UK Government Backtracks On Black Box Snooping

judgecorp writes "On the day the so-called snooper's charter was included in proposed UK legislation, as part of the Queen's Speech, it has emerged that the government is already backtracking on the controversial idea of making ISPs install black boxes to collect traffic and pass it to the authorities. The bill is not yet in a draft form, and TechWeek has learned there is a lot of maneuvering behind the scenes."

Comments

you don't understand how politics works

[Anonymous Coward]

You never ask for what you want. You ask for more than what you want, and pretend to have made concessions. You end up with exactly what you want.

Also, the big ISPs have so many government contracts that they will happily cooperate voluntarily. If you want privacy, you would do well to use a small ISP - particularly ones like A&A with a vocally anti-censorship and anti-snooping agenda.

Re:you don't understand how politics works

[ppanon]

That's not just politics, that's Negotiation 101, which applies to far more than politics. The difference is that in most other negotiations you don't want to be so outrageous that the other party walks away, whereas in 21st century politics that can be a bonus that makes your base happy.

Re:you don't understand how politics works

[lightknight]

Hmm. So that's what I've been doing wrong all these years. I tell people exactly what I want (read: programmer needs), and they think it's the beginning of negotiations, instead of the end of them.

Re:you don't understand how politics works

[Anonymous Coward]

You never ask for what you want. You ask for more than what you want, and pretend to have made concessions. You end up with exactly what you want.

True, although in any civilised country the mere act of asking for such a broad sweeping surveillance system should be sufficient grounds for the requestor to be immediately removed from office for being some kind of batshit crazy voyeur/control freak. How would we have reacted 20 years ago if the Home Office had asked that the Post Office open every letter sent, and photocopy it before sending it to its intended destination? We'd think them crazy. This request for the automatic routing of data to GCHQ is no less crazy than this, so in this case there should not be negotiation or haggling - just the immediate sacking of the person requesting this stuff.

Re:you don't understand how politics works

[L4t3r4lu5]

That's not just politics, that's Negotiation 101, which applies to far more than politics. The difference is that in most other negotiations you don't want to be so outrageous that the other party walks away, whereas in 21st century politics that can be a bonus that makes your base happy.

Or, as I like to put it, "If you want a puppy, ask for a horse."

Re:you don't understand how politics works

[TubeSteak]

This request for the automatic routing of data to GCHQ is no less crazy than this, so in this case there should not be negotiation or haggling - just the immediate sacking of the person requesting this stuff.

If that's what the public wanted, that's what it would get.
And when I say "wanted" I mean really wanted to the point where it was politically untenable to not-fire someone.
But the reality is that most shitty legislation is created with "a lot of maneuvering behind the scenes" and not presented to the public until the votes have been more or less lined up.
Is it really a democratic process when the legislators and businesses are "maneuvering behind the scenes" without public input?

Sudden outbreak of common sense?

[AmiMoJo]

Maybe they realized that it would just push people to use more encryption and make the security service's job even harder.

Re:Sudden outbreak of common sense?

[Xest]

That's a problem I have with a lot of these laws including those in the US - they're getting implemented with the intention whether explicitly stated or not that they be used for minor crimes like file sharing. Yet there's a price to these laws - the effect is what you state, and it means the criminals they really should be catching, i.e. child abusers, become much harder to catch, whilst the file sharers continue sharing.

There's a kind of an unspoken honour system on the internet in a way - if you let people file share etc. then those with the abilities will not attack your sites, they will not produce anonymisers, they will not produce technology that disrupts law enforcement, but if you start going after every petty little crime online like that, then expect a response that will benefit file sharers, terrorists, and paedophiles alike. The authorities need to realise that - that the real winners of a war between authorities and those who commit minor crimes will be people who commit serious crimes.

Perhaps this really isn't about minor crimes, but excuse me if I get the feeling that it wouldn't take long for this snooping charter to be used for exactly that which would only crate an arms race which slow moving leglislatures can never hope to win.

Re:Sudden outbreak of common sense?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure if it's 'honor' as much as 'apathy'(though the results are the same).

At a population level, it isn't really the existence or nonexistence of a tool that matters as much as its availability to laypeople. As long as you don't exert any overt pressure, even relatively tiny barriers to use(whether inherent to the technology, because of common ignorance, or because of UIs that uphold the finest stereotypes concerning why programmers aren't UI experts) will keep people away in droves. The only ones bothering will be privacy geeks and atypically clueful criminals, both of which are relatively scarce.

If you do exert overt pressure, you create a substantial incentive for even people who care nothing about technology to know about some basic circumvention tools. This creates not only a wider skill base; but a much larger pool of basically-legitimate users among which to hide.

If you block facebook, even people who are socially obligated to dislike geeks will take a sudden interest in the otherwise alien notion of 'proxy servers'...

What the hell Britain?

[mirix]

Don't you know how these things are supposed to be done now?

You do it illegally, then after the fact pass laws retroactively granting immunity. Noobs.
Room 641A
Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act

"It's particularly important for Congress to provide meaningful liability protection to those companies now facing multibillion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in efforts to defend our nation, following the 9/11 attacks."

etc etc

Re:What the hell Britain?

[Rogerborg]

Bear in mind that what they're backtracking on is saying that they're going to install back doors. They don't learn fast, but maybe they catch on eventually.

It will be back

[gramty]

The powers that be have been pushing for a ubiquitous telecoms surveillance pork fest for at least the last 20 years. There is a fresh push with every new government / home secretary. I have no doubt whatsoever that we have not seen the last of this, need to stay vigilant.

Encrypted VPN

[sleiper]

I already use a lightly encrypted and anonymised VPN service to avoid traffic shaping when watching movies and playing games, and when accessing US services, all this would do is make me plug my service directly into my router, instead of just activating it when I needed it. All these laws will do is force more people to go down this road, I'm not doing anything wrong, but I also don't want Johnny Government looking over my shoulder at everything I do.

Re:Encrypted VPN

[Big Hairy Ian]

That's ok for the likes of you and me but what about your average Joe Public who doesn't even know what a VPN is. Yes the techies like us can circumvent this but this legislation will effect every one not just us.

Re:Encrypted VPN

[qbast]

That's why it should be server-side effort. Switch as many websites as possible to https, use imaps and smpt+tls for email. Then the biggest remaining hole would be DNS.

Re:Encrypted VPN

[sleiper]

But I don't see why a company in the VPN market can not come up with a simple consumer product that would encrypt a users traffic. There has been some proliferation of this type of idea for users of public WiFi connections, ie a one-click third party app that anonymises internet traffic. I can see a market for this type of product if enough of a buzz is made about it. Of course this just draws attention to a nice little work-around that we have, and might focus attention on combating it, but judging by how cack-handed governments are when it comes it this area, I doubt it.

Re:Encrypted VPN

[Theophany]

If email encryption is as easy to open and repackage as an envelope, you may as well not bother.

the queen never backtracks...

[Covalent]

We are at war with Eurasia...we have always been at war with Eurasia