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Jimmy Wales Threatens To Obstruct UK Government Snooping
judgecorp writes "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has threatened to encrypt communications between Wikipedia and UK users in order to frustrate the proposed Communications Bill, known as the Snooper's Charter, which would give the UK government the right to routinely track citizens' web and phone use. Wales was addressing the committee which is scrutinising the Bill before it is considered by Parliament."
Nice to see someone has a pair of balls. Not very common on an adult named 'Jimmy'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Done.
Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
I understand that wikipedia is a non-profit and has limited resources, but why not just do it? This doesn't seem like a radical stance at all. This should be on their roadmap. Given wikipedia history of taking sides on issues like this, they should be pioneers in doing this sort of thing.
Plain text HTTP is on its way to becoming a legacy protocol.
Just do it! What's stopping him?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
From what I read of TFA, it doesn't look like Jimbo is actually making a threat. He's just saying "Your idea sucks because I, and any competent server operator, could bypass it in 30 seconds."
It is interesting to refer to this as a "threat" -- what exactly is being threatened here? There is nothing illegal about using cryptography in the UK, and the UK has a key disclosure law. It is only logical for people to use cryptography when they have good reason to suspect that untrusted third parties might be reading their traffic, and frankly, we should have been encrypting our communications from the start.
Palm trees and 8
How does a bill like this even get proposed in this day and age? What ever happened to privacy?
I'd hate to make the ridiculous V for Vendetta reference.. but yikes. The UK really isn't supposed to be going that way.
Video: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=11355 [Windows silverlight warning!]
To highlight what we are up against - the chairman wasn't aware that 'kids' these days are able to chat to each other in games using their Xbox - 'Good Lord' was his reaction.
The committee really do not have a clue, and have no real chance of getting it if the goverment machine gets their way - the witnesses here showed this.
The 25% arguement is laughable [That being it is claimed that 25% of internet data is not available to collect thorugh current legislation]
Why "threaten" to do it?
Like Nike says, Just Do It.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
He uses the donation to keep the site running, since this is what he claimed he'd use the donations for it's not correct to say this is a scam.
If you have the balls, just do it. Empty threats like this make you sound like a yapping chihuahua.
Now how about cleaning up internally so that all these moderators on Wikipedia become productive, useful additions to its service?
You must be popular with your government.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
I'd love to see him use a self signed cert. intstead of one of these centeral authority issued ones..
Why? are they going to deport him to Sweden?
Once we'll all switch to peer-to-peer encrypted communication.
Using HTTPS is not enough, though.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Yes. We (and Wikipedia) should be encrypting our communications from the start. A lot has been written about why we should use encryption, some of it from around 20 years ago. It's an uphill fight still these days and many won't become interested until it is too late. If you haven't already, consider throwing your own cryptoparty.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Shouldn't Jimmy Wales be more concerned with how he's going to keep scamming users for more money with his stupid "pledge drives"? Seems like Wales is trying to be another boneheaded Assange-like figure and make up wild accusations just to try and get a media spotlight.
You know most of the time I disagree with down-modding people. I prefer to call them out instead, tell them why they're wrong and why their reason is faulty. I think that's more useful for the rest of the readers even if the asshat in question is too stubborn to admit obvious fault. Obvious fault like "it's a voluntary donation, why shouldn't people be free to make a gift when they want to", etc.
But you, sir, are making me reconsider that point of view. There's no reasoning with people like you. You don't like Wikipedia, its administration, or anything about it, that's fine, don't use it. No one is going to force you to access the site. But that's not good enough, no not for you. You can't stand that other people derive value from it and want to see it prosper, and some of those people are willing to back that up by putting their money where their mouth is. You call this a "scam".
Naturally everyone who disagrees with you is "stupid". If I like a beer you don't like then clearly I have substandard taste. If I like a song you don't like then obviously I know nothing about music. If I use an OS you don't use then of course I am a brainwashed fanboy. Yeah, I know how you think. There's lots of people like you. I wish there were other habitable planets our technology could reach, so then the rest of us can leave all of you to your own devices instead of having to partake of the taint you promote on this planet.
"Jimmies" is a euphemism for balls, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
I run a Tor relay and an I2P node 24/7. Both can be configured to only use a certain amount of bandwidth over a certain amount of time, for those on metered connections.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
A personal appeal by Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales
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There are a good number of Christians and other peaceful groups in the UK that are discriminated against for various reasons. I think he should. More power to Mr. Wales.
