Total Phone and Email Database Proposed In UK 434
mishmash writes "The Times of London is reporting a proposal for a massive government database holding details of all phone calls, emails, and time spent on the Internet. This is to be justified as being 'part of the fight against crime and terrorism.' Quoting: 'Internet service providers and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.' If you want to write to representatives to let them know your views, contact details are available at Write to Them." UK telecoms are already required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months, accessible by subpoena; the requirement is already slated to expand to records of Internet usage, emails, and VoIP. This new proposal aims to centralize all that information in a single database in the Home Office.
Re:Useless information (Score:1, Informative)
Premature? (Score:5, Informative)
While I think Write To Them is a fine service and encourage people to use it more, I can't help but feel this is a little premature. This is just another hare-brained idea by the Home Office that MPs haven't even seen yet. Why don't we wait until they actually have a copy of the bill before bombarding them with complaints about it? Otherwise we run the risk of looking like paranoid kooks for protesting a bill that nobody has read because it doesn't even exist yet.
Re:awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Time to buy stock in storage providers.. (Score:3, Informative)
You can store a phone call in WAY less than 128kbps per second, which is what 1MB/min amounts to.
Re:awesome (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Who exactly is proposing this? (Score:3, Informative)
There's nobody from the Home Office mentioned by name in the article. If you are referring to Jonathan Bamford, the assistant Information Commissioner, then the ICO is an independent public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice. If you are referring to David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, then he is part of the shadow government, i.e. he is the opposition party's counterpart to the Home Secretary.
Re:Premature? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:awesome (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/politics/05labs.html [nytimes.com] Texas.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/17/national/main544209.shtml [cbsnews.com] FBI technician Kathleen Lundy
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:2, Informative)
If I were British I would be considerably more afraid of my government than any terrorist.
Believe me. I am. And when we raise our concerns, they ignore us and do what they want anyway. Learn this, we are no longer a democracy (rule of the majority), we're a totalitarianistic state. The vote is just something they 'allow' us to have because it appeases the masses. And please don't mod this down unless you actually live in the UK. I WISH this were a flamebait or a troll. I really do.
Re:You forgot to mention the sheep.... (Score:5, Informative)
Watching Sky news (one of the two main news stations) earlier today they referred to the data retention law as an EU law, but that isn't entirely correct.
When the UK was president of the EU it brought in Europe wide data retention laws. It was shortly after 7/7 and managed to get enough votes to be passed.
When an EU law is passed the member states implement it in their own way (all member states are required their phone companies / ISP's to log phone / internet data for at least 6 months, some do longer).
So while this is technically an EU law, it was brought into Europe by predominantly by the UK.
Allowing the data to be stored by the government is a new, UK only law.
Re:Time to buy stock in storage providers.. (Score:4, Informative)
If you record the audio in each direction as a different stream, then you get 128Kbps.
Re:awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Association is a guaranteed way of convicting an innocent person.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Six [wikipedia.org]
Re:This is brilliant! (Score:2, Informative)
Their laws seem to do a pretty good job overall:
"The statistics tell us that there are roughly 1.35 gun related homicides per million in the UK and roughly 37.3 per million in the US. This would suggest that you are around 27 times more likely to be killed by a gun in the US."
http://www.scribes-write.co.uk/article/20040421134346697.html
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
They have a clip of Tony Blair saying that he knows a whole class of people who will grow up to be be criminals and ought to be registered as such *pre-birth*.
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:3, Informative)
And they wonder why voter turnout in Canada (and the UK, incidentally) has been sliding for years...
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:2, Informative)
According to Privacy International, Australia's slight worse off than Scotland but a lot better than England and Wales, luckily we keep our own law system when we invited England into the union.
The UK government seems to implementing anything they think they can get away with, CCTV with speakers attached, lamp posts with hidden CCTV and flying CCTV (like the things from HL2).
With all that in mind it has become absolutely imperative that Scotland gains its independence in the 2010 referendum, without that, I worry that we will be heading down the tubes with the rest of the 'UK'.
For those that debate how bad things actually are then the 'Taking Liberties' documentary (as mentioned above) shows how every basic human right has been violated by the Labour government in the last 10 years.
It's time....
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:1, Informative)
The powers that be are not without a sense of humor. The Englightenment was fun while it lasted. It sucks just as hard in the USSA, and our rulers don't even have the same sense of humor as yours.
But if it's any consolation, neither is Anonymous. (Insert plug for Operation Sea Arrrrgh, June Just Google It, 2008. More Guy Fawkes masks than you can shake a stick at. We're warming up on nutball UFO cults. Who knows where we'll end up? Maybe Airstrip One helps free the USSA in the 2010s, and we finally pay back the debt we owe you Yanks from WW2.)
Last Heard: Birmingham 6, Birmingham 6, and I'm digging it even though I was brought up as Orange as they come.
Now Playing: Front Line Assembly, Victim of A Criminal
Next in Queue: KMFDM, DIY
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget they have actually had a number of terror related incidents... more than one the US has had.
How many incidents do you think it would take to get the US on this track? (Keep in mind we've already got surveillance in NY where 9/11 hit hardest)
We love to think we're so brave and treasure our liberty above our security, but human nature is human nature. I'd say we'd cave similarly quickly in the same position...
* 2000 1 June: Bomb explodes on Hammersmith Bridge
* 2000 20 September: RPG attack SIS Building
* 2001 4 March: A car bomb explodes outside the BBC's main news centre in London.
