Jack Spine writes "The UK government, which is becoming increasingly Orwellian, has said that it is considering snooping on all social networking traffic including Facebook, MySpace, and bebo. This supposedly anti-terrorist measure may be proposed as part of the Intercept Modernisation Programme according to minister Vernon Coaker, and is exactly the sort of deep packet inspection web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee warned about last week. The measure would get around the inconvenience for the government of not being able to snoop on all UK web traffic."
What if Facebook and other sites enforced encryption? Sure, it would slow things down and increase their cost, but if they did, it would be "chic" to encrypt, and a generation of users would start demanding end-to-end encryption everywhere.
Hell, what if they just offered encryption? To be fair, it would cost facebook a not-inconsequential amount of CPU time (with repercussions for power consumption and heat production) to implement, even if they needed no additional hardware (heh heh)
They'd have to go for hardware encryption/decryption.
What kind of scale? I said offer it. It's not clear what percentage of facebook's membership would use https:/// [https] if they didn't offer any links and you had to alter the URL manually (oh, the humanity!) If their front-end servers had CPU to spare (e.g. the front-end was I/O bound) they might be able to serve the actual demand without any additional hardware.
What's the point of encrypting data that you are uploading to a social networking site for public consumption? And how effective would it really be at keeping the Government out anyway? What's to stop them getting a subpoena to pull the data directly off Facebook's servers?
Content on Facebook (and any other social networking site with privacy controls) isn't for public consumption - it's for consumption by those whom you've marked as friends.
Encryption would prevent packet sniffing, and as Facebook is owned and operated in the US, I don't see how the UK government could subpoena the data successfully*. That whole jurisdiction thing - ya know.
*Unless they have servers located in the UK. With 200m or so users, they probably do Of course, Facebook could just threaten to block UK users, posting the contact info of various government officials so you can complain to them for forcing FB into such a situation. Facebook is easily large enough for that kind of stunt to actually work.
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday March 18 2009, @03:10PM (#27246711)
Content on Facebook (and any other social networking site with privacy controls) isn't for public consumption
At a job interview (relatively high clearance required) my potential employer presented me with, among other things, questions about blog posts I had written. The odd thing? I never mentioned the account and I had never published any articles from it. They were just sitting on a well-known company's server in draft mode.
People have no idea how much is being collected and how many companies have been compromised, knowingly or not.
Facebook already does offer encryption - https://www.facebook.com/ [facebook.com]. Sure, not everything works 100% perfectly, and it sometimes reverts to plain http, but with the use of enforced https through NoScript in Firefox, 98% of the stuff on Facebook can be made to work reliably over HTTPS.
"Sure, it would slow things down and increase their cost, but if they did, it would be "chic" to encrypt"
From what I can tell, kids hate pretty much every change facebook ever makes. Sure, it's uncool to not use facebook nowadays, but loving everything about facebook is probably even less cool. Everyone knows it's a site run by suits.
The U.K. snooping is probably going to be done with Facebook's support, knowledge, and help...
Possibly. If not, it probably won't take much pressure to make them cave in. They'll be shamed into doing it by a claim that doing otherwise would be unpatriotic or would support the evil terrorists. Or they'll be threatened into doing it by a law that requires it, and won't have the courage to respond to that by refusing to service users in the UK. Some form of manipulative pressure will be used. Most people respond to pressure this way because it appears to relieve the pressure. What they don't know is that anytime you cave in to pressure, the relief is quite temporary -- by doing so, you teach others that this is the way to "reach" you and you invite more of the same. Bullies are cowards but they won't appear that way if you are even more cowardly than they are and are unwilling to take a risk to stand up to them.
Incidentally, I salute the accuracy of the summary:
The measure would get around the inconvenience for the government of not being able to snoop on all UK web traffic.
If that doesn't describe the freedom-destroying mentality, few things can. It never seems to occur to that mentality that the loss of freedom and privacy might be just the sort of destruction that our enemies wish to visit upon us. It makes sense, since they know they stand no real chance of winning a conventional military battle against the very-well-armed Western nations. If they're "street-wise" at all, and to avoid hubris you should always assume that your enemy is, then they have probably realized that they only need to attack us a few times and we will do all of the rest of the work of destroying what is good about our civilization on our own. It will, of course, be in the name of safety and security. When all of this started, I bet the terrorists never imagined it would be so easy -- just scare us a bit and we'll give up all of the things that we used to fight for. This, by the way, is why physical armaments cannot be your only source of strength. If they are, your enemy will merely attack you on a different front. All of this is quite predictable and easy to understand.
Perhaps the USA and the UK aren't so different after all.
