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In the UK, Big Brother Recedes and Advances
PeterAitch writes "The UK government's Home Office has put a hold on their surveillance project to track details of everybody's email, mobile phone, text, and Web use after being warned of problems with privacy as well as technical feasibility and high costs." Four hours before the above Guardian story was filed, the BBC reported that the same Home Office insisted that it will push ahead with plans "to compel communication service providers to collect and retain records of communications from a wider range of internet sources, from social networks through to chatrooms and unorthodox methods, such as within online games."
could someone please seriously enlighten me as to why the UK government believes this has a chance of succeeding?
TalkTalk's director has already said unequivocably that TalkTalk will sue the UK Government if they proceed with policies like this, on the basis that presumably the TalkTalk director does not want to be put in jail for being ultimately responsible for implementing UK government policies that violate E.U and International Laws on privacy and human rights.
Additionally, the UK's secret service has warned the UK government that raising people's awareness of attacks on their privacy simply raises their awareness of techniques to keep their conversations private, thus making the job of snooping on conversations that really *matter* just that much more difficult and costly.
All right, people, I'm in charge now and we will find the terrorists. Jarvis, I want you to check for any terrorist chatter on AOL. Marley and Greggs, try searching for nuclear devices on askjeeves.com
This is the level of sophistication we're dealing with. They might catch some really, really stupid criminals. Like the ones that put their bank robbery's on youtube.
Now bearing in mind that they currently are looking at the connections between communicators, rather than the content of those communications; that's arguably even more dangerous, because it's like a giant fishing expedition combined with "guilty by association".
It's not just the Brits, it's the whole EU. It's an EU regulation that pretty much all countries accepted.
And it's for our protection, it's to stop terrorists. Erm... or what is to stop child pornography. Maybe it was to catch copyright infringes. Well, it was to stop something anyway, I think.
Anyway, the people will be more safe.
This is good news, because it creates more jobs so that half the people in the UK can watch the other half all the time, and then they swap over every so often.
No one will be without a job then, and we solve the terrorist problem in one shot!
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It is very hard to object to this kind of thing, because no-one is against catching criminals and terrorists if it makes us safer, right?
The opposing arguments are hard to make because they rely on criticism of human nature and seemingly outlandish warnings of sleepwalking in to 1984. None the less, they must be made if we are to save ourselves.
Everyone has things to hide, and everyone needs privacy. You don't expect your bank statement on the back of a post card, you expect it hidden inside an envelope. Surely though the police should be allowed to monitor everything? The problem is that the police are human beings too and there are endless examples of them abusing their power.
My local MP (Sarah McArthy Fry) made the argument that internet surveillance had been used to prevent a suicide, and so was entirely justified. Harsh as it may seem, one life is not enough justification. If we banned cars we could save thousands of people from being killed or severely injured every year, but the bottom line is we consider the benefits of cars to outweigh those lives.
There is no perfect system, but there must be a balance between privacy and limiting the powers of those in authority on the one hand and prevention of crime on the other.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
it is time to abandon these islands ..
you mean eject the prats surely!?
preferably by cannon.
Sadly, some of our compatriots do want it.
Some of them have a mix of just enough racism, just enough respect for authority and just enough credulity to have really, heavily bought into the "terrorists are everywhere" line. They think anyone with dark skin of arab/persian or even indian descent is probably plotting to overthrow the state and/or perpetrate some mass murder like 9/11 or 7/7. The tabloids deliberately confuse them and conflate immigration (legal or otherwise), asylum and terrorism into one big boiling mess of "those dark skinned foreigners are just evil!".
And so when the government tell them they are doing something, anything at all, they jump for joy. Criticism is taken as dangerous, subversive anti-patriotic and prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. They also tend to be the types that will immediately defend any action by the police because beating up defenceless protestors is somehow defending the public.
This is not some sort of "those people" thing either, this cuts across social class and geography. Hell, I'm even related to some people like this.
