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

Posted by Soulskill on from the apparently-spying-is-the-only-thing-that-happens-over-the-holidays dept.

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.

2 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Re:End game? by Endymion · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's the end game with all this?

    China is showing us one of the possible end games. Facebook is already patenting features along those lines. Combined with omnipresent spying, this "new" type of oppression will work. It's a terrifying future.

    It's like a new cold war.

    Dan Geer describes our situation as a cold civil war. It would be useful if more people recognized that.

    --
    Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
  2. Re: End game? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's more than one way to revolt. I agree that the "open warfare by flag waving troops" isn't going to happen. But what's far more likely is that, more and more, people simply... stop. They stop buying things other than necessities. They stop going out in the evenings. They no longer participate in society. No marriages. No offspring.

    It looks like just another economic downturn at first. But there never seems to be an upturn again. Slowly, slowly, things just get a bit worse, and a bit worse, and a bit worse. Because people stop participating.

    That's when governments will really go crazy. Because there's no leader of a resistance to arrest. None of those flag-waving troops to battle. There's nothing they can do. Can you make people go to the movies? Force bowling teams to form at the point of a bayonet? Demand people volunteer at the homeless food lines?

    Societies build social capital over decades and hundreds of years. They can use up all that capital just as slowly, as people simply no longer give a damn. That's when things end, not with a bang, but with a whimper.