Slashdot Mirror
UK Proposing Real-Time Monitoring of All Communications
An anonymous reader writes "In response to a plans to introduce real time monitoring of all UK Internet communications, a petition has been set up in opposition."
Previously covered here, El Reg chimes in with a bit of conspiracy theorizing and further analysis: "It would appear that the story is being managed: the government is looking to make sure that CCDP is an old news story well ahead of the Queen's Speech to Parliament on 9 May. Sundays — especially Sunday April the 1st — are good days to have potentially unpopular news reach the population at large."
An e-petition! Brilliant! Since their inception a few years ago they have revolutionised democracy!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17590363
What do critics say?
Nick Pickles, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, called the move "an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran". Conservative MP Dominic Raab said it was "a plan to privatise Big Brother surveillance" which "fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between the state and the citizen" and turns every individual "into a suspect". Fellow Tory David Davis warned that until now anyone wishing to monitor communications had been required to gain permission from a magistrate, but the planned changes would remove that protection.
What do internet service providers say?
Trefor Davies, a board member at the UK's Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA), told the BBC that the technological challenge of collating and storing such vast levels of data would be huge. Although a large amount of data about us is already collected for billing and other purposes - such as who we call and when - ISPs do not currently store detailed data on what websites we visit, or details about the emails we send. Mr Davies said: "The email stuff isn't straight forward, and neither is the web. Those aren't bits of information that traditionally we keep. We don't keep backups of deleted emails. Think of all the spam people get," Mr Davies added. "We delete it, but under the new rules would we be allowed to?"
On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
Time to move... but to where?
Of-course this proposal concerns all those, who are concerned about the real-time communications of everybody.
The proposal is this: all of those, who are so concerned about the real time communications and all other forms of communications and thoughts and actions of other people, the concerned need to be protected.
The proposal is to protect those, who are so afraid and are looking for protection, because obviously, there will never be enough done, in their eyes, to protect them. Clearly real time monitoring of all communications is not enough. Eventually everybody will have to have devices built into them, that can monitor everybody's real-time activities, and eventually read their real time thoughts with the long term goal of projecting thoughts in real time into everybody, so that nobody could ever even think something that the concerned individuals would be afraid of.
So the proposal is to protect these poor souls from the rest of us by isolating them into a well guarded facility, where they could really have real time monitoring of all communications that are internal to that facility and monitor each other (I suppose they are paranoid enough to want to do that).
For those, who believe it is not enough protection, they should be isolated within that facility from the rest in well suited, very well protected rooms (and they should have extra set of locks they could use from the inside), and all of them need to be given all sorts of weapons they need to keep safe as well.
I believe it is at the point right now, where those, who believe they are in need of protection and will not stop until everybody is a mechanised food processor without any original thoughts, that these people need to get the protection they so desire so that the rest of us can carry on, having terrible thoughts and killing each other they way we do - left, right and centre.
You can't handle the truth.
Coming to a pub near you!
FCKGW 09F9 42
This is sheer idiocy.
1984 anyone?
Western countries have an interesting dilemma, how do you reconcile an open world with any form of control. The issue is this, people have gained an unprecedented amount of freedom to travel and communicate. Take the recent French shootings, the terrorist had traveled all over the world with ease at a very low cost. This simply wouldn't have been possible a century ago and even 50 years ago it would have been costly. Mean time, during all those travels he was in constant contact with the rest of the world in an instant.
It means that those who wish to do wrong have far more capacity to do so then before.
There is a relatively new BBC program "Angels and Saints" that takes a look at benefit fraud. It is an odd program for the BBC as it shows a very negative picture of immigrants. (BBC is rather liberal usually) A lot of the criminals in it are immigrants, either permanent or temporary, using the ease of travel and communication to create multiple identities. The way to combat is to link all the different administations together and run matches across them to see that a person with the same parameters is getting benefits in multiple places. PRIVACY!
There are three solutions:
Pick one. All of them are electoral suicide. The first would just lead to a hellish world in which out of control capitalism would be warm fuzzy memory. The second survives right up until the moment the tax man comes around (and gosh, won't it be hard to collect all the needed taxes to pay for all the abusers if the taxman has no investigative powers)
And three... well that is what this article is about and it doesn't seem to popular.
Greece has run with the number 2 option and it didn't and doesn't work. They have been on the dole for generations and the rest of Europe has grown tired of feeding their relaxed nature to tax collection.
How do you run a modern country western country anyway? Note that in EVERY single god game, taxes just show up by magic. Not a single game I ever played ever had the population lying about their income. Imagine Civilization with a Greek setting, build a granary, food production mysteriously drops while some fat cats get richer. Would be rather hard to win the game right?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This is part one of the process of introducing a draconian and unpopular new law. First you come up with something completely over the top and unacceptable. Then, over a few months you water it down here and there, chopping little bits, amending others, until you end up with something that is draconian and unpopular. But it'll be accepted because it's not as bad as the original plan which, by then, will be falsely seen as the alternative. It's a flaw in human logical thought that has been exploited by politicians since they first crawled out of the sewer.
Well, I signed the petition. Put down my name and address as was required.
This may well label me as a possible seditionist in the government's eyes but it's important that I get my opinion out some way.
At least I can still post anonymously on sla---ROUTE TO CLIENT LOST---
The problem they have for someone running their own TLS enabled mail server and reading their email via imaps or ssh is that this warrantless interception will not work. So it's basically for petty nanny state style spying on peoples private, everyday business.
That is, it's useless for it's stated purpose and useful for arseholes in local government (who we know will eventually have access) to harrass taxpayers. Naturally government will sell access to private concerns.
No justification for it whatsoever.
I'd be in a constant state of fear if I knew that every time I wanted to simply read some material relating to alternative political views about distant and not so distant places and mentally keep up and refresh my skills from the times of the service, I would be logged in some system producing a probabilistic estimate of my level of radicalization resulting an automatic denial of employment. I would be feel the same for others even if I wasn't the one wanting to read the alternative political viewpoints.
Today, security services are often consulted about applicants for responsible positions. Maybe in the glorious world of tomorrow the security services provide a report for any position just because it is doable.
The point is to initially study who people are talking to, right? That can be used to determine (un)reasonable suspicion. Random thought:
What if, say, hundreds of thousands of people were to sign up to a single service. Each day they posted their messages to that service, plus some garbage, to make a nice constant number of daily "posts". Each day everyone downloaded ALL messages posted to that service. The messages are, of course, each encrypted for the intended recipient, and people never download individual public keys - only everyone's or no-one's.
When a computer has downloaded the message batch, it tries to decrypt all of them, but will only be successful with messages actually intended for the recipient.
1) Is this already used?
2) If not, is this technically feasible?
3) I am assuming that a man in authority would be able to listen to all network communications or retrieve all server content and logs. Will it be possible for them to establish who was communicating to whom?
I understand that there are other options which rely on obfuscating routing between particular destinations. This method relies on not having any routing at all - more like listening to a daily broadcast in the style of the old "numbers stations".
So the system must enforce a service user's lack of choice on what to download and whether to upload (even if you just upload garbage). Anyone reading IPs in a similar "broadcast" service's access logs (e.g. Twitter) will have a good idea who is receiving what - which I think is what this law is taking advantage of(*) - but what if the service's logs were open for all to see, law enforcement or otherwise, because the logs revealed nothing useful?
The practical questions would be concerning whether the idea scales, i.e.
1) how many messages can everyone download at regular intervals (multicast?) before there'd be a need to split the batches?
2) is it feasible to attempt (part) decryption of all these messages to identify which are for you?
(*) The proposed law isn't afaict demanding warrantless "wiretapping" (i.e. of content), but denying privacy of association. This seems to be the route the EU has tried to go down, and mirrors recent legislation in Canada.
Thoughts?
... but only if all data for everyone is made public to everyone else. I bet that wouldn't be popular with MPs.
See the guys with the British accents *are* the bad guys.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You require people by law to retain all comm for N years on their own machines at their own expense. You require them by law to install a tool which indexes and reports the info back to the command center. You make versions available for Windows and Mac.
Then you just imprison anyone who doesn't comply (terrorists). Problem solved.
Deleted
They *already* obtain the records of internet sites visited, phone calls made, and location.
What Theresa May is doing is requiring that the ISP's index all this stuff ready for searching in a distributed database. Once that is done, it is then a simply matter to run queries against that. The upfront cost has already been paid, it then becomes difficult to justify NOT using something that has been paid for.
Warrants are not needed under RIPA (or rather a request for info from a senior officer is renamed a 'warrant'), they just ask for it. Since there are > 3 million queries under this supposed anti-terror law, it is being misused. With the real time queries, it will be seriously abused.
None of the people whose data is indexed have a suspicion at that stage against them. This pre-criminalizes people in order to justify the surveillance.
Already the police are the bigger than the courts, bigger than the political system. It's so bad that we can't even freely discuss the details of this up-coming law. Cameron is a coward, he's backed down on every issue related to the police, he's scared of them and it shows.
No not the "English" real-time monitoring...
But us Scots wanting independence!!
The bloody referendum can't come quick enough!!!
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Funny, I read this book warning about a "type-1" society.
There's still oil. You're not getting independence.
Deleted
And don't even say you have the north sea oil to sustain you, it is not Scottish companies that run that. IN fact most likely it is French or other GLOBAL companies.
As for defence, you will still be relying on the Crown.
For money? Are you going to go back to a GOLD standard? Where will you get all the gold?
What about social benefits and healthcare and education? Are you going to charge for education? People will just tripsy off to EU universities where Educaton is FREE (but living is not :)).
The west is ruled by democracy and for the UK and the US at least that has resulted in a two party system (oh okay, the brits got the liberals) who seem to be fighting each other as if there are only absolutes.
Anyway, what is common sense? We can't even agree on a common sense maximum speed limit, how do you agree on a common sense level of privacy? Or is what you really mean "My sense"?
Another poster above also talks about common sense as if that is so simple. The moment it affects YOU, common sense goes out of the window. It might seem common sense to have medical aid freely available for all so doctors first question is not a for bank statement showing you can afford to have your wounds taken care off. Right up until the moment YOUR taxes go up.
Just follow the elections in any country and then talk to me about common sense.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I would have used a slightly stronger word to descirbe the people who employ physical force against me as a business model -- perhaps "oppressors" would fit.
The date on the article is April/01, so I hope this is just a april fool!
Does anyone know where the lib dems stand on this? Surely they wont be supporting it?
For money? Are you going to go back to a GOLD standard? Where will you get all the gold?
Gold Standard? Not a single country in the world uses that any more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
I dont read
But us Scots wanting independence!!
Can the rest of England join you please? The people left behind in London should be OK - what with all those nice velodromes and swimming pools they've been building - they could always plant potatoes in the long-jump pits. A few years ago I'd have said that we needed the money generated by the City, but these days they seem like more of a liability than an asset. Just make sure that the wall goes up while Parliament is sitting (preferably debating their next pay rise or expenses package, so they all turn up) so that you catch 'em all.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Everyone knows that in order to spy on every conversation there is, you just do it. You don't need any legal basis. Instead you claim your executive authority to protect the people from terrorists. If a whistleblower or leaker reveals what's going on, you tell The People about how you're listening to conversations involving The Terrorists -- being very careful to never say "only The Terrorists". That will placate the people, while you ram through the laws needed to make your actions legal, which is easy since no lawmaker wants to help terrorists. If someone mentions that you *already* had the authority to wiretap terrorists, and to even get a warrant after-the-fact, just keep repeating about how you need to move even faster to catch terrorists and need to bypass the judicial system.
Most Londoners would like to join the new country of Southern Scotland as well please ...they didn't vote for the current Government ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Like the American political system, there are good guys and bad guys. However, they do not split along party lines. As an old lefty it annoys me that I have to approve strongly of people like Tomlinson, David Davis, John Bercow and Geoffrey Bacon (all Conservatives) while maintaining a deep loathing for most of the Labour leadership. But that's real life: people's standards of behaviour and their expressed opinions are often at variance.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
1984
However, in reality this is all a bit paranoid. Most of this is the Praetorian Guard of MI5, the Home Office and the Met panicking about how they can protect themselves and their political masters from the London mobs, of any creed or colour you care to mention. Understandable, really. If you had to live in London on the average national income, I imagine you would be beside yourself with fury much of the time. Get outside our rather nasty three main conurbations and things are very different.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Jeffrey Archer made a lot of money for his publishers despite the cost of the editorial team and the proofreaders. As did "Andy McNab". A nice big cheque to keep your mouth shut as to who really wrote what removes any need for other people to feel sympathetic.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Right, because you'd really be better off on Salmond?
This is the guy that overturned a local council's decision to allow a local scottish guy to refuse to sell his land to Trump for a golf course. Favouring foreign businessmen over actual Scots and areas of Scotland important to nature.
The guy that wont let 800,000 Scots vote on the future of their homeland, despite the fact they'd be subject to the effect of that future. Preventing a large percentage of the population from having a say over the future of their nation.
The guy who has said that any islands not wanting to split and instead stay with the UK shouldn't have the opportunity to do so. Forcing them to be ruled by Salmond against their will.
