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UK Gov't Proposes Massive Internet Snooping, Data Storage
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 13, 2008 05:16 PM
from the ofsted-is-spooky dept.
from the ofsted-is-spooky dept.
Barence writes "Big Brother Britain moved a step further today with the news that the Government will store 'a billion incidents of data exchange a day' as details of every text, email and browsing session in the UK are recorded. Under new proposals published yesterday, the information will be made available to police forces in order to crack down on serious crime, but will also be accessible by local councils, health authorities and even Ofsted and the Post Office. The Conservatives have criticised the idea, with the Shadow Home Secretary saying, 'yet again the Government has proved itself unable to resist the temptation to take a power quite properly designed to combat terrorism to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.'"
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encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:encryption (Score:5, Informative)
Encryption is no obstacle in Great Britain, home of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. If the authorities don't like anyone who uses encryption, they will simply demand the keys under RIP. If they don't like what they see or no key is provided, they will lock up the individuals concerned and throw away their own key, since the law essentially deems anyone using encryption guilty until proven innocent.
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Re:encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if that network were available today, and even if you didn't have the option of using a longer key, encrypting would still be a good idea. "A network of computers fast enough" is not free. Why not add to your enemies' expenses, especially when it costs you nearly nothing? This is an arms race that you can win. And if everyone does it, everyone wins (except the bad guy).
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Re:encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
It costs them very little to hold a gun to your head and demand "Hand over the encryption keys."
Why do things the hard way when the easy way generates so much more fear in the sheep?
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Re:encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if encryption starts becoming the norm, that all encryption keys will be required to be registered with the government. Unregistered encryption will be illegal and the public will applaud as the government sends the men with guns to drag you away, because you will be a "dangerous criminal with suspected connections to child porn and stolen credit card numbers" *
* This is how it will show up on your local Evening News.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
modern encryption is robust enough to deal with anything you want to throw at me. the idea that you could compute my 27 character long pass phrase is stupid as well.
Re:encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
If that gun is a Taser, then yes they will pull the trigger, probably after you are already handcuffed. It is a great way to cultivate an attitude of compliance, regardless of things like right and wrong. [wordpress.com] Notice how the author of the linked article urges people to never challenge a police officer. I agree that one should never physically challenge an officer, but the serf mentality has progressed into not even verbally questioning an officer's actions, all because of the increasing likelihood of getting tasered. No my friend, the police pull the trigger all the time, there is no revolution.
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Re:encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Another good reason to encrypt your data. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most network encryption methods might not be 100% bulletproof, but if more people did it, massive data collection projects like this would be a lot less worthwhile.
Re:Another good reason to encrypt your data. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why I advocate people using PK even when they don't have a trust path to the recipient. Yes, they can MitM you (until you get around to a secure exchange -- and then you know that someone had been messing with you earlier) but you still kill cheap passive surveillance -- you're making them MitM you. If more people did that, Big Brother would be fucked.
Get on the Wot when you can. Until then, though, encrypt anyway. Get your key out there where we can all see it. Certing can wait.
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Re:Another good reason to encrypt your data. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't Britain already have a law in place requiring you to hand over encryption keys on demand??
I see that as a very short hop from "on demand" to "as required by law for all encryption users".
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Re:Another good reason to encrypt your data. (Score:4, Funny)
**Sigh
I guess you'd have to start writing in code as well as using encryption then.
Hey, can someone snurf me a baloney kargel? I looked on the stardiffel and didn't see any kegels for it.
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Re:Another good reason to encrypt your data. (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, can someone snurf me a baloney kargel? I looked on the stardiffel and didn't see any kegels for it.
You mean Cockney then?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But if _everyone_ is using encryption, how will they know what's worth looking at to demand the keys? Demanding keys from a large number of people will (hopefully) lead to a bit of resentment, which will of course force this to be repealed, in line with the demands of the populace. A bit like speed cameras,fuel tax, alcohol tax, and foxhunting...
Yeah I'll keep dreaming
Re:Another good reason to encrypt your data. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act does indeed allow for compulsion in dissemination of keys.
That's why it is important not to store anything sensitive in encrypted form, but to pass it about using methods where keys are ephemeral and are never in the possession of the person targeted. If intercepted data simply cannot be decrypted, the authorities will come to understand that they are unable to seize anything of value.
Perhaps this would be enough to get them down from their insane power trip and back to sensible levels of state vs individual power.
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Again? (Score:5, Funny)
Let Them Try (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans have an annoying tendency to save things.
We fear our own demise, and we seek permanence in our surroundings and possessions.
We do the same with data.
We create far more data than we will ever be able to manage. In principle, it's a horrible idea. In practice, it's unfeasible. The only thing this will result in is harassment and inconvenience for people when the data is leaked/stolen/hax0red.
The government is NOT watching everyone - they can't. The government wants you to THINK everyone is being watched.
