Slashdot Mirror
UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls
Sara Chan writes "The UK government plans to introduce legislation that will allow the police to track every phone call, email, text message and website visit made by the public. The information will include who is contacting whom, when and where and which websites are visited, but not the content of the conversations or messages. Every communications provider will be required to store the information for at least a year."
...at every intersection in London. I guess the ACLU was unsuccessful in setting up a branch office.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Does that make me public?
How about: *Proposal* in UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You assume that our parliament hasn't already had access to this information for years..
Now I see why the Brits constantly write Orwellian-dystopia-type fiction. They have every reason to be scared of their government. And there I was thinking that Labour had been overly surveilling at times. That said, I'm fairly certain that I read that BT logged calls anyway, so this simply pushes it out of legal liminality.
I guess it's finally time (if it wasn't a long time ago) to move to encrypting everything you do online. And moving to encrypted VOIP obviously, though I don't know if they can still track who you are calling in that case. Still a problem if you send something to someone and they don't encrypt it on their end, but better than nothing.
I wonder, when the British read 1984 did they say "hey that Big Brother thing is a great idea"
The issue isn't so much whether law enforcement can scrutinize your web access, but rather that the information could leak out. A distressing amount of private information seems to be kept on laptops that keep getting stolen out of cars.
Requiring ISP's to keep this data is also iffy. ISP's don't want to be in the business of spying on their subscribers. There's no profit in it, it only angers the customers, and potentially the ISP could be drawn into a legal tangle if it potentially knows that someone is doing illegal stuff like, say, downloading and emailing nuclear bomb schematics to someone in North Korea or Iran.
Anyway it sounds like the government is leaving enough wiggle room to discard the policy if it generates too much controversy.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
...where this has been the law for some time.
All politicians will have to register all their communication devices, email addresses, phone numbers, and then make the list of all communication (not the content) available to the public.
Who watches the watchers?
We have met the enemy, and it is us.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Hey, guys - we voted against the other lot for this reason. Ah well. Hopefully the libs will decide to stick to one of their election promises and vote against this. If they don't then there's quite frankly no point in having the coalition in the first place.
Elsewhere in news: massive increase in the user base of TOR and I2P predicted. :P
Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This really reads like something out of fiction. I did not think I'd see the day of such a government, but here I am at 22 years old and already, a modern, 1st world country is to the point where it feels the need and justification to monitor every action of it's populace. The precedent here is staggering, terrifying and morally bankrupt. The possibility for abuse here is strong to the point of certainty. I pray this never makes it to a country I call home.
Soon, I shall dawn my cape and mast to fight this tyranny! ... I just have to brush up on my knife throwing skills, police in the UK use guns now right? ...Bummer.
I believe if this becomes law in the UK, it is only a matter of a short while before it will be pushed through in the USA as well. There are plenty of people here who would present it as, "for our own good, to keep us safe", and plenty of others who would buy that reasoning. And hey, the UK is already doing it! All the trendy countries have one, mom!
Anyway, for the Brits' sake as well as ours, I hope saner heads prevail 'cross the pond.
not to live in the UK.
Most mobile phone operators already keep statistics on who you call when (they need it for billing information in case somebody doesn't agree with their bill) and emergency services are capable of pinning down the location of mobile phones in less than a minute. And ISPs are already required to keep quite some information as well by EU regulations. So I'm not really sure this will change anything. Except provide a legal framework to (ab)use this information.
And we've always been at war with eastasia.
The Government's Strategic Defence and Security Review, which revealed: "We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.
Yes, it is _just_ a proposal, do you want it to come about? So... time to ramp up development of https-everywhere, ensure that you use GNU Privacy guard for all EMail, bit locker on your drives, and dust off your NT box to run https-everywhere!
Well at lest they will be an absolute monarchy now. Citizens do not deserve privacy nor rights for they are the tools of the rich and powerful. No matter who is "elected" the corruption is with the system not who partakes in it. As long as certain groups of people who have a military force ready to open fire upon those they "rule" over this world is just gonna get more cramp, more violent, more unappealing, and if the past 30 years have taught me anything our future if gonna be WAY worse than anyone can possible imagine....remember when water came out of the tap clean pure and free? I do.... a bit apocalyptic maybe but 2 + 2 isn't that hard to figure out....
at least they were forewarned, in the USA, they didn't even warn us, then we had the NSA.
