Slashdot Mirror
Proposed UK Communications Law Could Be Used To Spy On Physical Mail
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that the UK's Draft Communications Bill includes a provision which could be used to force the Royal Mail and other mail carriers to retain data on all physical mail passing through their networks. The law could be used to force carriers to maintain a database of any data written on the outside of an envelope or package which could be accessed by government bodies at will. Such data could include sender, recipient and type of mail (and, consequentially, the entire contents of a postcard). It would provide a physical analog of the recently proposed internet surveillance laws. The Home Office claims that it has no current plans to enforce the law."
Someone should really tell the guys in power that 1984 was more of warning and less of a plan. Guess the old e-petition becomes invalid now: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/32400
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
"The Home Office claims that it has no current plans to enforce the law." Really? Then why is the provision in the bill then? If you dont need and dont plan on enforcing it why is it being passed then?
Potential Terrorist 391,496, mail log:
Received junk mail from Direct Marketing Alliance.
Received junk mail from Insurance company
Received junk mail from Direct Marketing Alliance.
Received junk mail from "V14GR4 4 U"
Received junk mail from Derp's Amazing Electronics.
Received copy of Harry Potter 4 via Netflix.
...
Well, on one hand, a warrant should be needed for any kind of surveillance. Monitoring activity pre-warrant shouldn't be legal. That said... snail mail is dying. It's mostly just junk mail, bills, and packages ordered online. I can't see how this would have much intelligence value.... Especially since, at least in the US, if you simply reverse the sender and receiver and leave off the stamp, it'll happily go to its destination as long as it's in the same geographic area. Oh wait... was that helping the terrorists? My bad.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Can't they just open the letters up anyway?
Really, if you think your mail is secure, I've got a bridge that was just mailed to me from London to sell you.
Do everything electronically, use encryption and for packages, use something like Fedex or DHL.
Invoices can be sent electronically. No need for Post offices.
All you need is the destination address. The person doesn't have to be identified.
The sending address can be omitted, or fake.
(If you don't care about having it returned if it can't be routed).
The content can be encrypted.
So, it's all good. :)
"The Home Office claims that it has no current plans to enforce the law." Similar assurances were made to the jews by the Nazi party when they were encircling them with laws in the 1930s.
Constantly in Britain you hear of control freak legislation and technology proposals and laws. I thik they have the most CCTV per capita, they are happily extraditing any of their fellas to any country claiming IP infringement, and you constantly hear of such obsessive control of the individual. In a country with a lot of parliamentary direct democracy (they vote individual people, not party lists, and the one with most votes wins), the only logical conclusion is that the citizens want to be controlled at this (insane, to me) level. What I do not understand is why?
Would the government consider it a threat if people started marking all their posts "death to fascists"?
on the outside of an envelope (or any part of a post card) has ever actually been private? Certainly not I, even before I knew enough to care about privacy.
It's just not been technologically practical to store all that info, but with 3TB HDDs stuffed into 42U SAN racks, it's more than doable. And with modern CPUs and high-density RAM, OCR on even the worst penmanship is probably practical.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
wow, Britain must really be expecting some major social and political upheaval to occur sometime in the near future, cause I can't believe the status quo justifies this level of intrusive surveillance now.
So if Some Bloke is messing around with my wife, all I need to do is send a postcard ...
Dear Al Qaeda HQ,
The bomb is in the mail, it is sure to make a bang.
Some Bloke
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is INTERNATIONAL LAW, and which the UK is a signatory of, states it crystal clear in Article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or CORRESPONDENCE, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." ---------- URL here for those who want to check the validity of this claim: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a12 ------ So UK Home Office, how the hell are you going to explain to the UNITED NATIONS that your little mail-snooping project violates ARTICLE 12 of the UDHR? -------- If you were going to pull shit like this, why did your government sign and rattify the UDHR to begin with? Why can't you just leave your citizens alone, like other civilized countries. And, finally, have you learned nothing from George Orwell's '1984'? It was published back in 1949, so you have had OVER 60 YEARS to learn something from that brilliant, brilliant piece of work, which was written by someone who was your countryman no less, who was British. ------ I give up. The more I look at the UK from a privacy perspective, the more I feel that that particular country has really gone down the drain, and perhaps irreversibly so.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
if people started marking all their posts "death to fascists"
Hey! Who said you were allowed to think like me?
