Broadband Bills Will Have To Increase To Pay For Snooper's Charter, MPs Warned (theguardian.com)

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Broadband Bills Will Have To Increase To Pay For Snooper's Charter, MPs Warned (theguardian.com)

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 12, 2015 @12:32AM from the paying-the-price dept.

An anonymous reader writes that the UK's Science and Technology Select Committee has been told that ISPs will have huge problems implementing the so-called snooper's charter, and may be forced to raise their prices. The Guardian reports: "Consumers' broadband bills will have to go up if the investigatory powers bill is passed due to the "massive cost" of implementation, MPs have been warned. Internet service providers (ISP) told a Commons select committee that the legislation, commonly known as the snooper's charter, does not properly acknowledge the "sheer quantity" of data generated by a typical internet user, nor the basic difficulty of distinguishing between content and metadata. As a result, the cost of implementing plans to make ISPs store communications data for up to 12 months are likely to be far in excess of the £175m the government has budgeted for the task, said Matthew Hare, the chief executive of ISP Gigaclear."

77 comments

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 00:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

Good. I'm delighted to hear about this. It's high time that the cost of outrageous government snooping programs are made to fall directly on the public who ultimately vote to support this nonsense.
Oh? You're ambivalent about mass GCHQ/NSA surveillance? OK. Well it'll cost you an extra £11 a month on your telephone bill. Oh you have a problem now?.
Most people will not care about an issue until they see it hit their pocket. Therefore, I say let it.
1. Re:Good. by olsmeister · 2015-11-12 00:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Call it out as a separate line item too.
2. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 00:47 · Score: 0
  
  Well they will. But by law it will look something like this:
  
  Keep-you-safe fee: £11,00
3. Re:Good. by KGIII · 2015-11-12 00:54 · Score: 2
  
  Meh, the MPs won't care. They've got money. The people will still vote for them.
  Look at how much had to happen to piss off people for Khadaffi (or however we're spelling it today) to be ousted. The riot that sparked it all was actually from sisters and mothers from a prison right that happened way back in 1994 (I think?). It took 20 years and severe oppression before people got pissed enough to do something. No, so long as they've got beer and circuses they'll put up with a whole bunch of shit - including paying more for internet access. They won't even lose a single member of Parliament over this.
  
  --
  "So long and thanks for all the fish."
4. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:12 · Score: 0, Funny
  
  Thanks to the way UK elections work, it's actually a safe bet that the minority responsible for voting in the Conservatives don't actually use the Internet. It'd explain why they're voting for a party with Victorian-era values, at any rate.
5. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:13 · Score: 0
  
  Call it out as a separate line item too.
  It'll never happen in the UK. All regression taxes like this are hidden, Whitehall demands it. Think what would happen if everyone got to see how much duty and VAT made up their bills when filling up the car. There'd never be an end to the protests in London. Presumably you saw how bad it got before Blair's spin-masters defused the blockage strikers?
  The US gets this right. Their telco/cable bills list everything, all the way down to the annoying nickel and dim taxes from the states, county and cities municipalities. The thing I never understood is why they were never the same each month, despite the service costs being identical.
6. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:18 · Score: 0
  
  and now it is a mess of war between tribes, militias and jihadist. In that region a brutal dictator seems to be the lesser evil
7. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:21 · Score: 0
  
  Indeed. I didn't vote for it.
8. Re:Good. by cdrudge · 2015-11-12 01:27 · Score: 2
  
  Well it'll cost you an extra £11 a month on your telephone bill. Oh you have a problem now?.
  Except it won't be an extra £11 a month. If £175m isn't enough, lets make it an order of magnitude larger to ensure that there will be enough with £1.75b There's 100m+ phone lines in the UK, so £1.75b / 12 months / 100m lines = £1.46 a month. Add in the 20m+ homes that have internet subscriptions, not to mention the number of commercial subscribers and you're barely above an extra £1 a month. Most probably wouldn't notice a £1 "government compliance and regulation fee" or whatever they call it in the UK.
9. Re:Good. by Dr_Barnowl · 2015-11-12 01:28 · Score: 1
  
  They actually want to make it illegal to even discuss the surveillance, so that could be interpreted as being in breach of the law.
10. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:33 · Score: 0
  
  In the US, we'll spare no expense and gladly give up all the rights and freedoms that our anscestors fought and died for, just so those evil terrorists won't sneak in our windows at night and eat us!
  Besides, the Republicans have promised that they can do this easily while cutting our taxes. They'll just use the money that's saved by defunding Planned Parenthood.
11. Re:Good. by clickety6 · 2015-11-12 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  The cost will probably be less than I currently pay for online storage and this is one service that's guaranteed to be unlimited. :)
  
  --
  ----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
12. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:52 · Score: 0
  
  Good. I'm delighted to hear about this. It's high time that the cost of outrageous government snooping programs are made to fall directly on the public who ultimately vote to support this nonsense.
  Oh? You're ambivalent about mass GCHQ/NSA surveillance? OK. Well it'll cost you an extra £11 a month on your telephone bill. Oh you have a problem now?.
  Most people will not care about an issue until they see it hit their pocket. Therefore, I say let it.
  Everyone in the UK should cancel their ISP service immediately sending a clear message to both the ISPs and the Government. Bankruptcy is a highly motivating stimulus for business.
13. Re:Good. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2015-11-12 01:53 · Score: 2
  
  I suspect that even dressing it up won't help: At least on this side of the pond; the "September 11th Security Fee" item on airline tickets was...less than popular...with fliers; even at the time when '9/11!!!!' was considered a perfectly good argument for setting up a network of torture dungeons.
  
