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Every Email In UK To Be Monitored
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:08 PM
from the what-are-you-writing dept.
from the what-are-you-writing dept.
ericcantona writes "The Communications Data Bill (2008) will lead to the creation of a single, centralized database containing records of all e-mails sent, websites visited and mobile phones used by UK citizens. In a carnivore-on-steroids programme, as all vestiges of communication privacy are stripped away, The BBC reports that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says this is a 'necessity.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Mobile: Passport Required To Buy Mobile Phones In the UK 388 comments
David Gerard points out a Times Online story that says:
"Everyone [in the UK] who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society. A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say."
We've recently discussed other methods the UK government is using to keep track of people within its borders, such as ID cards for foreigners and comprehensive email surveillance.
[+]
UK Outlines Plan For Internet Black Boxes 419 comments
RobotsDinner writes "In what sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot, the Home Office has made public plans to outfit the country's Internet with upstream data recorders to log pretty much everything that passes through. 'Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database. The vision was outlined at a meeting between officials from the Home Office and Internet Service Providers earlier this week.'"
[+]
UK Email Retention Plan Technically Flawed 115 comments
deltaromeo points out a BBC report calling the UK's law requiring ISPs to retain users' emails for at least a year an "attack on rights." The article also points out financial and technical flaws with the plan (which we first discussed in October). TechCrunch goes a step further, detailing how it conflicts with other governmental goals. Quoting:
"...with one hand the government seeks to lock down the British Internet with an iron fist, while at the same time telling us it is boosting innovation and business online. It is quite clearly blind to the fact that one affects the other. Are we also expected to think that the consumers using online services are not going to be put off from engaging in the boom of 'sharing' that Web 2.0 created? How would you feel if every Twitter you sent, every video uploaded, was to be stored and held against you in perpetuity? That may not happen, but the mere suggestion that your email is no longer private would serve to kill the UK population's relish for new media stone dead, and with it large swathes of the developing online economy."
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That's it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm out of here!
Fuck the UK!
Re:That's it (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:That's it (Score:5, Insightful)
They had representation then, too, just not for the colonies. Seriously, what do you think the Americans were wanting representation in, anyway, if not Parliament?
On a side note, to what degree do your elected representatives represent you personally? I think the tree of liberty could use some refreshment on both sides of the Atlantic...
Parent
Re:That's it (Score:5, Insightful)
On a side note, to what degree do your elected representatives represent you personally?
Well, given that I live in California, for my senator anyway, I am represented as 1 out of about 18 million. How much representation do you expect a single citizen to get?
There are a few ways to power, one is by paying money to your representative, which is good if you have money, but annoys people who don't have money.
Another way is to convince other people to agree with you. This is a much stronger power, because as a democracy, the government tends to follow the will of the people.
A good example of this in action is the FCC: do you want to know why they act so strongly against nudity? Because a small minority of people with very strong opinions engage in constant letter writing campaigns to our government, and to the FCC to try to keep pornography off the air.
If you have neither money nor the capability to inspire people, then enjoy your 1 in 18 million representation.
Parent
Re:That's it (Score:5, Interesting)
One good campaign to try and fix some of that is http://thirty-thousand.org/ [thirty-thousand.org] , where they want to have 1 member of the house for at most every 30,000 people. Considering the House hasn't been expanded since 1910 aside from Hawaii and Alaska, it has been very distorted from what it should be.
Parent
Re:That's it (Score:5, Insightful)
And you think they give a flying FUCK what you think?
Yeap. I think they give about a one in 200 million of a flying fuck what I think. Which isn't much. But it is something. And if enough of us get together, he will start caring, because if he doesn't, he will get voted out in favor of someone who at least acts like they care.
I mean, this is how it works, it's a democracy. Why do you think the two parties are so similar? It's because both of them are trying to appeal to as many people as possible. When enough people want something, it will happen, one way or another.
Parent
Re:That's it (Score:5, Insightful)
When enough people want something, it will happen, one way or another.
No, that's still wishful thinking. When enough people want something, it causes politicians to make themselves busy pretending to fix things. They then turn around and either claim to have fixed things, or that they made a sincere effort.
Real immigration reform? Social Security? Healthcare? (Which is broken, but I don't want it socialized and broken further)
Parent
Re:That's it (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck the US!
No, fuck the THEM!
Parent
Re:That's it (Score:5, Funny)
Me too. Big hair, spandex and uncomfortable rashes. At least Madonna was still a hottie, though.
Parent
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotcha! (Score:5, Funny)
If you're using snail-mail you must have something to hide!
