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Sir Tim Berners-Lee Accuses UK Government of "Draconian Internet Snooping"
An anonymous reader writes "According to British daily The Telegraph, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned that plans to monitor individuals' use of the internet would result in Britain losing its reputation as an upholder of web freedom. The plans, by Home Secretary Theresa May, would force British ISPs and other service providers to keep records of every phone call, email and website visit in Britain. Sir Tim has told the Times: 'In Britain, like in the US, there has been a series of Bills that would give government very strong powers to, for example, collect data. I am worried about that.' Sir Tim has also warned that the UK may wind up slipping down the list of countries with the most Internet freedom, if the proposed data-snooping laws pass parliament. The draft bill extends the type of data that internet service providers must store for at least 12 months. Providers would also be required to keep details of a much wider set of data, including use of social network sites, webmail and voice calls over the internet." Jimmy Wales doesn't seem to be a very big fan of the UK snooping either.
Right to privacy? Nope. Freedom of Speech? Nope.
Although I think all the conspiracy theorists are crazy, the new world order is the eventual coalescence of the violation of inalienable rights and it's frequency of occurence across all nations.
Anymore the difference between the tinfoil hat brigade and the rest of society is, mainstream society believes that 1984 is coming. The tinfoil hat brigade believes it's already here.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Which "reputation as an upholder of web freedom" would that be? The one based on them censoring Wikipedia for showing an album cover? Or the one where you have to hand over encryption keys or be thrown in jail?
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
Even if you're not happy running an exit node, you can help speed up the Tor network by running a relay. All traffic through a relay is encrypted and kept within the Tor network, so you remain unidentifiable. It also helps obscure when you yourself are using Tor.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Actually, as anyone working in IT in the UK can attest, we have very strict rules on what you can do with people's data.
I've spent a whole day at 3 different jobs attending a Data Protection Awareness course.
Companies are also realising that the data they collect isn't quite as valuable as they once thought. That's why the big supermarkets that lead the way on this data mining with their loyalty cards are actually reducing the rewards they offer.
New technology brings new challenges, but to pretend we are slipping towards a 1984 state just betrays your ignorance of history which actually shows that the majority of movement is going towards increased rights.
Magna Carta only applied to the aristocracy at the time remember, and as recently as 1918 women couldn't vote here.
I have to admit I snorked my coke when I saw that the UK government was supposed to be an "upholder of web freedom".
The UK government is one of the most openly snoopy governments in the developed world. If that's what they do in public, what do they do in private?
No sig today...
I have only had rights taken off me over the last 10 years. If you can name a new one i've been given them i'm all ears.
Rocket Surgeon.
Uhm....
First of all - Google collects data about my VOIP calls? I don't think so.
Google is mostly only present on the web, not the rest of the internet.
Even then, you have to be logged into a Google account.
Even then, they don't collect data they don't care about.
Even then, Google is one of the few countries that won't just hand whatever data over to the government that they ask for with no questions.
Even Google wouldn't want to retain every detail of everything a user does - ISPs certainly don't. I can only think of one place that would really love this idea - hard drive makers. Think about it - when everything you do is logged in detail, and that data has to be retained long-term, then the ISPs and government will have to store it somewhere. It's going to be Hard Disk, at least until it gets cut to tape.
to pretend we are slipping towards a 1984 state just betrays your ignorance of literature. We're in Brave New World.
Fix'd.
We've never had any bother from the Muslims here, at all.
Apart from the 77 bombings, the Glasgow Airport attack, the Exetrer bomb attack, shoe bomber and dozens of failed attempts and arrests.
The source of this junk law is the European Union. It just so happens that the UK has implemented this directive. Others will follow suit if they haven't already!
"On 15 March 2006 the European Union adopted the Data Retention Directive, on "the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC".[1][2] The Directive requires Member States to ensure that communications providers retain, for a period of between 6 months and 2 years, necessary data as specified in the Directive"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention#European_Union
The Glasgow airport "attack" wasn't terrorism, it was two drunk Asian kids crashing a car. It happens all the time in Renfrew, it's a rough area.
What *you* have to realise that apart from the 77 bombings which were reasonably effective they were all pretty pitiful. The IRA terrorists really knew how to do terrorism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Park_and_Regent's_Park_bombings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing
But even those were nothing. You have to remember that our grandparents and parents lived through this. Nothing since has been comparable in anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz
The whole point of terrorism is to instil terror. *NOT* to kill people. That's a side effect. While you react to them they're winning. So don't react. As Ben Franklin said, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
We will be nice today and only ask the small sum of $1,000,000,000.00, payable within 3 hours..