  All but the staunchest law-and-order-authoritarians hate actually paying for state violence almost as much as they enjoy watching it.
  
  I'm honestly not sure how that happened: back when we still had genuine 'communists', we also had genuine 'fascists' who sometimes sincerely stood for oppression first and profit second. Now they all want their giant penal apparatus to somehow turn a profit. Sellouts.
14. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:55 · Score: 1
  
  Give it a rest. Moan about the SNP having 58 seats compared to the UKIP's 2 despite a similar number of votes. That's where the system is broken.
  Of course, had Blair not fucked the country over for more than a decade for his builderberg mates, and enter an illegal war based on evidence that didn't exist (promising to do so a year before). The masses may not have voted against them just to get rid of the tossers.
15. Re:Good. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2015-11-12 01:55 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah; but if you want to restore from backup, you have to infiltrate Theresa May's lair and defeat her in hand-to-hand combat(and don't let her media-relations-form fool you; her combat form is considerably more terrifying). The savings just aren't worth it.
16. Re:Good. by Flavianoep · 2015-11-12 02:01 · Score: 1
  
  So, the Britons are anything like the Frech? What a pity!
  
  --
  Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
17. Re:Good. by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2015-11-12 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  Have you considered a thing like the Bill of Rights? And not wattered down versions, so common in modern countries, that offer escape clauses "if the government really really really wants to". As we see in the US with warrantless spying, even that may not be enough, but it is a start. Then you can call out taxes as a line item, as speech.
  
  --
  (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
18. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  Historical revisionism. The masses never voted against Blair. They voted against Brown. And it wasn't because of the invasion of Iraq. Blair easily got back into power when that was ongoing. Nobody cared. They voted against Brown because he was successfully scapegoated for the global financial catastrophe caused by the blatantly fraudulent activities of the US credit rating agencies. None of this Bilderberg crap was an issue at the time. Occupy wasn't even a thing then, and "the 1%" wasn't a phrase. You wish Labour got voted out because of that, but the real reasons are far more mundane and obvious.
19. Re:Good. by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · 2015-11-12 02:29 · Score: 2
  
  Who are the Frech? Citizens from Frace?
20. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 02:37 · Score: 1
  
  It is where we get Creme Freche from.
  It's basically a little republic, very like France but a bit more sour.
21. Re:Good. by Flavianoep · 2015-11-12 02:41 · Score: 1
  
  Basic spelling is not one of my strengths. Sorry!
  
  --
  Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
22. Re:Good. by AmiMoJo · 2015-11-12 03:15 · Score: 2
  
  Â£11 isn't enough. We need to develop some scripts that make millions of random DNS queries, to increase the volume of data and the associated storage cost. Unfortunately it might look like a DDOS attack on the DNS servers... I'd argue that's what a protest is, you walk down a street with a bunch of people who together end up blocking it and denying normal service. Having said that, the government is trying to stamp out protests anyway.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
23. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 03:50 · Score: 0
  
  Personal Data Retention Fee*: £19.82
  *Per the "Consumer" broadcast bill, we are required to record everything you do online. This makes it easier for the government and any nasty group to access your data. If you don't like the fee complain to your government.
  Just wait for the update to make it illegal for ISPs to record any politicians or rich people. Do they realize they made it a lot easier for any cracker to access your information?
24. Re:Good. by Crowd+Computing · 2015-11-12 03:54 · Score: 1
  
  All Bills of Rights have "escape clauses" that limit the rights of an individual when they appear to threaten public order, national security etc. There's not going to be much difference in the bill of rights of a totalitarian country and an open and democratic country. The rights exist only so long as there are people willing to fight for them, whether in word or deed.
25. Re:Good. by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2015-11-12 04:33 · Score: 1
  
  The masses never voted against Blair. They voted against Brown.
  In which country? Because in the UK, Blair only received about 40% of the popular vote even on New Labour's second term, and only about 35% going into the third term. In each case the turnout was around the 60% mark. That "historic third term" with the third big majority of MPs in a row was based on the support of just 1 in 5 of the electorate. And even that was with the clear and unambiguous promise that Blair himself would lead the party for a full third term and wouldn't hand over -- as he ultimately did -- to Gordon Brown mid-term.
  
