Slashdot Mirror
UK Government To Demand Data On Every Call, Email, and Tweet
judgecorp writes "The UK government is proposing a law that would require phone and Internet companies to store information on all communications, and hand it to the security services when required. The Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP) abandoned by the last government is back on the table, proposed as a means to increase security, and likely to be pushed through before the Olympics in London, according to reports."
Thank you Tory Government for proving you're just as big a bunch of cunts as the others.
When they were in opposition?
I guess whether it looks like a good idea or not largely depends on whether you're the one choosing the "preferred bidders". And thinking about your post-political career.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is even on the same front page! Well, I guess we haven't had a dupe story in a little while - they used to be thick like files around here!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Doubleplusungood!!!!!!
i wonder what could go wrong if this where voluntary opt-in for every citizen?
What remains is a pathetic pretender which occupies the same position on the globe,
but which deserves no respect from its citizens or anyone else in the world.
This IS where the USA is heading, in case anyone was wondering. And before
you jump to conclusions with some xenophobic diatribe, allow me to
mention that I am American.
I always thought Big Brother would start in the US.
I'm a Real Estate Blogger
If you're referring to this, it's not in fact a dupe, because the other story is about the Canadians trying to do exactly the same thing as the UK is doing here,
I am officially gone from
But I'm afraid they won't remove that law after the Olympics.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Somebody out there probably never heard of Twitter switching to https.
That's a side effect of two-party/adversarial politics. The party in power only opposes stuff because they see it as their job to. If the current government proposed a law outlawing the mistreatment of kittens Labour would probably find an angle to argue against it. It's because party politics isn't about serving the people any more (if it ever was), it's about beating the other party at the next election, and that means scoring points wherever possible.
The only thing more depressing than a situation where one side opposes the exact same thing they supported when on the other side of the chamber, is when both sides agree on something, and it gets rushed through without any of the issues being examined.
... then you are a pedo terrorist who hurts animals, or something like that.
I, for one, welcome our new CCDP overlords, in my back end... and front-end... and side-end.
WHEN WILL IT EVER END?!
We can talk about how this might be 1984 or not, but the inevitable path of technology is such that soon all information will be easily available and stored whenever possible.
The reason for this is simple. If your child is kidnapped by an insane pedophile, you want the Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) to use everything they can to find that guy. If a record of tweets, blogs, phone calls and IMs helps them do that, it could save your child.
I'm not enough of a hypocrite to say that I'm going to stand around talking about privacy issues if my kid has been stolen away by someone who is probably busy raping that kid in a panel van. I think my opinion at the time will be "Do whatever you want and get the kid back."
This is the eternal tension in law. Privacy is a great idea, but there are a lot of bad guys out there and we want to keep tabs on them. I think a better solution is to find a government we can trust.
I remember a conversation between my wife a naturalized US citizen and her kin from the UK about security and who cares how much they know as long as you have nothing to hide. It is amazing and sad but a vision into our future. There is a whole series of reports and exposes in the British press a few months ago about how the presence of all the cameras and surveillance tactics have done nothing to make the country any safer. It is basically a giant scam to sell products to the UK government but .... now it is entrenched.
Oh well this is how freedom ends right ? With thunderous applause?
ACK
Sad thing is you can argue against pretty much any good idea by saying there's not enough money to fund enforcement of it.
At least you can use the same argument against bad ideas fairly effectively too. But this is the main reason even good ideas rarely make it into law.
"The project appears to have been resurrected over fears of a terrorist attack at this summer’s Olympic Games in London and security services’ inability to track terrorist’s communication over the internet. The government has already pledged ‘unprecedented levels’ of cyber security for the event."
And they're right! Once the Anonymous take down their systems, they will be completely secure. A malfunctioning web site has never exploited anyone's browser.
Ezekiel 23:20
You're more likely to get "flamed" because you don't know what "totalitarianism" means, yet seem to think beyond all doubt that you do. The rest of your abject nonsense is just laughable.