The guy who has allowed his consultation to support rigging that allows him to make it look like more people back him using multiple artificial anonymous responses than actually do. Giving the impression of more people supporting his plans than really are.
The fact he wanted to create his own puppet referendum overseer to oversee the referendum rather than use a third party neutral option. Opening the door for voting fraud with no one to indepdently stand up and say the referendum was won fair and square.
If you haven't noticed that the only reason Salmond wants independence is because of more power for him personally, and not for any care of the Scottish people or Scotland as a country, then you're a gullable fool.
He can't even run his referendum fair and square, with multiple attempts to try and rig it in his favour because the polls are against him, so if he can't even do that, then why the fuck would you think he'd do anything else more fairly? As soon as he's got his independence rest assured, he'll make use of that power in as authoritarian and corrupt manner as any other politician.
Fortunately most Scots realise how full of shit he is, and the polls are still riding well against him. But then, that's also why he set the date in 2014, so he can have even more time to figure out ways of rigging the vote.
I should add, in fairness, that both Archer and McNab had the ideas; I'm not suggesting for a moment that their books were ghostwritten. They weren't. (according to a publisher I used to know). And I used to work with a Cambridge First in English who really could not spell - his writing was basically just the shape of the words. He wrote quite successful detective novels in his spare time. His publisher never complained. Successful writing is usually a collaboration.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Our MP will be out come the next election, and in the meantime he will seemingly support anything that keeps his ministerial salary intact.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Most Londoners would like to join the new country of Southern Scotland as well please ...they didn't vote for the current Government ...
Nobody voted for the current government: they either voted for the Conservatives or the Lib Dems, not for a coalition which combines the social conscience of the Tories with the experience and fiscal prudence of the Lib Dems.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I see it this way: They keep knocking at your door trying to knock it down. It's not that you're doing anything illegal, you just don't want government in your living room while you're courting your wife. But they keep knocking and you tell them not to enter but they continue knocking. All it takes is one moment of distraction and you will be distracted long enough for them to barge and start monitoring for illegal activities.
It's an invasion of privacy, what you do in your private quarters is your business. Your communications with a third party is private between you and the third party. The government has no business trying to get pry itself into your privacy unless they are charging you with a crime.
A government needs to fear its people, not the other way around. The government needs to be punished for knocking and asking for this. You wouldn't let your government get away with trying to pass a law legalizing prima nocta, yet they try to pass this sort of invasion of privacy and all we do is give them a light slap on the wrist and say "no, not now". There needs to be stronger repercussions for this type of deviant behavior.
ENGLAND PREVAILS!
there's a difference between being a citizen and being a subject.....
have fun!
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So far as I know, the proposed Scottish independence plan includes EU membership, using either pound sterling or Euro as a currency (subject to a separate referendum), and maintaining their own defense force.
The problem is that that proposal assumes the UK cooperates on both fronts. Potentially the UK could veto Scotlands entry into the EU, and make it near impossible to use Sterling. If they do use Sterling they don't have control of their currency.
I wouldn't expect it'd veto EU membership, and I doubt it'd prevent them using the pound, but with the problems the euro has had and with the UK determining policy on the Sterling with them having no say, I think there's a fair chance they could be forced into their own currency.
The Eurozone might not want more nations like Scotland joining the Euro, particularly after seeing what happened to Ireland. The problem for Scotland is that if it gained independance it'd have to inherit a proportional share of the UK's national debt relative to it's population, and this coupled with the fact Scotland is currently subsidised by England means it's not in a good starting place. Salmond has argued they could counteract this with oil revenue, but there's a further problem - many of the islands surrounding Scotland do not want to be a part of Scotland's independence bid and want to stay with the rest of the UK, and as such it may well be that the oil fields continue to remain under UK ownership due to their proximity to these islands that want to stay part of the UK regardless.
Fundamentally the problem is that the proposal seems to be based entirely on ignoring the reality of what independence would mean. Salmond has tried to suggest that the islands wanting to stay part of the UK regardless shouldn't have this choice, but it would seem odd that the UK would defend the right to self determination for the Falkland islanders in the South Atlantic, Gibraltans in Spain, and not those living on islands in the North Sea, particularly when there's oil at stake.
Personally I'm not sure it matters either way what happens, and I'm not sure I really care despite living here. It does irk me a bit though that Salmond seems to be trying to fiddle the referendum a bit by telling Scottish people working/living outside Scotland (i.e. those living in England currently) that they can't vote but European nationals resident in Scotland can. Effectively he's saying all those that have left Scotland, potentially because they don't like the way he's run it the last few years they don't have an opportunity to tell him to fuck off with his nationalism, but those who have moved there to work can. It wouldn't matter if we were talking small numbers, but it's something like 20% of Scotland's voting population that will be prevented from voting because they're not currently living there. This is pretty unprecedented, as even my girlfriend who has dual British/Canadian citizenship living here can still vote in Candian elections and referendums at the high commission.