  --
  If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
26. Re:Good. by Archtech · 2015-11-12 04:41 · Score: 0
  
  Good. I'm delighted to hear about this. It's high time that the cost of outrageous government snooping programs are made to fall directly on the public who ultimately vote to support this nonsense.
  Oh? You're ambivalent about mass GCHQ/NSA surveillance? OK. Well it'll cost you an extra £11 a month on your telephone bill. Oh you have a problem now?.
  Most people will not care about an issue until they see it hit their pocket. Therefore, I say let it.
  Unfortunately, many British taxpayers will not think this through so clearly. But the increased ISP bills will discourage Internet use; that would suit the government very much indeed. Just imagine how much frustration and anger there is in Western political circles at the growing tendency to seek news and opinion on the Web. All that money and effort channelled into controlling the mainstream media, bribing editors and journalists, and spoonfeeding them the party line - and what happens? Their circulation figures are shrinking faster and faster, and citizens are increasingly turning to the Web. Worse still, the Web allows them not only to obtain a variety of news reports and shades of opinion; it even lets them comment and discuss the issues among themselves. Good grief, at this rate we'll have the people choosing and setting policies! We can't have that - it would be democracy!
  So we should all be on the lookout for the inevitable counter-offensive: attempts, by any and all means, to stop citizens communicating through the Web. It may be, as in the measure being discussed in this thread, through ways of increasing the cost. Or through attempts to outlaw the hyperlink itself - http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
  The Web is our common heritage, thanks to TBL and his colleagues, and we must do everything in our power to keep it free, affordable, fully functional, and worldwide. This should be very near the top of everyone's list of priorities.
  
  --
  I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
27. Re:Good. by Archtech · 2015-11-12 04:44 · Score: 1
  
  Look at how much had to happen to piss off people for Khadaffi (or however we're spelling it today) to be ousted.
  Yes, all the free education and health care and social security eventually got too much to bear. But actually it wasn't any meeting in Libya that ended Qadafi's (I personally like that spelling) career. It was the thousands of bombing missions that destroyed civilian infrastructure and rendered Libya effectively ungovernable and chaotic - which it still is.
  Bloody man - how dare he turn Libya from one of the poorest countries in Africa into the richest? (Especially since we wanted to suck all the wealth out for ourselves).
  
  --
  I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
28. Re:Good. by Archtech · 2015-11-12 04:51 · Score: 1
  
  Give it a rest. Moan about the SNP having 58 seats compared to the UKIP's 2 despite a similar number of votes.
  UKIP actually got one seat, not two, out of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.
  "UKIP had 3,881,129 votes (12.6%) and was the third largest party on vote share, yet it won only one seat". (Wikipedia)
  
  --
  I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
29. Re:Good. by KGIII · 2015-11-12 05:08 · Score: 1
  
  It might have had something to do with his being a mad druggie that put tens of thousands to death, many innocent people to death, and siphoning off the wealth of the nation with an estimated self-worth of nearly 1,000,000,000 USD at his death. But no, it was surely the imperialist's infringement that doomed him. It wasn't his systematic rape of women, the abortion clinic under the college, the nearly daily attempts to propagandize the nation via television, the personal screening of allowed television, or anything like that - but, boy, they had free health care.
  He was like a mad Keith Richards gone Tin Pot Dictator. He started off well enough. I'm sure he had great intentions and he did do some nice things but I'm not sure why one would want to concentrate on those and fabricate the reasons for the riots when those rioters have clearly articulated their reasons for rioting. Hell, they wrote it on their signs! Something akin to, "Let's not forget the massacre of *insert prison name here that I've forgotten*" That was the very first major riot that sparked off the rest of them, the police shot into the crowd and fecal matter hit the fan. Err... It went steadily downhill after that, so to speak.
  It would appear that if you're going to rape the women, kill the men, and then kill the women too - you should probably give them better beer and circuses than you can provide with bad television and piss poor health care as a very limited resource. But you knew that... You're not fooling me. ;-)
  
  --
  "So long and thanks for all the fish."
30. Re:Good. by KGIII · 2015-11-12 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  Well, look at how far the Ugandans (I think) went before they finally got rid of the Brits? Shit, they felt Amin Dada was better. At least, for a while.
  Heh... Dada was kind of awesome in a sick way. He was tough and didn't afraid of anything. He declared himself King of Scotland. He was also king of all the fishes in the sea and all the land animals. He made the white people carry around his fat ass in a chair. He really embarrassed the Brits and they couldn't do a damned thing about it. He basically went 4chan on them.
  Anyhow, they tolerated the abuses of the Britons for quite a while before they were like GTFO oldfag! Lulz! Even my own country, America, put up with a hell of a lot before we kicked them out. Oddly enough, few people ask why the Brits were stomping to Concord. They were coming to steal the guns - specifically the cannons and all weapons (powder and shot) in the armory.
  Concord's like, "LOL WUT?"
  The King's Men are like, "I can haz gunz pl0x"
  Concord, "NO U!"
  Then the King's Men get out their giant muskets (while wearing targets across their chest) and go PEW PEW PEW!
  Concord ducks 'cause they can only pew pew pew a little bit and then they go pew pew pew back.
  The King's Men go, "Oh shit!"
  Concord says, "IMMA CHARGIN' MY LAZRS!"
  The King's Men go, "Run away!!!"
  Then the little villages between Concord in the coast sang "TROLOLOLOLO" while making a few pew noises of their own.
  Point being, you never know what's going to finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back but we'll put up with a bunch of shit before we are angry enough to actually do anything. I'd wager 100 quid, or Queen Moniez, that not one single MP doesn't get reelected specifically because of this. I'm sure there will be some that lose their seats but I doubt this will be the cause. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying there's quite a bit of historical precedence.
  Err... And that's exactly how they should teach history in school. *nods*
  