Yep, same as the Canadian ruckus. The Conservative government is pushing C-30 -- which is largely the same as bill C-74 tabled by the Liberals, back in 2005. It seems by the time a political party is large enough to play a meaningful role in parliament, it's already large enough for widespread corruption to be a statistical certainty.
Dude I think the right-wing with their obsession with big-business, concentrating wealth in the hands of a few and assuming people are worthless unless they have money has kind of helped. As for this libertarian bollocks about people fending for themselves, well I wonder how many of you lot work for the government in some manner or other (military, security, university researchers, politics, military contractors - jeez even computer companies probably sell half of their shit to the public sector). Remember throughout the entire of human history since the discovery of agriculture there existed a parasitic ruling class that sucked up the surplus production from the masses in order to build its castles/temples & live a life of luxury. This goes on for thousands of years in different forms - nobility, emperors, bankers.... and when someone suggests a century or so ago 'Hey, lets take some of this wealth and give it back to the people' the supposed freedom-loving right-wing scream "SOCIALISM!!!"
As for this law, well thats being pushed by a Tory government. The last Labour government were also quite right-wing & like most of your US politicians in the pockets of big business. So if you're remotely bothered about this then perhaps you'll start fighting against the global corps who control your life instead of sounding like an Alex Jones wannabe. You lot are going to keep screaming about socialism until every last fucking right you have has been taken by the rich at which point it'll be too late to do anything at all...
for whom?
Hmm, only one letter away from CCCP...
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Name-calling aside, I think Parent has a point. I'm pretty sure it's the responsibility of the people to keep government power limited and we definitely have been slacking off lately in favour of all the wonderful handouts. We ask that it runs everything then we complain that it does so for its own sake rather than ours. We kid ourselves if we think government any less selfish than those evil corporations. We're too lazy to vote with our dollar against the latter and too lazy to change the former and keep it in check. Bottom line is that we get what we deserve.
I see this as a natural reaction: The Internet has caused a little surge of activism lately and we can very well see how that has the government running scared.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Nahh, they need to bill this as the "data preservation act", free backups for everybody. They can spin it as a job-creator in the hard drive industry!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Would be more efficient than duplicating efforts.
Governments will never stop seeking more and more power over individuals. Corporations will always serve the will of their plutocrat masters.
Anonymity is the ONLY effective defense against power, that is why powerful interests do everything they can to eliminate it.
"The People" who aren't in either of those camps need a means of anonymous, distributed, communication that is outside of anyone's control.
Imagine a box anyone with a little electrical knowledge can wire into a hot outlet. Or a solar powered "wifi grenade" that can be thrown on a roof to make a node in the mesh and last until someone finds it. Set these up to connect to existing hotspots to piggyback on the "plutocrat" internet. Configure them to be low noise enough that they are difficult to distinguish from regular traffic. Add a little onboard storage and files can be "cloud stored" and impossible to remove.
We are coming to a crossroads. The future will be either the one of the boot stomping on the face like 1984, or one where the evil men who seek power are constantly frustrated by freedom loving individuals who have a greater understanding of technology.
encrypt your phone calls, email, everything
This sounds very close to Indias IT act 2011, and proposed changes in 2012 (for which 22 companies have been taken to court)
... or perhaps just mutiny?
davecb@spamcop.net
should be "Dump your Member of Parliament."
Don't just complain about it. Run for Parliament and throw the corrupt government out. Shut down the program.
Unfortunately you won't be able to penalize companies for cooperating with the law. But you may be able to prove corruption of your current MPs and lock them the hell up for taking or soliciting bribes.
oh wait... tw@ts...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
That's a side effect of two-party/adversarial politics. The party in power only opposes stuff because they see it as their job to. If the current government proposed a law outlawing the mistreatment of kittens Labour would probably find an angle to argue against it. It's because party politics isn't about serving the people any more (if it ever was), it's about beating the other party at the next election, and that means scoring points wherever possible.
The only thing more depressing than a situation where one side opposes the exact same thing they supported when on the other side of the chamber, is when both sides agree on something, and it gets rushed through without any of the issues being examined.
