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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!
Worthless, the bad guys will use custom apps and custom encryption scheme to stay ahead. You will end up spying on joe six pack and stupid criminals. Really dangerous guys will find a way to stay ahead. The only way to win is to keep up and being able to decrypt their communications by any means we can. No bill can help that.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I have to share your lol. Panicky people will keep voting for this crap for years to come. It's a mini 9/11 of gov/corp power grabbing. Works every time.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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!
Unfortunately, a lot of the press are going along with this proposal, despite its lack of support in any logic. Take the case of unbreakable encryption on phones. At the point that the phone is being held by the security services, what information can they not get? They can present a warrant to the app providers, email providers, etc. to get the information about the communications.
Who is the most likely target of abuse of these powers? Probably politicians. These politicians have to be either mind-numbingly arrogant, mind-numbingly stupid, or already being blackmailed to want this (arrogant because they think that no-one would ever dare to spy on them).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
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.)
Islamic terrorism is the excuse used to roll out state based terrorism. Bills introduced after the attacks in New York were the beginning and they have been consistently rolled out since then.
Generally covering up political incompetence appeared to be the core motivation, at first, but what better way to continue to roll out a campaign of harassing the populations of western democracies than by propping up and enhancing an ineffectual security theatre.
Having spent significant time reading these bills and writing to politicians to either stop or modify the wording of these laws it's pretty clear that ineptitude and general laziness has been behind the services inability to stop these attacks, most governments already have ample power to stop these attacks.
Most western countries passed effective terrorism laws back in the days of the IRA, ample powers were available to all these countries to stop terrorist attacks for decades. Not doing so allows our governments and controlled media to whip the populous into a frenzy that allows more state based terrorism to be rolled out in the form of laws none of us deserve.
Why? Because what the state is saying is you have no right to protect your rights and freedom and that it has a right to inspect the minutia of your life. In doing so it is also happy to expose you to organized crime, which has no impact on the state.
As distasteful as it sounds, the illusion of our freedom was over a long time ago. Orwell was an optimist in terms of what capabilities the state would have and, as usual, the moronic machinations of Islamic extremists give governments the excuse to drive us closer to a police state every day.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Despite lack of growth of in the UK, there is still plenty more money companies make from offering the UK services that are only over shadowed by the USA and Asia. As an example, if you look at Deloitte's member firms, the two largest ones are 'USA & India', 'UK & Switzerland' - interestingly, UK is the big earner in the latter, the money the UK practice makes goes beyond that of all the other member firms combined, only eclipsed by US & India.
Outside of trade, because of the EU, the UK still extremely relevant to world affairs as the commonwealth and peacekeeping (some peace keeping has been going on since World War 2).
The Netherlands is a nation that countries hold some resentment to because of the high interest loans it has a tendency to dangle in front of suffering nations.
Probably the same people who assume that the first UK phone network, which was operated by the post office was never monitored (it has always been).
I think though that the risk that people don't like, is that numerous companies will meet these standards for encryption to meet country requirements and apply this to an international audience too, making them vulnerable.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
an attack on Paris by terrorists is solved by an attack on the citizens and corporations of Great Britain by it's government.
GPG is out, you cant turn off encryption, stop wasting tax payer money you incompetent crony bastards.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
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.
You mean 2001? Yet another example of a government using a tragedy as an excuse to grab overreaching powers with little judicial oversight or feedback from citizens?
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.
As ever it looks like they did in fact know that something was coming, and were warned by the Iraqi security forces and US security forces. As ever it looks like those warnings were lost in the noise, probably because they were flooded with too much data coming from all angles and too reliant on it. Much of the planning appears to have been done in person because IS knows that western security services put all their eggs in one basket. They only use the internet for propaganda and disinformation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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
The whole surveillance thing has only one purpose: prevent any more leaks of shady deals done by the politicians.
Whenever dirt is being dug on the politicians, it is released over the Internet.
If every single keystroke is spied on people releasing the dirt will be immediately identified, along with those reading it.
It's all about politicians protecting themselves.
I just wrote to my MP telling him that I'm disgusted by Cameron's attempt to use a tragedy in this way. I hope that other UK readers will do the same. If you've never written to your MP before, Write to them is run by mySociety and makes it very easy.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Unfortunately, Labour is even more in favour of a police state. Only the Liberal Democrats seem somewhate more reasonable.
Red tape, presumably. Anyway, because this is all handed off to private enterprise. Paid for with public money, most of which does not come from taxes off other corporations. So the net result is another stream of public funds into private hands. Guess who lobbied for that, and guess whose interests this does not serve.
Add to that two words: regulatory capture. With a revolving door between the large corporations and the regulators, a lot of that 'expensive' regulation is lobbied for by the established companies and has a disproportionate impact on smaller businesses trying to compete in that market.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.)
Which is exactly what happened, and has been pointed at in an editorial in the Guardian that used the exact same metaphor you did: "When the intelligence agencies are looking for a needle in a haystack, they shouldn’t be adding more hay."
Basically, it's a manpower problem, not a legal one. But every government jumps on that pretext to expand surveillance.
There's nothing like $HOME
The real issue I see here is how easy it appears to be to get military assault weapons in the EU. An interesting Washington Post article here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Apparently the Charlie Hebdo attackers bought an RPG. How is it possible that you can't get on a plane in Western Europe with a bottle of water, but you can buy an RPG in Brussels for less than $5k? That just seems incredible.
An unarmed civilian population (which I think is something hugely preferable to the USA alternative) should not be exposed to this level of risk. Even if all they could get were hand-guns it would have been a much less bloody outcome than mowing down people with assault weapons. I realise it isn't realistic to eradicate all the AK47s floating around, but it would seem if you really squeezed availability it would make these attacks more difficult and likely make the acquisition of weapons more noisy so that these people can be detected before they use them.
Why do we hear so much about how the government needs to empower a bunch of spooks sitting in air conditioned computing centres, while nobody is talking about how the EU can fix this assault weapons problem?
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'.
There is so much wrong with the above, it's really sad.
That these politicians can stay in power when they are so obviously sociopaths.
Not one of the so called "agencies" (NSA, GCHQ) caught this before it happened, or (and more in line with what I think) they let it happen.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The terrorists in the Paris attack were known to the security services.
This almost always seems to be the case: the security services don't need more mass surveillance, they need to act on the intelligence they already have; they don't need a bigger haystack to find the needles they already have in front of them.
The proposals by the British government (the civil servants behind the scenes, that is, impressing it upon the clueless "here today, gone tomorrow" politicians, who propose it to every bunch that comes along until they get what they want) are ludicrous and will be abused.
Having Mike from Bromford's internet history stored for a whole year won't help them catch a single fucking terrorist, but it will help they shut him the fuck up if he starts campaigning against Fracking in his neighbourhood once the party's donors (the Frackers) start complaining about how effective his campign is.
The UK is becoming an ever greater, scary, over-arching surveillance state. The other shoe just hasn't dropped yet for the vast majority of people.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce