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:5, Interesting)
Sending all that information to the database system is going to generate just as much traffic as spam generates. How on earth are they going to differentiate between spam with forged E-mail addresses and real E-mail, when they won't have access to the actual message contents?
Now more than ever (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this even legal issue? (Score:4, Interesting)
NIMBY! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is brilliant! (Score:1, Interesting)
now the only two armed groups in the Uk are the military and the criminals.
At least the USA take s a long time to go to totalitarian regime. of course we will be a lot more through when it goes. Fortunately there is always the vast canadian wilderness to hide out in.
Re:awesome (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to see us have an Osama Bin ladin day where we burn his effigy to fireworks and general celebration
- and Guy fawkes never actually carried out the gunpowder plot
AND nobody seems to forget the bloody goverment reprisals that have taken place under the guidance of the old Kings and Queens, mostly due to religious differences. here I name but a few:
The rampage of Bloody Bonner during the reign of Queen Mary I
The Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys in the reign of King James II
The repression in Scotland against the highlanders after the first Jacobite rebellions which some historians have called genocide
The Peterloo Massacre in 1819
Have the English forgot all of these thousands of government killings and yet still remember Guy Fawkes who did not manage to kill a single person?
If I were British I would be considerably more afraid of my government than any terrorist.
Re:awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only that, wait 'till someone who wants to move up the ladder starts making up bullshit! It's happened in state-run crime labs before.
Re:Fail (Score:3, Interesting)
1. A totalitarian government spends its money and employs its people to build a Great Firewall. Expenses: $100 million. It Works.
2. A democratic government takes people's money, gives it to a few chosen private contractors to build a monitoring station that can intercept ten million telephone calls a day, and will work for first few hours before its database becomes full. Expenses: $1215 million. It never works. After a year and spending 10x times the budget, the government blames the contractors, the contractors blame the MPs, and the people vote out the party and a new party comes into power. The new party is approached by a private contractor who proposes monitoring emails....
There should be a law which states that for each camera in public, there should be a camera in each MPs house. After all they are public servants!
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do people go on about the vote as if it makes a difference? In China they have had elections for decades and nothing has changed. The party puts forward a few suits to chose between and the people choose a puppet to stand in front of them. In Britain we get to choose between 3 suits and in the US they get to choose between 2... It is a long time since we have been any different to China or Russia.
Russia and China are moving in one direction and becoming more free. The UK and the US are moving in the other direction. Russia has closed its gulags and the US has opened its own...
In a few years we will be different to Russia and China again when they become the representatives or the free world.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:2, Interesting)
Now that I've said that... ehm...
Re:You forgot to mention the sheep.... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Blame Europe" is a game the UK plays well. It's what they do whenever an unpopular law gets passed. Never mind that the UK often voted in favor of these laws in Europe.
The doom scenario "being a puppet of Brussels" is equally absurd. Like the UK is the only country in Europe that would want to keep it's independence. The EU is still mostly a tool that enforces the economy of all members, and it won't become that much more in hurry.
Sure, some EU regulations are bad, but all UK parties use the EU as their number one scapegoat to hide their own flaws. And sadly, playing the victim works.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:1, Interesting)
Five years ago, two million Brits marched through London protesting against the very idea of our government launching an illegal war against Iraq.
We were ignored - they took us to war anyway.
What's more, the people of the UK then voted this government back into power for a third term.
That's when I decided to leave.
You won't get two million protesting against a database, no matter how heinous, because most people don't care about databases, or even understand what they are.
And even if you did, two million people is too small a minority to change anything.
I don't live in the UK any more.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:3, Interesting)
I will admit I was thinking in terms of the anglosphere. Russia obviously took an absolute beating in WWII, although for a long time they were also neutral.
As for the Cold War, well, I didn't say they stood alone in that. But post WWII Britain and the US were the dominant allied powers, with Britain on the wane and the US on the rise.
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:3, Interesting)
"Oh but stop moaning, there are twelve kinds of butter in the supermarket".
Pah, Viz comics bottom inspectors [blogspot.com] are looking more like prophecy every day !
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the UK?! (Score:3, Interesting)
I stopped reading at ...
Ah now that's where you went wrong, you see, being closed minded and being well informed are mutually exclusive. And because you were not informed about the rest of my comment, your make a critique is somewhat lacking in relevance.
Let me fix that for you: "Now that Western imperialist wars on Islamic countries have triggered terrorist responses.."
Had you continued to read, you would have noticed that this was not about "Islamic countries" (which should in any case not exist)*, but about British Muslims, born, bred and living in the UK (which remains for now not an "Islamic country"). Yes they are living there as a result of past imperialism, but about the only imperialist transgression these individuals can complain of that the UK permitted their ancestors to escape the "Islamic countries" they lived in and settle in Britain.
Contrary to what you hear from adults around the playground "Who started it" is very important.
When some religionist fruitcake decides to kill him- or herself and to take out as many innocent bystanders because of his or her delusional adherence to some psychopathic intepretation of any particular "holy" book, (and without so much as the excuse that they are fighting off the invader), it really and truly doesn't matter "who started it." But I guess you would have to be an adult to appreciate that.
*instead there should be countries which, like Turkey, are simply countries which happen to have Islamic people living in them.
Re:awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
The Aussies only complain about us whinging (not whining) if it's about Australia. Knocking Britain is fine
The other thing that's better in Britain is the beer, whatever an Aussie might try to claim otherwise. Which is an interesting point, because at one time, beer looked to be utterly fucked. Thanks to CAMRA you can now find decent beer almost everywhere, so it proves that grass-roots movements can achieve things. So maybe there is hope - Brits just need to start caring about their food, their health and their political representatives as much as they have shown they cared about their beer!
I should think they ought to give me a guest spot on "Grumpy Old Men" at this rate. Which is another bloody thing, reality TV..........