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Britain Has Passed the 'Most Extreme Surveillance Law Ever Passed in a Democracy' (zdnet.com)
Zack Whittaker, reporting for ZDNet: The UK has just passed a massive expansion in surveillance powers, which critics have called "terrifying" and "dangerous." The new law, dubbed the "snoopers' charter," was introduced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2012, and took two attempts to get passed into law following breakdowns in the previous coalition government. Four years and a general election later -- May is now prime minister -- the bill was finalized and passed on Wednesday by both parliamentary houses. Civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government "document everything we do online." It's no wonder, because it basically does. The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer's top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand -- though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that that; and even disclose any new security features in products before they launch. Not only that, the law also gives the intelligence agencies the power to hack into computers and devices of citizens (known as equipment interference), although some protected professions -- such as journalists and medical staff -- are layered with marginally better protections. In other words, it's the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy," according to Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group.
Truly despicable! I understand WHY they're doing it, but it's still wrong.
The only good thing is, at least they're letting you know ahead of time they're violating your privacy. (not that that is much of a prize).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Nice to have the focus off the United States every once in a while. USA! USA!
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
During the Bush administration, I used to remind people of the dangers of giving too much power to the executive branch by reminding them that one day, another "Clinton" will have control.
During the Obama administration, I reminded people that one day, another "Bush" will have control.
Eventually, I'll remind people that another "Obama" or "Trump" will have control.
Never give anyone, even your allies, the kind of power you would fear in the hands of your enemies.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If the internet really is to be considered as a public space, censorship laws should be expanded to prevent outsourcing censorship to private companies which somehow makes it completely AOK.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
If it weren't muslims, there would be some group that governments would position as requiring these powers to fight.
... democracy.
Some people would say that laws like this mean you've forfeited the right to call yourself a democracy.
Others define democracy to mean only how you elect your leaders (although all but the purists typically include republics in the definition), not whether you have freedom of speech, etc. With that definition, there have probably been other "democracies" with far more draconian laws.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Like who? What were they doing in the 90's, after the Cold War, but before 9/11?
after your privacy and defends it. But hey, at least they took back control!
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
If not muslims, the Irish, if not the Irish the Russians, if not Russians the Bogeymen.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Maybe abolish the Magna Carta, and go back to what England was before King John? Except that nobody there now is anything remotely close to King Richard I
"Like who? What were they doing in the 90's, after the Cold War, but before 9/11?"
Figuring out what these new Internets and The Google really do.
The time has come
There was a survey about this particular one a little while ago. 97% of people were against it, if they knew about it or after they had the contents explained to them, but only around 10% even knew it was being proposed. I hope that the opposition parties make a lot of noise about it at the next election.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Most likely the Irish...
In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
There needs to be a rule that every time someone going on about our governments being Democracies just needs to slapped like the retarded child that they are.
Before Australia follows suit.
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
They did take back control. The small print said that they took back control on behalf of the Westminster Parliament, which had been consistently acting against their interests for decades, but that's not the point. I still don't understand the people who decided that voting to give Parliament more power was a protest vote against the establishment.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The news suppression must be in force.
No mention of it on the BBC website, but that's frequently the case if the government want something suppressed, the BBC is not the impartial news service that some people outside the UK think it is.
What's more annoying is that it has no mention of this on the bills before parliament site which shows the last action as Lords bouncing back to Commons.
But even if it's not actually law yet, it's going to be soon. There are just formalities left.
Not really. The only thing special was they managed to be "terrorist of the day" when the tech ability became possible. If the IRA (suitably funded by the US, thanks for that) were still at it, they'd have used them as an excuse.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The idea is there's a legal framework in this country. We can use the law against any business operating in this country. If it is entirely in a foreign country, we have to use whatever framework they have in place there.
I just want to be clear - I don't in any defend this law, or even the actual law that was passed (blogs tend to hype it up a little). This comment is just an observation on a specific point in the summary.
