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Warehouse or No, UK's Expensive Net Spying Plan Proceeds

Posted by timothy on from the man-vs.-the-state dept.

Vincent West writes with this excerpt from The Register: "Spy chiefs are already spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a mass internet surveillance system, despite Jacqui Smith's announcement earlier this week that proposals for a central warehouse of communications data had been dumped on privacy grounds. The system — uncovered today by The Register and The Sunday Times — is being installed under a GCHQ project called Mastering the Internet (MTI). It will include thousands of deep packet inspection probes inside communications providers' networks, as well as massive computing power at the intelligence agency's Cheltenham base, 'the concrete doughnut.'"

8 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nana/na na-nana.nana by Prune · · Score: 3, Informative

    Man-in-the-middle-intercepting-your-keys-and-certificates!

    --
    "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
  2. Re:Fight back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    You mean something like Paranoid Linux?

    http://paranoidlinux.org/

    Still in development, but promising...

  3. Re:Fight back by robably · · Score: 4, Informative

    Possibly the Trackmenot plug-in for Firefox?

  4. Re:Fight back by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Emacs has had a spook function since at least the 80s.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  5. For non UK readers some info by mrphoton · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thought I would just put this in perspective for non UK readers:

    This is quite ironic because the politician Jacqui Smith who was backing this crazy plan. Justified the plan with logic such as if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Well.... last month she found out that this was true. Somebody leaked her expenses claims to the nation press it turned out that she had claimed for two porn films along with a load of other essentials for her house such as flat screen TVs which were of course essential for here to carry out her job. Oops.

    Secondly, the last few months and in especially the last week has been very bad for the government. It is generally agreed in both the left and right wing press that the government has totally lost the plot and is also losing control of its MPs. (there is talk of the ruling party splitting in two and senior ministers defecting) Add to this that the UK is in massive debt, and I mean massive. This means that after the next election (in 12 months time) the ruling party will most probably be out. The incoming party will HAVE to cut expenditure and things such as this mad project will be cut and all the employees fired. I can not wait!

    1. Re:For non UK readers some info by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Informative

      The first paragraph is true. Besides, everyone has things to hide, even if they are totally innocent. Like your bank statements on the back of a postcard, or prefer them hidden in an envelope? How about installing a CCTV camera in your bedroom? Mind if the police go through you and your wife/girlfirend's private photos?

      The second part is just nonsense though, the kind of tripe put out by the Daily Mail. The Labour Party won't split into two, no one (except Daily Mail writers) is even suggesting that. The UK does not have massive debt, it's actually still a lot lower than most other developed counties (including France, Germany and Japan). It's big by our standards but put in perspective it's not particularly unusual, in fact our previous low levels of government borrowing were unusual. At the moment a poll of polls suggests that the Labour party would remain in power were an election called tomorrow, due to the fact that despite their faults they are at least making an effort to sort things out and frankly the opposition have a proven track record of not helping (remember Thatcher had 5 million unemployed compared to 2 million today, even John Major managed 3 million and that wasn't during a world wide recession which again is unprecedented). Most likely an election tomorrow would keep Labour in with a slim majority or create a hung parliament.

      I'm no fan of labour, and Jacqui Smith is a particularly nasty, authoritarian powermonger, but I try not to delude myself by believing everything I read in the right wing press.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  6. GCHQ technology by rs232 · · Score: 2, Informative

    "GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain .. GCHQ is subject to rigorous parliamentary and judicial oversight .. GCHQ only acts when it is necessary and proportionate to do so; GCHQ does not spy at will

    'the ECHELON system was designed by NSA to interconnect all these computers and allow the stations to function as components of an integrated whole. The NSA and GCSB are bound together under the five-nation UKUSA signals intelligence agreement. The other three partners all with equally obscure names are the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain'

    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
  7. Re:Fight back by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 4, Informative

    The whole tactic is nonsense. A sent email is essentially something that was placed upon your property by a 3rd party. There is no proof at all that it was intended to be sent to you or that you consented to receive it.

    You misunderstood. I was merely taking the idea of encrypted emails and files from the poster, not the actual process of sending them. My proposal was for botnets to create false positives, and so they would fake both sending and receiving of these emails, complete with appropriate "trace" in the email client.

    What ever happened to actual investigative work? If your really a pedophile you would expect other media, and activity. Being caught masturbating near elementary schools or something sick and twisted like that. Or trips to Thailand to molest young boys.

    Catching paedophiles is hard and they are far rarer then some of the "moral panic"-riding fascists would like everyone to believe. And all actual paedophiles are still innocent until they actually go out and try to molest a real child and even then things get questionable if it was the "child" who was soliciting. And yes there are pervert kids out there - just check out any sex-oriented boards to find out when the perverts on them started having their sex drive, most of the TV talking heads would faint from hyperventilation if they ever found out.

    Catching "thought criminals" however is very easy and painless and profitable.

    Guess which of the two The Righteous Crusaders focus on?

    A real pedophile is going to have far more incriminating evidence and behavior than just some encrypted files.

    Not at all. Some are savvy tech users who are likely to have well hidden data. Some do not do tech at all. Some get off on pictures. Some do not. There is only one common critical element: a molested child. The rest, if it is not direct evidence pertaining to that child, is all thought crimes.

    The fact it is used to justify a complete and total invasion of all of your encrypted data is egregious when there is no other evidence to support their accusations.

    They do not care. Catching paedophiles, terrorists, witches and what-not was never the objective. Just a pretext. The objective was always to create an ability to have total surveillance and thus to permanently and irrevocably shift the balance of power firmly toward the "intelligence" and "policing" complexes, away from the public. And this is all about just that one thing: power. As it always was, since times immemorial.