Close, but not quite. It's an effect of both parties really being the same party behind the scenes. They only pretend to be fighting each other to give the silly voters the illusion that voting for the other set of scum might change something.
Things will only change when the citizens march on the legislative bodies and kill the legislators. Which means it will never happen, because we've all lost the killer's edge that our ancestors had. Oh well, it was such a nice civilization while it lasted.
Do China and Iran have this much control?
CCDP vs CCCP. So close. (CCCP was better known in the west as the USSR, you can see it on aircraft and cosmonauts)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Anon parent and grandparent - Although I'm sure you both feel like your side is less to blame than the other, I think that the anger shouldn't be against the ideas of the opposing side. I believe it should focus on the execution by the corrupt few who chose to implement the policies. Honestly, conservatism, libertarianism, liberalism, and even socialism all have advantages and could probably work if it weren't for asshats. That's the rub, there's always going to be some asshats. Anymore, I think policy should be directed to controlling the damage by asshats.
The biggest fear for me is how they can take things out of context.....and even then at their own discretion. Like that bloke off on his holidays who said he was gonna "destroy America" only to be greeted with a rubber glove at LAX.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/01/2-british-tourists-deported-at-lax-over-twitter-jokes/1
do i need to continue
When the topic was related to Facebook's storage of user information, there was all this talk about the EU's "right to be forgotten" and how Facebook was violating this "right". Apparently this protection doesn't extend to the government.
I've noticed that various western governents (australia, UK, Canada,) seem to working almost in unison with these orwellian type laws. There have been 3 or 4 major laws or decisions raised by each countries government in succession over the last year or two, I'd read about it in the Canadian papers then not a week later find out both Australia and the UK are trying to pull the same nonsense.
the Olympics are coming to Britain. They will do just as much for the economy as they did in Greece.
Off-the-Record (OTR) gives you "perfect forward security", which means even if they know both your and your friends secret keys, they can't decipher the conversation they've captured. Keys are used to authenticate each other together with random values. The authentication generates a one-time key for that connection. When session is closed, key is forgotten and only way to decipher the captured data is to bruteforce AES.
The onion router (Tor) gives you anonymity so that even if government knows every single connection your network connection makes, they can't be sure it was you and who you connected to.
Unfortunately, it's only feasible for chatting. For voice communications it has too poor quality (latency, jitter).
With the psychotic behavior of many Western governments growing more pronounced, what are you doing to prepare for the upcoming revolutions?
As for this law, well thats being pushed by a Tory government. The last Labour government were also quite right-wing & like most of your US politicians in the pockets of big business.
The suggestion that either Blair's Labour or Cameron's Tories are 'right wing' makes me laugh. They're only right wing when compared to Stalin and Mao, and not by much.
They want everything stored? Give them a lot to store. Send a bunch of quasi-random, but important seeming, documents to the email accounts of UK officials until it becomes cost prohibitive to store all of them. The less compressable the messages, the better.
Name-calling aside, I think Parent has a point. I'm pretty sure it's the responsibility of the people to keep government power limited
And how do you plan to do that? Labour were authoritarian scum, and they were replaced by Tories who are authoritarian scum.
There is no electable party which is not full of authoritarian scum, which is why so few Britons bother to vote any more.
While there will be the inconvience of the government knowing all that you are talking, texiting and complaining about, think of all the jobs this will provide for those that will have to sort and determine who to check out as a terrotist! Why, with all the unemployment in the Muslim community, there is a "willing" body of people that would just love to sit at a computer reading all your mail! And of course, since you all have to be "PC", just because they are not "true" English people, you can't deny them the jobs! Can't wait for it to expand to the US! End of privacy, and Unemployment at the same time!
Either they are real scared about some Morons who cant even blow up their own underwear.
Or UK tries to become more scary Dystopian then the USA.
I just cant decide....
The more they take away the greater the sense of oppression the more we push back; this green and pleasant land, this terrorist factory of those who had and lost and cried "No more!" With nothing to hide yet all to fear, of prying eyes that see me bare when cast away that right to share, a mind made up by proxy where free will lay trampled underfoot, in a terrorist factory that my brother born on me.
