UK Proposing Real-Time Monitoring of All Communications 145
An anonymous reader writes "In response to a plans to introduce real time monitoring of all UK Internet communications, a petition has been set up in opposition."
Previously covered here, El Reg chimes in with a bit of conspiracy theorizing and further analysis: "It would appear that the story is being managed: the government is looking to make sure that CCDP is an old news story well ahead of the Queen's Speech to Parliament on 9 May. Sundays — especially Sunday April the 1st — are good days to have potentially unpopular news reach the population at large."
Brilliant! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
They allow the government to precisely target which sections of the population to ignore.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Funny)
They allow the government to precisely target which sections of the population to ignore.
You mean "all of them except the big contributors to my slush fund"?
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Or to arrest.
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"And what are you going to do about it? Vote Labour? Hahahahahaha" - AC predicts the response from the Conservative leadership.
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No! We're going to vote Lib De... oh wait.
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especially after cash fort access moron [url=http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/4704-the-cruddas-story-anonymity-and-bbc-scotlands-political-news-agenda]Peter Crud-Arse[/url] [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-17574289]said[/url] [url=http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sunday/scotland/scottish-independence-peter-cruddas-tape-reveals-pm-was-advised-to-be-se
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
An e-petition against having my email monitored, but to sign it I have to give the government my name and email address. As far as I can tell, they don't want a Facebook password though. Yet.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, they don't want a Facebook password though. Yet.
Don't worry, they've already got it.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:4, Funny)
"I sincerely hope I can trust you with my email address", my letter started.
Justin Tomlinson (MP) is actually one of the good ones, even for a Tory. He turns up for meetings, doesn't claim for first class travel, always votes.
Wait, I'm praising an MP for doing his job. Ignore me, I must be ill.
Some do (Score:5, Interesting)
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Surely in this day and age you can bring yourself to vote for a man who does not share your religion?
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I signed the petition.
I'm willing to put my head above the parapet. I hope you will be too.
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Yep, already done.
BBC Q and A session (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17590363 [bbc.co.uk]
What do critics say?
Nick Pickles, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, called the move "an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran". Conservative MP Dominic Raab said it was "a plan to privatise Big Brother surveillance" which "fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between the state and the citizen" and turns every individual "into a suspect". Fellow Tory David Davis warned that until now anyone wishing to monitor communications had been required to gain permission from a magistrate, but the planned changes would remove that protection.
What do internet service providers say?
Trefor Davies, a board member at the UK's Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA), told the BBC that the technological challenge of collating and storing such vast levels of data would be huge. Although a large amount of data about us is already collected for billing and other purposes - such as who we call and when - ISPs do not currently store detailed data on what websites we visit, or details about the emails we send. Mr Davies said: "The email stuff isn't straight forward, and neither is the web. Those aren't bits of information that traditionally we keep. We don't keep backups of deleted emails. Think of all the spam people get," Mr Davies added. "We delete it, but under the new rules would we be allowed to?"
Yeah right... (Score:1)
The problem they have for someone running their own TLS enabled mail server and reading their email via imaps or ssh is that this warrantless interception will not work. So it's basically for petty nanny state style spying on peoples private, everyday business.
That is, it's useless for it's stated purpose and useful for arseholes in local government (who we know will eventually have access) to harrass taxpayers. Naturally government will sell access to private concerns.
No justification for it whatsoever.
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TLS and imaps is based on certificates and most western governments have the ability to create their own certificates for any site. MIM would be perfectly plausible since most browsers and email clients will not complain when a certificate is changed to a new valid one.
SSH is different however since the client starts screaming about changed fingerprints when someone tries to MIM the connection (though they could possibly force the SSH server provider to hand over their private keys and apply a MIM attack an
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Mr Davies said: "The email stuff isn't straight forward, and neither is the web. Those aren't bits of information that traditionally we keep. We don't keep backups of deleted emails. Think of all the spam people get," Mr Davies added. "We delete it, but under the new rules would we be allowed to?"
