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."
The UK is just putting together the biggest porn database in the history of the world to provide a search engine along with relevant advertising to bring in some extra cash.
Ok I guess Orwell was about 25 years off
{sarcasm} It's cheaper to just waterboard the suspect rather than save all that data {/sarcasm}
Table-ized A.I.
When will governments figure out that pushing big brother tactics on their constituents doesnt help them find the badguys in fact all it does is make the law abiding masses paranoid and pushes the ones they are after further underground into darknets, and other more nefarious methods.
In the end the only thing this will be used for successfully is kowtowing to corporate interests and eroding the rights of citizens.
Yeah, yeah. I've heard the movie and book don't mesh but the overall theme is still the same: Complete access to what anyone and everyone is doing, thinking or writing.
On a related note, the following quote from Sneakers isn't too far off either:
There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, I am not going to feel safe until *everyone* is in jail. That is the only way to make sure there is not a criminal free somewheres.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Maybe the e-snoop plan is a ploy by the postal service to boost revenues. Very clever, those Brits.
Table-ized A.I.
But in the most incompetent way possible. Letting the ISP's store the data? So you're telling me that tracking the communications of the worlds most dangerous terrorists is so incredibly important that it can potentially be left in the hands of a 20 year old intern charged with swapping the backups tapes? Hyperbole of course, but come on, if you (the UK gov) aren't storing the data, do you really know it will be available when you need it?
I'm honestly sure who I trust less to securely maintain a database containing large amounts my of private data. The government have consistently proven themselves incapable of managing large scale IT projects, or of taking privacy seriously. On the other hand, I don't trust my ISP either - will they be prevented from outsourcing any part of the chain involved in collecting and storing this data, for example, or is my data going to be available for $1 in Delhi anytime soon? It's a lose-lose situation.
Oh no... it's the future.
Please, as anyone who does sorting in RM will tell you, losing stuff is damned rare.
Most mail that doesn't reach its destination is because the public is apparently too damn stupid to write a proper address.
Hell, just last week I had two letters to Dublin, United Kingdom; three to West Germany and a couple of dozen with no town or city...
Never mind the people who just make up post codes.
I no longer have any hope for Great Britain.
The country that spawned the magna carta is on an irreversible spiral into a police state.
They will continue to erode the rights of people in the name of "terrorism" and "child pornography."
And the general populace seems happy to let it happen.
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
I'm sorry, but if I want to write my address as "1337 Drive, Leetown, HAX X0R" simply because it sounds a lot cooler than "123 Main Steet, Liverpool", I bloody well will and it's your job to make sure it gets there!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
And Americans stocking up on guns and ammo:
That would end if people didn't believe that Obama and the Democratic leadership were itching to infringe on their 2nd amendment rights. Most sportsman are extremely annoyed by the run on ammo and firearms because it's driving up prices for everybody -- but it isn't going to end until some sanity comes out of Washington.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
The devil is always in the details.
1) what do you do with the 1.6 million muslims (most of whom are peaceful & law-abiding) who are presently living in the UK (many of whom are not first-generation)? If you just throw them out, won't that make the previously peaceful ones very angry with you?
2) what do you do with the 53% of all residents of Northern Ireland who are protestant (and therefore want to stay where they are)? If you just evict them, doesn't that risk starting yet *another* war in that region?
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!)
That EU regulation is now used as an 'excuse' by the same British government to tell the ISP's and Telco's to retain the data.
As usual the tabloids will blame Europe.
The EU regulation does only specify some minimum requirements like 6 months retention but the UK government will no doubt go for the maximum of 24 months, that was the minimum they wanted of Europe with unlimited as an option.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I agree. The only reason they are not storing the content now is technological limitations. Once that barrier is removed, they will certainly take the next step.
Wholesale surveillance is not limited by good will, it's limited by technology.
When all else fails, run.
And you think group foo won't violently resist such a thing? And make the problem far far worse. And won't it make it very dangerous for British tourists to travel just about anywhere where members of group foo may live?
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?
...it will now let ISPs and telecoms firms store the data themselves, and access it when it feels it needs it.
Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou sir, you are too kind, your generosity overwhelms me. Would you like to lash me with that nice whip you have there?
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.
You have a short memory. I was living in England at the peak (or nadir) of Thatcher's reign, and she had everything well set on its present course.
I think his point was that even during the Thatcher years, you at least had Labour as an alternative. But when Tony Blair took control of the Labour party and sent it down it current Thatherite course, British politics effectively became varying shades of conservatism.