In this case, the Conservative party can have a reasonable expectation to remain in power for a long time, especially if leaving the EU causes Scotland to abandon the union. Scotland represents some 10% of the population and regularly vote everyone-but-Theresa-May's-party.
For those interested in evil genius accomplishments and Bond-style villains, it's a good time to point out that with the chaos and paralysis that followed the recent referendum, Theresa May eventually got the law she had wanted for a long time. Merit where merit is due.
Sounds more like this will just generate more "homegrown" terrorists....
All of them were Cold War era groups - I specifically asked about the 90s, after the Cold War ended, but before 9/11, when we had the so called 'Peace Dividend'
Yes, that's what you get when you let your own gov't padlock the rigid mitts over your hands. The only people I feel sorry for here are the children whose parents delivered them into this nightmare.
Or you know, you don't go about invading other countries killing innocent people and inspire hatred of you around the world so no one feels the need to terrorize you. Or do you still think they hate you because you're so free? PS: Guess what the objective of terrorists is? To terrorize you. That's right, you just made them win by being terrorized into passing draconion Orwellian laws.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
Britain Uber Alles
Given the set {Diversity, Security, Liberty}, you can pick at most 2. Britain chose Diversity, and as surely as the sun rises in the east, Security evaporated. To restore Security, they are throwing out Liberty.
If Brexit was the harbinger of a rising tide, I expect that the country will complete the cycle by using Security to drive out Diversity so that they can restore Liberty.
It helps to remember that the history of Britain for the last 1000 years or so has been the rise of Liberty. The people will have to decide if we are seeing the end and reversal of that trend, or just an 80 year detour.
See that "Preview" button?
And once we "liberate" Britain, we have room on our flag for a new 51st star :)
The Conservative government, during this term, will pass boundary changes which are not blatant gerrymandering but do look like ensuring a multiple term Conservative government regardless of anything else that happens. The graph in the article nicely illustrates how irrelevant the Scotland, Wales and NI vote actually is despite what some (invariably Conservative supporting) people in England think.
The problem with that argument (and I agree with your point), is that both sides believe people are waking up from the lies of the other. They both see history as being on their side, and their position as the inevitable conclusion. Why fear the future? "We've won!"
If you're a nice approachable person, many people will assume you'd agree with them on politics, simply because you seem sane and decent. They absolutely cannot understand how anyone could agree with the other side unless they're stupid or evil.
While your point makes a lot of sense to a rational actor, in politics very few are.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
This is just formalizing and bringing out into the open what has already actually been happening in secret for years.
My only concern is given what happens in secret is often beyond the law, if the law itself is beyond the edge of decency, how bad can/will the secret stuff become?
Seriously, we all know it's coming.
Eastern Europe, Erdogan, Putin, Le Pen, Frauke Petry, Donald Trump ... these are special effects, smoke & mirrors.
The real action happens when laws like this get passed or Tim Cook and his Silicon Valley Bros push for everything-as-a-service / 'ecosystem' and proprietary payment systems instead of cash.
You can read it in Aldous Huxleys work, and in William Gibsons and Neal Stephensons.
We are moving into an all-out full-blown cyperpunk society where anyone halfway free from 'the system' is a potential suspect or locked out of essential basics , only able to acquire them by semi-legal / grey-market means. A world where *everything* has a price-tag and you can't move without Big Brother watching you.
Tamper-free FOSS IT systems are becoming more and more exotic a concept while the brainwashed masses think Fakebook or Twotter is some sort of innovation over other services we've had for decades.