I honestly don't know how politics is in the UK, but in America I think the costs associated with forcing ISPs to save the entire internet in its every iteration would result in quite a lot of ISPs lobbying against shit like this.
Now, if it were up to the ISP's discretion as to what they want to save (Hello the bullshit that will be July 1st) or if the government subsidized a load of their costs, I can see ISPs going for it, but just saying "spend a shitton of money OR ELSE" legislation seems unlikely to su
Re:BBC Q and A session (Score:5, Interesting)
I honestly don't know how politics is in the UK, but in America I think the costs associated with forcing ISPs to save the entire internet in its every iteration would result in quite a lot of ISPs lobbying against shit like this.
You'd do well to assume that things are relatively similar here. Margins in the ISP business are thin.
Now, if it were up to the ISP's discretion as to what they want to save (Hello the bullshit that will be July 1st) or if the government subsidized a load of their costs, I can see ISPs going for it, but just saying "spend a shitton of money OR ELSE" legislation seems unlikely to survive.
Right now, it's mainly a kite that's being flown by the spooks. They'll run into problems over funding it and from the privacy advocates too. (There was a Tory blathering on about how unacceptable it was on the radio this morning; I turned it off because he sounded like an annoying git, even if he had a point on this matter. Wanting to punch someone in the face before starting your morning commute isn't healthy!)
Of course, if this does get implemented (a sad day if it comes to pass) then it becomes important for all spam headers to be sent on as well, including all the stuff that a responsible ISP would normally filter. Ideally, it should all go to the same Exchange server that all their internal messages are hosted on. After all, Exchange is an enterprise-ready solution! ;-)
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Now, if it were up to the ISP's discretion as to what they want to save (Hello the bullshit that will be July 1st) or if the government subsidized a load of their costs, I can see ISPs going for it
You're describing basically the situation as it is now. Most of the UK's ISPs adhere to a voluntary code of conduct where they keep logs of web requests for 3 days and email "traffic information" for 3 months, and will reveal it with a court order. They do this because the government offered to pay their reasonable expenses in implementing the system. If the government were offering to pay for this extension of the monitoring, then the ISPs would mostly be quite happy with it. But something tells me tha
Nah it's simpler than that (Score:3)
You require people by law to retain all comm for N years on their own machines at their own expense. You require them by law to install a tool which indexes and reports the info back to the command center. You make versions available for Windows and Mac.
Then you just imprison anyone who doesn't comply (terrorists). Problem solved.
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You require people by law to retain all comm for N years on their own machines at their own expense. You require them by law to install a tool which indexes and reports the info back to the command center. You make versions available for Windows and Mac.
Then you just imprison anyone who doesn't comply (terrorists). Problem solved.
What about linux? ;) You are now a terrorist if you have linux or some other operating system.
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Of course they're all terrorists. Have you ever bumped in to one of these GNU/Linux types?
http://stallman.org/rms-bw.jpeg [stallman.org]
Where's McCarthy when we need him?
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What about linux? ;) You are now a terrorist if you have linux or some other operating system.
Good point! Apple and Microsoft will be happy to fund the legislation.
Re:BBC Q and A session (Score:5, Insightful)
Read "All comments" on there. Filter the highest first, then the lowest first. The modding is unual on there - I had a +17 (insightful!!!) yesterday, but I can't even find my post today (clearing history is not always a good idea).
People get it. The majority understand exactly what's happening. They have read some history and know the Stasi quotes, the American interment, the whole shitbag.
The UK goverment has been a real twat over the past few weeks. Taxing the elderly more, taxing warm food, letting the rich off tax, phone hacking(!!) scandal, petrol panic buying, cash for policies and more. We've all had enough of it.
I'll leaving you with one quote from our delightful Prime Minister. He said this last week after helping his rich elite besties over dinner:
"I live in a little flat, a very nice flat, actually, above number 11 Downing Street up there. But what I get up to in there, that's private."
Private.