  --
  "So long and thanks for all the fish."
31. Re:Good. by macs4all · 2015-11-12 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  He was like a mad Keith Richards gone Tin Pot Dictator.
  GREAT Imagery!
32. Re:Good. by onthemightofprinces · 2015-11-12 06:44 · Score: 1
  
  It's the 19th century newspaper tax all over again!
33. Re:Good. by onthemightofprinces · 2015-11-12 06:46 · Score: 2
  
  As the saying goes: all men are equal, but some are more equal than others.
34. Re:Good. by onthemightofprinces · 2015-11-12 06:50 · Score: 1
  
  Popular vote (Proportional representation) wouldn't work in the UK simply because of our population distribution. The number of people living in London is almost equal to the number of people living in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. So the wishes of one city in a heavily urbanised area would sway public policy almost as much as the wishes of three entire countries/provinces in (mostly) rural areas.
35. Re:Good. by david_thornley · 2015-11-12 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  It takes a lot of work and danger to overthrow a government with violence. It's much easier to just vote new people in. It isn't easy anyway, but the bar is far lower.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
36. Re:Good. by david_thornley · 2015-11-12 07:26 · Score: 1
  
  The constitution in the UK is different, being mostly old laws and customs. There are few absolutely guaranteed rights, as I understand it, but there's lots of things that the government isn't going to do. You might want to ask somebody who knows something about the UK government legal structure for accurate details.
  It is likely to be against EU treaties, though.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
37. Re:Good. by KGIII · 2015-11-12 07:40 · Score: 1
  
  How many MPs do you think will be ousted specifically over this added fee? Are you willing to bet on it? Are the average people even paying attention?
  Beer and circuses seems to be pretty damned effective. :/ You, or I, might be up in arms about this but I suspect we'll look like tinfoil-hat-wearing-crazies to Joe Six Pint. I wish this would wake people up but they don't appear to really give a shit. I don't think they even care about the pedos or terrorists. They just don't give a shit.
  The ISPs could post a advert that says, "You're being charged eleven extra quid so that we can spy on you as is mandated by Parliament." I bet 90% of the people don't notice, 9% grumble and say something about the rising costs of living, and 1% notices, is outraged, and forgets because they've something new to be outraged about come election time. The people who actually give a shit and will take notice and vote accordingly are a rounding error, a statistical anomaly, a percent of a percent.
  Maybe I'm cynical. That could be the case. I hope like hell you guys are right and that something does happen but, I suspect, we've a long ways to go. I do advocate the ballot box and using violence pretty much never but I'd not judge too harshly those who opt for it, at this point - or soon, at least. It's probably a bit early for that - they should try educational programs and ballots first. Not now though, football's on the telly.
  (Any misrepresentations of stereotypical Britons is unintentional. I could not fit the word tyres in there. The same behavior appears true in my country, as well. We just drink less tea.)
  
  --
  "So long and thanks for all the fish."
38. Re:Good. by nukenerd · 2015-11-12 08:34 · Score: 1
  
  So in what way would that be "not working" ?
  
  As there are nearly as many people in London than in Scotland + NI + Wales (taking your word for it) then I would expect London people to have collectively as much influence. In fact the system is meant to do that now, because each parliamentary seat is supposed to represent roughly equal numbers of voters. London does not have just one parliamentary seat, you know.
  
  It is the distribution of voters that makes the present system broken - working class people, who tend to vote Labour instinctively, without thinking about it much*, tend to be clustered into areas where they are like 90% of the population (industrial South Wales for example) - areas where any Labour votes over the 50% are "wasted". There are some Conservative areas like this too (I'm in one, Monmouthshire, farming and tourism), but fewer. Even the Liberal Party has areas supporting them mainly by tradition.
  
  OTOH, people voting for minority parties like UKIP, BNP, The Greens and Communist are, if anything, people who are by nature more individualistic (they are leaving the comfort zone). But such people tend to be scattered around (it does not correlate much with any particular type of area), so there is almost no chance of them getting MPs elected, and nothing like in proportion to their actual numbers. Their percentage in any one constituency will always be rather low. Of course, the main parties (and the people who vote for them) want to keep it that way.
  
