48 Organizations Now Have Access To Every Brit's Browsing Hstory (zerohedge.com)

schwit1 quotes a report from Zero Hedge on Great Britain's newly-enacted "snoopers' charter": For those who missed our original reports, here is the new law in a nutshell: it requires telecom companies to keep records of all users' web activity for a year, creating databases of personal information that the firms worry could be vulnerable to leaks and hackers. Civil liberties groups say the law establishes mass surveillance of British citizens, following innocent internet users from the office to the living room and the bedroom. They are right. Which government agencies have access to the internet history of any British citizen? Here is the answer courtesy of blogger Chris Yuo, who has compiled the list
Click through to the comments to read the entire list.
Metropolitan police force
City of London police force
Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996
Police Service of Scotland
Police Service of Northern Ireland
British Transport Police
Ministry of Defence Police
Royal Navy Police
Royal Military Police
Royal Air Force Police
Security Service
Secret Intelligence Service
GCHQ
Ministry of Defence
Department of Health
Home Office
Ministry of Justice
National Crime Agency
HM Revenue & Customs
Department for Transport
Department for Work and Pensions
NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England that provide ambulance services
Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service
Competition and Markets Authority
Criminal Cases Review Commission
Department for Communities in Northern Ireland
Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland
Department of Justice in Northern Ireland
Financial Conduct Authority
Fire and rescue authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004
Food Standards Agency
Food Standards Scotland
Gambling Commission
Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority
Health and Safety Executive
Independent Police Complaints Commissioner
Information Commissioner
NHS Business Services Authority
Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust
Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board
Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation
Office of Communications
Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland
Police Investigations and Review Commissioner
Scottish Ambulance Service Board
Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
Serious Fraud Office
Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust

Comments

I want acess too

[stooo]

I want acess too

Re: I want acess too

[LankyBoycie]

Check the list, you've probably already got it...

Re: I want acess too

[Mashiki]

Give it time. Someone will expose it, and I'm guessing it'll be just like the gigantic leak in S.Korea. $20 says that you'll see politicians browsing history and it'll be every banned thing that your average pleb isn't allowed to see in the UK.

Wonder if people are going to start whining that the source article is Zerohedge though and it's "fake news" like they've posted before, when people have linked to it.

Re: I want acess too

[Builder]

I believe that politician's history may be excluded from being retained. They're thinking of the children in Westminster.

Re: I want acess too

[Anonymous Coward]

if you do browsing history retainement like that, you don't have real filters.

Re: I want acess too

[Anonymous Coward]

They're thinking of the children in Westminster.

That's what worries me.

Re: I want acess too

[Anonymous Coward]

when they start using that line you know its going to get bad.

Re: I want acess too

[TheRaven64]

I think that browsing history for elected officials is in the public interest and so can probably be requested via a freedom of information act request.

Re: I want acess too

[nehumanuscrede]

For a few $, I'm sure you can find some lowly underpaid clerk who has access to those databases.

Given that possibility, I would think a lot more than just the original list will ultimately have access to that data.

Re: I want acess too

[amiga3D]

Yeah, like aqualung, watching the little panties run.

Re:I want acess too

[Anonymous Coward]

You want acess to my hstory?

Re: I want acess too

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is for all the hackers to jump on this as soon as it goes live, then expose the browsing history of people who are related to government employees. Hopefully they'll then see how this is an absolute breach of privacy and stop it.

Re: I want acess too

[Locke2005]

The American congress exempted themselves from the Freedom of Information Act. I suspect the British parliament has done the same. The people making the laws have an unfair advantage here; they don't have to put up with bull that everyone else does, they just pass a law saying it doesn't apply to them. They have their own government healthcare system, their own government bank, their own private parking lot at the airport, etc. That's one of the reasons they can't relate to their constituents: they're living in a completely different reality.

Re: I want acess too

[Scarletdown]

o/~ Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. o/~

Re:I want acess too

[HiThere]

Don't worry, if 48 organizations already have access, anyone will be able to get access.

Re: I want acess too

[dave420]

You misheard the lyrics. Try again.

Re: I want acess too

[amiga3D]

frilly not little. yes you got me. :)

Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

'Free', democratic Britain now has the tools the Stasi could only dream of, back when the West criticised such methods.

Re:Police state

[Mashiki]

Want to know what's even worse? That there's probably more UK citizens whining over Trump and not protesting in the streets in their own country over this. $20 says that the Liberals here in Canada try pushing through something similar in the next year or two.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

What does this have to do with the Stasi versus the modern surveillance state. The Stasi were the East German Secret police, not a NAZI organization. Learn your history AC.

Re:Police state

[houghi]

This has nothing to do with Liberal or any other form. They ALL want it, because the police is asking for it and to deny it, they will be called out on doing nothing against crime, be it terrorism, rape or whatever crime you can think of.

It is the easy way out for politicians. For the Police it is normal that they are asking for things that make their work easier. That does not mean it should be given.

I am sure that everybody has ideas on how to make their job easier. Does not mean it is always a good idea when you look at the whole.

e.g. Having no internet access will make the job of many network people a lot easier. Not always a good idea. Having no firewall will make their life also easier (bit more work for others) and also not a good idea.

Having a tag on each and every person 100% of the time and seeing what everybody does will make the job of the police a lot easier, but it is also not a good idea.

What would be needed are politicians that say "ok, when we don't do that 150 kids will be killed by terrorists and that is a price we are willing to pay for our privacy." I am not going to hold my breath for that.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn your own history - stop making assumptions like that one. I never claimed Nazi = Stasi and that's missing the point quite bigly.

You make a direct correlation where a diabolical series of unconscionable parallels exist, and that's just a single example for Godwin effect.

Stick a history book up your ass and see what you can critically absorb that way I guess.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

You can thank Brexit for that.

If the UK remained in the EU, it would be much harder to pass shit like this. The EU sucks for many things, but privacy is one of the areas they don't budge on.

Re:Police state

[butzwonker]

I've heard many stupid comments about purported "liberals", but this tops all of them. Go get some basic introduction to political philosophy or even just a good book on European history that covers the political movements from 18. to 20. Century in order to get at least a very rough idea about what the terms you are using actually mean.

Re: Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah, except UK is still a part of Europe and bound by all its conventions. We haven't triggered article 50 so haven't even begun to negotiate Brexit, let alone complete it and untangle ourselves.
So no, you can't blame Brexit for this.

Re:Police state

[Big Hairy Ian]

Well obviously the Dept of Health needs access you your browser & search history so that they can diagnose that bowel cancer you don't know about

Re:Police state

[leshii]

As the UK is yet to leave the EU I suppose this could be fought as a contravention of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights

Re:Police state

[Joce640k]

'Free', democratic Britain now has the tools the Stasi could only dream of

At least they're doing it openly, they've got that going for them.

Most other countries deny doing it at all.

(and don't think for a minute that means they aren't...)

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

This is much more than a police state. It's a food standards gamble healthy senior living military state! Taking away the obvious law enforcement and security services from that list, there are so many organizations not belonging there, even under special or emergency circumstances.

Re:Police state

[TheRaven64]

Most don't know about it. There was a poll a month or so back that showed that 97% of people in Britain were opposed to this, when they knew what it contained, but only around 5-10% were even aware that it was being passed.

Re:Police state

[TheRaven64]

As the other poster said, we haven't left yet (or even started to officially leave). Add to that, this law was drafted back when the current PM was Home Secretary. It was one of the reasons that she wanted Britain to be able to opt out of the European Court of Justice, as this is almost certainly going to see legal challenges.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

You can thank Brexit for that.

If the UK remained in the EU, it would be much harder to pass shit like this. The EU sucks for many things, but privacy is one of the areas they don't budge on.

Bugger All to do with Brexit, as we're still in the EU, and we're still signatories to all those 'troublesome' Europe wide laws..this is what you get when the current PM is a stooge of the security services (cf. her past history).

In the name of the great escape clause 'national security' we'd have had this anyway, Brexit or no...

Re: Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, another liberal racist.

Re:Police state

[Dins]

I hope there is some sort of awareness campaign happening across the pond, then. This is the most egregious technological privacy violation I've ever seen. For older people, it needs to be explained as the same as 48 organizations having access to the content of every individual slip of paper and written word in your house at any time they want it. Orwell would have blushed at the audacity.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a tag on each and every person 100% of the time and seeing what everybody does will make the job of the police a lot easier, but it is also not a good idea.

The mobile phone industry begs to differ with you there.

Re:Police state

[Plus1Entropy]

He's not talking about "liberals" in general. He means the Liberals, the name of the party that currently has a majority in the Canadian House of Commons, i.e. the Canadian Government.

That being said, I also live in Canada and I'm not sure I agree that they're planning to do that, but who knows.

Re:Police state

[TheRaven64]

because the police is asking for it and to deny it,

Actually, they're not. The police realise that being able to install malware (which the act permits) makes it easy to tamper with evidence and destroys the normal evidence chain, so will open a load of grounds for challenging any evidence that they can bring to court. The intelligence agencies (who would far rather let someone get off a crime than compromise a data-gathering source) are in favour of it.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: The governing party in Canada are called "Liberals"

Re: Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA is next.

Re: Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. We were first.

Re: Police state

[oobayly]

No you can't. However, the UK is free to pass laws that contravene EU privacy laws. It just takes some time for the UK government to be taken to task over them. Take David Davis - the UK Brexit Minister - he took legal action against [his own] government over mass monitoring in the European Court of Justice.