I think (because I'm cynical and a little paranoid like this) most governments do similar surveillance, but they just keep it on the down-low. At least the UK has the cojones to say it.
I think it is close to inevitable
I heartily disagree. If anything is inevitable, it is government failure.
The people now have a lot of power. In every country. This people power is based on the idea that everyone has certain unailable rights. That there are no such things as Lords and Kings, Privilege and Divine Right.
Leaders are just regular people.
Everyone is equal before the law. Everyone.
There is no rule by Fiat or Whim.
There is rule by law. A law, where the laws are written down, then tested and retested in courts. Checks and Balances. The right to know what the charges are. Warrants signed by a judge. No search and seizure without a good reason. Right to a speedy trial. Right to a jury of your Peers. Right to an open trial. Right to face your accuser.
Every creature on the planet knows the list and can point out what I have missed. History teaches us the people have become more and more free of the tyranny of the rich and powerful as time progresses.
What the Canadian, Australian and UK governments want to do is clearly illegal. Everybody knows this.
So what purpose does the Dystopian Meme serve?
When Men are so educated and enlightened, how can the clock of progress in ideas and freedom be reversed to where the Rich and the Powerful again rule by fiat?
Enter the Dystopian. The Devolution. The Crises. The War Time Emergency. Where People Power has crumbled and Lords Rule by Fiat, Fear and the Sword.
Of course they do not want you to fight it. Of course they are going to tell you resistance is hopeless, dangerous and inevitable.
Traditionally, what the Right has always done is try to maintain the satus quo. There's a reason they're called 'conservatives', ya know. What that traditionally meant in the US was, smaller governments, less taxes, fewer restrictions on businesses, you know, the guys who kick into their campaign warchests. The 'liberals' have always been about 'uplifting the poor', 'creating better working conditions', that kind of thing, basically, 'cut into everybody's pocket cause we have a social program we just can't resist'. In my experience, there's never been a social program the Left didn't like.
The problem comes when these groups get the 'nanny state' idea locked in their genes. Government must now control the population for their own good no matter what. If they need to jail or shoot 10% of the population as 'dissidents', they'll do it & point to the 90% that's been 'saved'. No matter your party affiliation, these days, the answer is always more government control, more draconian laws, more cops, more troops, more interventions. Governments get so much experience in crisis management that they lose their marbles when there are no crises to manage, thus, they'll invent one to manage. Bonus points if the 'solution' to the crisis is yet more government, more government control, more management of the 'sheeple'. The neocons have been theorising since the 50's that in order to 'save' America, they need to remake the myths. Who cares if these myths are actually contraproductive or outright lies, they're necessary to 'keep America strong'. We'll always need an enemy, and if nobody steps up to the plate, we'll make one. If nobody hates America, there's zero justification for a pre-WWI style military, where all the citizens went into the reserves and a core military was retained to train and lead them in time of war.
The downside of the 'nanny state' government is, it becomes important to remove any possibility of revolution against the government. They monitor large scale sales of nitrated fertilizer these days, somebody could mix it with kerosene and make a drum barrel bomb. There are always new gun control laws coming up through various governments here in the US, designed to take away any citizen's right to self defense. Leave it to the cops, they're supposed to be trained for this. Well, all the cops do anymore is clean up the mess in violent crimes, and knock doors in for nonviolent crimes.
It's possible to build a homebrew cruise missile using off the shelf parts for the guidance and control circuits. How long til rc model airplanes are licensed even stricter than guns?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Every limey will be required to insert a camera into his rectum to monitor for internal hanky-panky. Reportedly it is so accurate that it can read lips from the other end.
Sieg Heil! as one similarly minded individual once said. Fascism is on its way to the UK, courtesy of the one party government of the conservative/newlabour/liberal party.
Nasty ring wing nazis.
It likes like we'll all have to start using Tor in the United Kingdom.
The only way you'll get any info on my emails is by packet sniffing. Even then, some of them are TLS-encrypted.
how about we make all communications of public funded government, public....
