Interception in the UK

An anonymous reader sent in the following: "A story on Techwire discusses the UK government proposal to require providers of digital communications services to make available interception capabilities for all pagers, IP telephony, email etc. As usual, the US Feds have some involvment in this. " Quite distressing. Even VPNs are covered.

Comments

let's see

[/]

Home Secretary Jack Straw now proposes all CSPs be required to take reasonable steps to ensure their system is capable of being intercepted.

Well, just run IIS, right guys?
You do have to wonder, though. Any system that lets technoignorant lawenforcement snoop is bound to have lots of holes for normal malicious citizens to exploit. Or is it just a matter of handing out root to the local constable.

But then, the English populace never did have many guarantees of privacy or speech or anything, really. At least here in the US, we make the pretense of having such guarantees.

And never mind that police can't be trusted not to torture and mutilate innocent people. I'm not prepared to trust anyone with my online communications whom I can't even trust not to assault my rectum, to put it bluntly.

Re:let's see

[D. Taylor]

Dammit. We are not the ENGLISH. We are Brittish. I happen to be Scottish, and every time some stupid US person speaks about 'England', instead of the UK, or Britain, I get slightly annoyed. How would you like it if I called the US Washington, or New York or something?

enfopol

[gbpeter]

There were plans in the European Union to introduce such law (enfopol). This also would have forced the providers to allow monitoring in real time without the customer noticing it.
This law were redrawn only at the beginning of this month after the European Parliament had already agrred on the law a month before. Now the UK will go their own way, as will many other countries in the European Union that are quite eager to know what people think, do, and feel.

Just use anonymous remailers

[roystgnr]

Take a look at mixmaster remailers if you really want to keep even the recipient of your emails a secret. Properly used, The Man can tell that you put a message into a remailer, and that your recipient got a message from a different remailer some time afterward... but connecting the two is pretty much intractable.

Damn lies and statistics.

[AJWM]

Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense. The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home. The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold."
http://www.handguncontrol.org/firearm_facts.htm

Well now, there's an unbiased source.

The "statistics" are irrelevant bullshit, of course.

Let's take a look in more detail:

Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense

Two major things wrong with that statement, even assuming that the numbers aren't fabricated. (1) the vast majority of "kill a family member or friend" cases are suicides, thus irrelevant here; there are plenty of ways for someone intent on suicide to do so. (2) Most - by orders of magnitude - uses of a gun in self-defense do not involve killing the attacker. Even if we count only the actual confrontations that occur (and ignore the large deterrent value a firearm has), most end with the bad guy being scared off or held until the police arrive, no shots fired at all. In a much smaller incidence, the perp may be wounded - these cases still outnumber those cases in which the perp is killed.

Of course, the whole paragraph is nonsense if taken literally: guns don't kill anybody, don't have family members, and don't defend themselves.

The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home. The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold.

Heh. Now subtract out the number of those cases in which the gun was acquired with the specific intent to commit murder and/or suicide (which acts can certainly be accomplished without a gun), and what are the numbers?

The facts are, when other influences are factored out (eg socioeconomic background, cultural influences, etc), the crime rate is inversely proportional to the availability of guns. MOst people are neither homicidal nor suicidal. Most criminals, while perhaps stupid, are not suicidal either. The facts also are that women who defend themselves against rape/assault with a gun are more likely to survive than those who don't defend themselves at all or who use some other (less effective) weapon.

Interception in Germany

[kzanol]

Actually, Britain is by no means the first country to come up with this idea; a very similar proposal was considered last year in germany and is again under consideration now.

The scary thing about it is that it's only a question of implementing existing legislature, namely para. 88 of the telecommunications act. So, the basic laws which require this sort of monitoring are already in place.

Basically, any network provider (ISP, company network, whatever) will have to provide dedicated access to the network at its own cost, in a way that not only enables government to capture any and all data but also leaves the network provider none the wiser.

Cost for the required infrastructure is estimated to be between DM 15.000 for small and DM 100.000 ( US $ 7.500 - 50.000) for large providers (Numbers from german iX magazine, 6/1999). In addition to the complete loss of privacy this offers a perfect infrastructure for hackers..

You can find details (in german!) at http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/ inhalt/te/2793/1.html