A dream that all web sites use https for everything. Why do so many web sites still not use https? Do they *like* third-parties being able to snoop on their visitors?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/faq
https://httpsnow.org/
http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/03/https-is-more-secure-so-why-isnt-the-web-using-it/
http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/03/https-is-great-here-is-why-everyone-needs-to-use-it-so-ars-can-too/
http://serverfault.com/questions/161854/how-to-set-up-https-without-paying-anything-anywhere-but-with-no-warnings-from
Wait... hold the press.. Wikipedia is now almost 13 years old, and Jimmy's considering pulling out his creditcard to purchase a SSL Certificate!
Wow, this should be on the front page of CNN and all major news papers!
In principle - and in practice prior to commercialization - the Internet worked fine without a "central service provider."
Central service providers DO provide several key services, but these can be done without a central authority. These include:
* blessing protocols as "standards," especially routing protocols between "autonomous" addressing zones.
* preventing or at least defining the behavior of namespace collisions, especially addressing-namespaces.
In theory, instead of a central authority, you can have a "first to reserve the name gets it, anyone who wants to fight over it can use outside channels like lawsuits, payoffs, assassination, war, etc. to get what they want, anyone who makes mischief by stomping on a reserved name or implementing protocols that disrupt others' ability to communicate between each other risks lawsuits, disconnection, shunning, assassination, war, etc." system. When scaled up to "world" scales, such a system is usually called "a gentleman's agreement," "might makes right," or "anarchy," depending on whether people are behaving like gentlemen and if not, whether a "strongman" emerges.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
that snooping stuff could NEVER happen here in the U.S.! Whew!
"Let's go find some Turian and beat the shit out of him
Bonus points if the Foundation publishes a picture of WikiMedia Foundation officers holding up a clearly-legible copy of the certificate along with yesterday's copy of The Times in every major British newspaper.
That way people can verify for themselves that the self-signed certificate is legit.
Well, they can if they have faith that Photoshop, er, I mean an open-source photo-manipulation program wasn't involved.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Nah, because he's relying on ad homarus attacks.
(...cause like, he seems a little crabby.)
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
You're missing the point. Action is undesirable. Threat of action means that people scratch their heads and wonder what it means, what the fallout could be, if their political careers might be impacted. Possibly unrealistic worst cases are made. If not, an ultimatum ("next friday") is delivered. Stirs things up, gets people wondering and talking (like this!).
Action, on the other hand, leads only to the question "is there a major outcry, and how long will it last?" Most people don't notice unless they can't access the site. Doesn't actually accomplish much, unless outcry can be sustained for a considerable period of time, which would require a lot more than "we're going SSL-only" ... like UK-wide wikipedia blackout. And that hurts more than it helps.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Yes, a good gesture indeed. However, encrypting the packets will not prevent traffic analysis by the UK government. To avoid that, individual users will have to take their own security measures (such as using Tor).
I'm not sure to understand, if I'm using SSL, my ISP or any computer between me and the web site doesn't know the url I'm requested, he only know the IP address and the size of the file. Tor is a good way for surfing non SSL web site but I think if every web site would be encrypted the web would safe from snooping.
In 2000 the previous government tried something similar with the Communications white paper that would require every ISP and data carrier to keep every byte of data carried for eight years.
At the time I worked for a small subsidiary of a local telco, our Chairman of our Board was well connected member of the House of Lords. I prepared a position paper for him pointing out that our division alone would need as much storage as was sold annually in the UK to fulfil our obligation.
IT Professional the country over lobbied against RIPA like this behind the scenes and the worst was quietly dropped.
Time to do the same again. Checkout out your companies boards and non-execs for Lords and member of the establishment and point out the stupidity and competitively crippling the current proposals are to UK Business.
The national, local and various agencies of the UK government could be charged say 1p (or 5p etc) per view. That would bring in many £000. It should be easy to see the domain of ...gov.uk in the logs and send a bill each week.
(Obviously it doesn't address the original issue but it does send a message that wealthy organisations should support a socially useful resource instead of just leaching.)
I think if we all send a bit of heavily encrypted messages back and fourth to friends that the expense of decoding traffic would become so great that governments would shy away from the notion of that kind of spying.
But really, there is the very real question as to whether we are better off with communications being studied. That is not a simple issue at all. If it could save us from a major terrorist strike or breaks up a lot of criminal activity we could learn to love governmental snooping. I wonder how many groups or gifted hackers have in mind some computer stunt designed to bring chaos and ruin to the US.
Not sure why Wikipedia doesn't encrypt all connections anyway.
A lot of censorware setups block all HTTPS traffic by default, as the censor-proxy can't see what is being sent without relying on a fiddley-and-expensive MITM attack. If wikipedia moves to HTTPS by default, it'll suddenly become impossible to access from within many schools.