Definitely. They have to under the terms of the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers act. That act allows local councils to spy on you for almost any reason, of course it allows central government to spy on you on Facebook. Under the terms of that act if you fail to provide your private encryption keys then they can put you in prison: you have to show that you've deleted them.
If you work for an ISP, communications provider or some other organisation providing a service to a target you have to assist them in s
Perhaps the USA and the UK aren't so different after all.
Well, it seems that our system has more checks and balances than the UK does. We have 50 individual sovereign states that are still willing to flip Washington off [cnet.com] every now and then. We have the Supreme Court which has shot down or at least severely constrained many attempts by the Executive and Legislature to violate our founding documents. The Upper House of our Legislature isn't toothless and actually has the power to stop legislation. We also (yeah I couldn't resist) have guns;)
I'm hard pressed to think of what checks and balances remain under the British system. The House of Lords was defanged a long time ago and if the Monarchy ever refused Royal Assent I'm sure that would be end of it as an institution. Hopefully our friends across the pond will wake up before it's too late.....
Those checks and balances are largely useless if most of the population honestly believes in the "safety is more important than freedom" type of fear-mongering. Pragmatically, this means only that those who would like to transform the USA into a totalitarian state just need to be more patient. Or they just need to remain underground.
What do I mean by underground? Look at how long the warrantless-wiretapping was going on, illegally, before it was exposed. Then look at how the Bush administration retroactively granted the telcos immunity from prosecution for assisting this illegal program (if that isn't a violation of "no ex post facto" then it should be). So, how many such illegal activities are happening right now that we don't know about?
It might be tempting to look at the UK and think we're so much better off. That's your ego talking because it wants to feel like a part of something greater than itself, namely, the national ego. But let's say that you are correct, that the USA really is better off than the UK. We're certainly walking down the same path. So, perhaps the UK is a little ahead of us and has already travelled farther down that path. That means that If we don't change soon, the UK is merely providing a vision of our immediate future. How about if we travel a completely different path that doesn't lead to the same destination before we make comparisons? I prefer not to be on a sinking ship at all. I like that much better than wondering whether the ship I'm on is sinking more slowly than the adjacent ships.
We have the Human Rights Act which is enshrined a the highest law in the land. It grants things like a positive right to free speech as opposed to your first amendment which simply prohibits congress from abridging the right to free speech. This means you can't get sacked for your political beliefs like you potentially can in the USA.
The HRA is ironic considering it was this Labour government that passed it during its first couple of years. I reckon we can thank Cherie Blair for that as she's a barrister fo
What I find puzzling and V. annoying is the UK Gov's apparent need to make so many new laws focusing on the minutae - Why not just "Incitement to hatred"? Why specifically racial and/or religious? Is it OK, then, to incite hated against women or even (think of the) children? Short or overly tall people, don'tcha just hate them eh? Ginger people, though god knows they've got it coming! Regional differences, 'cos those easy to get on with and otherwise outwardly
I'm frequently amazed, however, at how little regard the average EU citizen has for recent history. Every time something like Al Quaeda comes along they try to send a diplomat to "work it out" and they come home like Chamberlain waving a piece paper and yell "Peace in our time!"
Then Al Qaueda bombs one of their train stations.
What's that about???
Maybe we have more knowledge of recent history than you give us credit for. Chamberlain came back waving his "piece of paper" -- and promptly put the UK onto a war footing. He introduced conscription (first time we'd ever had that in peacetime) and massively ramped up military production. He sacrificed his career and reputation to buy the UK the time that it desperately needed, so we didn't enter the war until we were in a position to hold off the nazis. I reckon Chamberlain should be considered one of the great heroes of WWII. Were it not for his shrewdness and self-sacrifice we would have been under Nazi occupation before Churchill got a sniff at Number 10.
That's part of what I meant about him sacrificing his career and reputation. Those were the days when a politician might put the country before his career. Seems like another world, doesn't it?
As all naysayers regarding civil liberty chant; "What good is your freedom if you're dead?" seems to be the prevailing wisdom in Europe. Can't fault them too much, poor bastards, they have a legacy of subservience, caving, and generally attempting to wheel and deal their way out of disaster.
I'm frequently amazed, however, at how little regard the average EU citizen has for recent history. Every time something like Al Quaeda comes along they try to send a diplomat to "work it out" and they come home like Chamberlain waving a piece paper and yell "Peace in our time!"
Then Al Qaueda bombs one of their train stations.
What's that about???
Motorists in Britain alone kill, every single year, more people than Al Quaeda have ever killed, world wide, in any single year. On the general scale of things, Al Quaeda are an incredibly minor threat. You are less likely to be killed by Al Quaeda than you are to be killed by falling down and bumping your head [guardian.co.uk].