What a fucking twat.
Where to move to? (Score:1)
Time to move... but to where?
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Oh...wait...
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Nope. Time to protest just before the Queen's Speech. Make sure this is headline news.
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I'm confused.
Why are they pretending they can't and aren't doing all this already?
Re:Where to move to? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm confused.
Why are they pretending they can't and aren't doing all this already?
Because to do it in secret means they have peoples' information.
But to be able to act upon it systematically, they must publicly admit that they do it. Hence, "We're going to start doing [foo]".
They can also pick up Governmental Power-Up Bonuses from it because the citizens will become too intimidated to dissent once they've implemented it openly.
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If that is what they were thinking I reckon they will get something of a shock. There is no better way to militarise subversives than to actually threaten them.
Re:Where to move to? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kidding me? The Empire's been suppressing dissenters and subversives for centuries. Where do you think the Punk movement came from? You take the poorest people who are on the dole, you get them to network together to become an astroturf movement [wikipedia.org]. As proof, you make the trappings of the movement thoroughly degrading and abusive (just like the more official representatives of The System are). And you bribe the more knowing and corrupt people within the scene to report dissidents back to you, at which point they "coincidentally" get arrested for whatever forms of vice or minor crimes they partake of with your agents. Deep cover can be had on the cheap, when everyone involved is on welfare to start with.
At that point, good luck forming a subversive network when you never know who's a sell-out. Sort of like the cloak-and-dagger sell-out kids planted within the Occupy movement, that have been spotted on YouTube.
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Disclosure: In drawing attention to the anti-subversive methods used by the status quo, I'm having to tout their strengths... and in that I'm definitely playing against my own feelings on the matter here.
Creating honeypot astroturf movements is typical powermonger handiwork. When you attract dissidents to a movement you yourself concocted, and in which you have people in positions of key influence, you can draw out the dissidents, distract them with propaganda and irrelevant action items, befuddle them wit
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Why are they pretending they can't and aren't doing all this already?
The answer to your question read literally, is because all governments are terrified of the People - and rightly so.
But at this point, they evidently feel that they've managed enough bluff and bluster and control to turn the screws on them, with only negligible resistance.
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Typical Marxist strategy is to have so many rules, regulations, by-laws and other bits of legislation that at any time someone is always breaking something. Then they can drag any opponent through the courts, give them a criminal record as well as confiscate their property.
Look up the lyrics to "The Ostrich" by Steppenwolf.
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Typical Marxist strategy is to have so many rules, regulations, by-laws and other bits of legislation that at any time someone is always breaking something. Then they can drag any opponent through the courts, give them a criminal record as well as confiscate their property.
Look up the lyrics to "The Ostrich" by Steppenwolf.
Not sure why this counts as Marxist, I am fairly sure Marx did not come up with this as a good way of running society.
It does sound very similar to the UK legal system though as we do have a series of law saying the many things we cannot do, but no bill of rights to say the things we can do.
Indeed... (Score:2)
However, in reality this is all a bit paranoid. Most of this is the Praetorian Guard of MI5, the Home Office and the Met panicking about how they can protect themselves and their political masters from the London mobs, of any creed or colour yo
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Not Marxixt, authoritarianist. The facists are just as bad as the communists in this regard. You think Italy had freedom under Mussolini?
Look up the lyrics to Steppenwolf's "Monster".
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I'll agree with that. Whatever British political party is in power, they always want more surveillance. Which political party is out of power, they will oppose the introduction of new powers.
It's been like that since the 1980's at least. They used to comment in Usenet that the British public were like frogs being boiled slowly. They wouldn't notice the slow erosion of their rights until it was too late.
Re:Where to move to? (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to move... but to where?
Stay right where you are, and start a social movement. Governments aren't land masses; they can only exist by the consent of the governed. If things get bad enough, joining such a group would become a no-brainer and you'd have de facto government reform by a collective choice from all the citizenry. They'd just pick a form of government, select their political representatives, start making policy and wait for support for the old regime to fall away entirely.
