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The UK Is About to Legalize Mass Surveillance [Update] (vice.com)
From a report on Motherboard: On Tuesday, the UK is due to pass its controversial new surveillance law, the Investigatory Powers Act, according to the Home Office. The Act, which has received overwhelming support in both the House of Commons and Lords, formally legalizes a number of mass surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. It also introduces a new power which will force internet service providers to store browsing data on all customers for 12 months. Civil liberties campaigners have described the Act as one of the most extreme surveillance laws in any democracy, while law enforcement agencies believe that the collection of browsing data is vital in an age of ubiquitous internet communications. "The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 will ensure that law enforcement and the security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need in a digital age to disrupt terrorist attacks, subject to strict safeguards and world-leading oversight," a statement from the Home Office reads. Much of the Act gives stronger legal footing to the UK's various bulk powers, including "bulk interception," which is, in general terms, the collection of internet and phone communications en masse. In June 2013, using documents provided by Edward Snowden, The Guardian revealed that the GCHQ taps fibre-optic undersea cables in order to intercept emails, internet histories, calls, and a wealth of other data. Update: "Snooper's charter" bill has become the law. The home secretary said:"The Investigatory Powers Act is world-leading legislation, that provides unprecedented transparency and substantial privacy protection. "The government is clear that, at a time of heightened security threat, it is essential our law enforcement and security and intelligence services have the power they need to keep people safe. The internet presents new opportunities for terrorists and we must ensure we have the capabilities to confront this challenge. But it is also right that these powers are subject to strict safeguards and rigorous oversight."
It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of civil society :)
FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump
All because you sheeple want to feel safe.
"People want to be slaves" - Academy Award nominated director I work out with.
Face it, the people don't want to really be free. They want to feel safe above all else. They are so afraid of terrorism when the fact is they are most likely to die from complications of their obesity or from a car accident because they were distracted while they were updating their facebook page.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
We'll make great pets
I think this is something that will ultimately hurt a lot of innocent people in the UK over the coming years.
However, it will also help the Internet mature with new encryption and canary protocols, and more ubiquitous deployment of them, to ensure privacy and protection from all threats.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Talking about putting people in boxes. If you use Tor, expect the government to be looking at you a little closer. Surely you must have something to hide if you have Tor.
It's like putting a box in the break room with a note saying "do not peak" written on it. Everyone is going to open the box. Use Tor and the government is going to want to see what you're doing.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You and I don't need to invent anything. We can create our own encryption keys, exchange them, and securely communicate.
The problem is the HTTPS infrastructure is broken by design, which is what the original poster was talking about.
The absolute irony is that visiting a site with a self-signed certificate shows the user a warning error (I understand why, don't worry) yet the resulting HTTPS exchange is actually immune to any and all eavesdropping. When visiting a site with a cert authority signed certificate, no error is displayed, yet this connection is vulnerable to anyone who has broken/intercepted the chain of trust. This includes state actors, but also businesses, and anyone that can get their certs onto your system, or can influence the signing authorities to give them the keys.
At this point some rabid net admin for a large corporation will chime in with "it's my network" etc... but the point is that we have been training users for years to interpret HTTPS as being "secure" and "safe" when it actually isn't. Just like we have been encouraging users to update Windows, yet now Microsoft have broken that trust with their forced updates and broken/mislabeled updates. The internet is currently broken and indeed has been broken maliciously by state actors. Are we going to just accept that as "good enough" and live with it? What exactly was so terrible about the internet in 1990 or 2000, before the NSA got their hooks in and started fucking everything up?? Can we point to a global reduction in crime, violence, terrorism, or child pornography, due to the valliant efforts of the NSA and similar outfits abroad?
At the **very very least** prior to this bill in the UK passing, anyone with half a mind should take note of the current state of UK society and crime. In ten years time, once the full ramifications of these new laws come to pass, look around again and make a comparison. My prediction, for what it's worth, is everything will be exactly the same (in which case what was the point?) or it will be much much worse.