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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.
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.
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
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.
Actually it's not quite a s stupid as it first seems. If they outlaw encryption and apps that don't give them a backdoor, then they can arrest anyone who uses those things. Such encrypted traffic, or traffic to and from the servers of such apps will be tagged as illegal and followed up by automated systems that ISPs and mobile service providers are required to install.
Once the infrastructure is in place the BPI will go to court demanding that ISPs block BitTorrent and consumer VPN services. Once the concept that a protocol or app can be illegal is established the government and large corporations will have powerful weapons to use against us.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC