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Online Activities To Be Recorded By UK ISPs
SmartAboutThings writes "The United Kingdom online monitoring law just got published, showcasing some disturbing facts. The paper is 123 pages long and is actually a draft of the Communications Data Bill. You might not be so happy to find out that from now, every single thing you do online will be recorded and stored by the good old Internet Service providers (ISP). What do we mean by online activity? Well, everything."
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.
www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
Why aren't their riots in the streets over this? For years I have heard about Europe being very pro-privacy. I have even worked with their privacy standards from a professional standpoint.
What went wrong? Seriously, how on earth did this ever happen? Your cars and your online activities are all being monitored by your government with your blessing! The communists never had it that good, all they got were phone calls and letters. You gave your own government a blessing to invade your privacy at a level the East German's could have only dreamed of. Something is very, very wrong in UK today. What the hell happened?
"If you have nothing to hide, then why complain?" - That's what they said when I told them I refused to open my car for the police. They'll probably say the same when I say the police should not be recording our websurfing.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
*The* authoritative guide to oppress and subdue your population into submission and complacency.
Warning: Void for the wealthy and/or connected.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
no, but it will.
It may take several attempts, but it eventually will.
The reason is simple: the powers that be *want* this. Much like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and whatever the current generation mutant strain is, keeps getting brandished about like a giant black rubber donkey dildo. The public says no, but the powers that be want to fuck us. They keep whipping out dildo after dildo, refusing to take the hint that we *DON'T WANT ANY* dildos, not just that specific one.
When they finally manage to snooker us into taking it (all the way I might add, without any lube), then they tell all their friends about it, and from then on, that type of dildoing becomes standard practice, for everyone, everywhere.
What we need is to propose counter legislation FORBIDDING proposals of this type. Simply defeating every proposed terror dick they whip out of their rape kit won't work.
Send emails that contain as much information that you can cram in there from wikipedia.
No, use high-entropy random numbers ... much harder to compress/deduplicate :-)
Make sure you invest in all the storage companies first.
Stick Men
It's usually standard practice to use a car analogy on Slashdot, but I find your new item quite refreshing. And a point well made.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
The reason is simple: the powers that be *want* this.
Even that isn't true. The Lib Dems are pretty strongly opposed to this, as are some high profile Tories, David Davis being probably the most obvious figurehead.
This is the usual power grab by police/security services/whoever, backed by the usual FUD about terrorism and organised crime. It's probably also something of a "We can still be friends, right?" from the Home Office to the police, whom the government in general and the current Home Secretary in particular have annoyed a lot in recent weeks.
Something might get through, but I very much doubt it will look anything like this by the time it's been done over by civil libertarians, ISPs who would have to foot the bill, and people who actually have a clue about technology. We as a nation might be far less protective of our privacy than I personally would like, but we're not completely clueless. Look at the way ID cards were beaten down, despite a huge push from government. More recently, look at the way the way the government at EU level has turned against ACTA, despite the national governments of almost every member state already ratifying it and publicly claiming they support it.
Even in the US, where the popular claim is that the government don't care about anything much any more, look how fast the politicians got educated about SOPA and PIPA and in many cases completely flipped their position after the entire Internet decided to teach them that these things matter. A lot of the time, the problem is that the legislators are naive and just listen to the loudest voices; never attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by incompetence, as the old saying goes.
You're right that certain organisations will keep trying. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. It's not exactly the spies' job to look out for people's privacy, after all. We just have to make sure that the other side of the debate is heard as well, and that anything that reaches the statute books is a sensible balance between the competing interests.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What makes you think that the powers that be are the representatives/senators/MPs/whatevers?
Multinational interests have powers that flow fluidly accross multiple political jurisdictions. They are the ones that want the dildo in your hole.
They won't stop until they are either told sraight up that they can't, or until they succeed in getting one rammed in there.
Despite what they might say, multinational corporations are not people. They are not human. They don't tire of devising ever more terrifying dicks to aim at you. They never get tired of trying, because they know that as long as they keep at it, they will eventually succeed.
If you think accepting a tiny dildo as a compromise is a sensible solution to the problem, I have only one thing to say:
Enjoy.
I think Governments need to be very very careful about going down this route. Should this go ahead I expect any ciminals to encrypt all their network traffic via a VPN or proxy as well as measrues such as sending emails encryped via PGP.
That's easy. It's already a crime in the UK to refuse to hand over encryption keys. They don't even have to prove that you have the encryption keys, or that the allegedly encrypted data is actually encrypted.
Before long mere use of encryption, or even possession of random data that could be mistaken for encrypted data will be illegal in the UK.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
More UK-bashing from timothy again, I see.
It's not "from now on". The proposal has been published. It is not a law, and is unlikely to ever become one.
Do you hate us because we're free, timothy? Is that what it is?
Here, we are simply shifting electrons around, real wealth and power are elsewhere.
People used to make just sound waves with their own mouths. Those waves couldn't propagate farther than a few meters. Still, those people were often arrested, imprisoned and killed. A technology that allows anyone to talk to unlimited audience over unlimited distances [on this planet] is far more dangerous.
Speech in general is dangerous. All palace revolts, all military coups, all popular revolutions started with people who were speaking.
In an ideally peaceful society free speech would be completely outlawed. Without being able to communicate you can only lead a revolt of one, easily suppressable. However such a society is likely to stagnate (see USSR.)
The real problem with human societies is the people. Someone always wants something from others, be it money or power or attention. Those are called "troublemakers." But this is normal behavior for homo sapiens. We might just as well ask molecules to stop their Brownian motion. It's what they are.
Democracy allows free speech on a slim chance that some of those new proposals are beneficial. In practice new political leaders only want to unseat current political leaders, and they use the people as fuel and cannon fodder for their purposes. Will Romney be better than Obama? Or worse? Or the same? Nobody knows; this is quantum information - the act of listening to either of those politicians changes the message. On top of that, the electorate is usually not even aware of all pertinent facts - because the facts are hard to find and because they are hard to comprehend. The electorate simply remembers who called them last and votes for that guy.
I could even understand if a government would offer zero free speech in exchange for absolute safety and stability. But this is not going to happen, in any country. You would lose your free speech but the government would be even more abusive. Losing your freedom of speech (or freedom of speaking anonymously) does not come with any benefits whatsoever. Not to you, at least. The government benefits mightily.
Similarly, Communists in 1917 Russia used their free speech (not really a right, but they had it anyway) to kill tens of millions in 20th century. A certain other person, let he remain unmentioned here, used his right of free speech (which he did have) to construct one of evilest empires in history of the planet. (Pol Pot is nervously smoking in the corner.)
Inverse it is, yes.
It's not those you've mentioned whose power of free speech is the active vector here.
It is the elimination/suppression of other speech that is the evil part, and enables further evil.
The answer to speech you dislike/disagree with is always *more* speech (voice your views as well), not less (suppressing/silencing opposing voices/opinions), in any society that could reasonably be called "free".
The US is falling into this abyss as well as the UK, under an ever-expanding government. To my "scoring", the UK is ahead in blatant, "in your face" public domestic surveillance, but the US is far ahead in covert domestic surveillance.
And please, let's not bring out that tired "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater" thing in this thread. That's been rehashed to death on /. and elsewhere. This is about political speech.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.