It's more or less what BitCoin is doing to the old dominate-through-control-of-the-money-supply regime.
The People always have a choice - that's just the nature of politics. The problem has only been that the choices the People have been making have been in support of the old guard.
Posit: The War for Independence never ended, they just quit shooting. Britain started using bribery on public officials and began to chip away at the society that had formed, until the Union was indistinguishable from the tyranny that it left. The point was to get them to stop making their argument for individual sovereignty; if they'd kept making it, it would have spread back to England where large swaths of the folks there would have been demanding it. Britain would have lost a lot more than a few colonies, because it was a very sound idea. Valid ideas are always a threat to tyrants, and sometimes the best way to stop people from making their argument for them is to let them think they've already won.
Your concept about running out of continents to go off and colonize is quite right. It's time to stop running. The only other alternative is to just roll over, close your eyes and er... "think of England".
Re:Where to move to? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more or less what BitCoin is doing to the old dominate-through-control-of-the-money-supply regime.
You mean, it will be used by organised crime, totally unworkable on a large scale, and ignored by anyone with any influence?
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Sounds like a description of drug prohibition. :)
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It's more or less what BitCoin is doing to the old dominate-through-control-of-the-money-supply regime.
You mean, it will be used by organised crime, totally unworkable on a large scale, and ignored by anyone with any influence?
No, I mean it will gradually and meekly attain a large a large demographic following because it's fairer than the existing system, while a concerted effort is made by the status quo to demonize and denounce it whenever they must discuss it at all. See also, Ron Paul's presidential campaign.
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It's not just Assad in Syria that calls that kind of thing "terrorism".
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It's not just Assad in Syria that calls that kind of thing "terrorism".
No argument there. Governments call it that all the time. However, that only underscores their illegitimacy.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
When a government struggles to demonize the very rights guaranteed by the documents that created it, there really isn't an argument left to make for keeping it.
What, did you honestly imagine that we were meant to wait for permission from our government to reform it?
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How would that work, then? If you connect to a server in a colo, the government just taps the line. They don't need the whole network for most pourposes, just the exits. You do realize that the current path leads to outlawing encryption unless one endpoint is on a whitelist, right?
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I'm anonymous and demeaning. You're delusional.
FTFY.
I have a proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
Of-course this proposal concerns all those, who are concerned about the real-time communications of everybody.
The proposal is this: all of those, who are so concerned about the real time communications and all other forms of communications and thoughts and actions of other people, the concerned need to be protected.
The proposal is to protect those, who are so afraid and are looking for protection, because obviously, there will never be enough done, in their eyes, to protect them. Clearly real time monitoring of all communications is not enough. Eventually everybody will have to have devices built into them, that can monitor everybody's real-time activities, and eventually read their real time thoughts with the long term goal of projecting thoughts in real time into everybody, so that nobody could ever even think something that the concerned individuals would be afraid of.
So the proposal is to protect these poor souls from the rest of us by isolating them into a well guarded facility, where they could really have real time monitoring of all communications that are internal to that facility and monitor each other (I suppose they are paranoid enough to want to do that).
For those, who believe it is not enough protection, they should be isolated within that facility from the rest in well suited, very well protected rooms (and they should have extra set of locks they could use from the inside), and all of them need to be given all sorts of weapons they need to keep safe as well.
I believe it is at the point right now, where those, who believe they are in need of protection and will not stop until everybody is a mechanised food processor without any original thoughts, that these people need to get the protection they so desire so that the rest of us can carry on, having terrible thoughts and killing each other they way we do - left, right and centre.
Airstrip One (Score:2)
Coming to a pub near you!
Please sign Open Rights Group petition (Score:3)
This is sheer idiocy.
Beyond privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Western countries have an interesting dilemma, how do you reconcile an open world with any form of control. The issue is this, people have gained an unprecedented amount of freedom to travel and communicate. Take the recent French shootings, the terrorist had traveled all over the world with ease at a very low cost. This simply wouldn't have been possible a century ago and even 50 years ago it would have been costly. Mean time, during all those travels he was in constant contact with the rest of the world in an instant.
It means that those who wish to do wrong have far more capacity to do so then before.
There is a relatively new BBC program "Angels and Saints" that takes a look at benefit fraud. It is an odd program for the BBC as it shows a very negative picture of immigrants. (BBC is rather liberal usually) A lot of the criminals in it are immigrants, either permanent or temporary, using the ease of travel and communication to create multiple identities. The way to combat is to link all the different administations together and run matches across them to see that a person with the same parameters is getting benefits in multiple places. PRIVACY!
There are three solutions:
Pick one. All of them are electoral suicide. The first would just lead to a hellish world in which out of control capitalism would be warm fuzzy memory. The second survives right up until the moment the tax man comes around (and gosh, won't it be hard to collect all the needed taxes to pay for all the abusers if the taxman has no investigative powers)
And three... well that is what this article is about and it doesn't seem to popular.
Greece has run with the number 2 option and it didn't and doesn't work. They have been on the dole for generations and the rest of Europe has grown tired of feeding their relaxed nature to tax collection.
How do you run a modern country western country anyway? Note that in EVERY single god game, taxes just show up by magic. Not a single game I ever played ever had the population lying about their income. Imagine Civilization with a Greek setting, build a granary, food production mysteriously drops while some fat cats get richer. Would be rather hard to win the game right?
Re:Beyond privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
(BBC is rather liberal usually)
Except when it comes to the drug war, the monarchy, police powers, free speech...
Re:Beyond privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. I'm an *American*, and I listen to the BBC far more than any of my own news services. *Especially* for American politics - they don't seem to have an agenda they're pushing, unlike Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and whichever other ones I forgot.
The only downside is a constant slightly-condescending tone. You could probably end each report on the US elections with "Silly Americans, thinking they know how to form a system of government." and it would fit perfectly.
Curiously, Xinhua, the government-sponsored Chines
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I'm an *American*, and I listen to the BBC far more than any of my own news services. *Especially* for American politics - they don't seem to have an agenda they're pushing, unlike Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and whichever other ones I forgot.
NPR is pretty balanced when it comes to presenting issues, though there is a clear undercurrent of liberal bias.
Re:Beyond privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The way to properly run a modern western country is, as usual, a compromise between privacy and the need to investigate fraud and crime. Between social safety nets and not rewarding failure. Between openness and fighting abusers.
Anyone who claims to have a simple answer to a question so vast either a lying charlatan or a fool for believing such an obvious lie.
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>with "any" form of control
Here is your problem buddy. You pose absolute question, all or none. How about a grain of common sense?
That's the part that has been missing from Western democracy for ages, and you just noticed the attack on privacy?
Have you followed the American election at all? (Score:3)
The west is ruled by democracy and for the UK and the US at least that has resulted in a two party system (oh okay, the brits got the liberals) who seem to be fighting each other as if there are only absolutes.
Anyway, what is common sense? We can't even agree on a common sense maximum speed limit, how do you agree on a common sense level of privacy? Or is what you really mean "My sense"?
Another poster above also talks about common sense as if that is so simple. The moment it affects YOU, common sense goes o
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I know it's in style currently to slam Fox News, but if one takes a good look at ALL the US news sources, there is far too much editorialization of stories to bring the "wow" factor. Unfortunately your average person picks the news "side" that they agree with, then take all of their words as gospel, instead of actually seeing the huge amount of opinion and hyperbole written into the stories.
BBC is not innocent of this, but they at least seem to be less guilt
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Note that in EVERY single god game, taxes just show up by magic... Imagine Civilization with a Greek setting, build a granary, food production mysteriously drops while some fat cats get richer. Would be rather hard to win the game right?
Pure gold.
Now, seriously, maybe a biometrical solution would be enough? Not every lose of privacy is bad or unacceptable: I just have an issue with i if other people can tell what I do or where I'm going. I would certainly give my biometrical data away if it helps me prove I am me.
This is part one. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is part one of the process of introducing a draconian and unpopular new law. First you come up with something completely over the top and unacceptable. Then, over a few months you water it down here and there, chopping little bits, amending others, until you end up with something that is draconian and unpopular. But it'll be accepted because it's not as bad as the original plan which, by then, will be falsely seen as the alternative. It's a flaw in human logical thought that has been exploited by politicians since they first crawled out of the sewer.
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Just let it flow and plan. No court, media, books, public spy ring trials- just sell the world cheap information technology and enjoy been one of the best with breaking, sorting and understanding.
Now the old problem of "we can use this in court" seems to have finally won over in the UK.
People will slowly feel they live in some 1960's War
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This is part one of the process of introducing a draconian and unpopular new law. First you come up with something completely over the top and unacceptable. Then, over a few months you water it down here and there, chopping little bits, amending others, until you end up with something that is draconian and unpopular. But it'll be accepted because it's not as bad as the original plan which, by then, will be falsely seen as the alternative. It's a flaw in human logical thought that has been exploited by politicians since they first crawled out of the sewer.
Politicians crawled out of the sewer? When did that happen? I guess the poor lawyers are on their own now.
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Politicians crawled out of the sewer? When did that happen?
When the UK stopped paying for the politicians second homes unless they actually lived in them? They stopped renting them out and moved out of the sewers then I think :)
Fear, fear and fear (Score:1)
I'd be in a constant state of fear if I knew that every time I wanted to simply read some material relating to alternative political views about distant and not so distant places and mentally keep up and refresh my skills from the times of the service, I would be logged in some system producing a probabilistic estimate of my level of radicalization resulting an automatic denial of employment. I would be feel the same for others even if I wasn't the one wanting to read the alternative political viewpoints.
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Privacy of association: an immodest proposal (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is to initially study who people are talking to, right? That can be used to determine (un)reasonable suspicion. Random thought:
What if, say, hundreds of thousands of people were to sign up to a single service. Each day they posted their messages to that service, plus some garbage, to make a nice constant number of daily "posts". Each day everyone downloaded ALL messages posted to that service. The messages are, of course, each encrypted for the intended recipient, and people never download individual public keys - only everyone's or no-one's.
When a computer has downloaded the message batch, it tries to decrypt all of them, but will only be successful with messages actually intended for the recipient.
1) Is this already used?
2) If not, is this technically feasible?
3) I am assuming that a man in authority would be able to listen to all network communications or retrieve all server content and logs. Will it be possible for them to establish who was communicating to whom?
I understand that there are other options which rely on obfuscating routing between particular destinations. This method relies on not having any routing at all - more like listening to a daily broadcast in the style of the old "numbers stations".
So the system must enforce a service user's lack of choice on what to download and whether to upload (even if you just upload garbage). Anyone reading IPs in a similar "broadcast" service's access logs (e.g. Twitter) will have a good idea who is receiving what - which I think is what this law is taking advantage of(*) - but what if the service's logs were open for all to see, law enforcement or otherwise, because the logs revealed nothing useful?
The practical questions would be concerning whether the idea scales, i.e.
1) how many messages can everyone download at regular intervals (multicast?) before there'd be a need to split the batches?
2) is it feasible to attempt (part) decryption of all these messages to identify which are for you?
(*) The proposed law isn't afaict demanding warrantless "wiretapping" (i.e. of content), but denying privacy of association. This seems to be the route the EU has tried to go down, and mirrors recent legislation in Canada.
Thoughts?
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I've always wondered if we couldn't just build up a network of "trusted VPNs". That is, let's say I'm running a mail server and I want to send an email to a Yahoo mail account. I set up a private VPN to Yahoo, send my message, and then tear down the VPN (or leave it open for a period of time, I guess). Then, when I want to talk to someone I don't know, I can either setup an untrusted VPN, or else send in the clear, or else pause and wait for me to exchange keys with the remote and do it securely.
Originally
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In the old days ISTR there was a company which proposed broadcasting all of usenet as a satellite feed. Maybe broadcast might be a way to go - the bandwidth is only paid for once (by the transmitter), and you might imagine a dedicated hardware stack to
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What if, say, hundreds of thousands of people were to sign up to a single service. Each day they posted their messages to that service, plus some garbage, to make a nice constant number of daily "posts".
You mean like Facebook? ;-)
Hitler would proud (Score:5, Funny)
It's mass surveillance (Score:5, Insightful)
They *already* obtain the records of internet sites visited, phone calls made, and location.
What Theresa May is doing is requiring that the ISP's index all this stuff ready for searching in a distributed database. Once that is done, it is then a simply matter to run queries against that. The upfront cost has already been paid, it then becomes difficult to justify NOT using something that has been paid for.
Warrants are not needed under RIPA (or rather a request for info from a senior officer is renamed a 'warrant'), they just ask for it. Since there are > 3 million queries under this supposed anti-terror law, it is being misused. With the real time queries, it will be seriously abused.
None of the people whose data is indexed have a suspicion at that stage against them. This pre-criminalizes people in order to justify the surveillance.
Already the police are the bigger than the courts, bigger than the political system. It's so bad that we can't even freely discuss the details of this up-coming law. Cameron is a coward, he's backed down on every issue related to the police, he's scared of them and it shows.
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>phone calls made
Does this include full voice *recording* of the calls?
Thank god we're heading in the right direction... (Score:2)
No not the "English" real-time monitoring...
But us Scots wanting independence!!
The bloody referendum can't come quick enough!!!
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There's still oil. You're not getting independence.
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But us Scots wanting independence!!
Can the rest of England join you please? The people left behind in London should be OK - what with all those nice velodromes and swimming pools they've been building - they could always plant potatoes in the long-jump pits. A few years ago I'd have said that we needed the money generated by the City, but these days they seem like more of a liability than an asset. Just make sure that the wall goes up while Parliament is sitting (preferably debating their next pay rise or expenses package, so they all turn
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Most Londoners would like to join the new country of Southern Scotland as well please ...they didn't vote for the current Government ...
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Most Londoners would like to join the new country of Southern Scotland as well please ...they didn't vote for the current Government ...
Nobody voted for the current government: they either voted for the Conservatives or the Lib Dems, not for a coalition which combines the social conscience of the Tories with the experience and fiscal prudence of the Lib Dems.
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For money? Are you going to go back to a GOLD standard? Where will you get all the gold?
Gold Standard? Not a single country in the world uses that any more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard [wikipedia.org]
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So far as I know, the proposed Scottish independence plan includes EU membership, using either pound sterling or Euro as a currency (subject to a separate referendum), and maintaining their own defense force.
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The problem is that that proposal assumes the UK cooperates on both fronts. Potentially the UK could veto Scotlands entry into the EU, and make it near impossible to use Sterling. If they do use Sterling they don't have control of their currency.
I wouldn't expect it'd veto EU membership, and I doubt it'd prevent them using the pound, but with the problems the euro has had and with the UK determining policy on the Sterling with them having no say, I think there's a fair chance they could be forced into their
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Personally I'm not sure it matters either way what happens, and I'm not sure I really care despite living here. It does irk me a bit though that Salmond seems to be trying to fiddle the referendum a bit by telling Scottish people working/living outside Scotland (i.e. those living in England currently) that they can't vote but European nationals resident in Scotland can. Effectively he's saying all those that have left Scotland, potentially because they don't like the way he's run it the last few years they don't have an opportunity to tell him to fuck off with his nationalism, but those who have moved there to work can. It wouldn't matter if we were talking small numbers, but it's something like 20% of Scotland's voting population that will be prevented from voting because they're not currently living there. This is pretty unprecedented, as even my girlfriend who has dual British/Canadian citizenship living here can still vote in Candian elections and referendums at the high commission.