* 2001 16 April: Hendon post office bombed
* 2001 6 May: The Real IRA detonate a bomb in a London postal sorting office.
* 2001, 3 August: The last Real IRA bomb in Britain explodes in Ealing, West London, injuring seven people.
* 2001, 4 November: Car bomb explodes in Birmingham
* 2005 7 July: The 7 July 2005 London bombings conducted by four separate suicide bombers, killing 56 people and injuring 700.
* 2007 January - February: The 2007 United Kingdom letter bombs
* 2007 30 June: 2007 Glasgow International Airport attack
source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_the_United_Kingdom (modified slightly for brevity's sake)
(This is just 2000-present. IRA bombs kill just as well as Al-Qaeda)
Re:awesome (Score:3, Informative)
4 (1)...
(2)If any person with the appropriate permission under Schedule 2 believes, on reasonable grounds --
(a)that a key to the protected information is in the possession of any person,
(b)that the imposition of a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information is--
(i)necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3), or
(ii)necessary for the purpose of securing the effective exercise or proper performance by any public authority of any statutory power or statutory duty,
(c)that the imposition of such a requirement is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by its imposition, and
(d)that it is not reasonably practicable for the person with the appropriate permission to obtain possession of the protected information in an intelligible form without the giving of a notice under this section,the person with that permission may, by notice to the person whom he believes to have possession of the key, impose a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
Completely incorrect. If you are even arrested for a "recordable offence" (which most are) your DNA can be taken, and kept even if you aren't charged, (or even if the arrest was completely baseless). The only place where it is automatically destroyed is in Scotland, which is may be what you are thinking of.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:4, Informative)
Huh! I wish! I was born in what was, at the time, a self-governing colony of Great Britain [wikipedia.org]. A couple of years later, it became independent of Great Britain [wikipedia.org] (the only significant change was that the government was appointed directly by the Queen on the advice of the the Victorian Premier, instead of on the advice of the British Foreign Office). However, neither before "independence" (Victoria of course remains a state of Australia, so it's not independent, merely independent of Great Britain), nor after it, was I entitled to a British passport.
And even of the former British colonies which have become practically independent of the United Kingdom more recently than my country, most people don't have access to a British passport.
And even of the present British colonies, or people who did whatever was necessary to retain a British passport in former British colonies, the mere possession of a British passport does not grant you right of abode in Britain. You need to have British Citizenship for that i.e. an association with Great Britain proper --- not just an association with a British colony.
France, on the other hand, is much more like you describe. You should check it out if you want scary weirdness.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
Mods really are on crack today, or else don't know *anything* about the UK. (Or possibly the original poster is Melanie Phillips.)
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:3, Informative)
2000 - a couple of incidents, neither serious nor fatal.
2001 - a cluster of 'Real IRA' incidents - again, none fatal.
Then a gap of 4 years, until a small group of misguided Islamists actually manage to get it together to cause mayhem - bad, but only about a weeks worth of road deaths in the UK.
Then another gap of two years, and two unrelated incidents - the Glasgow attack was particularly inept and risible, the letter bombs were the work of a nutter rather than organised terrorism.
I live here, and my parents were a couple of hundred yards away from the Arndale Centre truck bomb when it went off, and I'm not worried about terrorism at all.
I am, however, worried about the authoritarian tendencies of Neues Arbeit and the complicity of their friends in the media.
Re:This is brilliant! (Score:4, Informative)
Laws don't stop crime, but perhaps you should actually go and look up some statistics on per-capita gun crime in various countries, then decide whether or not the UK has a real problem with it?
We also do not have cameras everywhere - I can't think of a single one in the area of London that I live in. Yes, the centres of the cities and large towns have a lot of cameras, and yes I'm somewhat ambivalent about that, but no they are not "everywhere".
now the only two armed groups in the Uk are the military and the criminals
And the police, and the secret services, and a large number of farmers and other such people who own licensed firearms...
Re:You forgot to mention the sheep.... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sounds Like A Reasonable Proposal (Score:2, Informative)
First - convert to Islam:
Second - enforce Islamic morality, replace the Constitution with Sharia, and eliminate the separation of church and state.
If Israel were to disappear tomorrow and all UK troops were brought home it would have no effect because the United Kingdom is not an Islamic state subservient to the Caliphate.
Fight back! (Score:3, Informative)
NO2ID [no2id.net] is the main campaign opposing mass surveillance. We are the fastest growing campaign in the country, are very well organised and have driven most of the bad press these Big Brother plans have received.
But we are short on people (and money). So register your support. There is no obligation and how many opportunities do you get to save your country?
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:2, Informative)
First of all, there are armed police in the UK. Granted, most police don't carry guns, but there are specific armed units, as well as regular officers who are authorized to carry firearms. And, it's not like they have never used them improperly. There's an interesting list of police shootings on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Controversial_shootings [wikipedia.org].
Secondly, where do you get your information on police having guns drawn and trained on people at all times? I live in Detroit. Arguably the most dangerous city in the US. I was a student at Michigan State University during the riots in the late 90s. I often pass 4+ cop cars on the way to work, an 11 mile drive (almost 18 km). I have *never* seen a police officer with their gun drawn. Never.
Your post should not be modded Insightful. You, sir, are a troll. I would mod you myself, but I felt it necessary to respond to the post, rather than modding you as you should be.