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

[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.

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

[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]

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.

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?

[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.

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

[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: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.

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.