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Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo Balk At UK's Investigatory Powers (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: The Investigatory Powers Bill may only be in draft form at the moment, but the UK government has already received criticism for its plans. Today, scores of pieces of written evidence, both for and against the proposals, have been published, including input from the Reform Government Surveillance (RGS) coalition. Five key members of the coalition are Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo. In their written evidence, the quintet of tech companies express their concerns about the draft bill, seek clarification from the UK government, and issue warnings about the implications of such a bill. The evidence (document IPB0116) says that any surveillance undertaken by the government need to be 'targeted, lawful, proportionate, necessary, jurisdictionally bounded, and transparent'. The coalition notes that many other countries are watching to see what the UK does.
the curious thing about uk bill is that is is explicit in its intrusive powers. western govs, in past and at present, have been getting these same companies to do what they want without such explicit powers.
they makes a fuss only when all these are publicly exposed. but are quite corporative privately.
At this point if the UK government annoyed Facebook+Google+Twitter+Microsoft+Yahoo into withdrawing their services from the country, it would damage the government more than it would damage those companies -- the government would blink first.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
"... many other countries are watching to see what the UK can get away with."
#DeleteChrome
So the coalition of tech companies is submitting a petition. Because that always works.
It's not like the effectiveness of petitions was debunked in 1425 BC by Rekhmira, Vizier of Tutmose III... oh, wait.
Although I'm born and bred here I cannot stand the utter lunacy display by the governments. They seem complete Luddites. Any criminals caught by such sweeping powers will be nothing more than token victories. This will do absolutely nothing to touch the ones whom we should worry about. They're supposed to be our leaders not our oppressors.
Normally, the government can wait for the first CEO to stick his neck out, then make an example of him. But pissing-off 5 corporations at once can easily put the UK government under cross-hairs. Normally, government rules are just the cost of doing business but no business can tolerate what is essentially government-sanctioned stealing of their property. These multinational corporations can run a smear campaign at the next election but the new masters will probably want to indulge in the same grand larceny. Another option is creating a new revenue stream, such as their subscriber's wallets. While not leaving the country, the cost to the UK would be immense, while a $40/month (per corporation) subscription fee would compensate Facebook and friends for the hundreds of lost page-views. With a good PR campaign, UK politicians will be left to answer why something that was free, now costs $160/month (eg. Facebook, Microsoft OutLook/OneDrive, Google Calendar/HangOuts, Twitter)
The big issue with the law is that it seems to be banning end-to-end encryption. Right now, when the FBI comes to Apple and says "give us this person's iMessages in clear text" Apple can just respond "we made it so that we have no way to comply". Apple likes it that way, mostly because customers hate being spied on so it's a selling point. The UK is ramping up to say "make it so you can comply in future or else big fines and gaol". And it's going to be hard for Apple to do this just for the UK. You can bet the UK is going to be of the view that they need to be able to see the comms of foreign citizens on UK soil, and of UK citizens overseas. It's just like how California car emission laws have consequences for the whole of the US. In this case a UK law could outlaw strong encryption for ordinary consumers in the whole developed world.
Banning end to end encryption is just one small effect. Small because most of them don't offer end to end encryption anyway for most of their products.
The big fat issue here is bulk data collection.
The judiciary in this brave new world, no longer approve individual warrants for individual searches, they approve classes of warrant for a bulk data feed. Similar to the crap the FISA court has been up to.
So instead of approving a warrant for "Abdul and people who communicated with Abdul", they propose that a judge will approve access to Gmail to let GCHQ or police or whatever look for data on Abdul. They then get access to BULK data and are trusted to self police themselves, with minimal oversight.
Really they go fishing, all the targets of their fishing have no access to judicial challenge because they're unaware. The judge is unaware if they've complied with the law. Google would not know, because Google has to hand everything over. The basic protections are removed.
A politician essentially sets the surveillance against the people or opposition or political groups or newspapers or judges or whatever. The judge approves the data feed for a different purpose, but once the data is there, he's out of the loop. And the judicial process can never protect the privacy right because the data is collected in bulk long before it is searched. Instead of Parliament deciding what data can be accessed by what group with force of law, a judge issues a warrant to permit the data, (he can permit or not each individual data grab).
So their demand for this law talks a lot about ISPs and their PR department pretends that an ISP is someone who provides your internet connection. But then there's this "must strip encryption" thing, your ISP does not do the encryption, that's the website. So this law also really applies to the Googles, Facebooks and a million other sites here. It applies to your email provider, to your searches, your discussion forums, banking, medical, everything. As you point out, a site cannot offer end to end encryption because of this law, so your email cannot be end to end encrypted because your email ISP can be required to decrypt it.
