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.
Welcome to totalitarianism, ladies and gentlemen. I know I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but you left-wing socialist idiots are finally getting what the hell you've been asking for at the expense of everyone else who knows how to fend for themselves vs. living off the government nanny state like a parasite.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks a bunch, limeys. Thanks for colonialism, hooliganism, and this. May your fucking island disappear under the Atlantic forever so that we can all piss into the waves that drank it.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.