Re:Police state

[butzwonker]

Oops, I thought he was talking in general. So what he suggests is in his opinion that Canada's Liberals are not liberal at all but rather authoritarians who plan to pass similar Draconian surveillance laws. My apologies to the OP for the snarky comment above then. Got it now.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

The saddest part is the citizenry just sits by and accepts its personal liberties being chipped away at. Repeatedly. Oh wait, so do 'murkins...

DEY TUK ER JERBS

Re:Police state

[Plus1Entropy]

Well they're planning to legalize weed (one of our current PM's election promises) so it's not all bad. :D

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they're planning to legalize weed (one of our current PM's election promises) so it's not all bad. :D

Considering the harm that many (if not most) weedkillers cause to the environment, banning weedkillers and thus legalizing weed might not be such a bad idea.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

because the police is asking for it and to deny it, they will be called out on doing nothing against crime, be it terrorism, rape or whatever crime you can think of.

Sorry, but liars are gonna lie. If you give cops whatever they want just because they lie, then you're just as much of the problem as the cops.

If these "liberals" accept blatant lies to justify surveillance, then they don't get to call themselves anti-surveillance. And by some people's definitions, maybe that means they shouldn't call them liberals. (But I suppose that's another issue.)

Re:Police state

[GLMDesigns]

Liberals and Socialism is antithetical to each other. A socialist can call himself a liberal but he's not. He's just appropriating the name.

Re:Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU member countries work hand in hand with the US intelligence agencies when it comes to sharing data on their citizens. The NSA wasn't collecting data on EU citizens they were just given access to everything the individual countries had collected. But if you want to live in fairy land where the Europeans are free from intrusions on their privacy please go ahead. The EU privacy regulations are just a lever Brussels uses to shakedown the dominate international web service companies. They used the NSA controversy to push for more data centers to be located in Europe like the location of the data center would somehow magically provide protection against the evil NSA. If the US could gain physical access to the Iranian centrifuge lab to release Stuxnet I am pretty sure a data center in Brussels would hardly be a challenge.

Re:Police state

[liquid_schwartz]

because the police is asking for it and to deny it,

Actually, they're not. The police realise that being able to install malware (which the act permits) makes it easy to tamper with evidence and destroys the normal evidence chain, so will open a load of grounds for challenging any evidence that they can bring to court. The intelligence agencies (who would far rather let someone get off a crime than compromise a data-gathering source) are in favour of it.

So essentially the secret police rather than the regular police.

Re: Police state

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL this guy.

Re:Police state

[RandomSurfer314]

That's certainly true if you take the positions "ideally". However, left-wing liberals have had partly overlapping goals with democratic socialists in many countries which is why liberal parties have often formed coalitions with social democrats. Classical goals of both socialists and social democrats have always been the strengthening of worker's right and human rights in general, which is compatible with the left-wing liberal idea of freedom and protection of citizens from the state. As for right-wing liberalism, there is not much of an overlap.

Re:Police state

[GLMDesigns]

socialism is not in favor of individual rights. It's a collectivist, not an individualist philosophy.

Lenin, Trotsky and Che have mocked the concept of individualism. And this, of course, doesn't take into account Stalin, Mao and others who murdered millions. Social Democrats do not, in my opinion, strengthen individual rights. They strengthen some group but not the smallest of minorities - the individual. Defending the individual against the predations of the state had been one of the goals of classical liberals - but no longer. Just look at the abomination of identity politics - humans only have value (or less value) depending upon the group to which they belong.

Re:Police state

[bankman]

There was a poll a month or so back that showed that 97% of people in Britain were opposed to this, when they knew what it contained, but only around 5-10% were even aware that it was being passed.

That's why Brexit is such a beauty, even if it never happens a lot of bad legislation will pass unnoticed.

Re:Police state

[HiThere]

They also realize that only the wealthy are going to be able to afford to challenge the chain of evidence...and they leave them alone anyway.

Saying the police don't ask for this is not substantiated by past history, though those doing the asking tend to be from the very upper ranks of the police. Perhaps the rank feel differently.

Re: Police state

[HiThere]

3rd or 4th, but more extensively. That was enabled by cellphones.

Re:Police state

[RandomSurfer314]

But socialists were at the forefront of movements for individual rights during the 19th, and modern social democratic parties certainly continue this tradition by defending human rights, worker's rights and individual rights in general. That's not really a matter of opinion, it's in their party programs. But of course you can disagree with the methods from a liberal perspective and it's true that socialism partly evolved out of a critique of the heavily property-oriented individualism of early liberals and utilitarians. Democratic socialism is more collectivist, because it is based on the idea of solidarity, which is fairly alien to the principles of original liberalism. As I said, social democracy and liberalism have partly overlapping goals - but really just partly.

The rest of what you've stated is what communists later called socialism and that's an unfortunate equivocation that needs to be avoided. Lenin, Trotsky, Che (I believe, not sure about him), Stalin, and Mao were communists in various forms, not socialists, and even purportedly socialist countries like the GDR were in reality communist. Socialism is older than communism and evolved out of the "social question", the same question that was also addressed by liberals such as John Stuart Mill. If it helps, it has become customary to label democratic socialism "social democracy" in many countries to distinguish it from the ill-conceived undemocratic socialism of the East Bloc during Cold War.

Anyway, maybe we can agree that all these labels have been watered down and are hardly recognizable sometimes nowadays.

Re:Police state

[Mashiki]

This has nothing to do with Liberal or any other form.

Sorry to burst your bubble. But in Canada we have a party called "Liberals" so yes, it has everything to do with them. The irony is of course, they've been the big pushers for this. In many cases, the police outside of CSIS and the RCMP aren't pushing for it. The conservatives have been against it most of the time, and support only goes up when there's a terrorist attack on Canadian soil.

Re:Police state

[Mashiki]

That being said, I also live in Canada and I'm not sure I agree that they're planning to do that, but who knows.

You must be pretty young. Back in the 90's the Liberals were the first ones pushing for "access" like this. And they've been pushing for it even when they were a minority in the house. We haven't heard much this time around, but then again it was them calling for a cabon tax that cost them the last previous election. And they didn't say anything about it this time around, and won. Of course now we're going to be hit with a 20% tax increase.

Re:Police state

[Mashiki]

Well they're planning to legalize weed (one of our current PM's election promises) so it's not all bad. :D

He's already come out saying that it won't be legalized. It likely won't even be decriminalized.

Re:Police state

[Mashiki]

That being said, I also live in Canada and I'm not sure I agree that they're planning to do that, but who knows.

Just a reminder that the Liberals were the ones pushing this exact type of stuff back in the 90's. The CPC was against it, then were for it when they needed the Liberals backing on something. Then against it again, so who knows on that case. But considering the garbage they've been dumping on us in the first year? Better hold on because it's likely going to get worse.

How?

[Anonymous Coward]

How are they doing it? Make https illegal? Mandate Spy-Cert in all browsers? Browser-history-just-means-ips? Royal-(pain-in-the-ass)-plugin that's mandatory for every subject on Monkey Island?

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing DNS on ISP's end

Re: How?

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly. https even dns you can use any number of servers including local(your own computer) and not to mention dnscrypt. not saying they can not make a list of what they can capture. i guess have fun with those cat videos arnt they cute.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a winner.

Re: How?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except where DNS traffic cant leave the ISP. Much like how Cable companies prevent external SMTP servers to be used.

Re:How?

[AHuxley]

Years of logs kept at the ISP level. Then the data is searchable by city, national gov, GCHQ. Every term, word in any url that did not get good https.
The logs can then be used in open court as the method of collection is court friendly.
Every site by name or ip. Every comment, forum comment, use of social media. Reverse look up of any UK ip back to an ISP account, name, address, CC details.
Any comment about any location in the UK, politics, been anti war, wanting union support, reporting on news about local gov or MPs' expenses, the role of celebrities in politics, mass illegal migration, hospital funding.. looking up work health and safety issues at home.. looking for legal advice in your local area, looking up any medical conditions and insurance.

Re:Source?

[thesupraman]

Probably because that list is part of the newly passed act they are discussing?

it explicitly says so, right in the 'bloggers ass' as you like to say:
'A list of who will have the power to access your internet connection records is set out in Schedule 4 of the Act'

Now, I am sure that actual reading is beyond you, but give it a go! its amazing what you can learn.

Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Ihlosi]

If they didn't, I guess there will be an increase in demand for such services.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck downloading Tor as a brit, your visit to their website will be logged and you'll instantly get flagged as a suspect.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

You think so eh?

Well, they don't need to ban TOR: companies like Google and CloudFlare already make sure you can't access vast swathes of the internet from a TOR exit node. The powers that be don't need to ban TOR because it's effectively been rendered useless by unaccountable privately-owned companies.

In short, these companies do the government's bidding and they're pretty happy to do it - which, incidentally, is a trait of Fascism.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[AbRASiON]

Could you TOR to a VPN?
I imagine your internet connection would run appallingly but still it would solve it, right?

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[windwalkr]

What's the point? If it's legal to use the VPN, then you just use the VPN directly without the added latency of TOR. If it's not legal to use a VPN, then the money trail is going to cause you problems even if they can't identify your traffic specifically. I'm sure there are edge cases, but I think for most people there's just no point.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[CastrTroy]

You can't ban VPN. It's a standard feature used by many businesses to access corporate networks. There's no way you could stop people from using something that's so ubiquitous on the internet.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Anonymous Coward]

....suspected of what? Doesn't even matter unless you actually do something

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Falos]

>you actually do something
lol, like we'll wait until you murderrapebomb innocent children, terrorist

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Dagger2]

Is this really the case? I'm not sure about Google, but I've had to fill out way too damn many Cloudflare captchas when using Tor and I can always get to the site in the end. I can't remember a single instance of Cloudflare actually refusing access to me as a Tor user.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[tepples]

They could ban failure to associate your VPN with a good faith business license number.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point?