The implicit assumption here is that, as long as Big Brother doesn't see the content of the messages, there's nothing to worry about. Of course that's total bullocks. The AOL search data scandal of 2006 shows that one's search history alone can reveal far, far more about a person than an unwarranted government search should be able to see. Amp that up to a list of every site visit, plus everyone I email, call, or text, and this represents the government demanding the right to dig very deep into Brits' communication.
I hope Britons go ballistic in opposition to this proposal.
...is that has to be one of the oldest Macbooks I've ever seen used in a stock photo.
At least for internet/email it will make the information pretty useless.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
... And finally, TOR under slashdot effect
The UK government plans to introduce legislation that will allow the police to track every phone call, email, text message and website visit made by the public.
How quaint -- they use laws to grant government authority for such things. Over on this side of the pond the President just declares it to be so and tells the judicial they're not allowed to hear any petitions for redress of grievances. Much simpler that way.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I think it's time the UK had a bit of a revolution like the French are currently doing it.
Do it now before your grandchildren ask you why you didn't fight back and you're too old to do anything about it.
Has everyone forgot already? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T
This tracking will be one way only. The average citizen seeing even a glimpse of a phone number that anyone in government dials will be put into a black prison... for their own good. Of course.
Or at the very least demand that the same records be kept for police, politicians, judges etc...
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
what he was trying to get at is that the ACLU are completely totally irrelevant in the UK, and that the ACLU hasn't got a monopoly on trying to improve peoples' liberty
Not being a citizen of the UK I don't know what sorts of rights to privacy are constitutionally or statutorily conferred to her people, but couldn't you folks have seen this coming with the cameras everywhere? If it's any consolation, we Yanks are right behind you. George Orwell is spinning in his grave right now.
Weasel words: Why "made by the public"? Why not "made by everybody"? After all, if they're only tracking who the call is made to and not the content of the message, what does the government have to fear?
One law for the people, and a different law for the government.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I will post the following comment:
FUCK YOU BRITAIN.
Why don't the British people simply exercise their 2nd Amendment rights?
How do these guys, and just about the world other than the US, stand living without the bill of rights? Sure, I know the US bill of rights gets violated, but come on: it's better than not even paying lip service to the rights.
RIPA act ??
It's a bit of a stretch to call what she does acting.
From the one that I saw today on TV, where all the MPs and subjects were getting their bowels in an uproar over proposed cuts. Because, in the words of the PM, "we ain't got no money for nuthin'!"
Oh, a big boondoggle surveillance project? "Sure, mista, we got cash for that!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Been hearing about ideas for complete internet data retention for a good few years now. Here's how it usually goes:
1) An idiot cabinet politician comes up with a "simple good idea"
2) Lots of people speculate about how good an idea it is and how useful it's results would be
3) The media cotton on to the idea resulting in larges amounts of WTF??!!!111!!!1/?1
4) Someone finally tells the cabinet politician how expensive and dangerous the idea is
5) Cabinet politician blusters about how it's still a good idea for years without making any progress towards implementation
6) Cabinet gets reorg'd and the idea is quietly shelved as a higher priority "simple good idea" comes along
Yup, this kind of thing comes along fairly regularly and this old chestnut always gets shot down fairly quickly. Move along folks, this isn't just old news, it's not even news-worthy.
I find it hard to believe that this information would really ever be useful - e-mail in particular. Even assuming the government were capable of accurately sorting out 90-something-percent of the total volume of e-mail as the spam that it is, that still leaves a volume of information that would be daunting, to say the least, to accurately sort and therefore take action on. Same with phone calls, except there one has voice-recognition to deal with (and the same volume, plus the far larger size of recorded voice calls). Does that make it right? Of course not - but the volume of information would allow a careful person to remain pretty anonymous.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
For Christ's sake, nobody tell them about IRC.
how right you are. in spite of the troll mod i'm going to get and the karma hit... the more they do stuff like this, the more guns and ammo i buy. bottom line, eventually it comes down to boots on the ground and who's willing to kill or more importantly die for what they believe in. a lot of people will kill for this kind of totalitarian crap. however, most won't want to die for it. i have faith that eventually America will see the light and embrace individual liberty and personal responsibility again and limit this 1984 nonsense to the europeans where it belongs.
