Slashdot Mirror
British Government To Grant Warrantless Trawl of Communications Data
First time accepted submitter cardpuncher writes "Having opposed the previous government's attempts to introduce mass surveillance of Internet communications, the Conservatives are planning to introduce the very same policy they previously described as a 'culture of surveillance which goes far beyond counter terrorism and serious crime.' The plan is essentially to allow stored communication data to be trawled without the inconvenience of needing a warrant or even any reasonable suspicion."
They can introduce all the warrantless tapping statutes they like but there's no obligation or wish on my part to hand over my decryption keys. When there's information I do not want to fall into the hands of my enemy I am NOT about to just giftwrap it for them.
They can suck the bark off my fat veiny purple-headed fuckstick.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
It beats me that anyone thinks that this is not already going on. What I want is the practise regulated by law, Why do you think we are resorting to locking up people without trial?
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
If it's not an April Fool, it's not funny.
Whatever it is this Gov't won't be my Gov't after the next election.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
We need Her Majesty to save her subjects and overthrow this government.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
This is about real time access with a warrant. I suggest that everyone RTFA for once. The summary and title are WRONG. That is not to say that it is not still troubling but let's be real here.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I agree. But what is the alternative? England, which is where this is happening, has an effective two party system. Like most places. On an individual basis, you realistically have two choices, and they will both lead to the same thing.
Theoretically, someone should be able to start their own party, and get voted into power by running policies specifically for the people. This is more difficult than it sounds, however, because you have to take into account that people do not vote rationally. Some might, relatively speaking, but probably the majority just vote for the same party forever.
A popular uprising is a route around this. This requires the populace to be angrier and less apathetic than they are now, though, and while we had some nasty riots recently, they were nowhere near the numbers required to actually pull off a regime change. To get one of those, the living conditions in the country in question need to be much, much worse than they currently are in the UK.
Blame can only be placed on the individual voter up to a certain point, as they have to work within the system they have, and with the people they are surrounded by. Of course, the people causing this problem are all individual voters too. But they are unlikely to be reading comments on slashdot. Even if you shouted this in their face, they would probably react with hostility, because their behaviour isn't really guided by stone-cold logic, and a lot of people don't like their behaviour being questioned. Also, you'd be shouting in their face.
This situation isn't as bad as it sounds, though. If quality of life here got really bad, a popular uprising would occur. It's self regulating - if the system gets that bad, it will get replaced. If it doesn't, then hey, things are going pretty well, relatively speaking. Unless technology gets so advanced that rebellion becomes impossible, in which case, we'll all be screwed.
They can introduce all the warrantless tapping statutes they like but there's no obligation or wish on my part to hand over my decryption keys
Incorrect. The UK has the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which lets them demand encryption keys/passwords. If you do not comply, you can face jail time
Can someone mod this up please, as I was about to paste the same thing. It's a *major* error in the summary.
I am under no lawful obligation to ...
Willful ignorance or believing that you're in the US are not excuses that a UK court will accept. The comment you were replying to pointed you to the exact law that you're trying to deny exists.
I agree. But what is the alternative? England, which is where this is happening, has an effective two party system.
England doesn't have a national government. Local government tends to vary between the 3 major parties and often have coalitions and independent councillors.
The national UK government is currently a coalition. Sadly the powers that be in the media and government don't like this, and certainly don't want it to become commonplace as in the EU. They collaborated to fight the only chance of this generation seeing electoral reform.
Some might, relatively speaking, but probably the majority just vote for the same party forever.
This actually makes the small minority of swing voters think they're empowered (95% of the votes in the UK are meaningless, it's only marginal votes in marginal constituencies that count). And they are, they get to choose between Labour and Conservative.
A popular uprising is a route around this. This requires the populace to be angrier and less apathetic than they are now, though, and while we had some nasty riots recently, they were nowhere near the numbers required to actually pull off a regime change.
Those riots were generally people nicking TVs and trainers. Had they ransacked chequers and burnt parliament to the ground, or even just attacked a council office, or a job centre, I'd have been more sympathetic.
There was a lot of anger about bankers recently too, so occupy London camped outside of St Paul's, then enforced the view they were work-shy homeless hippies and fell off the the news radar before, quite rightly, being removed as the pointless eyesore it was.
It's not the body of the communications that can be trawled, but the headers. The government want to be able to see who is communicating with who, and when. The plan was written about in The Telegraph last monthbut the plans are much older than that. The last Labour government, lover of all things authoritarian, came up with the Interception Modernisation Programme which in its original form would have had details of all electronic communications sent to a central government database. When the government eventually realised that this would be completely impractical they shifted the work to the service providers, who would all have to keep the details of the communications travelling through their networks and give the government access to their database at all times. The service providers realised just how much this would cost and so the government committed £2 billion to cover those costs over ten years. The plan was heavily criticised by the Conservatives, who published a paper titled Reversing the rise of the surveillance state. (Which is still on their website.) It was also criticised backthen by the London School of Economics.The plan was shelved in 2009 after opposition from communications service providers and a realisation that it would not be popular with the public.
After the election, though, the Conservatives decided to resurrect the plan, giving it a new name, theCommunications Capabilities Development Programme. (CCDP) Questions were raised in 2010 bythe Information Commissioner's Officeand it was mentioned in The New Statesman. Now the government are pushing ahead with the CCDP and the queen's speech will say that they intend to introduce legislation to implement the programme as soon as possible.
There are many things wrong with this programme of spying. It is impractical, expensive, a huge violation of our privacy, it places too much power in the hands of government, a government who we cannot trust. Making the full details of who talks to who available will allow security personnel to trawl through our data on fishing trips instead of requiring some basis for suspicion. Combined with the database for Universal Credit, which will be almost as comprehensive as the National IdentityRegisterthat was criticised so much by the Conservatives, and the centralisation of medical records, this provides private information about us all to the government on anunprecedentedscale with huge scope for abuse and for life-destroying mistakes.
If these plans scare you, please write to your MP to tell them your objection to the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. You can use WriteToThem.com to send it if you don't have their details. Pleasesign theOpen Rights Group's petition against government snooping and maybe consider joining the group too.
A latent existence