Yes, we are destroying all the things which made our civilisation worth living in, but we're not doing it because Al Quaeda are a serious threat. We're doing it because our politicians think they can
Besides being intrusive its not going to be very useful. I mean, how many terrorists are going to schedule their next bombing as a Facebook event and then say this is an open even you can also invite friends.
Terrorists? On MySpace? What, are they going to attack the train stations in their horned-rim glasses, striped shirts, excessive mascara, and tight girl pants? Unless they have the Perspective Gun (HHGTTG) that won't do a lot of damage. Really, even if they have razorblades they're just going to use them on themselves.
And Facebook. I can see it now... 11:15am - Jihad has been called! We are all so very excited, yes-m. 11:27am - is feeling very blue (they left to go get mcdonald's without me) 11:52am - Achmed didn't bring all the parts to build the bomb. We're watching House instead 12:56pm - Cutty really is a bitch! We must issue fatwa on her. 02:45pm - took nap. Unemployment called, they say I get free dollars. woo woo! 05:17pm - Achmed returns with rest of parts to build bomb, but comcast triple play package more fun 08:59pm - Got call from head of cell. Wants to know about bomb. What bomb? We lost bomb. 11:36pm - Go to bed. Really loving these american TV dinners.
Or not. Seriously -- we're just going to encrypt the crap out of everything in a few more years anyway, and the UK and other governments and piss off. Or we'll go back to having pseudonyms and fake identities online and only our friends will know the truth. *shrug* Terrorists... christ. I wish they would come and blow something up, just so we had the reminder they weren't entirely a figment of our imagination. In another 10 years, nobody will believe 09/11 happened because of all this screaming by politicians about 'teh terrorists' will have gotten so old people will start subconsciously rejecting anything to do with it.
05:17pm - Achmed returns with rest of parts to build bomb, but comcast triple play package more fun, when it works
05:30pm - Comcast down again. Fifth time today. Achmed suggests using bomb on them instead.
Any form of communication might be used for nefarious purposes. touch, sight, taste, smell. These could all be used to transfer information. Unless you plug into our brains directly you might miss something. Just give up.
Western society has forgotten what it means to stand up to oppressive leadership. We would rather stay comfortable and placated with our modern opiate.
Break the chains that bind you. Turn off your TV's, read books they don't want you to read, think for yourself.
One of the users on this board has a sig that is very significant: There are 4 boxes to be used in the defence of liberty: Soap, Jury, Ballot, and Ammo. Use in that order.
I am a non-violent person (as are most of us). I believe more can be resolved with intelligent, logical discussion then could ever be resolved with violence, but I also believe that when the system is broken you cannot work within it.
Why won't the government just come out and say - "We want to see your private data"? I mean seriously, they're going to monitor traffic to stop terrorism. Maybe if they were this upfront about their operations, I can actually respect the fact that they were honest, but they actually think we're stupid enough to believe Al Queda has a Facebook group? WOW.
The UK Police already routinely scan YouTube, MySpace, Bebo and Facebook for "criminal" activity.
While Facebook stuff is already public, and you're utterly retarded if you post anything genuinely incriminating on it, there is still a danger -- now and in the future -- that the definition of "incriminating" may change.
The way The People's Republic of (formerly Great) Britain is going, it's only a question of time before your opinions (such as mine expressed here) will get you a visit from the State Sec
And whose fault is that? The idiots in Government passing the stupid policies or the population that has allowed (even encouraged in some instances) them to do so?
It is ultimately the people who are the problem. Not just those who voted Labour, but those who are police officers, civil servants, people who work in ISPs, those who sit and watch through security cameras, anyone involved with the E-Borders scheme, anyone in Customs and Excise, and many, many more.
"befehl ist befehl" was proven not to be a defence at Nuremberg. Anyone co-operating with these totalitarian schemes is just guilty as the oppressors that are most surely coming, if not already here.
It is too late. The E-Borders scheme controls entry and exits more surely than the Berlin Wall. The Security camera network means they know where you are while you are in the country. The internet monitoring means they watch what you are doing and know who your friends are, the phone call logging means they know what you are saying, the ability to detain you without charge for longer than anywhere only helps. The population is fat, drunk and broke, and ever more geared towards hating "immigrants", as today's BBC "have your say" only proves. The tripartite excuse of "terrorism", "paedophiles" and "knife crime" are perfect covers for any eventuality.
What more does any dictator actually need? The tools are all there, cheerfully implemented by willing members of the population. These tools will eventually be used.