Many VPN's keep logs and hand them over on request. Others advertise that they don't keep logs, yet when raided logs were still found. The point of TOR > VPN is that TOR is defense in depth. TOR is more likely to give you privacy while the VPN guarantees you get out of the country and all your traffic is encrypted when passing an exit node.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Falos]

You waste our time with your technobabble, terrorist. Those corporations could be smuggling drugbombs.

I mean, they'll still smuggle them, and they'll still communicate. We'll just spend millions (your millions) slowing them down slightly.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that these sites could collect browser information on Tor users and correlate actions, because one user will hit many sites gateway'd by the same organization.

Re:Did they ban VPNs, TOR, etc?

[AHuxley]

The FBI can track onion routing with a per case budget. So the UK can do the same. Onion routing as safe as your ISP in any UK or US open court..
The GCHQ can see a VPN user so allowing a VPN is just a better way of seeing who is interesting.
As VPN's are not banned or banned from using UK banking services, the GCHQ tracking must work as expected.
The good news is a good VPN with router will stop most of the city, gov backed NGO, charity partnership level tracking.

My precious socks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no now everyone will know my many sock puppets when I talk to myself online!

Re:My precious socks!

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has been listen()ing to your socket puppets all along, good citizen.

Re:Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's ass are you pulling this from? I Ctrl+F'ed the blogger's page and can't find shit. If reading is beyond me, I'm pretty you can link me to a source. As I asked. A fucking source. Is reading beyond you?

Good intentions

[Roodvlees]

Of course this will only be used for the betterment of mankind.
Not at all for controlling people and hiding government crimes.

Not yet

[ContextSwitch]

The IP Bill isn't law yet and ISPs are not yet recording this information (at least, they're not admitting it). It's coming though :(

Re:Not yet

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be more surprising if ISPs weren't already collecting that data....

Hstory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad teeth, for sure. Bad spelling, too?

Re:Hstory?

[Anonymous Coward]

High-school Tory. Sounds like a fair description of the current British ruling class.

Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying there's not an issue, just that the headline "48" is a bit over-the-top.
Of those "48" separate organizations, the following 12 are really the same, or possibly two organizations, civil and military police:
Metropolitan police force
City of London police force
Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996
Police Service of Scotland
Police Service of Northern Ireland
British Transport Police
Ministry of Defence Police
Royal Navy Police
Royal Military Police
Royal Air Force Police
National Crime Agency

Then there are the spooks (GCHQ etc), and lets face it, they'll have access whatever the law says.

What's even more worrying is the ongoing creep of police powers into non-security organizations:
Government departments (Health, Home Office, Transport, Work & Pensions, Economy etc.)
HM Revenue & Customs
The NHS, fire & ambulance services

and the really weird ones:
Food Standards Agency
Gambling Commission
Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority
Health and Safety Executive
Information Commissioner
Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation

I'm surprised the council litter and parking wardens aren't in there :-(

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[Anonymous Coward]

The more organisations have access, the higher the chance that someone fucks up or leaks something or gets taken in by a phishing attempt. The various police forces don't share backoffice stuff, so the more of them that have access, the more chance that the same fuck ups can be repeated.

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[Anonymous Coward]

Including the Information Commissioner is really weeiiiirrrdd!

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[geekmux]

I'm not saying there's not an issue, just that the headline "48" is a bit over-the-top...

and the really weird ones: Food Standards Agency Gambling Commission Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority Health and Safety Executive Information Commissioner Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation

I'm surprised the council litter and parking wardens aren't in there :-(

Uh, just the really weird ones alone dismiss any attempts to label this list as "over the top". At least the hackers will know exactly who to target, since I strongly doubt most of their security standards are strong enough to protect it.

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[AmiMoJo]

City of London police force

Those guys are not normal police though, they are a semi-private force that serves big businesses based in the City of London. These days their main concern seems to be shutting down web sites that businesses don't like, for example.

The other issue with the long list of police forces is that it is very doubtful that any of them have proper safeguards in place. The current scheme is that they have to ask one of their own people if it's okay, and they said "yes" at least half a million times a year before this legislation came in.

Government departments (Health, Home Office, Transport, Work & Pensions, Economy etc.)
HM Revenue & Customs
The NHS, fire & ambulance services
Food Standards Agency
Gambling Commission
Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority
Health and Safety Executive
Information Commissioner
Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation

In the name of catching tax dodgers and finding people at imminent risk of suicide. Doubtless most accesses will just be checking up on lovers and selling dirt to newspapers.

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[Anonymous Coward]

The CoL police is essentially a private force paid for by big business

They will be using this primarily for copyright enforcement

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying there's not an issue, just that the headline "48" is a bit over-the-top.
Of those "48" separate organizations, the following 12 are really the same, or possibly two organizations, civil and military police:
Metropolitan police force
City of London police force
Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996
Police Service of Scotland
Police Service of Northern Ireland
British Transport Police
Ministry of Defence Police
Royal Navy Police
Royal Military Police
Royal Air Force Police
National Crime Agency

That's not at all true. Each of those is has a separate IT department, a separate way of handing things, their own way of configuring their web server and connecting it to inside their infrastructure bypassing the protection of their DMZ, their own separate set of viruses. Security is about the weakest link and even if the Royal Navy Police have everything perfect all it takes is for one of any one of the "Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996" to have a virus infection on any of the PCs they use for accessing this and your data can be exfiltrated.

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[dbIII]

Of those "48" separate organizations, the following 12 are really the same

No.
That's like saying the FBI is the same as the Secret Service.

Re:Group "The Police" to reduce the Sting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying there's not an issue, just that the headline "48" is a bit over-the-top.
Of those "48" separate organizations, the following 12 are really the same, or possibly two organizations, civil and military police:
Metropolitan police force
City of London police force
Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996
Police Service of Scotland
Police Service of Northern Ireland
British Transport Police
Ministry of Defence Police
Royal Navy Police
Royal Military Police
Royal Air Force Police
[...]

They are not the same thing. These are all separate organizations with their own records. I.e. they could all take a copy of a citizen's information and a security failure in any one of the 48 would leak said information.

Should we talk about VPN and spread its usage?

[hcs_$reboot]

and take the risk of having, sooner or later, VPN ports (or even higher layers) closed?

Re:Should we talk about VPN and spread its usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLwhut?

Seriously?

There are so many different was to tunnel & encrypt traffic that they would literally have to shut down the whole internet.

Re:Should we talk about VPN and spread its usage?

[butzwonker]

Not really, it's definitely possible to block or heuristically throttle down encrypted traffic in a way that makes it all but unusuable for web surfing, streaming, downloading of larger files, etc. You're right that potential terrorists will continue to be able to exchange small encrypted text messages, though, that is indeed impossible to block.

Re:Should we talk about VPN and spread its usage?

[AHuxley]

Don't get a UK based VPN, don't get a VPN based in NATO nation or EU nations or nations wanting to join the EU/NATO as they will have banking and legal obligations to the UK gov/GCHQ/courts even after any changes to been in the EU.
A UK CC will show your payment to a VPN service.
Get a good router and a VPN service with the ability to use that hardware. Ensure that if the VPN stops or changes that the router stops the network. No settings that fall back to a ISP IP. That will keep out most of the city and local gov, UK NGO/charity, public/private partnership tracking. The GCHQ will see it all and log as normal so don't be interesting online.

Re:Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloggers have opinions, rarely facts.

It disarms Western criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

How can we now criticise China, North Korea and even Zimbabwe if they do the same ?

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

But, but, it's different when we do it!

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[serviscope_minor]

Making massively over the top false equivalences doesn't help. If anything it weakens the argument.

Is the snoopers charter bad? Yes.

Does it make us like the places listed? No. I can still say that Theresa May is a dreadful pm with impunity. No one will arrest me. Literally nothing will happen to me as a result. That is why we are nothing like North Korea.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference disappears after a government official hires armed thugs to kidnap, beat up or kill with machetes those pesky citizens daring to disapprove the corrupt practices of that official.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[Bongo]

Making massively over the top false equivalences doesn't help. If anything it weakens the argument.

Is the snoopers charter bad? Yes.

Does it make us like the places listed? No. I can still say that Theresa May is a dreadful pm with impunity. No one will arrest me. Literally nothing will happen to me as a result. That is why we are nothing like North Korea.

This is a very interesting and nuanced point. We could say, that in principle, we should not trust the government. However, if you actually take that to its full conclusion, then you end up with mafias... as nobody trusts the government and so everyone has to find their own way of enforcing contracts and order. It takes you back to tribal warlords. So actually, we do trust the government in many ways, with police and taxes and so on. The "leviathan" as some call it. So we don't simply say that the government's powers must remain limited, as history shows that regimes with even less power were still able to f**k up their countries. What really matters is how that power is used, the culture and ethos and values of the people in charge. So it is really a test of a nation's average "intelligence" and values and ethics. Like how you trust your doctor, to a large extent, with your life. Because something about that profession's average culture and values tends to guarantee that they won't do something awful, that they are safe and trustworthy, even though they have enormous power over you for a while. So it isn't the objective laws which make two nations the same, it is the comparison of the people and what they are like, their intentions and motivations. And that is hard to gauge, but it is still an important difference.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[DarkVader]

Nothing will happen to you YET for criticizing her. Not today.