This is actually an EU directive, to be implemented by every member state. Governments need to store at least 6 months of logs. Costs to be borne by individual ISP:s. So if any brits were looking to the mainland for escape from this idiocy, think again. By the way, the man responsible for the creation of this law is one Thomas Bodström, former Swedish Minister for Justice. He's moving to the USA. Please make sure he doesn't get to hold any public office...
Red party started 2 wars and tried this shit -> unelectable!
Blue party cut everything and try this shit -> unelectable!
Yellows are in coalition with the tories -> unelectable!
The hippies won't ever get elected -> unelectable!
The racists are racists -> unelectable!
Is there anyone left to waste my vote on??
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
They might not go ballistic, but they should celebrate it with a Boston-style tea party!
This article is from the website of a dangerously insane far-right newspaper. This article started life along with the stories about how evil brown people are coming over and taking our jobs, and how reptile aliens transplanted the frozen brain of Pol Pot into Zombie Elvis so that gay Jewish cybercriminals could force schools to teach children to line dance. Or some such shit.
Take everything you read here with the same size pinch of salt that you use for the National Enquirer.
I don't understand the fuss about this, because it simply means that they are going to implement the laws that the European Union already has made. This same kind of law already has been implemented or is in the process of being implemented in many European countries, including my own, The Netherlands. If I remember correctly, the European Union laws are in the process of being extended to include all URL's (including search terms) as well.Telephone companies are already performing a lot of tracking for many years. Many ISP's are complaining that this will be very expensive to implement and that it will raise costs for the end-users, while the effectiviness of these laws are probably going to be very small.
Wouldn't it be relatively easy to diseminate a little program that ran in the background and just opened massive numbers of connections to random, or not so random, IP address constantly. If everyone did this, the volume of data collected would become such a burden to the ISPs that something would have to give. And then of course there are anonymizers outside your country of origin who are not bound by said laws.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
what about tracking every noob you gank in WoW or what asteroids you mine in Eve? Savvy miscreants would encode messages into team fortress 2 sprays and put them on walls to communicate with each other.
You just don't realize it's being done. ...
Do you feel safe yet?
Even if al-Qaeda left Iraq and Afghanistan five years ago and are actually in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia - two of which are supposedly our allies?
Well?
Or maybe you gave up too much liberty for false security ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Hello!.
Yours In Minsk,
K. Trout
we have excatly that system here, with 1year backlog of what sites people have visited,whom you have emails, phoned, etc. But atleast our politicians are begining to question if this is needed, and have talked openly about removing it. that comes after a simular law in germany was found to be illigal accoding to their constitution, and they where forced to scrap it, afterwards there was alot of discustion about if it was even needed. A study showed data collected with was only used in 0.0005% procent of criminal cases in germany, they still have the option to log data, but now they need prof and can only activate per person and not for the whole population. Lets hope UK looks at germany and act accordingly.
and more and more I wish I did not. We are losing freedoms all the time and no one seems to care.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
V for Vendetta: so it begins.....
Hope they already have the freak in the oven, so it will be cooked and ready when the fun...er...revolution begins!
I've love to see the data centers they're building for this!
Agony continues
We tried that here, once.
Or twice.
Maybe spammers are cleverer than we thought they were: all that they have ever wanted is private communications.
WTF are you talking about? Let's say you've got naughty pictures of your wife, a few commercial trade secrets, a spell for summoning Yog-Sothoth, and your bank account passphrases all stored on your laptop, encrypted. One day, the drive electronics (but not the platters) fails and you RMA it to Western Digital, install the replacement, and restore your backup. A few weeks later, someone steals your laptop. You're saying it's worthless to prevent both Western Digital and the laptop thief from having your information, because the government has the power to arrest you? You do realize, don't you, that RIPA actually only gives powers to the government (not everyone), right? RIPA doesn't say you have to give keys to just anyone who demands them or else face arrest.