Basically we're smack in the middle of a cyberpunk society already.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
--- This comment was deleted by the UK government ---
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The basic trick you can use (something which took me at most a couple of hours on a lazy afternoon to knock out off the top of my head -- easy or any CS student) is to have a MySQL table somewhere, with a simple schema of { int insertTime, char[32] key, string value }. The keys are produced by hashing a string of some sort, and the values are produced by encrypting using some password used by a related hashing method. Essentially you take a string 'HexVision' and salt it in two different ways. All table rows with this key are considered part of the conversation. Anybody with correct means to produce encryption key and row key can see the conversation. Encryption and decryption is done in javascript in the browser, as is producing the hashes (aes.js and sha.js). All the server does is store and retrieve rows, and is a few lines of PHP. You then get e.g. the last n messages, (get rows with matching key, sort by time, return last n), or the messages after a given time. The time things are written is not encrypted in this simple approach.
The thing is, you can write this into a single PHP file that you can stick on any LAMP stack anywhere (copy aes.js and sha.js inline). Then for the salting stuff, you use a separate html page (using sha.js and a few lines of js) to generate stuff to stick into the messaging page. Stuff like that.
Then, you stick it in something like a wordpress blog, where accessing a certain page (e.g. myweb.com/blog?page=46&etc=45) at the right time gives you the messaging application, but otherwise not. Then stick this in a country other than the UK.
Too easy. The government has basically declared its right to use a magic wand to summon unicorns.
John_Chalisque
I would argue that your conjecture could be simplified to: Pick one, Security or Liberty.
Security is gasoline, it doesn't mix well with Liberty's waters. Another analogy, Security and Liberty are on either ends of a slider/spectrum (think volume control).
Regarding Diversity, one can spy on a neighbor of the same or other
Spot on commentary. It's terrifying how terrorists can force our leaders to enact such changes (fear). As well, out of more fear, many of the populace support such change.
BlameBillCosby.com
George Orwell would be proud of himself for his predictions.
Finishing my thought, replying to myself.
Regarding Diversity, one can spy on a neighbor of the same or other colored skin. It only takes efforts to promote distrust.
Your sig was a fortune teller...
BlameBillCosby.com
I also think that the UK should hurry up with the Brexit, and so do the officials from all EU countries except the UK. The UK's totalitarian disregard for basic civil rights is completely incompatible with the EU constitution. For the rest of you demented post: Please piss off sooner than later!
When they get repeatedly burned by Trumps and Obamas, maybe they'll figure it out. I'm not very hopeful, but at least it's an easy argument to make these days.
What is it with the British and their love of surveillance and the right to privacy meaning so little to them? There is a Fundamental difference from the US, where laws and the Government are supposed to be charged with protecting the rights of the individual, while in the U.K. the objective is to protect the people and the Government itself from the individual.
The "Investigatory Powers Bill" is not quite as bad as the "Communications Data Bill" that was shot down, this one passed by a huge majority:
In March 2016, the House of Commons passed the second reading of the Investigatory Powers Bill on a 281 to 15 vote, moving the bill to the committee stage.
Wasn't exactly surprising the House of Lords passed it too, almost as much a formality as the Queen's Royal Assent.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think that many of them don't realize the future implications.
I can only use the US's political landscape as a point of reference but I think the point will be clear...
We've been hearing about the GOP's "Demographic problem" for more than a decade. Basically, as America is getting younger and browner, there is dwindling power for those groups who have traditionally been the Republican party's base. People with left-of-center politics really did think that we wouldn't see another Republican president for a generation or more.
Now that Trump won the presidency and Republicans control both houses of congress, I have heard grumblings on the right-of-center side who think that the Democrats are now over and done.
They're both wrong.
Giving more power to the government is a bad idea, no matter who is in control of it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Those 'billion' enemies - assuming that they materialize - will be outside the US. People in Teheran or Lahore or Tunis burning US flags is par for the course - we should just advise our citizens not to go there. As long as we keep them out of our countries, we should be fine!
Well, the UK is trying to pick both options, restricting access and spying on everyone.
Al-Qaeda were a Cold War era group too, but back then they were getting US support to cause trouble in Soviet.
