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Did the Queen Just Resurrect the Snooper's Charter?
DavidGilbert99 writes "This time last year the Queen officially introduced the Communications Data Bill (known as the Snooper's Charter to those opposing it). Last month it was effectively killed when the UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said it went too far and he wouldn't support it. Today the Queen was back and while there was no official mention of the Communications Data Bill, there was mention of 'crime in cyberspace' and a very strong hint that more legislation to monitor people's online activity is on the way."
In my opinion, having royalty weakens an entire country.
I don't think the queen had much to do with it so I'm not sure why she's getting a mention. This would fall under "official duties that have to be carried out or I lose my allowance". The royalty just do as they are told by the politicians.
The Queens speech is not written by the Queen.
It's a summary of the Governments plans for the next legislative period, written by the government.
She just reads it out.
The Queen's speech outlined the various bills that Parliment intends to bring in, and the "snooper's charter" wasn't one of them; the absence of any given bill from the speech is widely (and uncontroversially) taken to mean that the bill is dead. The government's comments that it intends to find other ways to address computer crime would seem to back this interpretation.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
..someone needs to read up on how constitutional monarchy works.
You said, "The Queen's speech will have been written for her by Parliament, so in instances like this, her opinions are not really her own."
Notice that you are suggesting that dishonesty is acceptable.
I lived in the U.K. for 5 months with an English woman. We were interviewing each other for marriage. It was my impression that allowing constant dishonesty helped English women manipulate English men. If the English culture is arranged such that the Queen can lie and be accepted, other women can lie and their lies will be accepted.
It's talking about mapping IP addresses to people, presumably by forcing ISPs to give them access to data they already have (IP address active at time ##:## for account name ####). How that's going to work with CGNAT is anyone's guess.
What's wrong with that? Anonymity means a lack of accountability, and there are enough people abusing the lack of accountability that it's a problem, so anonymity (in the sense of even the police can't track you down) has to go.
And you can bleat all you like about Tor - if that becomes a problem it has to go too. Any technical measure you like is useless when you have to go via an ISP who has to conform to local law. Ultimately they can make it so you can only send and receive unencrypted HTTP traffic. And every "clever" technical workaround (all this "routes around it" bullshit) takes us a step closer to that day. Eventually all your comms will be known to the police and all because you didn't want them knowing your fucking IP address. Pick your battles carefully.
Next question.
Dumb, Dumb, DUMB!!!
Sorry, I felt that part of the summary lacked gravitas.
I understand that polo's a dangerous game and all, perhaps that is how Charles got his decorations?
Which "the queen" are we talking about?
This is a US based site but they have no queen so that leaves roughly over a dozen choices.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The Queen has all the power in England and has taken away all their guns so they have no freedom. She is a tyrant in Australia, UK, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and England and those folks cower before her and they don't know what freedom is. If we let Obama take our guns and our pipe bombs we will be defenceless and the Queen on England will come here and we will have SOCIALIST OBAMACRE like in England. You go to a doctor but you can not pay so he sends you to a hospital and you can not pay them either because the Queen's law says so, so the death panel KILLS YOU!
In America we have the first amendment to make us free and we have the second amendment to stop socialists who use the first amendment. Without guns the Queen of England would come here and take away all our elected Washington lobbyists and we would not even have our fair and balanced TV news to get the real truth. Wake up American sheeple !!!!!
There were a few other positive signals in this year's Queen's Speech for those of us involved with technology as well.
For example, the government has apparently noticed the number of DRM schemes crippling new games when they go wrong and the plague of low quality software that people are selling, particularly on-line, even though it's so bug-ridden/unstable as to be useless, and it sounds like the consumer rights legislation is about to get an overhaul to make it clear that vendors are on the hook for these kinds of abuses.
Also, while there is mention of new patents and harmonisation across Europe, there seems to be no mention of new patents for things like software and business methods. Sometimes what is missing from the Queen's Speech is more telling than what is stated explicitly, so this could also be a good sign.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Unfortunately reports are that "other ways" includes methods to tie and individual to an IP address.