And as meerling points out, encryption also gives you a lot of protection from the government too. Let's say it was the government who took your laptop. Maybe they even imaged the disk and then returned it to your house without you ever knowing. Without encryption, your privacy has been violated and since you don't know it happened, you have NO recourse. With encryption, even with RIPA (!), they forcefully coerce the key from you. Now you know you're under attack, you probably give them the key, then you call your solicitor (or do whatever it is that UK people do when they have conflict with their government).
RIPA or not, you've gotta be just plain negligent, to not encrypt. Use 5% of one of your 6 cores for something, geeze.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Socially liberal, very strong on individual rights, very strong on limited government.
Some embrace anarchy.
'Lunatics' we are not : this was the position of people like Jefferson, for the most part.
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
Downcast gaze OR a plastic Groucho Marx nose & glasses.
Rent a Colo in an eastern European country and set up SSH port forwarding on it (to hide your online activity) and to operate your own mail server.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
In the land of Orwell nonetheless.
On the bright side, every time I feel down about how fascist the U.S. is becoming I can always cheer myself up by looking at the UK which seems to at least one solid step ahead in "one nation, under surveillance"
This really reads like something out of fiction. I did not think I'd see the day of such a government, but here I am at 22 years old and already, a modern, 1st world country is to the point where it feels the need and justification to monitor every action of it's populace. The precedent here is staggering, terrifying and morally bankrupt.
There are only two things new about this:
Son, if you live long enough, you'll see 'free' and 'democratic' nations perform a lot of acts that will make you ashamed, that will make you fear for the future. In my lifetime, I've seen Nixon bomb Cambodia, the Reverend Martin Luther King shot down in cold blood, along with Medgar Evers, Bobbie & John Kennedy and a bunch of others; I've seen students shot dead merely for expressing their opinion. I've seen government admit to selling drugs in order to finance guerrilla operations to subvert a foreign, democratically elected government. I've seen governments sell anti-tank missiles to their enemies.
I've seen enough appalling and apparently senseless miscarriages of justice to understand that human society --that chimera we call civilisation-- is a fragile, ephemeral thing.
Danger lies on both sides of a very narrow path. Oh it's all well and good to check the safety on your handgun and make noises about getting ourselves a new government, but when it comes right down to it, mythology notwithstanding, violence almost always begets more violence. Once that cycle starts, the one most willing to keep shooting is most likely to be the last one standing.
On the other side lies complacency and a willingness to buy a stake in the game. This may be inconceivable to you now, but the people who screamed loudest for deregulation of the finance system, for off-shoring labour and for vengeance post 9/11 were the very same ones placing daisies into the muzzles of M-16s just few decades ago. People change; they learn to acquiesce. They just want to be secure. They'd rather join a party than a cause.
The only thing holding things together is common decency, and even that is failing --at least in the US. When it's no longer possible to object in civil tones, when disagreement is more about affiliation than information, when dissent and disenchantment are met not only with disapproval but disenfranchisement... it becomes harder and harder to keep the ship of state on an even keel.
The answer? read your Thoreau. Understand the tactics that Gandhi and King used. Their tactics were not about Peace, Love and Bobby Sherman; they were dry-eyed assessments of the most effective way to move policy when violent rebellion seemed to be the only option --and a losing option at that.
Grow up, kid. Brace yourself. We're living in one of the best, most prosperous times in human history, yet humanity is still the venal, nasty selfish brute that wandered the veldt millions of years ago. Enjoy the miracle of our success, then devote some time to understanding in detail what it is that keeps us from wiping ourselves off the face of the planet.
... And welcome to the world. You're going to love it, even if it doesn't always love you.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
British MPs: you just gave a big boost to the Free State Project.
British people: come to New Hampshire. We're waiting for you to come HOME.
http://freestateproject.org/intro/real-id
Part of the Second American Revolution!
Both countries elected new leaders (Obama in the US, Clegg in the UK).
Both leaders (and their parties) promised real change. Less aggressionist foriegn policy. Less violations of civil liberties. Winding back the crap done by the previous government. Less acting on behalf of vested interests and more acting on behalf of the people who elected them.
Yet, both governments and their parties have delivered essentailly NONE of the things they promised and seem to be going the other way.
The UK seems to think 1984 is an instruction manual for how to run a government. And the US isnt that much better.
Is there a SANE country out there?