At 15:43 terror suspect Lishmaki Alibababran tweeted "Whazup man?" to Obama Balali who proceeded to set his status to "Obama is watching 'UK today'. We believe this is part of a terrorist plot to stay informed about domestic and world news. Furthermore we may be able to use TV licensing laws against Obama as we have no record of him owning a TV license. This is further proof that piracy aids terrorism. In other news Beth Smith sent a private facebook message to Sally Tallman about Bill Wade that said: "He's soooooo hot". Sally was not impressed and replied "Stay away biatch, he's mine". Our operatives believe this may lead to violence and much bitchslapping at the Trinity school for girls on Monday morning and recommends that we send in a team of operatives.
At 15:43 terror suspect Lishmaki Alibababran tweeted "Whazup man?" to Obama Balali who proceeded to set his status to "Obama is watching 'UK today'. We believe this is part of a terrorist plot to stay informed about domestic and world news. Furthermore we may be able to use TV licensing laws against Obama as we have no record of him owning a TV license. This is further proof that piracy aids terrorism. In other news Beth Smith sent a private facebook message to Sally Tallman about Bill Wade that said: "He's soooooo hot". Sally was not impressed and replied "Stay away biatch, he's mine". Our operatives believe this may lead to violence and much bitchslapping at the Trinity school for girls on Monday morning and recommends that we send in a team of operatives.
Sally is a lieing tramp.
Beth would never cheat on me.
Hitler stopped the German people from being able to protest with the Reichstag Decree - as no-one was able to protest, Hitler was able to build the worlds most brutal totalitarian state and invaded Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war, a generation was devastated in the hope that future generations might live without tyranny. In 1945 the allies declared victory and said never again. To protect the world from war they had to protect the citizen from the state - in 1950 the leaders of the war torn countries of Europe came together to try to prevent these horrors from ever happening again, in comes the European convention of human rights authored by Winston Churchill, and contained the fundamental protections of an individual from their own government, including, ban on torture,no detention without charge, innocence until proven guilty, right to privacy, right to protest and freedom of speech.
We in the UK have became too cosy with the idea that we have these rights anymore. I often wonder when people will wake up and realize they have had their freedoms taken away. I wondered if it would happen when they gave taking pictures of police a maximum 10 year jail sentence - nope. I wondered if it would happen when they allowed records of phone calls, web history and emails to be for police - nope, I wondered if it would happen when someone was arrested under the anti-terror act for shouting "rubbish" at a New Labour party conference - nope.
Wake up.
Well, yeah, but no. What goes on Facebook is public, but the real problem here is the expansion of the government (in this case, the UK) into areas that they do not belong for reasons that are, arguably, pretty stupid.
Additionally, some parts of Facebook are "private." IM conversations between friends, and the messages that pass between people on Facebook are two things I can think of. Those are not available to the general public (at least not via normal means).
But, again, the growth of the government into citizens private lives is the more important issue. Aren't any of the UK citizens concerned?
As a UK Citizen, yes I am, and yes I do write the letters to the MPs to complain.
The government we've had for the last 12 years, near enough, has overseen a huge erosion in the English Civil Liberties. Hell, it's architected them.
It's been expanding for as long as it's been in power, pushing politically correct agendas, and trying to tag and barcode the populace on the sly (but these days, it's not on the sly; they just tag on "to counter terrorism", and leave it at that).
And what really bugs me is that I lived through the 70s and 80s when the IRA were very active. Bombings weren't too uncommon, and we got through it as a populace. We were still free.
These days, there's been one real attack (and at the time, the UK was actually taking military action in the Middle East, as it is still doing), and the NuLabour overlords take that as affirmation that they can barcode, DNA tag, and record every single thing you do (attempts to monitor phone traffic, email, network, have mandatory trackers in your cars, they already have sensors in the waste bins you put your rubbish in to be collected by the bin men to record what you dispose of, CCTV that's used to spot people who take their kids to a school that they may not be in the official catchment area of, and other completely outrageous examples of totalitarianism that would have Orwell penning new chapters in 1984 over).
Actually, the register [theregister.co.uk] has a nice little snippet from our current overlords. I suspect they're ever so slightly slanting what was said, but hey, it says what a lot of us think anyway..
I appreciated the poster's response, and I'm glad he cares about what his government is doing. The problem is, not enough people do care about things bigger than, "OMG!!!11! WHO'S WINNING AMERICAN IDOL!!11!!" There are so many more important things to be involved with in this world and the snarky kind of comment that you just made is not necessary, not appreciated, and pretty much shows what's wrong with the way our world is currently being run (where only a few people have power because everybody
There are two real options. One is you attempt to use force, and then get gunned down in a blaze of stupidity by the military protecting the politicians, and be branded a terrorist yourself, and have your ideals associated with extremism, and thus debunked before sane debate can start. Secondly, you pen a note to the representatives of your government expressing, as eloquently as you can, exactly why you think it's a terrible idea what they're doing. Then you pen the media with the same. And if you have a few s
The current incumbents are so fekking incapable they would struggle to work out which end of a USB stick goes where. The chances of them implementing *any* form of large scale IT system is zero. Zip . Nada. Not gonna happen.
but yea but no but yea but no but the government cant look at my page coz im not friends with them but that slag shelly who i hate has a crush on that fat brown and i cant block her cos then kelly will like, totally hate my guts!