No, they weren't - this is another canard that's used to defame the US. In the 80s, the main Jihadist group that the US supported was Gulbudin Heqmatyar's Hizb-i Islami, which was one of those Afghan militias backed by Pakistan. The Taliban was something that the Bhutto regime started supporting, since Bhutto hated Gen Zia, who was the US ally. But by then, the Soviets had started their withdrawal from Afghanistan, so from that point on, it was just the Afghan civil war. And the US wasn't involved in the Afghan civil war. As for Osama, he was a freelance Jihadist operating in Afghanistan, but certainly not w/ US support.
Maybe the UK is trying a new approach to stop terrorism. Take away freedoms one at a time until the terrorists no longer hate them! /s
The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer's top-level web history in real-time for up to a year
That is a lot of data the ISPs will have to store. I assume they're going to store logs from their DNS servers, for every little DNS request.
Eat the rich.
Get a program that will load a thousand random websites every hour. When millions of subscribers will each load 24000 websites every day, the storage will quickly overflow, and if the ISPs feel the pain, they are better placed than John Q. Public to effect pressure on the government.
The UK is still subject to the ECHR, and this sounds an awful lot like it would conflict with at least Art. 8.
"Public to effect pressure on the government."
You need a lot of people willing to literally go to *this* government's jails in a civil disobedience protest for this tactic to work as anything other than a weaponized surprise attack that if carried out at scale would cause even further unpleasantness to those arrested. I'm not all that optimistic that even if you had all those people willing to take that risk, that you would effect enough pressure on the government to change. By the point you got enough people that hard core about the issue, you might as well fight your battle with newspaper editorials and opinion essays. I think that would be more successful anyway.
"I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have."
Let me try and rephrase that for you- "I'm a [insert color here] [insert gender here] [insert sexual orientation here] [insert any religious affiliation here] 'Merican. I love this country and the freedoms that a subset of my nation has had for a subset of its history."
We should be terrified of where things might go. But it doesn't make where things have been better than they actually were. Of course, I'm going to take a wild guess that you filled in white male non-sodomite torture-loving jesus phreak above.
Congratulations, Airstrip One!
Perhaps the most depressing thing is that this isn't even mentioned on major news outlets like the BBC today.
The second most depressing thing is that Labour wanted it as well and basically allowed the Tories to wave it through as soon as they were no longer hampered by being in coalition. If you look at the Parliamentary speeches, a lot of MPs seem to genuinely believe this is a good and necessary law.
Most of the public don't want it, once they know about it and understand what it is. Most of the smaller political parties don't support it either. Legal challenges about violating the right to a private life and so on are inevitable. But the reality is, both big parties love this authoritarian measure, so it's going to be an uphill struggle -- and probably a Sisyphean one -- to rein it in.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
America is, for the most part, a very safe place to live. If you can avoid visiting a few specific zip codes, your chances of dying violently are very, very low. My understanding is that England is pretty much the same, except that they use post codes instead of zip codes.
In those parts of those countries, there is pretty much no need or desire to spy on or restrict anyone. The few exceptions seem mostly to be people that don't want their government to push diversity on them by force.
Without diversity, you get security for free. With diversity, the best you can do is to sell your Liberty for a veneer of security.
See that "Preview" button?
Let them think they can see anything of meaning.
I mean: Oh snap, now everything I do online will be known without fail by the government! Oh woe is me! Better not do anything unwholesome!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is nothing to do with terrorism and all about control! The internet allows the people to communicate, share, learn and oppose. Not something the government generally wants - this is about monitoring the population, detecting trends, silencing opposition and influencing thought.
BS. Lack of security is a fairytale the media has dreamed up to drive ratings. Really, the chance of getting killed or harmed in a terrorist attack is basically zero. People are scared because they see 1-in-a-million events on TV all the time, since that is an easy sell for the news networks, so you are left with a bunch of idiots with a poor understanding of statistics fearing for their life. Western countries are safer now than they have been at any point in history and there is zero reason to trash liberty for more security.
Colonoscopies will continue until morale improves. That is all.
The ECHR isn't part of the EU.