  Under the present UK system, the optimum distribution of voters is to have the support of just over 50% of the voters in as many constituencies as possible, and have none of your supporters "wasted" in no-hope areas. The Conservatives are the closest to having this voting demography, which is why they always punch above their weight in elections.
  
  * My mother is an example. From a family with a traditional "Us and Them" attiude, she voted Labour all her life. She didn't understand Blair's "New Labour" but said she could never change "after all these years". She'd have still been voting Labour if they were going to send her to the gas chambers [whoops, is that Godwin?].
39. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 09:25 · Score: 0
  
  So in what way would that be "not working" ?
  
  There needs to be a balance between proportional representation of people and proportional representation over land. The reason being that people who live in a place should have a reasonable self governance over the laws and policies of that place, rather than people that don't. This is why eventually Singapore split away as a separate country from Malaysia, because it wasn't working; people in rural settings were having laws forced on them that didn't represent the interests and aspirations of rural life, and the disparate economies of a rural country and a large metropolis really weren't compatible.
  Imagine a hypothetical country in which 90% of the population lives in a large city with an outstanding public transport system. Now imagine that 90% votes to ban private automobiles, deeming them unnecessary in light of their awesome public transport and taxi system. According to your democratic ideals, those 10% that live on farms, and have no access to public transport should just suck it up and accept the will of the majority, even though what works for the 90% is absolutely catastrophic for the remaining 10%.
  Now this example is maybe a ridiculous hyperbole, but already in my country of New Zealand, there are growing tensions between people living in Auckland and people living "on the farm" so to speak. Laws and civic plans that make sense for Auckland urban residents like myself, are absolutely brutal to people who live within the greater Auckland region, but outside of any urban area, they pay the same huge property taxes (rates, we call them) as people like myself, and yet they don't receive water service, they don't receive sewage service, or buses, or public libraries, or trains, none of that; but because of proportional representation, they are expected to pick up the tab for a society they really aren't a part of. On a larger scale, a large proportion of the electorates are backboned by dairy farming, and thus our economy has policies that punish technology firms and other high value exporters to drive wages low, and keep dairy farms small and inefficient (effectively our currency policy steals wages from farm workers, and gives it to farm owners, by constantly lowering the value of our currency, effectively lowering the wages of workers, while unaffecting bulk exporters), so while our economic policy is insane, it will continue to be supported because of the geographic distribution of electorates, and because we're all in the same playpen, though the urban Auckland economy has almost no relation to the entire rest of the country.
40. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 09:54 · Score: 0
  
  There's also the European Convention on Human Rights, which much of the draft bill might be found to be incompatible with. There's a strong possibility that Cameron and May wanted to repeal the Human Rights Act precisely because it buggers up their total surveillance plan.
41. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 09:59 · Score: 0
  
  My business would be bankrupt without a working internet connection. I'd much rather lobby my MP and support organisations such as Open Rights Group and Liberty who were effective in lobbying against the last attempt at a Snooper's Charter. I will also write to my ISP to ask how much they think the proposed law would add to my charges, so I have more information to give to my MP.
42. Re: Good. by skalra63 · 2015-11-12 18:51 · Score: 1
  
  But make sure you take a lot of potions. You just know she will be one of those annoying bosses that you think you have defeated kmly to laugh in your face spouting "you're a fool if you think this os my final form" and then comes back bigger and stronger than before
43. Re:Good. by david_thornley · 2015-11-13 03:50 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not expecting this to cause a ballot revolution, but it's easier than in a dictatorship, and so comparing Britain with Libya doesn't work.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
44. Re:Good. by KGIII · 2015-11-13 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  No, not a direct comparison but, certainly, markers can be drawn betwixt the two - we're all humans, after all. Point being, history says we'll take a lot of abuse so long as we aren't without hope. This, while irritating to some, probably won't even be a bump in the road. Would that I could, I'd change it.
  
  --
  "So long and thanks for all the fish."
Joined up Government ? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 00:40 · Score: 0

Meanwhile the PM - Cameron - is promising affordable broadband for all
Do these politicians ever talk to each other ?
1. Re:Joined up Government ? by Archtech · 2015-11-12 04:52 · Score: 2
  
  Meanwhile the PM - Cameron - is promising affordable broadband for all
  Do these politicians ever talk to each other ?
  Did you perchance overlook the key weasel word "promising"?
  
  --
  I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
2. Re:Joined up Government ? by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2015-11-12 04:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  They've also been talking about broadband being some sort of fundamental right one minute, with ominous-sounding ideas about cutting people off for dubious IP-related reasons the next, and then moving government services that many people are legally required to use into on-line systems the day after that.
  I'm pretty sure it's all just an elaborate episode of Yes Minister at this point.
  