Right now, they're just going after people for things like BDSM porn, which you probably don't like. But with no real constitution, all it takes is one bad act of Parliament and you ARE like those places. The tools are already in place.

Keep in mind that the US Constitution with its protections of rights held above ordinary law was written because of the bad things the British were known to do.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[swillden]

Keep in mind that the US Constitution with its protections of rights held above ordinary law was written because of the bad things the British were known to do.

That's rather one-sided. The Constitution's model was based on key British documents that blazed the trail of removing the power to restrict certain rights from the King. It went further in many areas, but it was as much following the British path as it was a rejection of British actions (it was both!).

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[serviscope_minor]

Nothing will happen to you YET for criticizing her. Not today.

In other words it won't happen. Look seriously if your draw stupid false equivalences it makes you sound like chicken little and no one will take your seriously. The snoopers charter is travesty but there's no sign at all of not being able to say the pm is awful.

none.

Do we need to be vigilant? Hell yes. Do you put people of the entire argument with false, over the top comparisons? Yes.

Like I said, comparisons to North Korea don't do you any favors. It just Gives the impression you have no idea what you're talking about and so by extension it's reasonable to ignore what you're saying. Is that really what you want?

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[alvinrod]

They might not go after you for criticizing Theresa May, but they might take a good hard look at your internet history and discover that you've done something else illegal. Of course that was all just discovered during a routine investigation that wasn't triggered by any action on your part. Modern society has so many laws that it's utterly impossible to know whether or not you're breaking one or not.

If you've worked enough jobs you've probably had one where someone was let go because of a number of small violations that piled up. Normally no one cares about those, but if management wants to legally can someone, they'll use those as an excuse because their real reason (usually something petty or personal) won't pass muster.

If you think this has a good ending, you've failed to learn from past history and are now doomed to repeat it.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

Because unlike in those countries, you can still gather and talk about how shitty those country's governments, and your own are, while in the pub, being a good prole and drinking yourself into depression because you have no idea how or guts to rebel, and there's no new world to run to like your forebears did 400 years ago.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[DarkVader]

I hardly said it won't happen. I think Britain is on a path that absolutely WILL lead to tyranny if it isn't stopped. The constitutional safeguards to prevent it aren't in place. The people are disarmed. The laws to enable it are being enacted now.

Ignore me and the rest of us telling you this at your peril.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[serviscope_minor]

Ignore me and the rest of us telling you this at your peril.

Well you can keep ignoring me at your peril.

If you make dumbass false equivalencies (and comparing us to North Korea is wild hyperbole) then your arguments will fall on deaf ears. If you want people to be listen to you, then you need to be reasonable.

It's quite clear that no one in the UK is being taken to gulags and worked and tortured to death. That is literally happening in NK. If you claim it's happening hear, people will dismiss you and your arguments.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[DarkVader]

Can you not read? Because it looks like you can't.

I am not claiming it is happening now. No one is claiming it is happening now.

We are warning you that when things start going wrong, they can get worse very, very quickly. We are warning you that laws like this are very dangerous.

We're not saying Britain is like North Korea. We're saying it's not impossible for that to happen, and laws like this make it more likely.

There was a novel written a long time ago. It was written by a British man, warning about the possibility of a future surveillance society. It was set in London. You've probably read it at some point.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[serviscope_minor]

Yes I can read. It's ironic that you ask this because I'm not sure you can.

No, it's not happening now. That's why comparisons to North Korea will likely make anyone dismiss you along with your arguments. You might be arguing about a slippery slope, but opening with comparisons to North Korea is about as effective as starting off with Hitler comparisons. You lose the audience before you've even started.

And no, you're not remotely as eloquent as Aldus Huxley. Huxley didn't open on page one with "imagine a world like Hitler but worse!!!!".

And Huxley wasn't arguing merely about the surveillance society, and as far as I can tell he was arguing that the surveillance was an effective tool of oppression within that society. He wasn't arguing that excessive surveillance necessarily leads to being disappeared for criticising the powers that be. He was arguing that it's dangerous because if the society besides oppressive then it will be a tool of oppression.

For heaven's sake I actually agree that this snoopers charter is a truly awful and dangerous piece of legislation. I'd rather however if you're going to advocate against it that you do it in an effective way rather than jumping to such extreme hyperbole that you lose whoever you might be trying to convince. It's in my interest because it seems you want the same as I do after all.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[DarkVader]

And I was actually referring to Orwell.

Yes, it's a truly dangerous and awful piece of legislation. I'm assuming at this point that you're British, correct me if I'm wrong. I fear for your country, and I fear for my own.

And I've tried repeatedly to say that you're NOT North Korea, and I will make it clear now that Theresa May is NOT Hitler, she's not Kim Jong Un. She's horrible and dangerous, but I don't think she has genocide or complete repression of the population in mind at all.

Laws like this set the stage for evil. Even if the intent is in some way good (and I don't believe it can be, government has no business engaging in such surveillance of their own population) the outcome will not be. The danger is obvious in misuse of these laws, which is why, no matter the good intentions of the government passing them, they cannot be tolerated. But the danger is there even if these laws are never misused, because they diminish the privacy of everyone. Even if they are never used for truly evil purposes like genocide, the attack on privacy is an evil unto itself.

And no, I'm not as eloquent as Huxley, I'm not a writer at all, I've never written a novel, the entirety of my published writing is a chapter of a book that likely no one ever read, back in the late nineties covering the Macintosh and how to connect it to the internet. There is no point in criticizing my writing, I know I'm quite terrible at it, and I will never attempt to do it for a living.

But I do think the danger in such laws is obvious, and I do think that a comparison to the truly awful regimes of the past is warranted. Not because I believe that in its present form it's as bad as those, but because it moves your country to a point closer to the danger of becoming those. It's a warning of the horrors that could befall, not a statement of the horrors that exist.

Re:It disarms Western criticism

[serviscope_minor]

And I was actually referring to Orwell.

lol yes. I had a brain fart there.

I'm assuming at this point that you're British, correct me if I'm wrong. I fear for your country, and I fear for my own.

Yes, same and same (you're American, right?).

OK, I basically agree with your post.

Re:Source?

[miketheanimal]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It references the relevent act. Good enough?

Re:Source?

[RuffMasterD]

As listed on pages 210 to 214 of the draft Investigatory Powers Act 2016.

Also, interesting titbit from page 37:

EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
[Name to be replaced] has made the following statement under section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act 1998:
In my view the provisions of the Investigatory Powers Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.

Really? Who? And is that even relevant (not that it makes a difference) if you are not part of the EU?

Re:Source?

[Cybertect]

Are you incapable of looking it up in the Bill? It's a matter of official public record.

As you have already been told it is in Schedule 4 of the Act (though technically it's still a Bill until it receives Royal Assent

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-public-bill-office/2016-17/compared-bills/Investigatory-Powers-AAC-Tracked-Changes-version.pdf

Schedule 4 begins on page 219, though heaven knows why I'm being so helpful for a sweary AC

Re:Source?

[RuffMasterD]

I'm pretty you even literate bro?

Re:Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

The blog is linked to from the article. If that's too much for you, here's a link: https://yiu.co.uk/blog/who-can-view-my-internet-history/

Immediately before the actual list, the blog says "A list of who will have the power to access your internet connection records is set out in Schedule 4 of the Act"

The act does indeed have "schedule 4". One version of it can be found here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2016-2017/0066/17066.pdf

I don't suppose this post will do any good though, as reading truly does seem beyond you.

VPN here we go

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a "Brit", but this is nice reminder to get VPN. This snooping now-days really sucks.

Re: VPN here we go

[Anonymous Coward]

Also a good idea to sign this: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199

Re:Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

The European Convention on Human Rights has nothing to do with the EU and the UK is still a member of the EU.

Home Office, Food Standards, Health and Safety

[Anonymous Coward]

"Health and Safety executive", in case you're dangerously surfing websites in a way that might generate RSI in your hand.

"Home Office" is a political office, so you can imagine the 'Brit Hillary Clinton's' emails and web history being very very useful in political campaigns.

"GCHQ" With GCHQ information sharing agreements, Brits web history is available to Trump's boys. They promised not to spy on politicians with this, but politicians web surfing data is in that captured data (there's no way of identifying it to filter it out), and you can bet Trump will ensure only Trump brand politicians elected in Britain now.

"Food Standards Agency", well you might order an unhealthy take away via internet, and that Chocoloate Brownie recipe is totally unhealthy... you really shouldn't be looking at that.

Re:Home Office, Food Standards, Health and Safety

[Anonymous Coward]

"Home Office" is a political office, so you can imagine the 'Brit Hillary Clinton's' emails and web history being very very useful in political campaigns.

'Home Office' is MI5

Re:Home Office, Food Standards, Health and Safety

[jabuzz]

I am not going to defend it but my guess is that as both the Health and Safety executive and the Food Standards Agency both have investigatory powers they have been granted access to further that aim.

Imagine a the trail from the rollercoaster ride at Alton Towers in 2015 showed that emails where being exchanged and web searches where being done about dodging Health and Safety regulations for example.

One can also imagine investigations about food safety from E.Coli 157 or Salmonella etc. having an internet related component.

All that said most web browsing history in the UK is to some extent obfuscated by NAT. That is you have no idea who behind a particular IP address actually did the search or browsed that site.

Re:Home Office, Food Standards, Health and Safety

[butzwonker]

Apart from the obvious destruction of democracy, this also looks like a gigantic security hole. It depends a bit on how access is regulated, but this sure looks as if spying on Brits by foreign intelligence agencies has also become way easier than before. It's almost impossible to imagine that there are no moles or 'bad actors' in those 48 organizations, let alone inside the individual ISPs who store all this data.