One that has:
A government that doesn't violate its citizens civil liberties
No censorship
Decent Internet links
Good jobs in software development
Good standard of living
Everyone speaks English
Oh and dont suggest India, there is no way I could live in a country where eating a nice jucy steak is against the national religion.
Not an instruction manual.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Phone calls and texts are already logged by service providers and are often cited in courts on both sides of the pond.
For Web access - here's a good starting point that will now become my new home page
https://encrypted.google.com/
For email - web based ssl email. That only leaves RIPA.
Open two accounts at each web site - the innocent spam bucket , and the 'plot to overthrow the world' account. Visit the latter via a sandboxed browser that trashes it's cookies?
Now all that is needed is a worm to setup several million Tor Relays.
Would it be possible to use a VPN service external to the UK (billing via credit card), and tunnel everything out to exit in some other jurisdiction?
SSL VPN that tears down connections regularly would make it harder to decrypt. Keeping it session specific with perfect forward secrecy would help if the tunnel keys had to be given due to RIP.
But how would you go about doing this in a manner that allows the user to use the VPN tunnel service without (direct) knowledge or access of the keys/passwords? Essentially, how would you make the tunnel client-proof?
And I'm sure they'd be more than happy to oblige!
Corporations need those data to sell goods efficiently. The governament need to spy the society because need collect taxes
more efficiently.
The majority of people seem to think that laws such as this will only be used to protect them from those evil terrorists. They would be wrong. The real terrorists, as in the ones we should really be scared of, are the ones who know better than to communicate over a link that can be traced to them. They will simply go to the nearest coffee shop or use an unsecured access point somewhere to do their bidding. The people this law is supposed to protect us against won't even be affected at all.
Now if the government allowed the ISP's to charge the spammers and email marketers for storing all their messages for a year, this might work.
Deep Packet Inspection GCHQ has been going on for a while, this is news that will serve the pubic well and "If it is deemed within the public's interest" that allows any law to be pushed through without consent actually. This could also mean mass innoculation remember Swine Flu h1N1, yes it all started as Sars, Bird Flu and other crap. The truth is it is in the publics' best interest to file "Massive freedom of information requests" of who in the government spoke to to who and when those emails were sent. We already know Sky (Murdoch's outfit) has been gathering viewing details for years. Is any of this going to help in a court of law. Guilty by association. I can see riots occuring over this. Remember the Police when Off Duty are Classed as Civillians and others in all security services. (opps) Oh and do not forget that in 10 years time it will be illegal to buy paper without a license that has you DNA linked, Pens and Pencils too. Here we go Revolution!!!!!
All cows eat grass!
Time to set up a spam server. Let the ISPs and police try to monitor my email when it is interleaved with a billion emails per day.
Everyone convert their data into Canadian SSNs!
WWOOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHH
> one's search history alone can reveal far, far more about a person than an unwarranted government search should be able to see. Amp that up to a list of every site visit, plus everyone I email, call, or text
This gives me an idea:
Largely people completely underestimate the info value of all those things compiled together ("Nothing I do is that interesting to anyone!").
So how about a *local* data collector daemon , that files away every communication the user engages in (not content, just traffic data), every search made, every web site visited etc.. Basically the same exact info, that's being retained and accessed by ISP's and GOV's. It won't protect you, of course, but at least you know what they know. And it might just make a few people a lot more aware of just how much they (should) have to hide!
A weekly letter in the post: "Your weekly Oceania status updates ...
Your wife likes Jones the Postman.
Friend suggestion: Jimmy Smith. You got on so well at Willesden Comprehensive, and he browsed you holiday snaps last week. He has probably forgiven you for tagging him in those drunken weekend pics.
Mary Contrary would like to borrow some chicken feed in FarmCounty.
Your mother has been getting an escalating number of calls from "Uncle" Philip. Perhaps have her round for tea and ask her what that's all about.
Your clandestine tryst with Julia in the countryside did not go unnoticed.
Love, forever,
BB."
It's just an attempt at a nationalised version of Facebook. At last, a Keynesian attempt at addressing unemployment and the recession, using good old ENGlish SOCialism.
I'm pretty sure the British government has been tracking domestic phone calls, and emails all along, certainly dating back to the cold war and UKUSA pact with the US NSA. This legislation allows them to legally collect the data, so they can do things "by the book" instead of breaking laws for things they will do anyway.