Slashdot Mirror
UK Government To Monitor All Internet Use
nk497 writes "The UK government has further detailed plans to track all communications — mobile phone calls, text messages, email and browser sessions — in the fight against terrorism, pedophiles and organized crime. The government said it's not looking to see what you're saying, just to whom and when and how. Contrary to previous plans to keep it all in a massive database, it will now let ISPs and telecoms firms store the data themselves, and access it when it feels it needs it." And to clarify this,
Barence writes "The UK Government has dropped plans to create a massive database of all internet communications, following stern criticism from privacy advocates. Instead the Government wants ISPs and mobile phone companies to retain details of mobile phone calls, emails and internet sites visited. As with the original scheme, the actual content of the phone calls and messages won't be recorded, just the dates, duration and location/IP address of messages sent. The security services would then have to apply to the ISP or telecoms company to have the data released. The new proposals would also require ISPs to retain details of communications that originated in other countries but passed over the UK's network, such as instant messages."
Let's talk about IM. I run an XMPP server which a few of my friends use. Everyone that connects to it used TLS. If they did enough traffic analysis, they might just about be able to tell who I was talking to, but are they really expecting ISPs to correlate every packet anyone sends to that machine (which is not located on their network) and communicate this data to all other UK ISPs so that they can try to work out who I am talking to? And what happens when I talk to someone using a busy server like jabber.org or gmail.com? They see some encrypted packets going from my machine to that server (well, they don't, because my server is outside the UK, but let's pretend that they do). Then, a second or so later, they see a few million packets going out to various other people. Are they just expecting Google to turn over their logs, or do they expect the ISPs to magically work out who I am talking to be analysing every packet going everywhere?
The same applies to email. My mail server is set up to use TLS, and so most of the time they can't do deep packet inspection to learn the destination, all they know is that my machine has delivered a mail to the recipient's mail server, and that a lot of people later on have checked their mail on that machine.
It seems that this will only stop terrorists who are stupid enough to use their ISP's mail servers, which surely isn't a huge number.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's recently been made illegal to photograph the police in the UK because the pictures might be useful to terrorists - it doesn't matter if you intend to use such pictures for terrorism, only that a terrorist might possibly want to have one of the pictures.
This new law has predictably led to such Kafkaesque situations like this story as reported by an actual constable there.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Jacqui 'Jackboots' Smith is definitely a Nazi. This moron is one of the most stupid, ignorant, and illiberal people ever to assume power in the UK (with a feeble minority, it has to be said)
New Labour have done more to dismantle the fundamental fabric of British society than any previous regime. Even the Tories under Maggie 'Madcap-Psychobitch' Thatcher never did such damage to people's fundamental rights (although she was probably more evil in other ways)
What does it mean to be British?:
- The right not to have to carry papers or ID cards
- The right to privacy, and to know that it is illegal for the state to spy on me.
- The right to protest anywhere I like, without being confined to a police cordoned area to keep me away from the war criminals and terrorists who are running this country.
- The right not to be beaten to death by the police.
- The right to be able to venomously criticise all religions, without them being granted 'special rights', just because certain religions (islam, and judaism) seem to be particularly prone to particularly psychotic levels of violence, and can't accept that their behaviour and beliefs should be scrutinised by sane people.
- The right to access to good public services, unpolluted by private sector profiteers, greedy lobbyists, and corrupt public private partnerships.
New Labour have taken all of these rights, and are consequently anti-British Enemies of The People, who have granted victory to terrorists worldwide, by curtailing the rights of our people in the name of 'fighting terrorism'.
I suspect that their attack on our rights, in reality, has much more to do with protecting the status-quo, as any terrorist can just mow down a busy street in a stolen car, if they really want to kill, without resorting to elaborate bomb plots, or mixing chemicals in the basement.
Fortunately for us, most terrorists are nearly as stupid as New Labour (they'd have to be, to be infected with religion!)
While technology is becoming cheaper for them, it's becoming cheaper for us also.
If this trend of recording everything becomes a nuisance, people could have programs doing random web accesses all the time. Get address lists from spammers and make your system send fake emails at random. With enough broadband, this would create an unmanageable amount of traffic for the surveillance systems.
Making it worse, the true criminals could use steganography on top of all that. If a machine sends a million emails and browses a million websites, what kind of surveillance would find the few messages that contain hidden information?
Paranoid Linux is an operating system that assumes that its operator is under assault from the government (it was intended for use by Chinese and Syrian dissidents), and it does everything it can to keep your communications and documents a secret. It even throws up a bunch of "chaff" communications that are supposed to disguise the fact that you're doing anything covert. So while you're receiving a political message one character at a time, ParanoidLinux is pretending to surf the Web and fill in questionnaires and flirt in chat-rooms. Meanwhile, one in every five hundred characters you receive is your real message, a needle buried in a huge haystack.
It's not big, but it's clever!
That depends on the issue, doesn't it? The last eight years seemed pretty sane for gun rights -- Clinton's gun ban expired, Heller was rightfully decided, DoJ issued memos saying that the 2nd amendment protects individual rights, retired law enforcement officers can now carry in any jurisdiction, etc, etc, etc.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Oh pffft.
In national surveys in the US, MORE THAN 50% of people subscribe to the "If I'm not doing anything illegal, what do I have to hide?" theory.
Did you know that in a recent survey, only 22% of British people surveyed could properly name the 3 countries that makes up Great Britain.
On an unmarked map, almost 90% of Americans could not identify any of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. 51% could not find New York State. 68% could not find Japan and 20% could not actually find the Pacific Ocean.
Sure, the number of people who are actively opposed to database surveillance has risen from 5% to 20%, but that doesn't mean the "general public" deserves anything.
I do notice the western countries with the strongest privacy laws happen to also be the countries with the highest test scores amongst kids.
Places like Finland, Belgium, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada.... They aren't known for government surveillance or overbearing police forces.
I don't know, is this ironic? Or a result of the "liberal agenda" in these places? :-)
sorry to turn that into a political rant, but... It's just too easy.