Parent
Re:Gotcha! (Score:5, Funny)
That you can't use a computer?
Parent
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
It really disturbs me that the plots in various movies, video games, and books that would have been considered "out there" or "couldn't happen" are gradually becoming true.
Obvious ones (which I've mentioned in a related post a few weeks ago): V for Vendetta and 1984.
Disturbingly accurate: Mirror's Edge. From the Mirror's Edge Wikipedia Article: [wikipedia.org]
The game's name derives from the mirror-like aesthetic of the city of tall, gleaming skyscrapers and Faith's existence on the fringes of that city along with other dissidents, who have been pushed to the edge.
Though set in a seemingly utopian city environment with low crime, clean streets, and sterile architecture, it is ruled by a totalitarian government regime that conducts unbridled levels of surveillance on citizens. [emphasis added.] In this world of communications monitoring, the only way to deliver confidential information between parties is to employ couriers (called runners) to physically deliver the information.
Granted, it's more likely that drivers, bicycle messengers, etc. would be used in our current era, but I imagine even vehicles will eventually be surveilled and controlled. "We need to be able to watch people in their cars so we know they're driving safely." "We need to be able to remotely shut off cars in case it is stolen or if someone is driving drunk." etc.
I wonder how they'd handle couriers delivering information to circumvent this system.
tl;dr: cute Asian mailwomen will backflip off of walls to get your letter to grandma.
Parent
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Unbelievable (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the cameras were bad enough, but this goes far, far beyond anything remotely reasonable. If they do this, they should have no problem listening to every phone call, opening up every piece of mail and package. In fact, they should just put microphones in every house, restaurant, bus and automobile.
Next year, they'll want to plant RFID into every person.
Is the UK government and authorities completely without morales? Or are they this > close to being destroyed by some threat? Or are they incompetent? Or all of the above?
Re:Unbelievable (Score:5, Insightful)
If they do this, they should have no problem listening to every phone call, opening up every piece of mail and package. In fact, they should just put microphones in every house, restaurant, bus and automobile.
Don't forget the telescreens, not just cameras. The UK is part of Oceania, ya know.
Parent
Re:Unbelievable (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA has 300 million people (5 times the UK population), which changes the dynamics somewhat.
It doesn't seem to me it changes the dynamics at all. Merely the scale.
If it can be done in China [rollingstone.com] it can certainly be done in the US.
Parent
Morales no longer employed by UK (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Is the UK government and authorities completely without morales?
A: Lead Programmer Jose Morales left the program recently for a position at Yahoo China. Many pundits claim that without him the implementation of the Communications Data Bill will fail as no one can read his code and his commenting mostly consisted of rambling diatribes against the IMF.
Parent
Re:Unbelievable (Score:5, Funny)
Completely. And I won't hesitate to mention that if you think a Mexican could break into politics in the UK, you're raving mad.
Parent
PGP... (Score:5, Informative)
PGP.
Re:PGP... (Score:5, Interesting)
GPG plugins for Mail.app and Thunderbird are at the point now that it's basically set it and forget it, come on folks. (I don't so much like the GPG Outlook plugins, but maybe I haven't messed with it enough)
Parent
Re:PGP... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography [wikipedia.org]
This may be the future. I imagine a mix of clever computer algorithms and understood slang will be necessary to secure messages: Look and act like a dumb slob, all the while getting your message across.
Parent
This article is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
This is quite misleading. According to the linked article, the program will only log traffic information, not message content. This may not be good, but it is a far cry from stripping away "all vestiges of communication privacy", and it means that it is not comparable to Carnivore, which actually would log message content.
It's a slippery slope... (Score:5, Insightful)
How long before somebody thinks it's "necessary" to see the content as well?
Parent
Re:This article is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
It can also be the case that, for cultural, demographic, or in some cases merely contingent, reasons, some institutions have much stronger and more stable institutional cultures than others. The role of the army in Turkish government is an interesting example. I would suspect that the Lords have some of that going as well. I suspect that undergoing a sleazy, poll-driven, media circus every so often in order to keep your position tends to dent your sense of tradition pretty sharply.
The US Senate is arguably supposed to have some of these characteristics(hence 6 year terms, rather than 2 years, as in the house); but the effect appears to have been limited. The judiciary is probably the closest thing to this phenomenon in American governance. It is hardly perfect; but it has some of the same (relative) resistance to popular hysteria, persecution fads, and "OMGNOVELCRISISOFASORTNEVERBEFORESEEN" style claims.
