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
"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.
Fedex and DHL will also be bound by the law and will always know sender and recipient. Stamps can still be bought with cash though. It's also illegal to withhold encryption keys from the government (senility or internet induced ADHD isn't a defense either).
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
(1) Political apathy
(2) "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear"
(3)People seem to believe that there's a terrorist on every street and a pedo under every bed.
they are happily extraditing any of their fellas to any country claiming IP infringement
That's news to me. Scary if true.
In a country with a lot of parliamentary direct democracy (they vote individual people, not party lists, and the one with most votes wins)
I'm guessing you aren't a Briton, because people do tend to vote for parties. Hell, I'd be surprised if more than one in ten voters could actually name their MP a week after the election; the only reason I can (it's Chi Onwurah, by the way) is that I read Hansard a lot. When I last checked there were less than a dozen independent MPs. Britain has representative democracy, not direct democracy.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
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
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.
(1) Political apathy
So, which party can Britons vote for which doesn't want this stuff?
And even if they could vote for someone, most seats are so safe that it would make no difference. Where I used to live in the UK I could vote for any party I wanted and the Tories would still win.
Just PGP the contents of your postcards. Should drive them crazy.
You have to write vewy, vewy tiny, though...
We didn't vote for it, and we actually voted against it. None of this stuff was in the manifesto of either of the parties in the ruling coalition. They were highly critical of similar legislation when proposed by their opponents, who were turfed out in the last general election. We've had such a long run of crazy authoritarian Home Secretaries now that it's pretty clear somebody or something is getting to them, possibly through their office (or bedroom) window.
Britain has representative democracy
No they don't with having First Past The Post as their method for electing members of Parliament.
It used to be the Liberal Democrats, then they finally got some power and decided that civil liberties weren't so desirable once they were in the government.
Why complain about it on Slashdot? Call your MP!
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
I finally found an acceptable solution for this. I have three types of encrypted file containers:
Type 1: That for which is worth giving the key to authorities or under limited circumstances is worth unlocking.
Type 2: That to which if my computer is compromised I accept as permanently lost.
Documents and files in type 1 include things like my bank statements, financial records, and other information which frankly anyone with sufficient power or authority can obtain if they absolutely have to
Documents and files in type 2 include that to which I don't want anyone else seeing ever. This includes my IP (which I can hopefully recreate), any photographs and other things I have taken, including holidays, family related etc, any absolutely anything for which in any context could cost me money if someone decided to be a dick about it (includes my legal backups of DVDs I own, legal backups of CDs, etc).
I am at the point where I can pull a hard drive out, put it in an appropriate container, and ship it across the country with minimal concern.
Now, those keys. For type 1 I have an algorithm. Pass phrase length and character sets used means that no one will be guessing or cracking it any time soon. The idea here is cost benefit.. their cost of getting into what is not theirs.
For type 2 the same, with one special difference. The password is on my fridge, in various places. Yes, today you can find the whole pass phrase for type 2 on my fridge - assuming that you know where to look and in what order to use the characters you find there.
I figure that if my door is bashed down, my stuff is confiscated and I am embroiled in a shakedown then eventually I will lose the place, and eventually the fridge will be gone. It is about then I will inform whomever is demanding my keys that they can have the key any time they like: It is written in plain text *on my fridge*.
Of course, next Sunday I will be picking another random object somewhere in the house and writing characters on it.. perhaps behind the large picture above the lounge.
I am not a lawyer but I believe that if they make a law stating that you must hand over your keys.. it can't state that they key is not indestructible nor can it state that if their actions destroy the key that you are accountable.
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...