Also it exceeds the UK jurisdiction, they seem to believe they should be the world police, but of course every other country, Russia and China will demand the same. So those assholes will:
a) Prevent us getting end to end encryption, as you pointed out.
b) Remove the judicial check from the searches, people's stuff is searched in bulk and in secret.
c) Expose all out stuff to foreign powers who will demand the same access.
Of that b) is the biggest threat to democracy. c) is the biggest threat to business and political freedom, and a) is an obstacle to the proper fix for privacy.
Really, we know what its about. GCHQ has been doing the "bulk data warrants" thing, it fears a legal challenge, it's been lobbying to get a law that establishes the right to define access to bulk ongoing data sets in a warrant (as opposed to a law created by Parliament who have repeated rejected Snoopers Charter), and so we have this grab for power.
Funny the results that come up with you Google IPB0116.....
https://goo.gl/4nVc9M
The UK gov and mil has had total control over all communications systems since 1914.
From the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... to every phone line domestically and in and out of Ireland to all calls on Intelsat via CSO Morwenstow/GCHQ Bude.
The ability to collect all and then use parallel construction over the decades was never really fully worked out by the press, lawyers, human rights campaigners, tech experts or academics.
All MI5/6 and the GCHQ had to do in closed courts was to ensure a protected "witness" could be presented to confirm what "collect it all" had originally found.
Legal experts would assume someone had been turned and offer immunity or a deal. Few in public really understood the collaboration between the US, UK tech sectors, academics and the UK gov over decades.
All the UK political experts should have said was that VPN, US consumer grade cryptography, onion routing was a complex issue that the government was spending money on trying to understand over time.
Generations of interesting people would have continued to be fooled into using fully tracked VPN services, gov malware ready cell phones, tracked telecommunications products, junk consumer grade encryption, IP reporting onion routing applications. All networking would have been under full UK gov observation with only hints that sock puppets could have been used to counter.
Projects like Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... would have given the UK the world if UK politics would have just been more vague about global collection.
Why did the UK intelligence services even allow UK political talking points to the formulated and talked about on topics like trapdoors, backdoors, new gov keys to all UK encryption?
Academics and software developers to help to trapdoor crypto by design and sharing of extra keys with the UK gov?
Now everyone knows "Designed in the UK" is code for the UK gov and mil listening in by default over all generations of UK products and brands.
Local manufacture is now synonymous with hardware tracking and default backdoors out of the box.
If only decades of clever policy surrounding crypto ambiguity had been allowed to continue.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
UK is seeking parity with China. Isn't it only fair that "freedom loving" western civilization give its "rulers" the absolute and iron-fisted ability to oppress that China uses to suppress "freedom" or "economic growth". The two aren't connected, right? Absolute monarchies, despite their textbook economic inefficiencies are great for centralized power and singleness of vision. England has a monarchy, and just wants to return absolute power to it as an example of how Europe can return to feudalism, right? Bah humbug. This isn't going to make anyone safer. This is going to be abused. This is also going to be hacked, and a third (or fourth, or fifth) party is going to siphon that refined resource - amazingly detailed information about citizens, and as a nation-state use it against the best interests of the UK. Only arm your enemy with weapons you can fight against. If you can't beat the Neutron bomb or the MIRV, then do not give it to them.
So the big opposition comes from a gaggle of American mega companies who shuffle money around to display a paper profit of zero in the UK so they don't pay corporation tax. They are of course completely right in principal, but not the most clean handed lobbying group. The politicians are quite keen to spin it as them screwing over Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo because of terrorism, rather than the reality of screwing over the population of the UK because of nothing.
'targeted, lawful, proportionate, necessary, jurisdictionally bounded, and transparent'.
1. Oh its targeted
2. lawful, we're passing the law right now,
3. proportionate, necessary - we're elected god dammit, we'll decide.
4. jb, its a UK law, what your government chooses to introduce is up to them
5. Transparent, we telling you up front what we're about to do.
If this is their defense I think their SOL.
Would it be possible to provide a link to the draft bill in these stories please?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Actually the few UK employees Google has would almost be guarenteed a job elsewhere in the industry immediately. And as those yank leeches dodge paying taxes here, good riddance. The only people who really benefit from Googles UK are Google.
Look, UK Government. Your asses got handed to you in the Revolutionary war. Don't think to yourself anything has changed since then. Your asses will be handed to you yet again.
It is time to kill the new Robber Barons / Oligarchs.
Zucky and company in front of the wall....