How about marking posts with phrases like "Top Secret Plans To Bring Western Society To Its Knees Enclosed" and then inside put your own instructions on how to kneel for prayer services?
Or mark the outside "Private" and inside just put a note that says "Your wife's been screwing a guy half your age and a willy twice as big as yours!"
Might I recommend chaff.
Quite frankly I'm surprised they didn't already do that, since this isn't any more invasive than retaining the information about phone calls.
yes folks just write this nice word on hte back of every envelope
PENIS
Suddenly the "eye" on the top of the pyramid gains more meaning.
Just PGP the contents of your postcards. Should drive them crazy.
You have to write vewy, vewy tiny, though...
Mail is electronically sorted and the data is used for trending purposes, thus stored for years.
It's not impossible that the act was deliberately excessive. Got a bill that's too outrageous to pass? Make it huge! Huge outrage! Super outrage! Mega Outrage!
Shrink it back down to its original size, everyone feels much happier and they let it pass.
Can we please get off any suggestions of domestic spying and just get back to being holier than thou?
You know, like berating China for violating human rights and shit? Please?
Accusations of being hypocrites is very distracting.
So please, let it go.
press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote
But it must be seized by force from oppressors, and is given away by the apathetic and scared.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Holy shit the right to read our personal mail? Next they'll grant themselves the ability to read our telegraphs or message pigeons!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I am so glad I live in America where we have freedom and the fourth amendment of our constitution explicitily forbids this type of thing.
And some thought Rupert Murdoch was the bad guy... I bet he laughed when he read about these recent addendums to the Communications Act.
One of the key reasons that Royal Mail ( which originally conveyed the King's post ) was granted a monopoly on inland mail delivery in 1654 was so that the Private Office could intercept and read / decrypt communications as instructed by warrant.
Additionally the Secret Office was established to covertly intercept letters; whilst the activities of the Private were recorded and acknowledged, the Secret didn't even appear on Royal Mail's expenses.
La plus ca change...
I send and receive small packages to/from the UK occasionally, and the failure rate has been atrocious. Something like 50% never arrives.
I use registered mail by default now, even though the price of the mail service exceeds the value of the package. At least that way I can file a complaint (and receive some compensation) when the mail doesn't arrive.
The small section allowing this is just supporting in law what they already are doing. The Postmaster General of the U.S. in a recent Youtube video mentioned how we could use that data -- which we already collect. It is part of the normal processing of the mail.
E Proelio Veritas.
Gosh, I'll have to remember not to put any incriminating evidence on my next postcard home on holiday. Normally of course, I would reveal my criminal and terrorist plans in detail, because obviously no one would ever be so rude as to read them.
Another non-story from thel libertarian tinfoil hat department.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is so old! Years ago I worked with a guy who as a much younger man (he was nearing retirement) worked in England for a company that made envelopes. They made literally several hundred tons of envelopes per year. While we were recanting 'horrible places to work' he told me about this place, and told me about the law that enforced that there was a 1/4 inch gap between the end of the glue and the top of the envelope. I had always assumed that it was there to make the envelope easier to open. Not so. The law was in place because if the government *really* wanted to read the contents of a letter, it would be very easy to tap the letter to the top of the envelope, then insert a small split rod (half the rod on one side of the letter, the other half on the other side of the letter), then turn the rod, effectively rolling the letter up around the rod. Then you remove rod and letter through the 1/4 inch gap, read contents, re-roll, replace contents, unroll, and done. The contents fully read, the letter rounded but still in the envelope, the envelope with original seal. Now whenever I send a letter, I use a glue stick and I seal it up all the way around.