Forced to choose, I'd rather they wasted my taxes by (not) spying on me incompetently than used them more "efficiently" to track me and every other damn person in the UK in the name of counter-terrorism.
Of course, the terrorists have already won- because the UK government's actions were exactly what all terrorists want, to disrupt and alter the behaviour of an entire nation on the basis of a small number of attacks. Remember that the next time you vote.
This assumes that the government didn't *want* to do th
There's a Jules Feiffer play, later a movie, Little Murders [imdb.com] in which an FBI agent is reading one of the character's mail. This character starts sending letters to himself for the FBI agent to read, chiding him for invading other people's privacy and so on. Eventually, the FBI agent commits suicide.
Orwell's approach took too much manpower (in principle you still need to trust a few people to do the monitoring).
What the UK Government is doing is imprisonment of innocent people: it is creating a Panopticon [wikipedia.org] out of a whole country.
The signs are all there:
- continuous, seemingly unbroken coverage of the people watching you (the idea is to make you feel you're always being watched) - penalties of minor infringements (also easier than solve the odd murder*) - pretty much random justice ("We're the state, we ha
What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:5, Interesting)
What if Facebook and other sites enforced encryption? Sure, it would slow things down and increase their cost, but if they did, it would be "chic" to encrypt, and a generation of users would start demanding end-to-end encryption everywhere.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, what if they just offered encryption? To be fair, it would cost facebook a not-inconsequential amount of CPU time (with repercussions for power consumption and heat production) to implement, even if they needed no additional hardware (heh heh)
You just don't use CPUs for that kind of scale (Score:3, Informative)
They'd have to go for hardware encryption/decryption.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They'd have to go for hardware encryption/decryption.
What kind of scale? I said offer it. It's not clear what percentage of facebook's membership would use https:/// [https] if they didn't offer any links and you had to alter the URL manually (oh, the humanity!) If their front-end servers had CPU to spare (e.g. the front-end was I/O bound) they might be able to serve the actual demand without any additional hardware.
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, what if they just offered encryption?
What's the point of encrypting data that you are uploading to a social networking site for public consumption? And how effective would it really be at keeping the Government out anyway? What's to stop them getting a subpoena to pull the data directly off Facebook's servers?
Parent
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:5, Interesting)
Content on Facebook (and any other social networking site with privacy controls) isn't for public consumption - it's for consumption by those whom you've marked as friends.
Encryption would prevent packet sniffing, and as Facebook is owned and operated in the US, I don't see how the UK government could subpoena the data successfully*. That whole jurisdiction thing - ya know.
*Unless they have servers located in the UK. With 200m or so users, they probably do Of course, Facebook could just threaten to block UK users, posting the contact info of various government officials so you can complain to them for forcing FB into such a situation. Facebook is easily large enough for that kind of stunt to actually work.
Parent
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:4, Interesting)
Content on Facebook (and any other social networking site with privacy controls) isn't for public consumption
At a job interview (relatively high clearance required) my potential employer presented me with, among other things, questions about blog posts I had written. The odd thing? I never mentioned the account and I had never published any articles from it. They were just sitting on a well-known company's server in draft mode.
People have no idea how much is being collected and how many companies have been compromised, knowingly or not.
Parent
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Sure, it would slow things down and increase their cost, but if they did, it would be "chic" to encrypt"
From what I can tell, kids hate pretty much every change facebook ever makes. Sure, it's uncool to not use facebook nowadays, but loving everything about facebook is probably even less cool. Everyone knows it's a site run by suits.
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.K. snooping is probably going to be done with Facebook's support, knowledge, and help...
Possibly. If not, it probably won't take much pressure to make them cave in. They'll be shamed into doing it by a claim that doing otherwise would be unpatriotic or would support the evil terrorists. Or they'll be threatened into doing it by a law that requires it, and won't have the courage to respond to that by refusing to service users in the UK. Some form of manipulative pressure will be used. Most people respond to pressure this way because it appears to relieve the pressure. What they don't know is that anytime you cave in to pressure, the relief is quite temporary -- by doing so, you teach others that this is the way to "reach" you and you invite more of the same. Bullies are cowards but they won't appear that way if you are even more cowardly than they are and are unwilling to take a risk to stand up to them.