Re:Home Office, Food Standards, Health and Safety

[AmiMoJo]

It's not a question of if, but when someone hacks one of the ISPs that has to collect this data or the organisations that has access to it. I expect scummy newspapers are looking for people with access to bribe too.

Re: Source?

[econnor]

"compiled the list" is internet for "cut and paste" . In this case from Schedule 4 of http://www.publications.parlia...

Re:Source?

[GNious]

The ECHR is not an EU construct, but separate from the EU, formerly EEC

ECHR:
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by the then newly formed Council of Europe, the convention entered into force on 3 September 1953. All Council of Europe member states are party to the Convention and new members are expected to ratify the convention at the earliest opportunity.

Council of Europe:
The organisation is distinct from the 28-nation European Union (EU), although it is sometimes confused with it, partly because the EU has adopted the original European Flag which was created by the Council of Europe in 1955, as well as the European Anthem. No country has ever joined the EU without first belonging to the Council of Europe.

When the UK decided to BREXIT, they voted to break off from the EU - they will still be members of the Council of Europe, and subject the ECHR.

Behind the times

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia logs all internet traffic and phone use for two years. Get with it Ukers

Re:Behind the times

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kinda surprised that people haven't mentioned that Australia went through this a year ago.

Are they going to shaft business like the Chinese?

[ukoda]

The articles I have seen don't mention the legality of VPNs? That would be the first thing I would do on principle. If normal VPNs get blocked then I would move to tunnelling via SSH to a proxy on a server in a free country. That is what I used to do in China. So if VPNs are blocked are they going to block SSH to? To my mind it is impossible for them to truly block users from private Internet activity unless they are prepare to do it at the expense of legal businesses, like they do in China.

Having managed a development team in China for a couple if years I know first hand how big the disadvantage Chinese developers are at because their access to decent sources of information are block. The way the Internet is broken there seriously impacts productivity there. If Britain really wants to know what everyone is doing then the technical steps they will need to take will impact the productivity of British businesses.

It gets tiring watching law makers passing laws with no real understanding of how technology actually works.

OT: PropOrNot Chrome Plug-in says RUSKIS ev'where!

[grep -v '.*' *]

"2 links on this site have been identified by the PropOrNot propaganda identification service as repeating, echoing, or referring their audience to Russian propaganda. They are highlighted in YYYs. See propornot.com for more information."

PropOrNot says Zerohedge is a Russian shill. Therefore everything ZH says is wrong, therefore this must be a good thing.

It's amazing how technology can be used to help me decide what to read, think, and what's true. I can now safely ignore my Critical Thinking classes from High School and College -- that's a relief, as I only remember 2 phrases from my 2 years of Spanish.

Well, that and !Ay, caramba! from Bart Simpson.

UK citizen and want to do something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sign this: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199

If 118,000 turned up outside Parliament, they'd have a big problem, but our problem is our apathy. The government know this and are taking advantage of our lack of commitment in taking the fight (for privacy!) back to them.

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[mrbester]

Protests outside Parliament were banned years ago. Not that any would make the slightest difference; a million people turned up to protest the invasion of Iraq. When that proportion of a country's population travels to the centre of a city to protest and nothing comes of it, what's the point?

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point seemed to be our "problem is our apathy".

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[ContextSwitch]

Signed. And as I type this the number of signatures is just under 120000 and going up every few seconds. Not that I think it will change anything, at least not while May is in power.

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you doing?! If someone opens that link, 48 potential hostile organizations will immediately know!
Those peoples blood is on your hands buddy!

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[thegarbz]

If 118,000 turned up outside Parliament, they'd have a big problem, but our problem is our apathy.

Our problem is apathy. And getting a paycheck.
2 problems that we have is apathy and not taking time off work because we need our paycheck, and getting to parliament house to protest.
Yes 3 problems that we have is apathy, getting time of work. .... you know what, let's start again.

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[AHuxley]

Start using the internet for interesting things. Thats the only aspect of digital tracking the UK gov has not considered.
Create media in your local community, do interviews, take pictures, then push that local news back onto the net without vast amounts of IPS logs to go with any ISP account.
Remove any dates, serial numbers, data or gps in the files you create.
Use social media, web 2.0 on your terms to talk about national and local issues. How the UK is changing, how the internet is been tracked. What a VPN is and how it can be tracked. Junk cryptography and big brands in the UK.
Pack in jargon, keywords, search terms and spread it to any other sites, blogs, forums, web 2.0 portals.
i.e. lots of new accounts but only for pushing up data.
UK gov workers, SJW, volunteers, local gov, charities, NGO's can report the ip and look at the logs and just see vast amounts of local reporting. The UK can try to take down the media per site. Just keep spreading local news and take your UK supporters from site to site that still allows uploads.
If local gov, police ask for a chat down or try a more formal caution, that makes for a great local or national news story too :)
Enjoy the UK internet until photo ID is needed per web 2.0 account.
Then just buy into another nations web services and report back into the UK from a nation that supports freedom of speech and freedom after speech.
The more the UK gov tries to delist, ban, hide UK content and track its creators the more people in the UK will seek out interesting local media.

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why we should just take the techno-anarchist route and encrypt and decentralise everything, politicians can't be trusted with things they don't understand or respect, let the technology take care of itself, it's the only sure way.

Re:UK citizen and want to do something?

[mrbester]

And my rebuttal was when there wasn't apathy it didn't change anything. People couldn't just camp out in the Mall for days or weeks in protest because they'd lose their jobs and their homes. The government knew that so could cheerfully ignore them.

Re:Source? [ECHR]

[The Cornishman]

> Who?
Probably the Attorney General at the time the Bill becomes law
>is that even relevant
(i) The United Kingdom is and remains a full member of the European Union, right up to the point when it leaves, which is probably two years away.
(ii)The European Convention on Human Rights is independent of the European Union. Unless Parliament repeals the UK Human Rights Act, the ECHR will continue to be relevant.

Nice!

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Now that the chance of this information being leaked is close to 100%, why not just release everything to the public?

Re:Nice!

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Also I've been thinking that they left quite a glaring hole unprotected which is SSL (VPN/Tor can be filtered quite effectively, while filtering SSL makes no sense because it renders the Internet pretty much unusable).

An extra law must be enacted which mandates the installation of a government issued SSL certificate to properly snoop on all your communications, otherwise a single Google query makes you more or less invisible: SSL web proxy.

But then you realize that like with all dictatorships and oppressing governments it's not about law or security, it's all about total control.

Re:Nice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also I've been thinking that they left quite a glaring hole unprotected which is SSL (VPN/Tor can be filtered quite effectively, while filtering SSL makes no sense because it renders the Internet pretty much unusable).

An extra law must be enacted which mandates the installation of a government issued SSL certificate to properly snoop on all your communications, otherwise a single Google query makes you more or less invisible: SSL web proxy.

But then you realize that like with all dictatorships and oppressing governments it's not about law or security, it's all about total control.

If their only goal is to know the meta information (what site you visited, when, etc) then you would not need to know the contents of the session. Sort of like call records. The phone company can't hand over what was said only the meta info.

HTTP SSL communications does not hide meta information. Also, your DNS queries would presumably be logged as well if you were using one inside the country. Though, even if you weren't, DNS is generally not encrypted, so it could be pulled off the wire at the point of egress.

49. FSB

[Anonymous Coward]

49. Putin's hackers. If they couldn't protect DNC emails during an election cycle, what is the chances they'll protect all this data from Putin's hackers? None.

So UK, prepare to have your own Trump figurine in power soon.

Re:49. FSB

[Roodvlees]

Where's your evidence that Russia hacked the DNC?
If they did it's part of a treaty Bill Clinton signed with Russia where they both promise to help each other solve crime.
All the information WikiLeaks has provided has been verified to be accurate.
So nothing can be blamed on Russia or anyone else, the Democrats fucked things up for themselves, by being corrupt.
Do you think it's impossible for politicians to avoid that?

Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority

[RuffMasterD]

Council litter and parking wardens will be in the next draft. Better add the Department of Pimps and Hoes, Slum-lords Commission, Authority on Terminal Stupidity, and the Vigorous Self-Abuse Executive too, just to be safe.

Re:Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority

[Anonymous Coward]

There is actually quite good reason for the Gangmasters abuse authority to have access to email and browsing.

Not without a warrant. But those guys do important work that we shouldn't pretend is trivial like litter.

Re:Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority

[dbIII]

In Australia the animal welfare agencies ended up on the list of groups with full access to internet metadata.

Re:Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority

[AHuxley]

The Australian list is very like the UK list:
"61 agencies apply for metadata access" (18/01/2016)
https://delimiter.com.au/2016/...

Re:Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority

[dbIII]

Greyhound Racing Victoria is the sort of group I was talking about. The tiny city councils are a bit of a worry and access is almost certain to be abused there.

Re:Source?

[ArsenneLupin]

Who's ass are you pulling this from? I Ctrl+F'ed the blogger's page and can't find shit.

hmmm, looks like the blogger knows what TP is for :-)

Zerohedge = Bulgarian

[Anonymous Coward]

Zerohedge.com DNS says it is a Georgi Hristozov Sofia Sofia 1784....

It's listed as Bulgarian.

That's really interesting, I knew they were ultra Pro-Trump, but I always just assumed they were American GOP PR lot, but when you look at the DNS record they are East European part of the old soviet block. PropOrNot cites a couple of examples, they're Bulgarian, hence the pro-Trump slant.

