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Brits Must Trade Digital Freedoms For Safety, Says Crime Agency Boss
bestweasel writes: The Guardian has an interview with Keith Bristow, the head of the National Crime Agency, (sometimes called Britain's FBI, apparently) in which he says, "Britons must accept a greater loss of digital freedoms in return for greater safety from serious criminals and terrorists." He also mentions pedophiles, of course. The article seems to cover just the highlights of the interview, but in another quote he says that for "policing by consent," the consent is "expressed through legislation." While this might sound reassuring, it's coupled with the Home Secretary's call last week for greater mass surveillance powers. Presumably whoever wins power in the elections next year will claim that this gives them the required consent (that's democracy, folks!) and pass the laws.
No, they are not. They are a privledge.
You don't have to use Facebook, Google, the internet, computers, or any form of technology if you don't want to. By choosing to use them, you must obey normal laws, including laws against copying and distributing (even for free) copyrighted material. There's no special right to download copyrighted material, even if its essentially costless and it's just electronic ones and zeros. Also, you are opting in to whatever surveliance the government wants to do on you, as well as consequences caused by doing stupid things online (if your previous boss chooses not to hire you because of your slutty pictures on Facebook, that's not Facebook's fault, that's not some kind of freedom being violated, that's your own damn fault). Don't do anything online that you wouldn't mind printed in the local newspaper and you won't run into problems.
Also, these digital freedoms you guys are promoting are essentially a way to pirate everything you want for free with no consequences. If you aren't doing anything illegal online (pirating, illegal pornography, planning terrorism) these laws won't affect you.
And lastly, when we are talking about mass surveilance, we aren't talking about an individual seeing your Google searches. It's just an automated bot that searches for certain red flags and alerts authorities when it finds suspicious actions. 99.99% of actions will be entirely ignored.
who is driving the campaign and what is their end goal?
It must be the Illuminati, right? Do shut up.
If you have compelling evidence of a global conspiracy, then show us. If not, then cut it out; there are simpler explanations than global conspiracies.