...I wonder. So there's no risk that private cert leaks out and government can do a man-in-the-middle attack easily.
AC, I wish I knew who you were so I could praise you properly. Instead, I can just say, "Fuck Yes."
- No Bounce, No Play -
Here, we have a prime example of a multinational corporation using its immense power to control a large national government. Let's cut them off at the knees before they enslave us all!
When is the US going to invade England and restore freedom?
AC, I wish I knew who you were so I could praise you properly. Instead, I can just say, "Fuck Yes."
I ended up using my mod points elsewhere, so I'm willing to identify myself.
That was me. I was actually wondering if the writing style was going to be a give-away, or perhaps the fact that the mentality he showed is the kind of thing I often speak against.
The unfortunate fact is that it's very important to many people to have some reason to look down their nose at another person and judge them as inferior in some way. This particularly happens to people who are noble and display virtue, or to people who accomplish things (like J. Wales), or who display advanced intellect and reasoning skills. Their unusual qualities make them stand out as targets for this kind of treatment. It makes them a special prize.
You can see easily how absurd this one was. If the guy seriously believes that Wales is running a scam, why hasn't he approached his local police department and demanded an investigation? Oh yeah, because the police want evidence, that's why. Since Wikipedia is not a scam, there is of course no evidence.
The world is full of immature, insecure little busybodies who remain that way because all of their energies are poured into various attempts to control others or to take them down a peg or two, even if only in their own small minds. When they start to occupy multiple key positions of power and people tolerate this (usually by making an excuse to cover it), your nation's viability is questionable to put it mildly. Fascists and Communists everywhere have always exploited this tendency of the small-minded, typically by providing a scapegoat or other form of national enemy to consolidate their power. That's the large-scale, fully developed form.
The small-scale personal form is someone with nothing to contribute so they try to tear down. They don't plan this deliberately and intentionally. Very little of what they do is deliberate and driven by reason or design. It's impulsive and driven by emotion; nonetheless there is a distinct pattern to it. I consider it a benchmark of our decadence that most people have become this way. It's the result of viewing virtue as an inconvenient list of rules and not as self-evident truth that is a joy to observe.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It's also worth pointing out HTTPS Finder which will work for the random sites you visit that aren't in HTTPS Everywhere's default list.
So what do you recommend for smaller sites that don't use HTTPS because they don't have their own IPv4 address? HTTPS needs a dedicated IP address per domain if the site has any visitors using IE on Windows XP or Android Browser on Android 2.x because these browsers lack support for SNI, the TLS extension that makes name-based virtual hosting possible over SSL. These browsers will throw a certificate domain mismatch error for any site on an IP address other than the first site. A lot of hobbyists running these sites aren't necessarily willing to pay twice what they currently pay per month to upgrade to a hosting plan with its own IPv4 address.
I'll grant that the first request is likely to be slower for HTTPS. But after that, how many TCP + SSL handshakes does a browser have to make for subsequent requests using HTTP keep-alive?
Give me a SINGLE valid reason for preferring http over https (from a normal user's perspective).
The following doesn't apply to a site as big as Wikipedia, but it applies to a lot of sites operated by hobbyists. HTTP allows more than one web site to share the same IP address. HTTPS does not unless the browser supports the the SNI extension, and IE on Windows XP and Android Browser do not. So the valid reason to use HTTP from the viewer's perspective is that it allows the viewer to see web sites operated by hobbyists that don't have a dedicated IPv4 address without a certificate domain mismatch error.
It's still not legacy, as it's unencrypted HTTP as soon as the SSL/TLS layer is removed.
Try this: "Unencrypted HTTP over a public network is on its way to becomming a legacy protocol." The only time the TLS is removed is behind the front-end proxies.
And if the mainstream (that is, non-free) entertainment industry is to be believed, the third most untrustworthy party is the customers themselves.
Why do so many web sites still not use https?
Cost.
If multiple HTTPS sites share one IP address, Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Android Browser on Android 2.x can't see any certificate other than that of the first site. Some shared hosting providers are known to routinely put upwards of a thousand different domains of shared hosting customers on one IPv4 address. Hosting with a dedicated IPv4 address costs substantially more for a relatively small web site run by a hobbyist.
From the user's perspective, the lack of a requirement of HTTPS means that the user has a larger selection of sites to view.
Sites that can't afford SSL simply won't use it. You still have not shown 1 single reason why a person would not want to use HTTPS on a site that offers it (thus the opt-in argument).