Incidentally, I salute the accuracy of the summary:
If that doesn't describe the freedom-destroying mentality, few things can. It never seems to occur to that mentality that the loss of freedom and privacy might be just the sort of destruction that our enemies wish to visit upon us. It makes sense, since they know they stand no real chance of winning a conventional military battle against the very-well-armed Western nations. If they're "street-wise" at all, and to avoid hubris you should always assume that your enemy is, then they have probably realized that they only need to attack us a few times and we will do all of the rest of the work of destroying what is good about our civilization on our own. It will, of course, be in the name of safety and security. When all of this started, I bet the terrorists never imagined it would be so easy -- just scare us a bit and we'll give up all of the things that we used to fight for. This, by the way, is why physical armaments cannot be your only source of strength. If they are, your enemy will merely attack you on a different front. All of this is quite predictable and easy to understand.
Perhaps the USA and the UK aren't so different after all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Possibly.
Definitely. They have to under the terms of the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers act. That act allows local councils to spy on you for almost any reason, of course it allows central government to spy on you on Facebook. Under the terms of that act if you fail to provide your private encryption keys then they can put you in prison: you have to show that you've deleted them.
If you work for an ISP, communications provider or some other organisation providing a service to a target you have to assist them in s
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the USA and the UK aren't so different after all.
Well, it seems that our system has more checks and balances than the UK does. We have 50 individual sovereign states that are still willing to flip Washington off [cnet.com] every now and then. We have the Supreme Court which has shot down or at least severely constrained many attempts by the Executive and Legislature to violate our founding documents. The Upper House of our Legislature isn't toothless and actually has the power to stop legislation. We also (yeah I couldn't resist) have guns ;)
I'm hard pressed to think of what checks and balances remain under the British system. The House of Lords was defanged a long time ago and if the Monarchy ever refused Royal Assent I'm sure that would be end of it as an institution. Hopefully our friends across the pond will wake up before it's too late.....
Those checks and balances are largely useless if most of the population honestly believes in the "safety is more important than freedom" type of fear-mongering. Pragmatically, this means only that those who would like to transform the USA into a totalitarian state just need to be more patient. Or they just need to remain underground.
What do I mean by underground? Look at how long the warrantless-wiretapping was going on, illegally, before it was exposed. Then look at how the Bush administration retroactively granted the telcos immunity from prosecution for assisting this illegal program (if that isn't a violation of "no ex post facto" then it should be). So, how many such illegal activities are happening right now that we don't know about?
It might be tempting to look at the UK and think we're so much better off. That's your ego talking because it wants to feel like a part of something greater than itself, namely, the national ego. But let's say that you are correct, that the USA really is better off than the UK. We're certainly walking down the same path. So, perhaps the UK is a little ahead of us and has already travelled farther down that path. That means that If we don't change soon, the UK is merely providing a vision of our immediate future. How about if we travel a completely different path that doesn't lead to the same destination before we make comparisons? I prefer not to be on a sinking ship at all. I like that much better than wondering whether the ship I'm on is sinking more slowly than the adjacent ships.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We have the Human Rights Act which is enshrined a the highest law in the land. It grants things like a positive right to free speech as opposed to your first amendment which simply prohibits congress from abridging the right to free speech. This means you can't get sacked for your political beliefs like you potentially can in the USA.
The HRA is ironic considering it was this Labour government that passed it during its first couple of years. I reckon we can thank Cherie Blair for that as she's a barrister fo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I find puzzling and V. annoying is the UK Gov's apparent need to make so many new laws focusing on the minutae - Why not just "Incitement to hatred"? Why specifically racial and/or religious? Is it OK, then, to incite hated against women or even (think of the) children? Short or overly tall people, don'tcha just hate them eh? Ginger people, though god knows they've got it coming! Regional differences, 'cos those easy to get on with and otherwise outwardly
Re:What if Facebook forced encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm frequently amazed, however, at how little regard the average EU citizen has for recent history. Every time something like Al Quaeda comes along they try to send a diplomat to "work it out" and they come home like Chamberlain waving a piece paper and yell "Peace in our time!"
Then Al Qaueda bombs one of their train stations.
What's that about???
Maybe we have more knowledge of recent history than you give us credit for. Chamberlain came back waving his "piece of paper" -- and promptly put the UK onto a war footing. He introduced conscription (first time we'd ever had that in peacetime) and massively ramped up military production. He sacrificed his career and reputation to buy the UK the time that it desperately needed, so we didn't enter the war until we were in a position to hold off the nazis. I reckon Chamberlain should be considered one of the great heroes of WWII. Were it not for his shrewdness and self-sacrifice we would have been under Nazi occupation before Churchill got a sniff at Number 10.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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As all naysayers regarding civil liberty chant; "What good is your freedom if you're dead?" seems to be the prevailing wisdom in Europe. Can't fault them too much, poor bastards, they have a legacy of subservience, caving, and generally attempting to wheel and deal their way out of disaster.
