UK Gov't Proposes Massive Internet Snooping, Data Storage 342
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.'"
encryption (Score:5, 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.
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.
No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
The eternal optimist in me feels some will see this as a step too far.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let Them Try (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to hide == nothing to fear (Score:1, Insightful)
what's the fuss about? if you've got nothing to hide, them you've got nothing to fear.
oh, as a side-point, this legislation is now required due to an EU directive and I noticed that the entire EU commission have made themselves exempt from any such troublesome monitoring.
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?
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.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
How screwed are we.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
To those who say this doesn't affect the innocent (Score:1, Insightful)
The government doesn't need to look at all this data for it to be a bad thing. What if you decide to speak against the local government or complain about the local police force? Don't bother trying to be anonymous because they already have enough logs to find you. Then they can either make you life hell by accidentally leaking information or simply by arresting you. I'm sure they can find probably cause inside all that data for you committing a dozen crimes and they don't need to find you guilty to make your life hell (ie: confiscate all your computers, return them 10 years later, etc.). Maybe you just went to the wrong website and are not being charge with pedophilia? If you're likely in a decade once you've had your reputation, job, personal life and so on ruined they'll drop the charges.
Governments are run by humans and humans are greedy, sadistic, selfish bastards who think they're always right. The more power they have the more power they can abuse and many of them will abuse it. They'll probably think they're doing it for the greater good and by some arguments they'd be right.
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.
Re:Another good reason to encrypt your data. (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
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.
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.
Re:encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I used to feel sorry for Britain (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.
Re:ISP Tape Storage (Score:1, Insightful)
They'd probably just arrest you as a terrorist.
Re:Some software that you should look at (Score:3, Insightful)
Proposes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or just wants to admit its already happening by making it 'legit'.
Wait every Email? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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 ?
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?
I can't recall where I read it... (Score:3, Insightful)
If this goes through, it will not take very long at all before the data is being used, whether by an authorized user or otherwise, for any or all of the following:
Slippery slope and all that. This one should die.
Re:I used to feel sorry for Britain (Score:1, Insightful)
New Labour are not left wing. They are almost as right-wing as the Conservatives these days.
See the Political Compass [politicalcompass.org].
Re:Some software that you should look at (Score:3, Insightful)
While i agree 100%, and *we* will do it, the problem is the other end. Unless encryption is turned on by default, and installed automatically the average joe will not be doing it, and with 1/2 the link unencrypted its completely open in effect.
Full disk encryption should be standard as well.
This isn't just the UK, remember most governments are already snooping.
Re:WTF UK? (Score:2, Insightful)
Assuming you're American, the key difference between your government and the UK's is that when the UK government does this kind of crap, the media and political opposition actually A) notice, and B) complain, so it makes the news.
Re:encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless the drive manufacturers are doing something way, way outside the spec, S.M.A.R.T. monitoring does not record any such access pattern statistics. It merely records a total read count for the entire device, total error counts for the entire device, etc.
At best, you could obtain the block remapping information and prove that any block that was remapped must have been written to at least once over the lifetime of the device. You could not prove that the remapping was not done during the factory burn-in period, though, AFAIK, nor could you show that the block was in active use.
Now if they stick a packet sniffer on your ATA bus, maybe you could get access pattern data. Then again, if they can do that, they can also likely recover the key, put a password sniffer on your keyboard, etc.
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.
Re:encryption (Score:2, Insightful)
*shrug* I read an article on it a few weeks back, had a look and couldnt find it again.
Still, it only takes a tiny amount of evidence your hidden partition exists for people to find out about it. Temp files refering to the X drive? Prefetch data? Non-zeroed swap? Shit that the logical disk manager leaves lying around?
And thats assuming the people asking for the hidden partiion are the "good" guys. It'd be a real clusterfuck if the "bad" guys decided that you might have a hidden partition that you don't. Rubber hose cryptanalysis that can only be stopped by divulging a password you don't have :P
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:Open source it (Score:3, Insightful)
"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."
Um, this "petition" happens every few years, it's called an election.
"To make any significant change to the deeper power structures of any large government you need a revolution."
"deeper power structures"? What on earth is a "deeper power structure"? Actual real-life, quantitative, examples please; not wishy-washy existential rubbish like such phrases usually represent.
The nature of Power Seeking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Its an interesting idea, but it would never be allowed to happen, as the people in power make the laws and so they will always create new laws to keep covering up what they do. They would cover it up by implying it was to protect the country, but it would actually be protecting people in power, from being removed from power by other people who seek power. People in power are power seekers who constantly seek more power and so more importantly, they also fear any loss of power. Its their fear of the loss of power which drives them to constantly close off ways in which they can be undermined by other power seekers.
The people who want power don't want an open and equal world. They don't want equality at all. They want to be higher up than others. They want to be the centre of attention. They want more money than others. They want more power than others and that power allows them to make the rules and laws by which everyone has to work. Throughout history the rules have been biased in the favour of the people in power and that will never change. So the idea of a totally open world is a scifi only utopian world, that cannot ever exist in a world that has some people who also seek power and that will never change. Plus these people who seek power ultimately make the rules, so they will not allow it to go that far, where everyone becomes equal.
What I find fascinating about this news, is how open they are becoming, about their goal of creating literally a total Big Brother police state. Its when they said this
The problem is, they make the laws and so they decide what is a crime. They are behaving with incredible self-righteousness. They always have this attitude of "trust us, we are only trying to help". What the fools constantly fail to see, is that they can ignorantly ignore the harm they are doing to groups of people, as they close mindedly seek to do various new things. (Like e.g. destroy a village of peoples homes to make a new runway). Yet in Big Brother police state, like they want to create, any attempt to speak out and so stop them doing what they are doing, will be see and labelled as a crime by them, as they are already doing with the protest law changes. There will be no way to stop them being unfairly to groups of people, in a world that automatically builds up a profile of ever persons attitudes over the course of their life.
The argument that's often used against this idea that they would bother to build up a profile of people is based on the idea that individuals are too unimportant for the people in power to want to record and profile them. While its true the people in power don't see most individuals as that important at all, what the people in power actually fear is large numbers of people moving together and against the ones in power. Its groups of people forming is what people in power fear and they always have throughout history. This is why people in power want to profile everyone to workout which groups of people can move against them. Power seekers fear groups of people moving against them, to block their ideas and stand against them and all large countries are governed by groups of power seekers using the same methodology. Its a methodology underlying all political systems, because its driven by the the underlying psychology of the the people who seek power.
So the idea of using the same Big Brother monitoring methodology against a government, to stop it behaving unfairly isn't ever going to work, as the people in power will simply keep changing the laws to keep protecting themselves and outlawing any attempt to monitor the government (For example, its
Re:encryption (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
What are they going to do once they have the gun to your head? Pull the trigger? That's when the real revolution begins. People will only accept so much.
In China they did and still do exactly this. You're causing minor annoyances, you're condemned to 20 years of torture at a political prison. You continue being annoying, they shot your neck (100% guaranteed to kill), then bill your family for the execution costs.
Listen, most people aren't revolutionaries. They only want to go along with their lives. Revolutions don't happen when "the people" rise. Revolutions happen when "a group" intent in taking power rise. Sure, "the people" in general must be willing to accept the new government, or at least not mind the revolutionaries, what usually happens if the current institutions aren't popular and the revolutionaries show they can hold ground and enforce their way.
But "not minding" is the most normal people will ever do. There's no point fantasizing it'll ever be different. It won't.