Now, before americans jump in here please remember that there's a big chunk of your population that think exactly the same way. They are often also the ones quickest to shout about loss of freedom when it comes to social programs.
the problem, is that the islamic community needs to do more to out these factions. when these communities refuse to habor criminals who blow up buses, then we might actually get somewhere. take the london bombings, there's no way the people that made those bombs had their wives/family/friends/neighbours all fooled. someone close to them would have known something was going on, and could have pretended that attack.
until you start seeing real rejection of this from islamic communities, you won't see any kind of understanding from the larger population.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The only possible explanation that I can think of is based on simply following the money - who expects to gain from this? Simple: the big IT service vendors that have been getting a stream of huge IT projects from the public sector. Our politicians are a fairly gullible lot and typically have no experience of being given the hard sell before they get into office - no wonder the poor fools fall for it when the nice man in the expensive suit offers to solve their problems on a time and materials basis. Now that they have sucked the public purse dry they need fresh victims and they don't want willing customers so they need their friends in power to inflict massive IT projects on the private sector.
We already kill ourselves in large numbers each year using cars, tobacco, junk food and alcohol, without any help by religious extremists. They're not even going to make a dent.
This proposed legislation has little to do with protection of the citizenry and more to do with making sure that those in power, remain in power.
This is the level of sophistication we're dealing with. They might catch some really, really stupid criminals. Like the ones that put their bank robbery's on youtube
True. But yet again, the declared purpose of legislation like this and its true aim are not the same - it is never intended as a serious form of catching real "terrorist" of the strap on some dynamite and get on a bus kind. To maintain power and control you need your Thought Police. The best weapon required is surveillance of the normal, general population - it allows the culture of fear to be maintained, allowing the status quo to maintain power.
Funny thing, they're just celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall...
The only people you'll catch with this are folks who have been baited, or don't know what's going on. Ever clicked on a TinyURL link and been presented with one of the "Unholy Trinity"? Well, all it takes is one prick to make it a link to a CP thread on 4Chan and *BAM* jail. Been sent an email from someone you don't recognise and Outlook auto previews an image in the same vein? *BAM* jail.
Pretty soon, I'll be ensuring that anyone I chat to either uses some kind of end-to-end encryption, or I'll just pipe anything apart from iPlayer and WoW through a VPN out of the country. At least that way, if I ever am conned into viewing something HM Gov says I shouldn't, I won't end up on a register for it.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It appears the Guardian has just parsed the legislative process in a strange way to make it look like the Home Office has changed its position when it in fact hasn't.
What would happen if all of the major UK ISPs sued, or outright refused to implement this monitoring system? Would they be fined? Would the Gov. be able to get them to pay?
Would cutting the UK off from the rest of the world for a day (in protest) be an effective demonstration of how costly this would be?
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Exceptions would be made for online banking and shopping using a dedicated system that can't be used for anything else.
Using encryption for other purposes - even SSH to your work, or SSL login to your admin account on a web service would require special government certification and installing a dedicated monitoring software on the machine you're on. Otherwise, even posession of encryption software would land you in prison.
Other than that - mandatory government-issued spyware?
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Actually they have caught people planning to blow up supermarkets who did discuss it over web email
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/6692741.stm
TAYLOR: They then walked round the corner to Universal Video in Slough. Again, the spooks were on the case.
CLARKE: What they did was look at an email account on which were images of devises, electronic components which formed part of remote detonation.
Heroic British SIS officers, with a little help from the NSA were able to spy on the https connection to the web email service and also bug their car
TAYLOR: Omar's friend then had a touch of the jitters.
KUAJA: Bruv, just one thing, you don't think this place is bugged, do you?
OMAR: Nar, I don't think it's bugged bruv, at all. I don't even think the car's bugged. I was saying to XXX what we talk about sometimes, what we're doing, what I'm doing, yeah, bruv, if they knew about it, they wouldn't wait a day bruv, they wouldn't wait one day to arrest me, yeah, or any of us.
TAYLOR: At night, two days later, police specialists moved in to access to neutralise the threat.
Plus they got tips from helpful members of the public
ACCESS GIRL: [on telephone] Hi, is that the police?
TAYLOR: But the spooks also needed something else, luck.
ACCESS GIRL: We've got a suspicion about one of our customers.
TAYLOR: And there was good reason for the call, and this was it, a huge bag stored in unit 1118. Now the staff at Access had got no idea what was inside, but the warning that said oxidising agent was more than enough to cause them concern. In fact, the bag contained 600 kilograms of ammonium nitrate fertiliser. That's around half a ton, and that's more than the IRA used to bomb canary wharf.
