Tech Companies Face Criminal Charges If They Notify Users of UK Government Spying (techspot.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Last week, Yahoo became the latest company promising to alert users who it suspected were being targeted by state-sponsored attacks (excepting Microsoft, who made a similar announcement just today). Twitter, Facebook and Google had previously assured their users that they would be warned of any potential government spying. The UK, it seems, isn't happy about this. They are pushing through a bill that will punish the leaders of any company that warns its users about British snooping with up to two years in prison. Specifically, UK ministers want to make it a criminal offense for tech firms to warn users of requests for access to their communication data made by security organizations such as MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

Comments

End game?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the end game with all this? At what point do people decide not to let this crap happen, and what steps do they take to enforce it? I honestly can't imagine a civil rebellion going anyway, even in a country like America where so many people are already armed with guns. Politicians obviously have no interest in backing down. It's like a new cold war.

Re: End game?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Arab Spring was a movement wanted and supported by Western powers and, especially in Lybia, it would have gone nowhere without direct Western intervention. For a more realistic outcome to any attempt at rebellion, see Tian an Men... While you still can.

Re:End game?

[flopsquad]

Your post is thought provoking, which makes it all the more frustrating you've succumbed to one of the least useful fads in modern internet culture: the everywhere video-ization of content that really just wants to be text.

Not trying to be an ass :) I honestly wanted to follow those links and read what you were talking about and then... oh, YouTube.

Re: End game?

[fnj]

The end game is: governments get what they want, a vocal minority huffs and puffs and ultimately resigns to the inevitable, the rest of the population gets on with their lives. There is not going to be any revolution. Anywhere. Ever.

Eat shit, fuck off, and die, o cowardly anonymous statist pig. There have always been revolutions and rebellions, and there will always be revolutions and rebellions. Counting on the masses to remain opiated indefinitely is a LOSER'S policy.

The establishment has certain advantages in terms of having vast, well-supplied agents of oppression, but it also suffers the disadvantage of being highly identifiable (nowhere to hide), and possessing much infrastructure which has to be protected.

How are these the same thing?

[wonkey_monkey]

Yahoo became the latest company promising to alert users who it suspected were being targeted by state-sponsored attacks

Google had previously assured their users that they would be warned of any potential government spying

UK ministers want to make it a criminal offense for tech firms to warn users of requests for access to their communication data

The first two situations involve the government going after the companies' users without notifying the companies

The last situation involves the government issuing a request to the company for information.

Seem like two different things to me.

China would be so proud!

[Bamfarooni]

China would be so proud!

Worrying logical consequences

[John Allsup]

Thus, thinking from a logical perspective, it makes sense to assume, by default, that we are being spied upon, that GCHQ, MI5, Mi6, NSA, CIA etc are snooping on all our internet transmissions, that all ISPs and tech companies are in cahoots with the intelligence services, and that the reason there's 'no evidence' is because of explicit legislation banning the dissemination of such evidence. Suddenly paranoia, delusions and conspiracy theories start to become sensible, rational and logical.