I dunno, it feels like a pragmatic limitation to me - they didn't want a UK-wide referendum (understandable on matters of secession, usually it's just the seceding territory that votes); but Scotland doesn't have its own citizenship records or anything, so how do you tell if a particular British citizen living abroad is Scottish and qualified to vote? Your girlfriend, for example, can likewise only vote in Canadian federal elections and referendums, but not in provincial ones, even in the province she had o
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At very least there's the fact that birth certificates will show place of birth, that at least covers those born in Scotland, which I believe in just about every country in the world would make you a citizen of that country.
My biggest concern though for those voters is what happens if Scotland does go independent. Are they then stuck in the obscure situation of being told they're not Scottish enough to vote but because they were born there, and not say, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland, then they're actu
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At very least there's the fact that birth certificates will show place of birth, that at least covers those born in Scotland, which I believe in just about every country in the world would make you a citizen of that country.
Not necessarily - in fact, most countries in the world practice "jus sanguinis", not "jus soli". I don't know about Scotland, though.
Also, being born somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that you're a citizen now even if you once were. My mother was born in Kyrgyzstan back when it was still a part of the USSR, but she's a citizen of Russia today. In some cases, people are required to denounce their existing citizenship to obtain a new one when immigrating.
My biggest concern though for those voters is what happens if Scotland does go independent. Are they then stuck in the obscure situation of being told they're not Scottish enough to vote but because they were born there, and not say, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland, then they're actually going to have to go back to Scotland due to not having the require permits to work in England? not having a passport? Effectively there's a danger that these people will become citizens of another country and suffer the effects of that without having ever had an opportunity to have a say in it. Presumably the UK government will allow them to retain British citizenship but what if they have property or other assets in Scotland? What if they have family there? are they going to have to cross a border they never voted for to see their family? Will Salmond seize or tax property of Scots living abroad who choose to stick with just UK citizenship?
I would expect Scotland and UK to arrange for an open
Dummies (Score:2)
Everyone knows that in order to spy on every conversation there is, you just do it. You don't need any legal basis. Instead you claim your executive authority to protect the people from terrorists. If a whistleblower or leaker reveals what's going on, you tell The People about how you're listening to conversations involving The Terrorists -- being very careful to never say "only The Terrorists". That will placate the people, while you ram through the laws needed to make your actions legal, which is easy sin
they keep knocking (Score:3)
I see it this way: They keep knocking at your door trying to knock it down. It's not that you're doing anything illegal, you just don't want government in your living room while you're courting your wife. But they keep knocking and you tell them not to enter but they continue knocking. All it takes is one moment of distraction and you will be distracted long enough for them to barge and start monitoring for illegal activities.
It's an invasion of privacy, what you do in your private quarters is your business. Your communications with a third party is private between you and the third party. The government has no business trying to get pry itself into your privacy unless they are charging you with a crime.
A government needs to fear its people, not the other way around. The government needs to be punished for knocking and asking for this. You wouldn't let your government get away with trying to pass a law legalizing prima nocta, yet they try to pass this sort of invasion of privacy and all we do is give them a light slap on the wrist and say "no, not now". There needs to be stronger repercussions for this type of deviant behavior.
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1984 anyone?
I am gonna right a new book called 2084 - a future projection - and just cut and paste what roman_mir just said :) and step 5:profit
Of-course this proposal concerns all those, who are concerned about the real-time communications of everybody.
The proposal is this: all of those, who are so concerned about the real time communications and all other forms of communications and thoughts and actions of other people, the concerned need to be protected.
The proposal is to protect those, who are so afraid and are loo
Re:Orwillian? (Score:4, Funny)
Please extend my sympathies to your future editor.
I don't know... (Score:2)
Responding to myself (Score:2)
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They are starting to compare smartphones to Orwells telescreen, except that now the proles csn afford them.
Oh yes (Score:2)