Re:Let Them Try (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Lets all use whitehouse.gov emails, NEVER saved (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Americans.
We have gone through all the data, and we've found that your President Bush was a great guy with no faults.
Sincerely,
Tony Blair
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No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
The eternal optimist in me feels some will see this as a step too far.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No surprise (Score:5, Funny)
80 year old English grandmothers are not terrorists
Thats just what they want you to think. then bam. tea and crumpets everywhere. oh the humanity!
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Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
The eternal optimist in me feels some will see this as a step too far.
Oh, I would think that's a fairly safe bet. The Information Commissioner will be all over it, and the public profile of his department is rising every time he speaks these days. The courts will be all over it, since blanket surveillance is going to be just a little difficult to reconcile with article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Opposition are already all over it, since any sort of claims about adequate data protection by the government are a joke thanks to repeated media coverage of numerous major leaks in recent months. Speaking of the media, they'll love this too, as it's another good opportunity to bash the government while it's down. And all of those are before we even get to the practical issues like who is going to pay for all of this and the overheads it would impose on service providers, presumably at their own expense if historical moves are anything to go by.
Finally, of course, we have the guy in the street who gets to vote, and he's becoming a lot more aware of privacy and data protection issues at the moment. Fortunately, the government will probably be so busy looking for a new Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer after the summer recess that they won't be able to do much about this, and they're toast at the next general election anyway since it's pretty hard to find any major group of voters they haven't seriously upset lately in one way or another.
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I used to feel sorry for Britain (Score:4, Insightful)
But then they showed how well they had learned their mistake under Blair by keeping Labor in power. Truly, to paraphrase Mencken, they are getting what they want and getting it good and hard.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But then they showed how well they had learned their mistake under Blair by keeping Labor in power.
Oh, come off it. At the last election, the Labour Party came second in England. They only took power again because of the Scottish vote, and Scotland is not affected by several of Labour's more heinous policies because of devolution. In fact, only 22% of the electorate (37% of those who actually voted) supported Labour, which makes the absolute majority they received in Parliament an obscenity.
And that was when they still said Blair would serve a full third term, not the current administration who have no l
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I used to feel sorry for Britain (Score:4, Insightful)
Either labor is entirely supported by the dregs of British society that depend on the welfare state, or there is a lot of bullshit from leftists in Britain.
I'd say it's more likely that their supporters are ignorant and short-sighted, fell for the war and terror rhetoric, and don't really care until it hits them in the wallet. I don't really think that that makes them left, but "New Labour" is determined to blur that distinction anyway.
The proof of this is evident: It has now hit the voters in the wallet, and Labour's support is now in the toilet.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Less than 30,000 people voted for Tony Blair. Other people voted for other Labour MPs, and most of them did that because they are old enough to remember the last time the Conservatives were in power and it makes them shudder.
The Lib Dems are a joke, and always have been. They and their predecessor party have not so much as sniffed power in 80 years.
Not necessarily a bad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
On another note completely - what is the over under on how long till this is abused (and they get busted)? I have 3 weeks.
Snoops mining (Score:3, Interesting)
Some software that you should look at (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gnupg.org/ [gnupg.org] - The GNU Privacy Guard
http://getfiregpg.org/ [getfiregpg.org] - FireGPG, "encrypt, decrypt, sign or verify the signature of text in any web page using GnuPG" (untested by me).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3424 [mozilla.org] - another Firefox extension, also untested.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3208 [mozilla.org] - another one that may be useful (untested).
http://www.gpg4win.org/ [gpg4win.org] - something for MS Windows
Remember folks, even if you aren't in the UK, this still affects you! If you communicate with people in the UK, if you have email based in the UK (I have a Yahoo.co.uk email address, in addition to my 50 other email addresses...), etc. ...
It is as simple as installing Firefox, installing GNUPG, and installing that extension that lets you encrypt text fields when you are emailing...
And don't forget TrueCrypt http://truecrypt.org/ [truecrypt.org] though it isn't strictly relevant in this case, it is always relevant.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are we surprised? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Conservatives have criticised the idea, with the Shadow Home Secretary saying, 'yet again the Government has proved itself unable to resist the temptation to take a power quite properly designed to combat terrorism to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.'"
The USA already did that, just not on the same scale.
If a law doesn't say "only to be used for purpose X" then assume it will be *(ab)used as widely as possible.
*is it really abuse if the law isn't limited in its breadth?
The opposition say... (Score:5, Insightful)
An of course, once they are in power, they will stop the data logging? - or will they conveniently forget and keep it going?
They've tried this before (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if such a plan were possible as the one proposed it would run into massive opposition, not just from the other two parties but from ISPs, phone companies et al. With Labour as weak politically as they are now I hope this one will be a dead duck.
Bear in mind as well that these documents always over egg the pudding so that some areas can be dropped as concessions. Nevertheless I'll be writing to my old MP laying out the reasons why this is a stunningly bad idea.