I guess it's useful in the west too (Chinese blocked it anyway).
Is it related to this?
ilovegeorgebush
It's really frightening how many "free" countries are proposing similar legislation now. The US has been doing similar things since the Bush administration and is still trying to legalize it. The Canadian government has something similar in the works and now the UK. What is the deal with this trend?
This. I don't care what the governmental system is, I don't care what the religion is. There will always be corruption because of one or two asshats. In the US, we have some honest and good republicans, just as we have some honest and goodness democrats, green party, socialists, communists, fascists, KKK, Black Panthers, etc.
The problem is that the good ones, of any group are always overshadowed by the asshats. Always.
I'm voting NO ASSHAT 2012
They were not fighting the Germans. They were fighting the Nazis. It just happened to be Germans who were the largest group under Nazi control at the time. The Nazis, had they been allowed to stay in power, would be a LOT WORSE than what the UK, USA, and some other countries are currently doing to rip off people's rights. Not that it is impossible for UK and USA to get as bad as the Nazis as this certainly could happen, and is the current direction of movement. But this proposal, while a big step in the direction of Nazism, is not there, yet. This kind of thing needs to be stopped as far from being Nazism as possible. Just replace "Germans" with "Nazis" and that will fix what you posted.
Yadda yaddda yada ...
It was the Germans. They started all the European wars from the mid 19th century to 1939.
As an American, I hide my German ancestry because of that. We Germans are war mongering assholes - when we are aren't making great turbines.
Form your own party? Become active in one of the smaller ones that might actually be better? Fight tooth and nail for whatever little issue you consider most important? Activism?
By lazy, I meant in the broadest sense... Both the people as a whole and the individuals. The majority of people are still too comfortable to take real political action and such is the wonder of incremental encroachment. The new 'normal' gets shifted further and further into oppressive, but too slowly for people to notice... or really care enough to risk their semblance of comfort once they do notice.
There's only so much complaining on the Internet you can do. At some point, you're going to have to take real action yourself if you want things to change. Or you can do exactly what put you in this situation in the first place and wait for other people to fix it for you... That doesn't seem to be working too well however.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending that you can change everything all on your own, chances are you won't. But you're in this crap because nobody wants to get involved, resist and drive significant change... Yet you're not doing just that yourself. It may seem entirely futile to you but it's not. If you're not genuinely fighting for what you believe in, then you don't really believe in it.
As a disclaimer, you might be the most politically involved person in your neighborhood and already doing everything you could possibly do. In such a case, my answer is: Keep fighting, brother, and never give up. You are not alone.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Haven't you all left the UK by now?
Is the US government behind this? I know there are draconian laws like this in the US, the Canadian government is pushing a law like this (and its getting a *LOT* of pushback, although I don't know if it is getting *ENOUGH*, and the government might just ignore the petition, even though it already has over 100,000 signatures), and I suspect the US government is behind it. I suspect it might be likewise in the UK. After all, if they already have Carnivore and Omnivore running, they can just pass on information they are already collecting.
The British are your ancestors, you daft cunt.
And it's not like the US isn't trying it's best to dryrape the internet. You're gonna wreck that glass house if you're not careful.
Now if they could only monitor and store everyone's thoughts....
and that means scoring points wherever possible.
Does it actually work though? When you see them spewing trite pre-prepared lines, starting every sentence with "I think", shaking their head as their opposite number speaks, making lame jokes, setting their own questions, refusing to debate with members of the opposite party on Newsnight etc. do you think "ha ha they are winning so hard" or do you just get slightly more disillusioned?
Come election time most people seem to vote for either who the papers tell them to vote for (and papers take no notice of what politicians actually say, except to twist it to their own point of view) or who they think will fuck up the economy the least.
I think both sides have realised this which is why the Torys when they were in opposition and now Labour are staying fairly quiet. They think that if they can just keep quiet and not actually put forward any specific policies then by virtue of simply not cocking things up they will look better than their opponents. The government is forced to act so can't avoid getting it wrong due to the incompetence inherent in the system. Everyone knows that manifestos are actually just a list of things they definitely won't do when in power anyway. "We won't do that" just means "we will do something with the same effect but worded slightly differently if we feel like it".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Is it just me or does this sound like the back story that leads to the regime present in V for Vendetta?