  --
  If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 00:41 · Score: 0

So... they're just collecting metadata, not actual content. There's also some fun abuse potential.
Slip a bit of javascript in to a page which goes and accesses some very naughty, illegal content. Distribute the link to the original site containing said background download code. Wait, sufficient about of time for browser caches to toss the page, or better yet signal no caching to the browser for the page. Remove original page. Report neighbour or others for accessing illegal content - police check their "metadata" on sites accused has visited, with no context for what made the request... and you may quickly have your friendly bobby knocking on your door.
Yes, bulk metadata collection with no context and no oversight, what could possibly go wrong?
1. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by IamTheRealMike · 2015-11-12 00:48 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  So... they're just collecting metadata, not actual content
  One of the insightful points made by the head of Gigaclear is that the line between metadata and data is pretty vague. For instance, who are you calling on Skype? "Obviously" metadata .... but if someone is added to a group call in the middle of it, then suddenly metadata might be being mixed in seamlessly with voice and video data. If you post a message to a website like Slashdot that has subject lines and bodies, is the subject line metadata? And if so, how does an ISP extract that and store it separately from the body?
  The real cost of this scheme isn't even in the hardware, really, it's in paying large numbers of skilled people to develop a dizzying array of Wireshark filters to try and separate and index the metadata for every imaginable internet protocol.
2. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:25 · Score: 0
  
  This snooping is so beyond ridiculous. I'd rather risk the odd crime than live in a world where every single thought and action is scrutinized.
3. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Dr_Barnowl · 2015-11-12 01:30 · Score: 1
  
  The scrutiny is the point. Blanket surveillance is shit for finding actual criminal / terrorist activity because the false positive rate means that your agents will all be tied up investigating bad leads forever.
  As a tool to gain insight into a population and thus control over them, it's excellent.
4. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:35 · Score: 0
  
  "metadata" is a ruse. They are likely collecting everything, and trying to pacify people with this mysterious and vague "metadata" label. You don't honestly believe that the spy agencies would put together this huge web of data collection and only skim a little off the top, do you?
5. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Jason+Levine · 2015-11-12 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  The scrutiny is the point. Blanket surveillance is shit for finding actual criminal / terrorist activity because the false positive rate means that your agents will all be tied up investigating bad leads forever.
  Exactly this. Finding "criminal/terrorist" activity can be a needle in a haystack endeavor at the best of times. However, mass surveillance just adds more hay to the stack under the notion that maybe perhaps you'll possibly be tossing in another needle or two. Of course, now you have to sift through 1,000 times the hay just to find one more needle.
  Do they need to do surveillance? Sure. But it should be targeted and only undertaken after the proper warrants have been obtained. Is there the possibility that they won't pick up on some activity until it's too late? Yes, but the loss of liberty from mass surveillance isn't worth the tiny perceived increase in security that mass surveillance brings.
  
  --
  My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
6. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 04:34 · Score: 0
  
  The answer is that as far as the (client's) ISP is concerned, the metadata is that the client connected to Skype. To take a telephone analogy, the teleco's call records will show that you called OmniConsumerProducts, but it will not show which extension or person the receptionist connected you to once the call was answered.
7. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2015-11-12 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  It seems highly unlikely that this is the interpretation the government is looking for. They've been quite explicit that they don't just want to know which communications channels you use, but also who you communicate with and the like.
  The trouble is that, as many here will understand but I fear many in the government do not, there is no black and white distinction to be made based on some universal technical test to achieve the results the authorities say they want. Leaving aside the usual issues with encryption and reluctant foreign services, you're effectively talking about deep packet inspection in real time of many gigabits/second of network traffic, applying custom processing based on numerous specific protocols and/or service providers to each packet, and then recording the remaining payload after irrelevant parts are stripped.
  
  --
  If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
8. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 09:40 · Score: 0
  
  The real cost of this scheme isn't even in the hardware, really, it's in paying large numbers of skilled people to develop a dizzying array of Wireshark filters to try and separate and index the metadata for every imaginable internet protocol.
  The real cost is buying the systems (software, some hardware). Nobody is going to use Wireshark for this, there are already many unscrupulus companies like Blue Coat et al. that already market systems for this exact purpose to third world dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
  Actually come to think of it, given the incestuous nature of these "defense" companies and government, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that behind the scenes the government tells these ISPs exactly which vendors they are allowed to use to collect the metadata, and this entire Snooper's Charter exists solely to drum up additional sales.
9. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 10:08 · Score: 0
  