Parent
Forcible decryption (Score:5, Informative)
Made worse by UK statute giving the police the authority to order the disclosure of encryption keys or the decryption of encrypted data.
Yay fifth amendment and subsequent interpretations equating disclosing cipher keys with self-incrimination!
Re:Forcible decryption (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no "fifth amendment" in the UK.
Which happens to be why there is one in the US.
Parent
This makes me proud to be an American. (Score:5, Funny)
Joe the Plumber is laughing his ass off at you Brits.
Who can view this database? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this database were publicly accessible, and could be used by anyone to monitor the communications of anyone (like in David Brin's The Transparent Society [wikipedia.org]) then I might not object to this sort of system. It could just as easily be used by the people to find government corruption as it could be used by the government to prosecute individuals.
However, if the database could be used only by a few to monitor anyone, then this is clearly incompatible with the concept of a free country.
Movie quote. (Score:5, Insightful)
"People should not be afraid of their government, instead a government should be afraid of its people."
Look for the key words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Orwellian down to the doublespeak:
There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the phone or online.
Translation: We might build one now, we might build one later. We might already be building one, just without a plan.
See? No lies, just no plans!
Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation.
In other words: There's going to be a database, but only available to those sufficiently high up in the government. Not to local authorities. What a relief!
If you think I'm being too harsh, read again. If there's not going to be such a database, why would she go on to talk about who should have or not have access to such a database?
Some of the commentary on the speech is at least as disturbing as the speech itself:
The raw idea of simply handing over all this information to any government, however benign, and sticking it in an electronic warehouse is an awful idea if there are not very strict controls about it.
How'd you fall this far, Britain?
So, to translate: It's actually a fine idea, so long as there are sufficiently strict controls. I wonder who gets to decide how strict those controls should be.
And who controls the controllers, so to speak?
More of the same:
The government must present convincing justification for such an exponential increase in the powers of the state.
Again: A giant database of every email ever sent, from now till forever, in Britain, is alright so long as there's sufficient justification.
At least someone has the balls to take a stand:
These proposals are incompatible with a free country and a free people.
Amen.
You have suggested... (Score:5, Funny)
Your post advocates a
(*) technical (*) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting terrorism. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from dictatorship to dictatorship before a bad federal law was passed.)
(*) Terrorists can easily encrypt their email
( ) Other legitimate email users would be affected
( ) It will stop terrorists for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
[...] anybody feeling ambitious? :)
There's a BBC show about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, apparently some people in the UK care enough to get the word out. These tools are being entrusted to people who don't get it.
It's like giving a nuclear-powered car filled with laser-armed sharks to your local branch of Neo-Nazis. (Sorry, had to get the triple analogy in there)
From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ... promised that the content of conversations would not be stored, just times and dates of messages and calls.
I don't trust her any farther than I could throw her, but even if I did, promises mean jack squat. Even if she happens to be the most honest, unabusive
person that exists, there will be someone that abuses this.
That's why the American Founding Fathers had it straight on. If men were angels, there would be no need for government. If angels governed men, there would be no issue.
But since men govern men, this fact must be acknowledged, and governments given as little power as possible over people.
Bankrupt them ! Problem solved. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have each person send everyone on the list a 1GB non-compressible, encrypted message titled "Iraq Iran Afghanistan Islam and North Korea"
This would generate 250TB of data per day that they would need to store.
In a month this would create more than 7 Petabytes of data to warehouse,
which is physically impossible with current technology.
So in short, 500 determined people could bring this system to it's knees in less than a month.
So what about me? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a Dual US/UK National. Will these new wiretaps be incompatible with the preexisting NSA taps on My AT&T Cell phone?
crossing the authoritarian line (Score:5, Funny)
Hot Button Checklist (Score:5, Interesting)
Terrorism? Check.
Protecting Children/Child Pornography? Check.
Looks like it's got everything that would be needed to pass it were it introduced here in the US. Plus, it has Murder and Drugs as bonuses. (And before someone misreads my post, yes I know this is happening in the UK.)
Of course not. You can trust the highly trustworthy, never corrupt Federal government to keep the corrupt local government's fingers out of that database and to never misuse that database itself. Suuuuure.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is fucking amazing.
Not only does the UK have the most extensive network of CCTV surveillance of its citizens of any country in the world, now every single electronic means of communication will be monitored, intercepted and stored for an in-definite period, with access granted to an unspecified range of bureaucrats and snoops.
WTF for? What evidence is there that this kind of massive untargetted domestic spy effort - against the 99.999% of the population who never commit ANY crimes - can be justified?