I think it's probably that he recognises that if he loses this vote the issue will be off the table for likely decades, and that when only 30% at best seem to support independence it makes life difficult for him. Really, he's often spoken off as a genius politician, but frankly, I think he was the one that got played. He pushed and pushed and was really hoping the British government would say no to his referendum so he could play the hard done by nationalists card to stir up further resentment for London, but unfortunately they called his bluff and now he's pushed into a referendum he almost certainly wont win.
Still, the politics, and legalities of a potential split are pretty interesting.
Personally I'm not sure it matters either way what happens, and I'm not sure I really care despite living here. It does irk me a bit though that Salmond seems to be trying to fiddle the referendum a bit by telling Scottish people working/living outside Scotland (i.e. those living in England currently) that they can't vote but European nationals resident in Scotland can. Effectively he's saying all those that have left Scotland, potentially because they don't like the way he's run it the last few years they don't have an opportunity to tell him to fuck off with his nationalism, but those who have moved there to work can. It wouldn't matter if we were talking small numbers, but it's something like 20% of Scotland's voting population that will be prevented from voting because they're not currently living there. This is pretty unprecedented, as even my girlfriend who has dual British/Canadian citizenship living here can still vote in Candian elections and referendums at the high commission.
I dunno, it feels like a pragmatic limitation to me - they didn't want a UK-wide referendum (understandable on matters of secession, usually it's just the seceding territory that votes); but Scotland doesn't have its own citizenship records or anything, so how do you tell if a particular British citizen living abroad is Scottish and qualified to vote? Your girlfriend, for example, can likewise only vote in Canadian federal elections and referendums, but not in provincial ones, even in the province she had once resided in. Supposing it's Quebec, and supposing they'd have another independence referendum soon, they'd pretty much have to do the same thing as Scotland.
At very least there's the fact that birth certificates will show place of birth, that at least covers those born in Scotland, which I believe in just about every country in the world would make you a citizen of that country.
My biggest concern though for those voters is what happens if Scotland does go independent. Are they then stuck in the obscure situation of being told they're not Scottish enough to vote but because they were born there, and not say, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland, then they're actually going to have to go back to Scotland due to not having the require permits to work in England? not having a passport? Effectively there's a danger that these people will become citizens of another country and suffer the effects of that without having ever had an opportunity to have a say in it. Presumably the UK government will allow them to retain British citizenship but what if they have property or other assets in Scotland? What if they have family there? are they going to have to cross a border they never voted for to see their family? Will Salmond seize or tax property of Scots living abroad who choose to stick with just UK citizenship?
Scotland does issue a lot of it's own documentation (they even issue their own version of sterling banknotes with Scottish branding), so the vast majority of the 20% or so of Scots living and working abroad could easily be identified as Scots.
At very least there's the fact that birth certificates will show place of birth, that at least covers those born in Scotland, which I believe in just about every country in the world would make you a citizen of that country.
Not necessarily - in fact, most countries in the world practice "jus sanguinis", not "jus soli". I don't know about Scotland, though.
Also, being born somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that you're a citizen now even if you once were. My mother was born in Kyrgyzstan back when it was still a part of the USSR, but she's a citizen of Russia today. In some cases, people are required to denounce their existing citizenship to obtain a new one when immigrating.
My biggest concern though for those voters is what happens if Scotland does go independent. Are they then stuck in the obscure situation of being told they're not Scottish enough to vote but because they were born there, and not say, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland, then they're actually going to have to go back to Scotland due to not having the require permits to work in England? not having a passport? Effectively there's a danger that these people will become citizens of another country and suffer the effects of that without having ever had an opportunity to have a say in it. Presumably the UK government will allow them to retain British citizenship but what if they have property or other assets in Scotland? What if they have family there? are they going to have to cross a border they never voted for to see their family? Will Salmond seize or tax property of Scots living abroad who choose to stick with just UK citizenship?
I would expect Scotland and UK to arrange for an open border agreement where citizens of either country can freely move around. Better yet, Scotland should just make it so that any British citizen that has resided in Scotland within the last X years for more than Y days, or owns property there, could apply and be automatically granted Scottish citizenship.