  you're effectively talking about deep packet inspection in real time of many gigabits/second of network traffic, applying custom processing based on numerous specific protocols and/or service providers to each packet, and then recording the remaining payload after irrelevant parts are stripped.
  That's not actually that hard, if you write all your protocol decoders as regular expressions (not Perl compatible (ir)regular expressions), as they can then be extremely efficiently compiled to FPGA code or TCAM state, and if you design a suitably regularised coded n-gram output format, you can get metadata records down to a few hundred bits. This is no different to what companies like Microsoft, Google and Baidu are already doing for search engine index generation, credit companies are doing for credit score analysis, trading firms are doing with automatic newstory trading, and companies like BlueCoat and Raytheon are already doing for metadata selector systems that are already in operation in the third world.
  People saying this is not possible, are either delibrately mis-representing the facts, or more likely just completely ignorant about the sophistication of selector transformation, the high level of redundancy, noise and irrelevancy in modern communications protocols, and the amount of metadata seepage from "secure" protocols like TLS. It doesn't matter that your communications are secured with TLS, as long as the metadata can be traced between the outside envelope (the IP and TCP protocol headers) and the cooperating inside entity (Skype, Gmail, etc.) If you have the srcip, srcport and tcp seqno, that is 32+16+32 = 80bits + timestamp (32 bits is enough) 112 bits, leaving 16 bits in a 128bit word for operational tags, is enough to uniquely identify a session and perform a JOIN (SQL terminology) against the internal system (Skype) data. All that needs to happen on the inside, at Skype, is to record this stamp into a table with each call. If you put this stamp or record just some random entropy against the stamp, you can just look for that same sequence across any other connection and produces a trace.
  If you've worked in telco environments with PDH or SONET/SDH, you would be familiar with these concepts of using small but unique bit signatures to trace data through large data networks. You used to be able to buy a box for PDH, that could insert a trace into a PDH channel, and then you could use another box that looks like a cable tracer, but is a bit more sophisticated to find that traced channel anywhere throughout the network (it's simply an electric field sensor attached to a correlator against a LFSR function on a finite field). It's not that simple now with numerous scrambling codes, making this sort of pseudo-analog trace unpossible, but if you can get into enough of the popularly used communications service, you can easily accomplish the same thing looking for short unique bit sequences (~128 bits) on the inside or outside of the protocol. It helps to for example, record octets N:N+16 on both the encrypted and decrypted side of a channel, where N is a fixed offset from the start of a packet or transaction determined to have high entropy, at each point where a channel is encrypted or decrypted by a controlled party, then you can join those trace tables, and trace the signal from source to destination with ease.
  The key point to remember is that at most points in a data network, the messages are not transformed, or at most are transformed by a simple process of inserting or removing envelope headers, and these transforms are extremely efficient to perform at line rate in hardware/FPGA/switch silicon (I've (ab)used standard switch silicon in the past to do similar things in a database application for non-clandestine purposes). Don't make the mistake that you have to parse the entire protocol stack to extract unique entropy from a message or channel.
10. Re:How to get your enemy arrested by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2015-11-12 15:25 · Score: 1
  
  I frequently do R&D work in this kind of area and I am familiar with the in-the-trenches details here. It really isn't as simple as you're making out.
  For example, you referred to using regular expressions for the decoders, but there are several details you're glossing over. The first is that you're presumably referring to application layer processing, but before you can do that you have to get hold of that application layer data and get it to something that can process it.
  Just identifying which application protocol is in use and therefore which analysis tools are appropriate may not be straightforward. Consider the number of protocols that use some sort of control channel to establish connections but then send their data over some arbitrary UDP port, for example. You need all kinds of stateful analysis to do this reliably, and each case needs to be custom written.
  Assuming you can isolate the application layer data, you then need to process it, at line rates, to extract the required metadata, which needs to be stored at line rates as well. The TCAM-based filtering built into a switch ASIC isn't going to implement any sort of regex matching, because that's not how a TCAM works. Compiling usefully detailed regexes to run on a sufficiently powerful FPGA is more plausible, but it's no trivial exercise either. (If it were, a large part of the network tools industry would not be the shape it is and some colleagues of mine would have retired very rich by now.) You can do some quite clever things bringing network traffic through a general purpose CPU, and you can build a device around it that could cope with a surprising amount of throughput using high-end but off-the-shelf components today and of course offers the best flexibility, but only if you can support the dramatically higher power, cooling and rack space requirements in your data centre.
  It's true that without needing any application layer processing it would still be practical to record all the TCP connections that took place between two connected devices over your network with current hardware. With the co-operation of whoever operated the server-side of a communications network you could then reconcile the connections to figure out who was communicating when, at least up to IP address and port number. But in that case the valuable information is primarily what you're relying on the communication network to provide; what is recorded by the ISP doesn't really tell you anything very useful, certainly not on the level government spokespeople have been talking about when they say "metadata".
  In short, extracting what you call "unique entropy" is straightforward, but it's also almost worthless without the real data set you care about to correlate with. You're still relying on some much more sophisticated deep packet analysis and/or the co-operation of at least one of the participants in the communication, and both of those things will normally need to be set up on a case-by-case basis.
  