I'm frequently amazed, however, at how little regard the average EU citizen has for recent history. Every time something like Al Quaeda comes along they try to send a diplomat to "work it out" and they come home like Chamberlain waving a piece paper and yell "Peace in our time!"
Then Al Qaueda bombs one of their train stations.
What's that about???
Motorists in Britain alone kill, every single year, more people than Al Quaeda have ever killed, world wide, in any single year. On the general scale of things, Al Quaeda are an incredibly minor threat. You are less likely to be killed by Al Quaeda than you are to be killed by falling down and bumping your head [guardian.co.uk].
Yes, we are destroying all the things which made our civilisation worth living in, but we're not doing it because Al Quaeda are a serious threat. We're doing it because our politicians think they can
stupid (Score:2, Funny)
Besides being intrusive its not going to be very useful. I mean, how many terrorists are going to schedule their next bombing as a Facebook event and then say this is an open even you can also invite friends.
Re:stupid (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow, you're even bigger liars than us yankees. (Score:5, Funny)
Terrorists? On MySpace? What, are they going to attack the train stations in their horned-rim glasses, striped shirts, excessive mascara, and tight girl pants? Unless they have the Perspective Gun (HHGTTG) that won't do a lot of damage. Really, even if they have razorblades they're just going to use them on themselves.
And Facebook. I can see it now...
11:15am - Jihad has been called! We are all so very excited, yes-m.
11:27am - is feeling very blue (they left to go get mcdonald's without me)
11:52am - Achmed didn't bring all the parts to build the bomb. We're watching House instead
12:56pm - Cutty really is a bitch! We must issue fatwa on her.
02:45pm - took nap. Unemployment called, they say I get free dollars. woo woo!
05:17pm - Achmed returns with rest of parts to build bomb, but comcast triple play package more fun
08:59pm - Got call from head of cell. Wants to know about bomb. What bomb? We lost bomb.
11:36pm - Go to bed. Really loving these american TV dinners.
Or not. Seriously -- we're just going to encrypt the crap out of everything in a few more years anyway, and the UK and other governments and piss off. Or we'll go back to having pseudonyms and fake identities online and only our friends will know the truth. *shrug* Terrorists... christ. I wish they would come and blow something up, just so we had the reminder they weren't entirely a figment of our imagination. In another 10 years, nobody will believe 09/11 happened because of all this screaming by politicians about 'teh terrorists' will have gotten so old people will start subconsciously rejecting anything to do with it.
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Re:Wow, you're even bigger liars than us yankees. (Score:5, Funny)
05:17pm - Achmed returns with rest of parts to build bomb, but comcast triple play package more fun, when it works
05:30pm - Comcast down again. Fifth time today. Achmed suggests using bomb on them instead.
Fixed that for you.
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Re:Wow, you're even bigger liars than us yankees. (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean you stopped doing this for some reason!?!?!?!
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You are forgetting something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Any form of communication might be used for nefarious purposes.
touch, sight, taste, smell. These could all be used to transfer information. Unless you plug into our brains directly you might miss something. Just give up.
Western society has forgotten what it means to stand up to oppressive leadership. We would rather stay comfortable and placated with our modern opiate.
Break the chains that bind you. Turn off your TV's, read books they don't want you to read, think for yourself.
One of the users on this board has a sig that is very significant:
There are 4 boxes to be used in the defence of liberty: Soap, Jury, Ballot, and Ammo. Use in that order.
I am a non-violent person (as are most of us). I believe more can be resolved with intelligent, logical discussion then could ever be resolved with violence, but I also believe that when the system is broken you cannot work within it.
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We would rather stay comfortable and placated with our modern opiate.
Says the person posting on /.
Yeah, I agree with what you said, but it just had to be pointed out ;)
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hehe, I did say _we_.
Just be honest (Score:3, Interesting)
Apologies for my last status update, UK government (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apologies for my last status update, UK governm (Score:4, Funny)
You take that back! We have some of the finest Indian cuisine in the world.
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I say, (Score:2, Funny)
This isn't really new. (Score:2, Insightful)
While Facebook stuff is already public, and you're utterly retarded if you post anything genuinely incriminating on it, there is still a danger -- now and in the future -- that the definition of "incriminating" may change.