It's like fining everyone who uses the freeway just because one or two people might be speeding, or jailing everyone just because one or two people might be murderers.
The UK has NO basis to ever criticize China or any other 3rd world despot or totalitarian state ever again for any abuse of press freedom or censorship or human rights, since now they set the benchmark for over-the-top Govt abuse of power.
As a businessman, I also don't like the idea that if I travel to the UK all my commercial-in-confidence business communications will be recorded by the UK Govt and possibly used to benefit UK companies who may be my competitors. Grrr.
Annoyed (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many people to whom the UK's system is perfectly reasonable.
Earlier tonight, I had an argument tonight with this woman who favors censoring YouTube. It went like this:
Her: I can't believe people put videos of woman being raped up on YouTube. They should stop that.
Me: Well, they'll take them down, and they're usually taken down pretty damn fast.
Her: Thousands of people can see the videos on the meantime. YouTube should screen all videos before putting them up. If they won't do it, they should be forced.
Me: Ugh. That would break YouTube. The expense would be huge. It'd drive YouTube out of business. Would you really rather have no YouTube at all?
Her: Then we'll have the government pay for it, or even set up an agency to review the videos.
Me: The cost to society would still be astronomical. And doing that would provide a very easy avenue for the government to censor anything anyone finds offensive. It's dangerous. If you want to go down that route, why not pass a law stipulating some huge fine for posting videos of rape? Then YouTube will at least be forced to comply on its own.
Her, crying by this point: I don't care. Fines aren't good enough. People might still see the videos. We have to filter them all.
[cut argument about my supposedly not knowing when to stop debating]
Her: It's not about 'cost to society', it's about protecting women. I'm appalled that you would put not being censored ahead of that. I don't know if I can care about someone who doesn't want to protect women. You should go.
Keep in mind this woman will have a doctorate in less than a year. *sigh*
Human Rights Violation (Score:5, Informative)
Excuse me but:
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as stated by the UN.
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Tie it in to the CCTVs with speakers (Score:5, Funny)
It will be very handy to be strolling down the street and have a helpful government man spot you and say "You've got mail".
Re:Police state bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
yes they can. theyve locked up the liquid bombers for exactly that sort of thing. conspiring to commit murder.
Parent
Re:Police state bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's dumb as a box of hair. Better to say:
Hey, dude. You looked the BOMB when I saw you at the STATION. Hope you look the BOMB when I see you at 11:17am at King Cross. Don't forget to bring your BOMB the Bass CD. Then OSAMA will pick us up and GUN the engine of his car and take us through LONDON as we BOMB along the M25.
I'm more concerned about how large the scope of this will be. Once again the here and now is bad enough, but what about in the future?
Parent
Re:Police state bullshit. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Police state bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
Three words for you (and people in the States, as well): "Making terrorist threats".
It's been used on people of all ages and colors. Yes, even kids:
* Middle School Kids have been threatened with being put on the Terrorist Watch List. [wired.com]
* A student was arrested for "Zombie Fiction" because the story was set at a high school. Not *his* high school, mind you, *a* high school. [lex18.com]
* A Chinese student was arrested because he made a map of his school for a video game (probably Counter Strike or a similar FPS) [joystiq.com]
* Two boys were arrested for talking about shooting up their school, probably jokingly. [cumberlink.com]
I miss the days when there were these petty requirements for things like evidence and probable cause.
Parent
Re:Time for a new protocol (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they're only logging origin and recipient. So PGP isn't going to help you.
They claim that's all they're logging. Even if that were the case, it sets a dangerous precedent.
Parent
Re:Time for a new protocol (Score:5, Insightful)
Origin and recipient? So they can tell the 98% of the email that arrives at my inbox that is spam, where the origin and recipient are forged, without looking at the body!?!? Please, share that tech with us, oh great and mighty Police State Overlords.
Parent
Actually: *more* fucked up & don't seem to kno (Score:5, Interesting)
Miss the memo? [eff.org]
Warrantless surveillance of American domestic communications has been going on for years.
Not only has it been comprehensively abused [salon.com] (to exactly nobody's surprise), the spying infrastructure has no legal reason to exist. [salon.com]
That sinister sound you hear is Nixon laughing at you, wearing a Dick Cheney mask.
Parent
Re:I'd like to know, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
that's the truest joke of all... back in the 1980's when they had REAL IRA problems there's no way they would have tolerated such intrusion. When the survivors of German bombing were still alive to remind people what freedom really was. Now they put firecrackers on a few subway cars and it's the end of the world, they need super-spy powers.
Parent