Nonetheless, countries in the EU condemning totalitarian actions by the UK government is one of the main defences we have.
Two years of Trump and even the thickest Brit would think twice about Brexit.
Even though the vast majority of the country would refuse to pay the price for Hard Brexit, our unelected authoritarian Prime Minister (whose legislation this is) is determined to push for it anyway.
I wish I had reason to share your optimism re: Article 50.
Even if you include the 2005 bombings where the Govt knew of the bombers and seemingly had an agent who was its mastermind... .. UK terrorism has killed fewer people than peanuts. Peanuts of course target young children too.
Replying to kill my accidental moderation as "overrated" (meant to hit "funny")
Expect every IM, website, and social media post to be readable with an ip and account details in real time by teams of in house SJW, NGO's and gov/mil staff. :)
So all freedom of speech is gone from any UK isp account with a UK ip.
Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "gain access to large amounts of Internet users' personal data, without any individual suspicion or targeting."
Once noticed, expect computer entry. The gov and mil will enter and alter your computer, network or any other device.
Expect that device to report all movements if your in the media or in contact with the media.
Whistleblowers reaching out to the traditional media won't get beyond the first call or meeting.
What can the press and media do?
Create a series of devices and fill them with fiction. Reports, searches, contacts. Use any UK isp for searches for amazing new stories with background help from informants and insiders. Sock puppet contacts with details of meetings. Walk, drive out for such meetings so gps and other tracking can collect. Select a good location to meet "someone" handing over vast amounts of data.
Then do days of background research with as much jargon, mil, science and party political terms as possible.
Flood the digital collection system with a lot of work related fiction everyday in plain text. Any real contact would be without an electronic devices, away from CCTV. Any phone been given to a friend to walk around with and handed back later. Buy a typewriter. Create your own secure shorthand for paper notes. Learn about one time pads. Once a story is ready, publish early, fully and often. Expect all networks and digital files to be searched. So have a lot of digital fiction ready
The UK gov and mil hope that a lot of new SJW, gov staff and volunteers can cover an entire nation of networked users. Physical access to a site will be rare as such teams of contractors are so expensive and might be reported or seen. Buying any new computer or network device with a CC or online is a risk if working in the media. Expect upgrades as delivered. Use and buy any such devices for fictional creativity.
VPN and onion routing are not much use for the media given the public court reporting about online tracking at a now low cost per case.
Democracy and public interaction and the fear of been reported will be very chilling for democracy.
The other real issue will be for the reader comments in the UK. Expect SJW reporting to gov and teams of gov staff looking over any and all comments.
A good VPN well outside 5 eye nations or the EU might still allow freedom of speech until the comment is removed or comments get turned off.
Credit card use on a VPN would also be an issue.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If you look at the Parliamentary speeches, a lot of MPs seem to genuinely believe this is a good and necessary law.
Actually, they read it and realised that politicians are exempt from unwarranted domestic spying.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Depend of your definition of Democracy. Most of people in western world, don't consider China a democray. But here, we are heading to slippery slope... :)
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Was, I believe, a work of dystopian fiction, not a handbook. Now was is Eurasia or Eastasia we need all this protection against?
Is there a single thing to protect me from cross-site tracking cookies and evercookies? How do I prevent one site's cookies from being used by another site?
I'm not sure that it's actually true. I'm a liberal in US, but I dabble in some hobbies that have a very strong conservative bias among its adherents (guns), and so I talk to these guys a lot, and, more importantly, hear them talk between each other. And their picture has been decidedly doom & gloom for a while now, even when "their" politicians are in office - they do acknowledge the reality of the demographic change, for example, and understand that it'll shift votes not in their favor long term. They're definitely more optimistic now with Trump in office, but I wouldn't say that it changed their long-term outlook much. They still see it as inevitable slope downwards to "socialism", with the only thing they can really do is putting up an occasional roadblock, like they did this year.
I believe we need to disseminate the information necessary to make this unworkable https://www.change.org/p/reque...