Personally I think that's even worse, it basically kills free speech online by forcing self-censorship upon people through threat of lawsuits and so forth even when they're in the right. The worrying thing is that Clegg seemed to support this to some extent in that he suggested previously to at least ensure each mobile phone is always assigned a unique IP address rather than have them assigned dynamically.
Luckily I can't see how it's even technically possible though beyond the mobile world, so I think such ideas will die a rather quick death when they recognise you can't really attach an IP address to a person. Even in the mobile world it's not like you can prove someone else used or didn't use the phone and that it wasn't hacked and some remote entity was proxying via it.
I'm in two minds about the issue, I voted Lib Dem last election and they've fulfilled a number of the primary reasons I voted for them including getting rid of the ID cards database, cutting DNA retention by the police, killing this sort of thing and so forth, compared to the Labour government, whom I still remember trying to push horrendous levels of tracking and monitoring they've done an excellent job IMHO. I just hope they wont back any stupid and absurd laws about tying IP addresses to individuals when it actually comes to the vote as that would undo all that. I'm hoping that Clegg's comments to date were simply based on his ignorance of the technical issues involved and to be fair, it may not be that Clegg even has a choice in the matter, given that it was the Lib Dem political party that voted at their conference to kill the snooper's charter basically forcing his hand on the issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Someone mod this +infinity funny!
I do remember that Hunter S Thompson once wrote something to the effect that there were Americans who still feared the return of George III. Looks like one's broken cover...
Luckily I can't see how it's even technically possible though beyond the mobile world, so I think such ideas will die a rather quick death when they recognise you can't really attach an IP address to a person. Even in the mobile world it's not like you can prove someone else used or didn't use the phone and that it wasn't hacked and some remote entity was proxying via it.
If the mobile carriers used IPv6 couldn't they give each device a unique, fixed, IP address within their network? The IP address could be tied to SIM card and IMEI of the device which would allow identification of a mobile device. This could be used to identify an owner in a legal sense. Whilst its not perfect its reasonable to assume that the law would work in a similar way to identifying car drivers from the car registration. The owner would be required to provide information as to who was using the device at the time, if it wasn't them. I'm not advocating this but its not a stretch to see how you could get to it legally.
As to a question of whether it should be done. That's a tricky one. Just think though, if you were liable for traffic coming from your computer would you take more care securing it, and making sure that it was free of viruses etc? If could have an impact on botnets and the like.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
No
* The Queen's speech is nothing to do with the Queen
* the Bill known as "Snoopers charter" The communications data bill was not in the Queen's Speech
So No ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Tying people to IP address(s) is made a reality by IPv6
Maybe they're gonna use this as a trojan horse to pass this sort of legislation.
The subject line, above, says it all.
So why would I be so worried about other people thinking ill of me because my monarch was Prince Philip?
That's a pretty fragile sense of self you'd need to have.
can you imagine that a law or act that is all about ww2 snooping on nazis, now being used for YOU well deserving citizens?
yup enjoy. we had a vote last weekend that if web surveillance gets more like this we 3000 hackers in our click are leaving the net for good and were done with it YOU, and all the bullshit this tech is now SPYWARE 100% and its done legally by your govts.
Because that's the only way that the royals don't get to own the land they do.
the nazi states of america sure feels free to everyone.....
did you americans let them nazis you took after ww2 breed by chance....
Manipulation of men can function only if the men do not realize they are being manipulated. The fact that the connection is not obvious is necessary to make manipulation function.
Pretending that someone is especially important only because she is the member of a family is not honest.
Just because a bill isn't explicitly mentioned in the speech doesn't mean it won't happen. However, the CommsData Bill is probably dead for now (it will come back in the next government, almost certainly). However, the stuff in the speech about cyber-security and IP addresses suggests the Government will be passing some sort of legislation, possibly in the form of requiring ISPs to keep more extensive records on who is using which IP (possibly forcing out use of IPv6). There's also a risk the government might try to introduce an "Online Identity Card" system, which they've been talking about (both in the UK and the EU) for a while now.