Later that night specialists from the anti terrorist branch gained access to unit 1118, the lockup where the bag was stored. They needed to establish that the substance inside the bag was ammonium nitrate ? it was. Alarm bells rang. The spooks had been hearing details of a bomb plot and now they'd found the explosive needed to make it. The pieces of the jigsaw were beginning to come together.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Well, uh, as I understand it, the govt's have pretty substantial physical access at the telcos and ISP hubs. Rooms, in fact. It seems like it would take a big budget, yet be otherwise feasible for them to record _everything_ and dump it off. Later, using grid power and secret NSA hax, they can pick apart your encryption retroactively to get the details they need. If you were REALLY bothering them, they could then use that data to backdoor your box and read your DRIVE encryption. I'm sure they could probably have you on the list in under an hour. I mean, they have the budget, the mandate, the capability. Just because they say they're scrapping a program... doesn't mean it's not a redundant capability. Likely contracted it out. Did you think the military / NSA / CIA / XXX were all just a bunch of keystone cops, waiting for authorization to wiretap? It's just a matter of priority and focus. They're dealing with a pretty large data set, so you've got to be worth their while. I guess that's the comforting thought here... if you're not a truly bad guy, they are not likely to waste resources on you.
A normal society would completely reject the idea that it has to be continuously monitored for its own safety. If anything, this doublethink only weakens the UK. This is exactly the same thing that we openly criticise in other countries, only carefully differentiated so that the blanket definition doesn't stick. It's like saying 'our secret police are less secret and oppressive than everyone else's, so it doesn't count'. So is it right or isn't it? In this weakened state of mind where we don't know ourselves, the hypocrisy of it is totally open to attack...
The budget for the snooping programme was allocated years ago, about £1bn ($1.6bn US) was made public - it was a nice small sounding figure, nothing heard of the scheme again for years. NOW there is an election looming where everything from lying about immigration to the politicians expenses claims have been leaked, they are claiming that the scheme is dead in the water, when the truth is anything but.
If the spies deny it, it is safe to assume they are lying to placate people
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8032367.stm
The UK's electronic intelligence agency has taken the unusual step of issuing a statement to deny it will track all UK internet and online phone use.
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) said it was developing tracking technology but "only acts when it is necessary" and "does not spy at will".
Known as Deep Packet Inspection equipment, these probes will "steal" the data, analyse and decode the information and then route it direct to a government-run database.
Or http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882622.ece
Every call you make, every e-mail you send, every website you visit - I'll be watching you. That is the hope of Sir David Pepper who, as the director of GCHQ, the government's secret eavesdropping agency in Cheltenham, is plotting the biggest surveillance system ever created in Britain.
The scope of the project - classified top secret - is said by officials to be so vast that it will dwarf the estimated £5 billion ministers have set aside for the identity cards programme. It is intended to fight terrorism and crime. Civil liberties groups, however, say it poses an unprecedented intrusion into ordinary citizens' lives.
Aimed at placing a "live tap" on every electronic communication in Britain, it will dwarf other "big brother" surveillance projects such as the number plate recognition system and the spread of CCTV.
I will say that the politicians here like to say "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". Strangely they don't subscribe to this maxim when you are looking into their criminal expenses claims, or government documents that are deeply embarrassing to the current government that were claimed to not exist - but exist, they just didn't want to release them. The UK police don't like the rise of photo and video cameras showing their abuses of the law, so the current corrupt UK government passes a law where is it's crime to photo / record a police officer. http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=839141
Take Nobody's Word For It.
No, its dictatorship, not communism. East Germany happened to be a communist dictatorship., but there are plenty of the other kinds
Bombers are not sheltered by communities, they may be sheltered by one or two people very close to them.
It is like claiming that fascist bombers are being sheltered by the white community (there has been one who actually platned bomds, and other who were planning to until caught in Britain).
Encrypted traffic does not hide who you are communicating with.
The term "thought police" comes from Orwell's "1984", set in what "had once been called England or Britain", so it makes sense that it's happening here. And according to Orwell, "1984" was a criticism of the perversions of communism and fascism. Interesting that you pick up on the extreme left but not the extreme right...
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Terry Gilliam made a really good documentry about:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
See that's a perfect summary of why I haven't watched Panorama in ages. It's become more and more like the US style of hypermentary: Tell the audience what you're going to tell them. Tell them they should be afraid / excited / awestruck. Play some bass noise. Talk in a Really. Slow. Earnest. Voice. Tell them what you're telling them. Tell them what you've told them. End forty minutes of drawn out information.
