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UK Government Backtracks On Black Box Snooping

Posted by samzenpus on from the on-second-thought dept.

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."

11 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. you don't understand how politics works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:you don't understand how politics works by ppanon · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
    2. Re:you don't understand how politics works by lightknight · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
    3. Re:you don't understand how politics works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:you don't understand how politics works by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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."

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  2. What the hell Britain? by mirix · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
  3. Encrypted VPN by sleiper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Encrypted VPN by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  4. the queen never backtracks... by Covalent · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    --
    Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
  5. Re:Sudden outbreak of common sense? by Xest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:Sudden outbreak of common sense? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Informative

    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'...