In Bitcoins, right?
To prevent the "TERRORIST, CHILD ABUSERS and PIRATES" from using them.
First of all - Google collects data about my VOIP calls? I don't think so.
on Google Volce (not technically VoIP) and Google chat sure.
Well, duhh, yes - the service provider you're buying a service from knows you're buying that service. If you don't want google to know about it, use a different service provider (but then that service provider knows...). This is no different from how its always been, whether on the internet or not - the telco knows when you made a phone call through their network, the baker knows when you bought a loaf of bread from him.
They also sync your contacts for android
Only if you tell them to... You can happilly use an Android device without asking Google to sync your contacts if you want to.
not sure about the call history
Google only gets your call history if you ask them to back up all your data. Again, you don't have to use this functionality (personally, I back up my phone nightly using rsync over my wifi network, so I don't bother using Google's backup stuff).
I'll give you that one. They have DNS and email, but it's all optional.
So, just like all the stuff you said above - they provide some services, its up to you whether you use those services and if you do they are going to know something about you in the same way as anyone else providing those services would.
For email, they aren't saving anything more than any other webmail provider.
Google _do_ analyse your email content to target advertising at you, which is more than many other webmail providers (although I imagine the likes of yahoo and hotmail do the same these days).
Even then, they don't collect data they don't care about.
When they care about *logging wireless packets* from their Streetview cars, we can conclude that they care about almost all data
I would say that Google's attitude seems to be "lets collect as much data as we can, we might find a neat way of analysing it in the future". There are, of course, good and bad things about that. Afterall, people use Google's services precisely because they work really well, and a lot of that is down to Google figuring out how to analyse your data in new and useful ways (useful to *you* as well as them).
That said, I don't really see the big deal with the whole wireless logging thing. They caught some packets that were broadcast in the clear into a public space for anyone with a receiver to see. If people didn't want their network traffic to be seen by others they had ample opportunity to encrypt it *using the standard functionality of their router*. And even so, the streetview car is moving at speed, it won't capture more than a few packets so they're going to be hard pushed to get anything particularly scary from the data. The whole thing strikes me like someone standing in their front window naked and then complaining that someone who drove past caught a glimpse of them - if you don't like it you should've drawn the curtains.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Actually, as anyone working in IT in the UK can attest, we have very strict rules on what you can do with people's data.
There are indeed very strict rules. But what good are rules if they are not enforced?
As an example, an organisation I dealt with illegally sold my personal data to numerous "partners" (they asked me if I agreed to have my data passed to "partner companies", I declined, they did it anyway). A complaint has been filed with the ICO, and the ICO's response has been to write to the company in question telling them they shouldn't do that. That's it - the ICO are not interested in doing anything to enforce the data protection law except write sternly worded letters to people.
Meanwhile, whilst the original company has now stopped selling off my data, the companies they sold it to have sold it. And the ones they sold it to have sold it. There is no way for me to prevent that (now widespread) data being distributed further. Futhermore, these third party companies aren't even guilty of doing anything wrong since as far as they knew, I had agreed to have this data distributed (since thats what the first company told them).
What is needed is 2 things:
1. Rules forbidding the sale of any personal data between companies.
2. Actual enforcement of those rules and punishment for breaking them.
I am much happier with the likes of Google having my data than other companies - although Google may have a lot of my data, they don't sell it, so I pretty much know where it is, and if I don't like it I can cease using Google's services and make a formal request for them to destroy my personal data (which they are required to comply with under EU law). Most other companies that I have to deal with (e.g. my insurance company, etc.) are happy to sell the data on to other people, who will further sell it on and there's no longer any way for me to know who actually has this data any more. I *always* tick the "don't sell my data" box whenever I fill in a form, and yet my personal data is out there being bought and sold because a few companies have broken the law and ignored my preference. There is largely no way to know which companies have done this.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It's hardly worth being a technical specialist in the British secret world. The real reason that Thatcher wanted Spycatcher banned was because it revealed just how badly technical experts were treated in comparison with the Old Etonians, and might have dampened recruitment. Here's a hint: If you are any good, you can easily earn more teaching maths in a UK secondary school than you can being a codebreaker for the Secret Services. No, I can't prove it, but I have good reason to believe it.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."