Except the people have Tor

[Viol8]

I would suggest they use it. Until at least its banned using some facile "terrorism" argument.

Oh, poor Brits!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't they somehow exit to a freer place?

Like Europe, for instance?

M-m-m-wahahahaha...

Every Brits browsing history? I think not!

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe most, definitely not every. plenty of brits like places all over the world protect themselves with VPN Services.

48 can see ours

[Anonymous Coward]

48 can see our internet actvity - so where is our right to see THEIR activity?
I mean, it should work both ways. Their XXXs (CEO/minister) history should be public, and all the middle managements, also.
And all the pricks that voted for this big mess.

Re:48 can see ours

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians, Journalists, the Police and the Media are all exempt.

Re:Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is grammar beyond you?? What the hell does "I'm pretty you can link me to a source". Are you saying your good looking?

also coming soon to ameriKKKa

[Anonymous Coward]

Orange Hitler and his minions have raging boners for this sort of surveillance over the peasants.
That same shit will be happening here soon too. Also coming soon, the outlawing of encryption and mandatory backdoors in ~everything~..

You can take that shit to the bank.

Always on the cards

[Anonymous Coward]

This law was always going to happen no matter what.

Theresa May showed all the signs of being an authoritarian control-freak when she was Home Secretary. It comes as no surprise that this crap has passed within six months of her becoming PM.

I've got nothing to hide, but I'm going to fucking hide it anyway.

Any suggestions for OpenVPN providers in Switzerland?

Re:Always on the cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it, between this, the "GO HOME" billboards, trying to bypass parliamentary sovereignty, not speaking out against the attacks on the judiciary, and now the attempt to ban "non-conventional" porn, we don't have to wonder. There is no doubt at all that she's a puritanical authoritarian who cares more about her own power than the rule of law, an incredibly dangerous combination. Meanwhile the Labour party have rebranded to Conservative "B" Team, they waved this through and do not appear to be interested in performing their duty as opposition, effectively making us a one party nation headed by some form of unrestrained puritanical curtain-twitcher.

So I'm in the same situation - looking around for a VPN provider. VyprVPN seems to be incorporated in Switzerland. Switzerland sounds like a good choice. You can't currently trust a full EU member while the UK remains in, five eyes nations like the US and Australia are right out, and China (including Hong Kong) I'd be more worried about spying from the provider or their location. Of the remainder, you need one with little corruption and a relatively strong rule of law that respects privacy rights. The idea of some dumb low grade civil servant scouring over my internet records makes me feel violated and sick to the core.

Re:Always on the cards

[another_twilight]

I'm from Australia and faced a similar decision a couple of years back when similar laws were passed.

My criteria included a lack of logging of user activity. It's not enough (I believe), to find a provider in what is nominally a neutral country. Nor to find a provider that claims that they will keep your data private. If the data exists, it _will_ be available.

Private Internet Access doesn't keep user activity logs. They do keep some records, such as payment information. This has, reportedly, been tested with respect to enquiries by the FBI for example. They have a decent number of end points. They've pulled out of countries where they would have been compelled to keep records.

Caveat - no association with PIA, just a satisfied customer for the last ~2 years

This bill became a sure thing ...

[Alain Williams]

when the previous home minister became prime minister. Theresa May is behind this rabid bill, she made speech after speech claiming that it was to stop: terrorists (you don't want to be blown up on the streets do you); drug dealers (scourge of humanity); arch criminals (but we don't include bankers in this list) and paedophiles (think of the children); the same sort of emotional froth that passes for politics these days - think: Brexit, Trump/Clinton, etc.

The main problems with this killing of privacy are that: information will leak and that it will be used for more than they will use it for purposes other than what is it enacted - but since it is all done secretly and we can't talk about it - we will never know.

George Orwell was wrong: 1984 was some 30 years too early.

Re: This bill became a sure thing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments never keep to schedule, even if planned for decades.

Re:Source? [ECHR]

[Anonymous Coward]

They will repeal it, though, because they are fascists.

Ve for Vendetta?

[TheDarkMaster]

British government working hard to make this dystopian society into a reality?

Ingsoc prevails!

[lwmv]

Oceania prevails!

Insane...

[bradley13]

Requiring ISPs to maintain the records for a year: That allows "retroactive" warrants, plus it imposes substantial costs on ISPs with zero recompense. That's a nasty law.

Allowing access without any sort of judicial oversight? That's full-on, true evil.

You know what's stranger? We just hosted a visitor from the UK. I asked him what he thought of the Snooper's Charter. He had never heard of it. Apparently, there has been relatively little discussion of this outside of the technical press.

Re:Insane...

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked him what he thought of the Snooper's Charter. He had never heard of it. Apparently, there has been relatively little discussion of this outside of the technical press.

In this day of rampant social media and world-wide data connectivity, isn't it ironic that Brits seem to know less about what's going on in Britain than citizens of other countries do? I guess it's a signal-to-noise ratio problem...

Re:Insane...

[AHuxley]

The security services did that since 1910 with letters, telephone, faxes and all new emerging communications globally and within the UK over the years.
Now all the logs are open court ready.

c.o.c.k.s.u.c.k.er..com

[Anonymous Coward]

...so my script im sending round for brits to run in back ground goes continuously to p..e.n.i.s. sites should tell them all we need

1984 is here.

[Anonymous Coward]

'm just missing Ministry of Truth on that list.

Fucking Zerohedge!?

[GameboyRMH]

If it's real find a credible source, right now I'm assuming it's fake until proven otherwise. This is about as bad as using infowars or prisonplanet as a source.

Re:Fucking Zerohedge!?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all listed in the bill itself, http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypowers.html

They don't have access to EVERY Brit's browsing...

[Oswald McWeany]

They don't have access to EVERY Brit's browsing history:

I live overseas! Only the Americans, Russians, Chinese, Israelis, and probably North Koreans have access to my browsing history.

good argument for open wifi

[breagerey]

If you provide open wireless access to anybody who gets in range then attributing ISP records to *your machines is no longer a reasonable assumption.
I've even seen a segregated open/guest wifi as a part of setup options on some routers.

Commercial advertising access in 3...2...1...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you love terrorist websites? Then try some of our Virgin soap. For the most discerning terrorist, smells like virgins!"

Good.

[wjcofkc]

This sort of bullshit will inevitably lead to better privacy tools. Thanks government of Great Britain for not being able to see 12 months ahead. I'll bet a lot of officials grinned ear to ear over this will high-fiving each other, "We've got them now!". I just wish I could be there for the egg on face moment.

Re:Good.

[CaptainDork]

The population of people NOT affiliated with governments and ISPs is MUCH greater by proportion.

That means the odds are that the brightest minds are NOT working for governments and ISPs.

Know what's smarter than a person with a computer?

Another person with a computer.

Re:Good.

[AHuxley]

Re That means the odds are that the brightest minds are NOT working for governments and ISPs.
Don't worry the UK security services now have take in a lot of really new staff thanks to party political policy.
UK security considerations or lack of ability will not be allowed to block any application to the UK security services.
Expect quotas to have to be filled by any applicants no matter the UK security risk.
Expect foreign security services to flood the UK with their trusted generations, some will make it in and move up the ranks.
It will be like the decades that saw a rapid influx of random new staff who had their applications considered on everything but actual UK security.
The 1930's or 1950's saw the rapid need for advanced math, crypto, languages. That allowed lot of really interesting new staff make it deep into the UK security services over the decades.
The new staff will be working for their own distant nations, faiths, cults and will be very busy reporting back as they advance up the UK ranks.
All the best gov staff will be trying to secure everything again for decades.
Expect a lot of log searches, computer intrusion (gov malware, input/password logging) to be fully push down automated as the best security service staff will be securing their own internal systems, decades of informants and networks from their own new teams.
What was once bespoke network entry will be staging servers spreading malware thats expected to log and report on most common US consumer OS brands.

Re:Good.

[CaptainDork]

We already got that all that stuff.

Re:They don't have access to EVERY Brit's browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

But they DO have access to countless extra information of companies headquartered on UK territory.
That is, lots of non-UK citizens as well. I don't believe they can legally demand all this...

We're a multinational, our company is based in Europe and was purchased by the UK HQ, and all our I.T. is now channeled through them.
Big question: how are the European rights of employers AND employees treated by the UK ISPs that are handling these new legal demands?
Will they exempt any traffic that is simply routed through the UK?
How would you identify it?

This smells really bad, but Theresa-May-the-Unelected-Fart was planning this for years and we should have expected it to rise again from the dead.
Very "democractic" indeed, isn't it all?

best recaction.

[fish_in_the_c]

UK consumers begin requiring strong encryption end to end on all their electronic communications from all products they purchase, beginning a new 'no snoopers' movement that seeps the country as the 'in vogue' political cause.

Re:best recaction.

[Anonymous Coward]

UK consumers begin requiring strong encryption end to end on all their electronic communications from all products they purchase, beginning a new 'no snoopers' movement that seeps the country as the 'in vogue' political cause.

It's nice to dream, but in all likelihood this will never happen. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance", but vigilance requires too much effort. People who are well-fed, and find their lot in life mostly comfortable and secure, tend to spend only a token effort on rocking the boat. Would-be tyrants are experts at boiling lobsters without the lobsters being any the wiser until it's too late. Then, when tyranny is fully established, subtlety goes out the window, and the tyrants freely chuck the lobsters into already-boiling water.

Re:best recaction.

[AHuxley]

The GCHQ does not seem too worried abut any commercial VPN brands and their crypto skills.
Any different networks that can really hold secure communications will be detected and have software or hardware altered until the communications is fully decoded.

