Slashdot Mirror
UK Government To Revise Snooping Bill
megla writes "The BBC is reporting that the Draft Communications Bill is going to be re-written following widespread opposition. The hugely controversial bill would, as it stands, require ISPs to retain vast amounts of data and grant broad powers to authorities to access it, in some cases without needing any permission at all. For those who are interested in the gritty details the first parliamentary report into the legislation is sharply critical at times.
This is good news for anyone in the UK who values their privacy, but it may not be enough. Many would prefer to see the bill scrapped entirely." Opposition to the bill, at least in its original form, isn't just from crazy civil libertarian types, either; reader judgecorp points out that it even includes Deputy prime minister of Britain Nick Clegg.
It doesn't need to be revised, it needs to be scrapped!
As you smash one down they keep coming back with another version. How about a bill to make this sort of thing illegal?
That presumably means that it'll wind up getting passed in an even worse form.
For those not familiar with UK politics, he's the member of a minority party who formed a coalition government with the Tories. He's managed to pretty much destroy his party's political future since then: they've lost their "protest vote party" status to UKIP, who are the people who split the bigot vote in the last election.
That he has been outmaneuvered at every turn by a bunch of upper-class twits isn't his main sin. He also managed to sign a pledge prior to the election and then have each and every one of his MPs vote against the direction they'd promised. At least he apologised. For making a promise he couldn't keep, not for not keeping the promise. People _expect_ the Nasty Party to be nasty; the electorate are just (naively, perhaps) surprised and disappointed by the incompetence of the coalition partner.
In seriousness, the LIb Dems won't actually stand a chance again without dissolving and reforming (rebranding) their ranks.
Opposition to the bill, at least in its original form, isn't just from crazy civil libertarian types, either; reader judgecorp points out that it even includes Deputy prime minister of Britain Nick Clegg.
So now, even on Slashdot, anyone who gives a damn about their privacy is "crazy"? The Ministry of Truth is doing a superb job.
Thanks to the conservative media, Civil Liberties has become a "Liberal" issue.
If you're a law abiding citizen, then you have nothing to worry about; therefore, you don't need Civil Liberties.
Of course what folks fail to realize is that there are so many laws on the books, everyone breaks at least three per day on average. We are all criminals in some shape or form.
I wish there was a satire website that would follow politicians and publish their criminal activity. Example: Well, this PM ( or Senator depending on country) broke the 1831 law on [fill in the blank of archaic or stupid law].
Keep doing that until legislatures are so ashamed of the law that maybe they do something about it.
...of the National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2030 report, where:
...major trends are the end of U.S. global dominance, the rising power of individuals against states, a rising middle class whose demands challenge governments, and a Gordian knot of water, food and energy shortages, according to the analysts.
[enormous caches of data] will enable governments to “figure out and predict what people are going to be doing” and “get more control over society,”
Make no mistake, we (collectively) pose a risk to the power of the 0.1% going forward, and bills like this are being pushed through in "democratic" nations worldwide. Sadly we as a group always seem to vote against our best interests, so being aware of the long term trend is probably not going to change anything (thanks corporate media).
While I would be appalled if such a measure came up on this side of the pond; although we do seemingly allow Facebook and insert any company with an online presence here to do a lot of data collection; I am somewhat surprised to hear about this apparent level of outrage from Britain.
The U.K. has been monitoring its citizens via a network of CCTV cameras for sometime and they appear to be especially prevalent in cities such as London where we have been lead to believe that your movements are recorded as soon as you step onto the street.
Has the line finally been crossed?
... the word "NO!"
And it is well know that when you say something enough others will start believing it.
Soooo... keep saying it for the really hard headed governments.
I wish someone would kill this meme once and for all.
The source for the "Government CCTV everywhere" myth was a reporter looking at a sample street and extrapolating. A bit like taking the population density of downtown LA, Chicago or New York and applying it to the whole US land area and saying the US population was tens of billions [I'm too lazy to work out the figures but I hope you get the idea].
The overwhelming majority of CCTV cameras are privately owned (therefore they must be good in Slashdot groupthink) and not controlled by/accessible to the government/police/spooks... Even when they may have captured evidence of a crime it's non trivial for the authorities to get hold of the data and when they do, given the screenings shown on TV appeals*, the recordings are of such poor quality that it's debatable why they're there at all.
If anything you have more anonymity nowadays than a generation or two ago when a whole army of little "old ladies sitting behind net curtains" and gossiping about the goings on of people in the street was the norm -- still probably the case in smaller communities everywhere.
If you're really concerned, you have a right under current data protection laws to see/be given a copy of recordings where you are identifiable; not sure if anyone has ever bothered with this.
Now this proposed bill, on the other hand, is a completely different matter; the level of outrage is a feature of people faced with a first past the post electoral system that favours two parties who are more similar than different -- should be familiar to you too ;-)
Please don't equate British people with our MPs
*There's a programme on BBC every month or so where they appeal for help in solving some cases and show CCTV footage and re-enactments.
When a problem comes along you must RIPA it!!!
When something's goin' wrong You must RIPA it!!!
In the UK the two main political parties are Labour and Conservative. A very similar bill was proposed by the previous Labour government. The Conservative party, then in opposition, strongly opposed it. Now it is the Conservative party who are pushing for this legislation and the Labour party that is opposing it. This indicates why you can never trust politicians. When they are in power they do exactly what they were against when they were out of power. Governments are increasingly run by big business for the benefit of big business. Continuing to vote for the two main parties will mean no real change in policies.
How dare you, after everything that's transpired over the last 10 years, call us "crazy civil libertarian types".
Governments always ask for more than they need with bills like this, then the revised version seems reasonable. As always, Calvin and Hobbes explains it best:
http://bestofcalvinandhobbes.com/2012/04/mom-can-i-set-fire-to-my-bed-mattress/
except the electorate isn't as smart as Calvin's mom.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/