How screwed are we.... (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF UK? (Score:4, Insightful)
What the hell is up with the UK Government that they constantly are all about shitting all over peoples' rights to privacy (perceived or otherwise)? It's like every few months there's some new story about the insane ideas they've come up with most recently about how to become as Orwellian as possible or something. These tards of narrow perspective need to take a step back and stop making national unilateral decisions (or proposals) based on their power-centric views that are endlessly apathetic/indifferent towards the thoughts and feelings of "the people". Even though I single out the UK government here because it's on-topic to the story, this seems to be a trend that's just about constant with the so-called "civilized world". I can see it doing no more than alienating the crap out of the general populous.
Proposes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or just wants to admit its already happening by making it 'legit'.
My taxes pay for this crap (Score:4, Insightful)
What disturbs me about this is that it's my taxes that pay for this crap. I'd prefer them to spend it on something that's worthwhile, something that may be to my benefit - like roads, sewers, hospitals and ambulances. Instead Gorden Scunner Broon and his unelectable cretins (aka MPs) do this in the name of "National Security". This won't make an iota of a difference to national security.
They're also proposing to give us all biometric ID cards to improve national security. Sorry I meant force us to pay nearly a hundred quid each for a Gov't issued piece of useless plastic. That won't make an iota of a difference either.
They'll have a national database with stuff about each one of us. That won't make an iota of a difference for national security. It'll just be another expensive white elephant and another opportunity for them to lose a couple of CD-ROMs in the post.
I won't vote for Broon. I'll be voting for anyone other than Broon and his cronies. I won't have an ID card. I don't want email snooping.
Camera's on Cops (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure they want to spy on us, but what happens when you put a camera on police and record there actions? They don't like *that* very much do they.. people who *do* record the police often find themselves arrested for --insert bogus reason here-- and their camera blank when they get out of jail in a few hours with no charges filed against them.
If the state can record and monitor the actions of the people, but the people are unable to monitor and record the actions of the state.. then who exactly is master of whom?
Not much to worry about... (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering all the stories you hear of UK government IT projects going massively over budget, failing in spectacular ways, and often getting canned completely, i seriously doubt they will be capable of constructing a system capable of doing this that actually works.
Re:ISP Tape Storage (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?
I mean, obviously you'd want to avoid getting the public's data that the government is recording, otherwise they'd probably record you recording their records, and the feed back loop would cause BT workers to commit sepuku. On the other hand, would that be a bad thing?
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Re:ISP Tape Storage (Score:4, Interesting)
"I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?"
This will include an awful lot of banking data. The most interesting banking data is doubtless that connected to gov't officials. ;)
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Re:The nature of Power Seeking... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was born in the UK and moved to the USA in '95. One of the reasons I do not wish to move back is because of this type of thing. They already have cameras everywhere, and can track you in your car from one end of the country to the other.
When I talk to people in the UK about this, they almost always shrug their shoulders and say that you shouldn't speed, although they do think that it's getting out of hand.
I'm not sure how the people will stop this, as it looks like the Labour party has gone nuts, and an election is years away.
I'm still proud to be British; I'm just glad I'm not living there right now.
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Re:Open source it (Score:5, Insightful)
To make any significant change to the deeper power structures of any large government you need a revolution. People in positions of global scale aren't going to give up that power just because you have a lot of signatures on a petition. You cannot vote high ranking bureaucrats and lobbyists out of power. But for ordinary citizens to attempt to use force to uproot those currently in positions of power would require them to be "terrorists" (gasp!) The only way to take down a large modern government without warfare is to wait for it to collapse under it's own bloated weight like the USSR did.
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Re:Open source it (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the State and Federal governments are really gonna respect that. There are two scenarios that could realistically happen, One is the perpetual ineffectuallity of something like The Second Vermont Republic. [csmonitor.com] Where it is just ignored until it becomes a joke, or you get The Montana Freemen, where a belief in individual sovereignty is repudiated by Federal Agents with big guns and armored vehicles, while any valid claims for secession are ignored by the media in favor of painting you as nutjobs. You don't actually think that government owned voting machines are ever going to show a vote in favor of secession or major government restructuring do you ?
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Re:Nothing to hide == nothing to fear (Score:5, Insightful)
So you don't mind me watching you have sex (wait an anonymous coward posting shit on Slashdot, you don't have sex)? Masturbate? Bathe? Shit?
How about we set you up in a glass cage for a week in the middle of (say) Times Square?
Or, how about you read this article http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 [ssrn.com] linked to by another Slashdotter at one time. You have to register to download it, but a fake email address works just as well.
But more to the point, you have got something to hide, everybody does. Who hasn't broken the law at one stage or another? Speeding? Jaywalked? Partaken of some illicit substance? Blasphemed? (You know why Mary was a virgin? She only had anal sex.) You get the idea, everyone is guilty of something, and that means everyone has something to hide from the government.
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Re:I Hate British People (Score:5, Funny)
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