Re:best recaction.

[fish_in_the_c]

interesting. Still it would presumably raise their cost substantially if every phone was running voip through tor and every computer also running tor possible with additional software added for further security. You can of coarse install virtual machines with fake hardware ID's that would help and hard drive encryption with 2 passwords 1 that decrypts 1 that auto deletes . A lot of creativity and energy could be expended to help shore up infrastructure from intrusion if there was enough demand. Of coarse you still have the 'we require you to give us the key' type laws, but that is why you build a booby trapped house with keys that are known only to the people communicating.

Off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

could you stop replying to random off-topic shit? Now there are three post to moderate off-topic, not just one. ...oops, four.

Re: Off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Five

Re:Off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Make me, faggot. Got that history book jammed up there yet? What did you learn bitch?

and you know what they say...

[MrKaos]

Hstory repeats itself.

I'm not usually a grammar nazi, but History isn't a difficult word and it is the title of the submission "48 Organizations Now Have Access To Every Brit's Browsing Hstory"

- just sayin.

Re:and you know what they say...

[Stan92057]

http://gizmodo.com/study-peopl...
just saying.....wait a minute here......

Re:and you know what they say...

[MrKaos]

Thanks, I wondered if someone would point it out. I probably fall into that category a bit right now because I'm withdrawing from painkillers however In my defence teh study torques about pple who continually point grammar issues.

Perhaps we need a study on people who continually point out people pointing out grammar issues.

- just sayin.

Re:and you know what they say...

[Stan92057]

I LOVE that link. As i said to another slashdot grammar nazi your a jerk just own it and move on.. just saying...

Re:and you know what they say...

[MrKaos]

Sure, I owned it in my previous post. However since u need to tell so many others that they are jerks, perhaps you need to own that you're a jerk yourself.

- just sayin.

Re:and you know what they say...

[Stan92057]

nice try...i would if i were a jerk but i am not...i love that link lol

Re:and you know what they say...

[MrKaos]

lols...nice fail, you're sentence structure says: you would own that you are a jerk but you're not owning that you're a jerk. - just sayin

News that is not news

[Anonymous Coward]

The only recorded data is the root URL of the websites you visit, Facebook.com, slashdot.org etc, not exactly a datamine

Random Traffic

[coofercat]

Years ago I used to run a perl script that used a few words (from the 'words' file) and made a Google search out of them. I then fetched a random number of the pages on the results it got.

Might be time to dust that off again.

Citizen or resident?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they mean every resident, or person present in the country, not just citizens.

Let me rewrite that headline for you

[RogueWarrior65]

48 organizations now understand what Rule 34 means.

Re:Source?

[dbIII]

Are you incapable of looking it up in the Bill?

But then those agencies will see he's looked it up from his web browsing history!

So, that one time you got drunk

[Karl Cocknozzle]

So, that one time you got drunk, and wondered "What's Autofellatio" and typed it into Google? Yep, that's why that Traffic Cop is looking at you funny. He's not judging, just trying to picture you blowing yourself.

Re: So, that one time you got drunk

[DickBreath]

Despite having the word "Auto" in it, driving while getting Autofellatio is crazy. Getting fellatio from a passenger while driving is almost but not quite equally crazy. A passenger who would eagerly perform the service would be crazy to do so unless you pull over and stop driving first. Friends don't give friends fellatio while they are driving. Consult expert advice about such matters.

Advice on a good VPN.

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the UK, and while I have "nothing to hide" in a legal sense I'm appalled by the principal this law. I've been looking at getting a good VPN recently and this has just pushed me over the edge.

Does anyone here have any recommendations for a good VPN service? I don't mind paying for it (as long as the price isn't exorbitant). My main priority would be that it's not UK based (for obvious reasons), doesn't track or otherwise keep records of your activity, is reliable, and is simple to use.

Re:Advice on a good VPN.

[AHuxley]

One that is as fast as your own network. One that is not in the EU, a nation wanting to join the EU, NATO or nation seeking to join NATO.
Too many banking and security treaties would make such locations open the UK requests on UK accounts, payments.
A router based VPN to protect the entire network and every device connected, all packets, no matter software, OS or hardware used.
A good VPN router that does not expose the ISP IP when a network drops.

Hmmmm.....

[MitchDev]

Sounds like time for a script that hits a new URL every few seconds (as an add-in for when you aren't using your browser).

Time to flood these scumbags with so much useless data they drown to death in it...

Re:Hmmmm.....

[Kernel Kurtz]

Time to flood these scumbags with so much useless data they drown to death in it...

Good idea. You can have some fun while you do it as well.

Flagger is a browser add-on that automatically puts red flag keywords (like bomb, Taliban and anthrax) into the web addresses you visit. Install Flagger to make a statement: government surveillance has gone too far.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Re:Hmmmm.....

[MitchDev]

I should've realized someone had already made this :)

Re:Hmmmm.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like time for a script that hits a new URL every few seconds (as an add-in for when you aren't using your browser).

Time to flood these scumbags with so much useless data they drown to death in it...

Is there a Chrome extension or app that does this? It would be perfect.

You moved the goal posts

[MobyDisk]

It isn't a false equivalence: instead, you moved the goal posts.

First, we made fun of those nations because the government spied on everyone.
Now we spy on everyone.
So in response, we changed the argument. We claim that it was never really the spying that was the problem, it was that they were blocking free speech.
Next, we block free speech.
Then we can change the argument again: It wasn't the blocking of speech that was the problem, it was that they jailed people and held them without charges.

In the US, we've been playing this game for decades:

We now have a special jail where we can hold people without charges (Guantanamo Bay).
But we can move the goal posts again. We still aren't as bad as those other guys, because they do it on their own soil!
We used to make fun of Russia for requiring paperwork to travel, now we require it.
But it wasn't the paperwork that was the problem! It was that they had special "watch lists." Now we have them.
But it wasn't the watch lists that were the problem! It was that they had to all be personally inspected in order to travel. Well now we do to.

As you can see, we have already gone down the slippery slope, we merely hide it by moving the goal posts. Eventually, the next generation will grow-up expecting this kind of stuff, having never known what it was like to be free. If you find yourself saying "well, we are nothing like place XXXX" then you should pause, reflect, and see if this is the same standard you applied a decade ago.

Re:You moved the goal posts

[liquid_schwartz]

I am so sorry I posted before I got to your comment. You deserve to be modded up.

Re:You moved the goal posts

[Anonymous Coward]

We used to make fun of Russia for requiring paperwork to travel, now we require it.
But it wasn't the paperwork that was the problem! It was that they had special "watch lists." Now we have them.
But it wasn't the watch lists that were the problem! It was that they had to all be personally inspected in order to travel. Well now we do to.

Your lists are negative, that is they deny the people in the blacklist from traveling by air. The Soviet, Chinese and North Korean lists are/were positive, whitelists in other words. This slipping on the slope always seem to come for alternative reasons: the fight for a total awareness of monetary traffic to combat money laundering is one example and leads naturally to the requirement of holding identity documentation or authentication certificate at all times.

Re:You moved the goal posts

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth noting that our enemies are moving the goal posts as well. There are no perfect solutions to our current problems.

Re:You moved the goal posts

[RyoShin]

But we can move the goal posts again. We still aren't as bad as those other guys, because they do it on their own soil!

We long ago ran over that post: The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'

Re:You moved the goal posts

[syntotic]

They had Arabs, Indians, Chinese, African mixes and now we have them too? I do not mean a few from time to time, but all American people in the block were tourists save the Arabs, Indians, Chinese and Africans...

Incomplete listing here

[Trachman]

Listing does not include multiple other agencies in USA, Russia, China, Israel etc.

That being said, they always had indirect or direct access, and this is merely a way to legitimize.

Re: Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha grammar. You're not your. Dumbass

Food safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

So your restaurant is going to lose it's license to operate if you visit wankingintocustard.com?

Then book 'em for piracy and/or child porn

[tepples]

That'd be an excuse to introduce something analogous to the German Störerhaftung, which made operators of a guest WLAN liable for copyright infringement and trading of child sexual abuse works done by connected users.

Too bad...

[XSportSeeker]

Well, I wasn't expecting Great Britain to be the first one to fall, but it's not too off the mark with all the policies around public cameras and such...

It'll only take the first leaks on politicians who decided to go for this, leaks around powerful corporation CEOs, general governmental leaks, blackmailing, database hacking of ISPs or those agencies, plus a whole bunch of problems that can and probably will happen from now on for them to regret it. It'll be too late by then, but you know how it goes.

It's a huge ammount of information that can be exploited for all sorts of things passing too many hands. Doesn't take a child's level of understanding what will happen next.

It isn't a secret to anyone how incompetent some ISPs and governmental agencies can be while handling sensitive information, it isn't a secret to anyone how abused some surveillance tools can get by the hands of organizations that were supposed to be responsible while using them, it's not a secret how much information leaked and hacked from all sorts of sources can be acquired on the dark net, it doesn't take a genious to tell how easy it'd be for a ISP employee or a disgruntled police member or whatever to just get the all that data and dump it somewhere for a quick buck. If whoever has ill intention is smart enough, it'd be easy to go through all that data and pinpoint highly profitable targets to blackmail.

Can't be helped. Stupid people only learn the hard way it seems. Get yourselves a good VPN and watch the ensuing shitstorm.

Also, non-brits be prepared for charters like these to come to your own countries as it might take a bit of time for things to explode.

People, specially politicians apparently, cannot be bothered with "complex" concepts like the importance of privacy for a democratic state. They'll need a rude awakening to understand. And now, they'll have it.

