were brought up (as far as I've witnessed) - so a person from working class background will vote Labour, and a middle-class background will vote Tory.

The general populace also doesn't understand the insidious nature of half the laws the government is passing, and whenever they're questioned by the vocal minority, the government uses the old 'think of the children' or 'be afraid of the terrorists' line and the law is passed anyway.

It really is making me totally sick of living in this country. The last time I posted my opinion on /. an ex-armed forces guy even agreed with me about leaving the country - and this was a person in the service of the UK who would have been expected to risk their life for their country!