  --
  If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Netflow! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 00:47 · Score: 0

Not too difficult at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetFlow
Will take a hugh amount of storage, but per user it will be tiny.
What did people expect? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 00:48 · Score: 0

Governments have no money. each and every crackpot scheme that they comes up with has to be funded by taxpayers
£175m??? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 00:51 · Score: 1

Of course it's going to cost more. Every time the "snooper's charter" proposal came up with Labour and then the Coalition, the cost was placed at around £2bn at least. Even during the Coalition, it was estimated at around £2bn to do this. Nothing has really changed with the proposals, and yet the government thinks it's now going to cost £175m. I know storage costs are getting cheaper, but the amount of data generated is far more than it was when Blair and his cronies were trying to push a Stasi state on us.
1. Re:£175m??? by amiga3D · 2015-11-12 03:07 · Score: 1
  
  The public must be protected at all cost. No matter how much money it takes or home much privacy we must lose it is imperative that the public be kept safe.
No, the subject line is data. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:24 · Score: 1

If you post a message to a website like Slashdot that has subject lines and bodies, is the subject line metadata?
1. Re:No, the subject line is data. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 06:14 · Score: 0
  
  This is metadata:
  
  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12, 2015 @07:24AM (#50914351)
Good, and while you're at it, itemize it! by serviscope_minor · 2015-11-12 01:40 · Score: 2

And whle you're at it, itemize the bill.
Line rental mothly: 5 pounds
30 mbit/s package: 10 pounds
fee for us to snoop on you as legally required by the government: 10 pounds
If it costs more, pass the cost on to the customer and LET THEM KNOW.

--
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Backward-looking government by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 01:58 · Score: 0

To violate the rights of the people with the excuse of protecting the people. Nothing new here.
The datas have gravity. by frup · 2015-11-12 02:03 · Score: 1

Have you ever wondered how long it would take to record so much data that to read it would take the same amount of energy as it would take to boil all the water in the world's oceans?
Thankfully we have ZFS but how much data do they really intend to store? It is cheaper to just put everyone in prison and give them a free iphone. As long as tasty meals are provided there shouldn't be many complaints. I shotgun top bunk.
Yup... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 02:53 · Score: 0

Because 12 month worth of data, for their million of customers... they will need data center servers as big as what Google have for youtube. Seriously, it's a lot of data they are asking for. Goes to show how little politicians know about tech. This stuff ain't gonna fit on a single 4TB HDD... or on 100 4TB HDD... They will need thousand of them.
This sounds slightly familiar by idontgno · 2015-11-12 04:12 · Score: 1

Urban legend has it that back in Old Days of the Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party billed the family of an executed criminal* for the cost of the bullet used to execute him.
There's some dispute to this, of course. It is hard to believe because it would be beyond the pale of decency, even to the extent it would be acknowledged by Communist revolutionaries, to bill you for the cost of their oppression.
But not, apparently, in Oceania.
*"criminal" often meant political opponent, not necessarily an actual criminal.

--
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Grrr... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 07:30 · Score: 0

I'm already paying £20.31/month to TalkTalk for 500 kB/s down, 100 kB/s up...
1. Re:Grrr... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 10:04 · Score: 0
  
  I'm paying £25/mo to Zen for 80Mb/s down, 20Mb/s up (and that's very close to the actual speeds I get as well), including a static IP. Time for you to change ISP I think....
There's a more basic problem than that. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-12 09:58 · Score: 0

After all, I could just not use the internet.
However, the UK government want to mandate the internet for all communication and access to government programmes for the UK citizens.
So I can't chose not to use this, then, can I.
Sites you 'visit' by illtud · 2015-11-12 10:48 · Score: 1

OK, say you take them at their word and they're just logging sites you visit (as in the domain). Have you ever looked at all the domains you 'visit' when you open a 'modern' web page?
What's to stop a random site from including an iframe or other call to http://dodgy-jihadi-site.com/ in their page? Does that get logged? If not, what's to stop a site from just being a wrapper page that lets you browse dodgy sites without triggering their metadata capture? What's the chances that loads of sites will put malicious img requests in for a 1x1 pixel from dodgy-site?
"Our metadata shows that on the X of Y, you visited 'dodgy-jihadi-site.com'"
"No I didn't, look, I just visited 'random-site.com', it must have pulled something in!"
But as they don't keep the full request 'dodgy-jihadi-site.com/images/1x1pixel.jpg', you have no defense.
This is a complete mess.
Cost of snooping by Anonymous Coward · 2015-11-14 13:12 · Score: 0

Snooping could be done in the wireless domain by the snooper using a receiving antenna. That would be unobtrusive and the cost would be borne by the snooper.
For the snoopers to capture traffic at switching centers, it takes about 1/3 the capacity of a switch to duplicate every packet and save it on a server. To put it another way, for every packet arriving on some specific port, it normally exists on some other port. But, if a snooper is present it must also exit on another port headed for the snooper's capture machine--1 packet in==>2 packets out.
Somebody has to pay for this. Every switch in the backbone network has to have at least 50% more traffic capacity than would be required for unsnooped operation.
Is the NSA paying the backbone service providers for this? It can't be done on the sly. The switching centers have to be configured and equipped to do this job/