Re:Are they going to shaft business like the Chine

[drew_kime]

It gets tiring watching law makers passing laws with no real understanding of how technology actually works.

Why do people keep assuming lawmakers don't understand technology? Isn't it possible their goals aren't what they say they are?

You know what they say...

[Locke2005]

Cops always have access to the best porn!

Troll Trace

[Anonymous Coward]

As a native of Fort Collins, Colorado, I have seen first hand what releasing everyone's browser history can do to society. Britons, pray that there are no leaks!

Illogical Police

[FeelGood314]

The police should be fighting against this.

This bill along with the actions of other western governments has hurried the use of strong competent encryption in our daily lives. Soon all my traffic will be over TLS, everyone's searches will by default all be done on secure servers out of reach of legitimate law enforcement. Now with this law us geeks will not only start using VPNs and onion routing more but we will teach our friends to do it. In a few years any idiotic criminal will be using encryption that will make it impossible for the police to discover their communication.

Re: Illogical Police

[Anonymous Coward]

but we will teach our friends to do it.

Will you? My friends consist of

- One overly paranoid nutter who is also a cheapskate that won't use his Visa card to spend 50 bucks a year. He disconnected rather than VPN.

- Several habitual downloaders who Have way too much hubris. They're convinced that their "secret" sites won't betray them.

- A few geeks and computer people who are largely too lazy to bother with a vpn because the latency is a bitch and working around it takes effort.

- The rest of the morons who constantly dribble the "nothing to hide, the government is looking out for my best" rhetoric. They don't care so long as the radio keeps playing their favourite popular crap.

All groups that I haven't been able to convince to install VPN software because it's too hard, too expensive too unnecessary or some combination.

I've tried to get them to switch to small things like Signal for messaging. A few did just to chat to me, but by and large they continue to tell me I should just get Farcebook to stay in touch and they continue to use Farcebook to talk to everyone else because inertia is a bitch.

Government spying on citizens has been a thing since before the Internet. The Internet was the government and advertisers wet dream come true.

The Internet privacy technology has existed for literally decades but it hasn't gained widespread adoption. Why do you think it's like to change this time?

Not sure how his post

[MondoGordo]

is "about purported "liberals" " ... he very clearly said ... "This has nothing to do with Liberal" ...

Beyond the knee-jerk outrage...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, what is so 'wrong' with this?

Phone companies have kept track of every call made to/from their networks. Police have always had access via a warrant to get a person's phone records. Are you willfully blind or have you just not thought about it till now?

Credit card companies have kept track of every transaction you make using their services. Police have always had access via a warrant to get a person's financial transactions. Is this different because it isn't the 'state' mandating these record retentions?

So how is a list of the websites you visit (or more precisely that your MAC/IP address connects to) any different from a list of phone numbers you called or credit card purchases you make?

Re:Are they going to shaft business like the Chine

[AHuxley]

The articles I have seen don't mention the legality of VPNs?
Expect a big push in the UK to say VPN's are safe and the encryption works. That will move most interesting people on to VPN's.
They are legal as the GCHQ can log it all. Better to have interesting people rush out to get VPN's, feel safe and keep chatting, using forums, commenting, using their mic, webcam. Buying a VPN service with a UK CC is a great way to locate interesting people legally :)
The GCQH fears people who just stop using the net. All their expensive tracking is then just not much use and work has to be handed over to MI5, MI6 or police teams for 24/7 surveillance.
Teams of about 9 people to watch one interesting person in shifts. With mass illegal immigration the UK has so many interesting people to track, its better to use computers, allow VPN's to be seen as still safe than the over time for police teams.
With the vast amounts of undocumented illegal migrants, a lot of new teams would need to be created.
Better to just allow VPN's and hope that most of the interesting people never work out the GCHQ logs it all.
Parallel construction would be used to hide the GCHQ VPN logging until open court police level VPN cooperation could be worked out.

I have zero sympathy for most people

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm talking to you! You sit back and do nothing or almost nothing. Nothing of significance anyway. I'm not suggesting people take up arms against the government even if that is what we should all be doing. No, not that, but we should all be taking steps that bring about at least *some* place where people can be free. You don't take any significant action or join with others to take action and the masses are too stupid to see how they are being screwed to take any action either.

For the the majority of you pathetic lazy do nothings it is you that have brought us here. I'm saying that as someone whose been fighting for peoples rights my entire adult life, and even much of my youth, to whatever extant I have been able to do so. From employment to where I live to the money I contribute. I spent my youth contributing to organizations fighting against this totalitarian state that we live in. I don't care if you live in North Korea, the US, or the UK, or anywhere else. We're all living in oppressive regimes and make no mistake about it they're often murderous and willing to torture and persecute and at least half the population if not more will step up and say things like "people like that should be shot". And this is for groups that are *already* being persecuted by the government. People don't get that what they are supporting is wrong and immoral and then go and justify it by 'those people do bad things' when in reality it's the projection of the media that has led us to those conclusions- yet those conclusions are dead wrong. Only a minority like in any other group do 'bad things'. Some jews *did* do bad things, but not all jews were bad people, but because of the media society thought all jews were bad. The same applied to homosexuals and we still do that for different more obscure sexual preferences in places like the US and UK. The same applies to users of recreational drugs and various other minorities. Drug laws are changing because the reality is these aren't any longer minority groups. But that means we still live in a totalitarian state because it's the minorities that matter, not the majority. Everybody is part of some minority and any one of them could end up being the next target by a misrepresented media/police/politician and used as a scape goat or to get somewhere. Maybe you are a socialist, well, 40 years ago you'd have been persecuted. Now socialists are in power! Things change and they can change for the worse for whatever minority you are part of.

There is no excuse. If you really cared about freedom and liberty you'd take action and join projects like the Free State Project and do more than just sign an online petition or two. You'd actually start considering how you can get from whatever h*ll hole you are in now to the h*ll hole we call New Hampshire such that we can actually begin to work on reforming *some place* such that there is at least one last bastion of hope and refuge for freedom. But no. You won't do that. You'll just say it's too hard. Or you like where you live now. Or there is no hope. Or you'll say we settled that with the civil war. Or we know what happens when states declare independence- they get killed off. Well, things change and we can change this too.

Well, there is hope. 20,000 people signed up to move and 10% already have in relation to the Free State Project. It's still early yet and despite that a lot is going on in New Hampshire. You don't need a majority. You just need an active minority working to change things at the state level to have a serious impact. The state government imprison far more people than the federal government so a lot can be fixed even without independence once there is a freedom-loving population that has a dominate influence (doesn't mean you have to have a majority in the state) in a state. New Hampshire is a small enough state with a well to do area and population to be attractive for people to move and feasible to take over/build off. It's already attractive in many freedom areas (no sales tax, no car insurance requirements, low co

Science Human Politic

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Think of something they consider illegal
2. Buy cheap IoT / mini pc
3. Setup a place and auto ping multiple illegal sources
4. Wait for stupid police raid
5. Lmao, and repeat

Seriously, this is like mandatory collecting 1 year worth of garbage in the dumpster. Even Edward Snowden knows about it.

Re:Are they going to shaft business like the Chine

[Anonymous Coward]

And I get tired of watching geeks scoff at tech regulation with no real understanding of why laws are passed.

The point isn't that you can use countermeasures to get around them, and the point isn't that a technologically savvy person can always remain one step ahead. Technological countermeasures are useless - Big Brother will just kick your door in if he can't hear what you are saying.

The point is Big Brother doesn't even need to see everything to know everything. We are already assassinating people based on metadata.

The is point is they've shifted the Overton Window on mass surveillance, and won another battle in the War on Encryption. Now that the law of the land says you are surveilled at all times, previously legit services like VPNs and SSH start to look real incriminating. Banning them is now only a hop and a jump away, and can be done with comparatively minimal public debate. Best case scenario, using these tools only leads to enhanced monitoring (as it does in China) and not to the inside of a black bag.

The point is that we are one step closer to turn-key dictatorship in a West rapidly rushing into the arms of authoritarian demagogues.

This is a good thing

[ancientt]

Nothing could be better for the business of providing privacy supporting VPNs and proxies than this. Every privacy service sees this legislation as a sudden boon to business. In six months there will be more and cheaper VPNs and proxies available all over the world. What could be better for proxy and VPN service providers than having governments produce an incentive to use them?

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. - John Gilmore

Perhaps we'll look back some day and see this as the thing that created the generator of an economy of privacy.

Re:This is a good thing

[CaptainDork]

We both know that VPN and proxy dodges can be mitigated.

The Internet WILL be transparent to all except for those who demand the transparency.

There's a problem with that, and you allude to it:

For every motherfucker out there with a computer there's another motherfucker out there with a computer.

Know what's smarter than people who control the Internet?

Other people who control the Internet.

Petition ! sign it

[tomxor]

https://petition.parliament.uk...

Social control for the 21st century

[CinnamonDonkey]

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 - Social Control!

This is what happens when you sue spy agencies

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the 1970s, spy agencies did illegal stuff. Everyone who knew about them knew this but even their existence was secret so you couldn't really bring a case against them.

In the 1980's and 1990's there was a move to pass laws that skirted around these issues. What they did was now legal but only because the law had some vague bits in that no-one talked about.

Now we're in the era where what they do is common knowledge and people have tried to sue the government over it, the obvious reaction is to pass laws so that what they have always done is now obviously and clearly legal.

The level of surveillance has not changed. The legal basis and who is responsible has. Make of this what you will.

Source : where do you think?