I think the Tories were keeping quiet when in opposition because they knew Labour were screwing up at every turn. And now Labour are keeping quiet because they don't have anything to say...
But yes, most people will vote based on what they think the parties stand for, not on actual performance. But in terms of the internal politics of parties, press coverage and point scoring seems to be very much the way to advance, or assert status within the parties.
As far as the general public go, iirc most people typically vote for the same party no matter what. If you look at general election election results since the 60s, neither the Tories nor Labour have dropped below 29% of the vote, so no matter how badly they do, they still get nearly a third of the population to support them. Then, with around 20% for the Liberals (+/- 3%, since the 1980s), that leaves about 20% of the vote left with which to win the election; i.e. 80% of the vote is pretty much fixed. You see a similar result with changes in the number of seats; the biggest swing in recent history was 200 seats to Labour in 1997, but the average is around 90 (something like 1 in 7, or 15% of seats).
Everything you've ever touched online, every file, every object every email. All of it. I think a billion petabytes should do the trick.
Good thing that I live in Canada where something like that could never happen...
A fundamental principle of intelligence is "if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, don't make the haystack bigger" and terrorism clues are always needles in haystacks, because, despite the hype, terrorism is an extremely rare event. That's primarily what makes it so difficult to combat when it does occasionally surface.
This programme is doomed to be abortive in the long run. With all that data to sift through (but remember, it's only connection data, not the content of communications, so it's a bit less scary than it might seem) there will be little hope it's going to be useful to anyone. And just estmate the storage capacity that's going to be needed by each ISP and the time it will take to collate such volumes of data from multiple ISPs - not to mention the error rate.
False negatives will abound, just because someone missed a clue by not looking in the right place at the right time - and how could you, with such huge volumes of stuff to look through? False positives will also occur in direct proportion to the enthusiasm with which the "new source of intelligence" is embraced, and if they happen too often the ensuing outcry will eventually embarrass the porgramme into oblivion having wasted bazillions of quid - i.e. a typical government IT project biting the dust yet again.
So this is just another knee? (yes, let's say "knee" out of courtesy) jerk response intended to "show we take" X or Y "seriously". The plain truth, which seems to have eluded our security services, was clearly demonstrated by R. V. Jones during WW2, is that the best results are achieved by directed intelligence - a process of building a picture out of carefully filtered information gathered purposefully. Not by burying the analysts in piles of irrelevant junk. Oh, but I forgot - we can use computers now, and that solves everything. Except, garbage in - garbage out maybe.
Holy fuck! How did this get modded up? A sensible thought out comment that calls out idiot right wing trolls for what they are and does not immediately get slapped down?
What is this? Opposite day? If not, the universe is about to implode. That is all I can conclude.
It doesn't pay to get upset about proposed legislation unless it has a very good chance to pass.
The vast majority of legislation never gets anywhere--much of it is put forth solely to appease some campaign contributor.
Fact is, the UK is in all likely-hood already intercepting such data, just as the USA and many other governments.
Under the old laws in the US, nothing sent by EMF was considered 'private.' Em ail & tweets have been declared non-confidential for legal purposes for years--one of the reasons law firms are keeping the fax companies alive.
You want secure? Then encrypt everything. Neither government nor industry can be assumed to be ignoring your traffic, and computers make it possible to listen to ALL the traffic.
Fact of the matter is, the electronic & data world is not even close to being a 'safe & secure' place.
Given that the US government is prepared, willing, and experienced at kidnapping people anywhere in the world and holding them in secret indefinitely, being listened to is paltry.
So far as I know, there has NEVER been a government which paid more than lip-service to the law. In fact, there are darn few large organizations, if any, which obey laws. So you can safely assume that at least one government agency is listening, and it's probably safe to assume that there is at least one private concern listening--law, or no law.