Honestly, I would prefer a nice tidy sequence of events and some more in-depth looks at the interesting parts. But I guess my aim is to get information and their target audience is those trying to fill their life with "entertainment". But I do miss being talked to like an intelligent human being.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Politics is circular - the actions once in power of the extreme right and the extreme left are identical. The only difference has been the lies they tell in order to get into power.
Typical liberal trying to defend communism, by pretending the dark ages of communism in ~10 different countries never happened. The experiment with communism was tried; it failed. It's a flawed system that is doomed to turn away from its intended goal (freedom) toward tyranny.
While I agree that communism has definitely failed, you seem to be missing the point. The GP isn't defending communism. He (correctly) points out that the same tools are also used in other dictatorships. Several fascist states used very similar tactics and they were definitely not communist. This type of government plans needs to be opposed, no matter the ideology they're using to justify their actions.
Neither word is useful in describing the twisted new regime in Britain. They are not communists or dictators, but they are tyrannical opressive big government types.
Orwell envisioned them as socialists, but socialism run amok doesn't explain it all. It's capitalism running amok alogside that Orwell missed.
I don't think it's malice on behalf of the politicians. When you look at many prominent members of the Labour government you notice they're just not clever or intelligent people- Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman, Keith Vaz, Peter Mandelson, Ed Balls and so on. I get the impression there's a few who are a bit more smart and are more malicious like David Miliband, but for the most part these people are a little dormant when it comes to their ability to think.
These people really do believe they're doing it for our own good, that it's a valid solution and that it's the right thing to do. When people like Peter Mandelson can't even keep the fact he's corrupt to the core secret, having been caught red handed about 4 times now in the middle of dodgy backhand deals, and Hazel Blears apparently can't walk down the street without getting her shoe stuck in the pavement and looking like an idiot in front of the worlds media why would anyone believe these people would have the mental capacity to pull off a power grabbing plot?
Of course you could still be right- it may not be the politicians, they could simply be puppets of those in the security services who are telling them what "needs" to be done which is plausible and probably more realistic. In general though the political problem is certainly one of incompetence rather than an inherent evil. The politicians almost certainly do believe these measures will really catch terrorists.
So what your are saying is that the actions of my neighbour reflect on me. That sounds like guilt by loose association, which is one of the arguments used for the culture of citizens spying on and reporting each other in 1984.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You make a good point. I was reading about Romania's dictator and his wife. He was not terribly bright, and his wife was a peasant who dropped-out of school in 4th grade. She used her power to force people to write research papers, and put her name on them, but she was dumb as a doorknob.
It seems government attracts the not-so-bright to positions of power.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
This view is only possible if you look at all gov't policy as being on a single line Left----------Right .
It makes more sense, IMHO, if you separate economic policy from social policy so you have a Cartesian co-ordinate system instead.
to stop child pornography. Maybe it was to catch copyright infringes
Yes, we must stop the digital copying of child pornography, because it will lead to an explosion in child pornography production.
And we must stop the digital copying of Hollywood movies, because it will lead to the cessation of Hollywood movie production.
Wait ... what?
It's not just the Brits, it's the whole EU. It's an EU regulation that pretty much all countries accepted.
No. Sweden, for example, tried to avoid implementing it completely. The Irish and the Slovaks also didn't like it. It was a British idea - they just realised it would have had a rough ride through the UK parliament so went to the EU to policy launder it (which in less polite circles is called "corruption").
When people learn that not all dark-skinned foreigners are Muslims that would be a step in the right direction too.
Hmm. There are a standard set of laws which are thrown at people where there's no evidence of a real crime. Immigration charges seem to top the list - merely being arrested effectively invalidates certain types of UK residence visa from what I can gather. "Banned books" laws are another in terrorism-type cases. For political protesters, when they aren't arrested using the terrorism laws, the laws against intimidation and harassment get well-used ("the fact that they disagree with me intimidates me!"). New Labour seems to have had a real fetish for these catch-all laws. The worst in the class is the ASBO - a device that they even admitted was designed to side-step those pesky "innocent until proven guilty" and "right to a fair trial" things and make convictions on the basis of the police's say-so.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this law joins those ranks.
When the first case comes up (as it eventually surely will) where these powers are used to attempt to force a journalist to reveal his sources (I can think of a scenario very similar to the Damian Green affair), we'll know for sure how much of a chilling effect it's really had. I suspect that, overall, the law is still a Very Bad Thing.