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UK PM Wants To Speed Up Controversial Internet Bill After Paris Attacks (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Less than three days after the attacks in Paris, UK prime minister David Cameron has suggested that the process of review for the controversial Draft Investigatory Powers Bill should be accelerated. The controversial proposal, which would require British ISPs to retain a subset of a user's internet history for a year and in effect outlaw zero-knowledge encryption in the UK, was intended for parliamentary review and ratification by the end of 2016, but at the weekend ex-terrorist watchdog Lord Carlile was in the vanguard of demands to speed the bill into law by the end of this year, implicitly criticizing ex-NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for having 'shown terrorists ways to hide their electronic footprints'.
evil begets evil.
Soon we'll live in a totalitarian state as restrictive as sharia law. Woohoo!
Saying you need to make your data available to government law enforcement is like saying it's illegal to walk around in public with a loaded AK47.
Like the real bad guys do as their told, right?
What galls me the most is the way we're being treated like we're too dumb to understand what they are really trying to achieve.
No rushing ANYTHING during times of crises. tsk! tsk!
They are not that interested in the 'bad guys' it is the rest of the population they want to control.
While the 'bad guys' are quite happy with the Police State scenario.
It's as they say: Never let a good tragedy go to waste. As soon as I heard about this incident, I knew they were going to try and use it. The first thing they were talking about was the "going dark" problem, before the bodies were even cold. These people will scale a mountain of corpses to make themselves heard. These are the politics of fear.
Decryption is a math problem. Politicians don't know anything about solving math problems. They only know how to pass laws. So that's what they're doing. They're passing a law to make it legal to point guns at math problems that they can't solve.
So basically their policy is "If you outlaw math problems, only outlaws will have math problems."
And the fucked up part is, it doesn't even work. France has had draconian anti-cryptography laws (relative to Britain) for decades. They're not one of the Five Eyes; NSA has probably completely infiltrated and pwn3d every packet transmitted to and from France.
And with all this surveillance, the bad guys still carried out their attack.
I can come to only one of two conclusions. Either the good guys knew about the attack in advance, and let it happen in order to avoid tipping their hands about their surveillance capabilities (in which case, what the fuck are they protecting us from?), or the good guys had the data but couldn't sort the wheat from the chaff (in which case, laws to further expand the dragnet of surveillance against the general population will reduce our security, not enhance it, by enlarging the haystack of data through which they're trying to search for the terorist needle.)
The only way to stay ahead is to use properly trained field agents and communicate with the general public. Creating endless lazy lard arse donut munching machines staring at computers for the answer is a complete waste of time. Highly profitable for the corporations feeding the bullshit but a complete waste of time, but then hey, if you actually solve the war on terror how can you continue to generate billions in profits pretending to fight it.
Then of course we all know it has nothing to do with war lords and organised crime gangs and everything to do with peace activist terrorists, union terrorists, environmental activist terrorist, fringe political party terrorists and any and all other political activist terrorist, anybody who threatens the unlimited greed and power of corporations and of course completely corrupted sham elections.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It's as they say: Never let a good tragedy go to waste. As soon as I heard about this incident, I knew they were going to try and use it. The first thing they were talking about was the "going dark" problem, before the bodies were even cold. These people will scale a mountain of corpses to make themselves heard. These are the politics of fear.
Well, in the minds of the British Conservatives the best way to defend our freedom is and always will be to strengthen the police state.
There's enough security for important people to be safe.
The security isn't to prevent terrorists, they're not afraid of terrorists.
They're afraid of average joe with a six pack getting tired of their shit and voting / forcing them out of power. If billions of people in a country say 'I'm tired of your shit, you're too corrupt, greedy, and we don't want you in power anymore'. That's the real threat, that's what they actually fear.
Ideally they want to make sure that the average people, who are the only one to interfere with any of their 'deals' 'laws' 'bills' etc, are average joe speaking out, saying hey, this isn't good for me, don't do it.
Instead they want to know everything you're doing so they can counter whatever it is, a rally, public speaking etc, and be prepared to denounce you so they can do whatever x thing they want to do.
Oh? Political activist? Against some oil deal the government is brewing? Plan to take a flight to another city to rally more support from average joe? I don't think so. You're on the no fly list for risk of terrorism. No no..we'd never abuse that list..honest..
So yeah, there you have it. They did it, it's working so far. They don't like what you're doing, they'll make it difficult for you to travel, half answers to try and fix it, blank excuses with no one truly responsible for whatever it is governmentally that's blocking you.
Hey, while they're at it, let's get you investigated by the CRA or IRS just incase you made a mistake. Oh, finally getting bogged down by all these things? Giving up on that trip to talk about Bill (whatevergreedythinglinesmypockets) good...good...
You can say about him what you want (like "why does he have such a big mouth?" "Well, duh, have you seen his feet? How you think he should get it in there?"), but he's reliable.
David, one question: You are aware that the Frenchies already have pretty much outlawed encryption, right? They had that for ages.
I don't expect you to know anything about technology. If anything, your governing style makes me wonder whether you know anything about anything at all. But even you can't be so dumb. So, is it that you think your voters are dumb enough to swallow this attack as a good reason to push legislation that would not even remotely, in no scenario possible, have avoided even a tiny bit of what went down in Paris?
David, until now I just had you pegged as someone who enjoys sucking his toes, considering how much you put your foot in your mouth. Maybe a bit on the uneducated side, because I shy away from calling someone dumb until I can actually identify mental deficits, you just come across as someone who isn't weighed down in his decisions with too much knowledge.
But abusing an atrocity where hundreds died at the hands of some assholes into a tool to push your agenda makes you a despicable, utterly horrific person. Until now I only had you down as inept. But now, you're on my asshole list.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It is sickening how politicians abuse a tragedy to push their personal agendas. Are there really no journalists left calling out their opportunism?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Unfortunately, Labour is even more in favour of a police state. Only the Liberal Democrats seem somewhate more reasonable.