The way The People's Republic of (formerly Great) Britain is going, it's only a question of time before your opinions (such as mine expressed here) will get you a visit from the State Sec
Re:This isn't really new. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is ultimately the people who are the problem. Not just those who voted Labour, but those who are police officers, civil servants, people who work in ISPs, those who sit and watch through security cameras, anyone involved with the E-Borders scheme, anyone in Customs and Excise, and many, many more.
"befehl ist befehl" was proven not to be a defence at Nuremberg. Anyone co-operating with these totalitarian schemes is just guilty as the oppressors that are most surely coming, if not already here.
It is too late. The E-Borders scheme controls entry and exits more surely than the Berlin Wall. The Security camera network means they know where you are while you are in the country. The internet monitoring means they watch what you are doing and know who your friends are, the phone call logging means they know what you are saying, the ability to detain you without charge for longer than anywhere only helps. The population is fat, drunk and broke, and ever more geared towards hating "immigrants", as today's BBC "have your say" only proves. The tripartite excuse of "terrorism", "paedophiles" and "knife crime" are perfect covers for any eventuality.
What more does any dictator actually need? The tools are all there, cheerfully implemented by willing members of the population. These tools will eventually be used.
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Can you imagine the reports? (Score:4, Funny)
At 15:43 terror suspect Lishmaki Alibababran tweeted "Whazup man?" to Obama Balali who proceeded to set his status to "Obama is watching 'UK today'. We believe this is part of a terrorist plot to stay informed about domestic and world news. Furthermore we may be able to use TV licensing laws against Obama as we have no record of him owning a TV license. This is further proof that piracy aids terrorism. In other news Beth Smith sent a private facebook message to Sally Tallman about Bill Wade that said: "He's soooooo hot". Sally was not impressed and replied "Stay away biatch, he's mine". Our operatives believe this may lead to violence and much bitchslapping at the Trinity school for girls on Monday morning and recommends that we send in a team of operatives.
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At 15:43 terror suspect Lishmaki Alibababran tweeted "Whazup man?" to Obama Balali who proceeded to set his status to "Obama is watching 'UK today'. We believe this is part of a terrorist plot to stay informed about domestic and world news. Furthermore we may be able to use TV licensing laws against Obama as we have no record of him owning a TV license. This is further proof that piracy aids terrorism. In other news Beth Smith sent a private facebook message to Sally Tallman about Bill Wade that said: "He's soooooo hot". Sally was not impressed and replied "Stay away biatch, he's mine". Our operatives believe this may lead to violence and much bitchslapping at the Trinity school for girls on Monday morning and recommends that we send in a team of operatives.
Sally is a lieing tramp.
Beth would never cheat on me.
Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Good, because terrorists regularly use Facebook (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, terrorists love Facebook so much! they always announce their plans in Facebook, in order to have their friends comment on them.
The terrorists also put the pictures of the terror act (you know, big-a$$ explosions and sh1t) on Facebook.
Someone in the UK gov has become paranoid...
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yeah, but no. What goes on Facebook is public, but the real problem here is the expansion of the government (in this case, the UK) into areas that they do not belong for reasons that are, arguably, pretty stupid.
Additionally, some parts of Facebook are "private." IM conversations between friends, and the messages that pass between people on Facebook are two things I can think of. Those are not available to the general public (at least not via normal means).
But, again, the growth of the government into citizens private lives is the more important issue. Aren't any of the UK citizens concerned?
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Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I better clarify.
I didn't for one moment want to downplay the threat of mass surveillance and totalitarianism in the UK right now.
BUT, it's facebook. My expectation of privacy on the medium would be lower than unencrypted email.
Which is already very low.
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Re:Who cares (Score:5, Interesting)
These days, there's been one real attack (and at the time, the UK was actually taking military action in the Middle East, as it is still doing), and the NuLabour overlords take that as affirmation that they can barcode, DNA tag, and record every single thing you do (attempts to monitor phone traffic, email, network, have mandatory trackers in your cars, they already have sensors in the waste bins you put your rubbish in to be collected by the bin men to record what you dispose of, CCTV that's used to spot people who take their kids to a school that they may not be in the official catchment area of, and other completely outrageous examples of totalitarianism that would have Orwell penning new chapters in 1984 over).
Actually, the register [theregister.co.uk] has a nice little snippet from our current overlords. I suspect they're ever so slightly slanting what was said, but hey, it says what a lot of us think anyway..
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-1 Troll
I appreciated the poster's response, and I'm glad he cares about what his government is doing. The problem is, not enough people do care about things bigger than, "OMG!!!11! WHO'S WINNING AMERICAN IDOL!!11!!" There are so many more important things to be involved with in this world and the snarky kind of comment that you just made is not necessary, not appreciated, and pretty much shows what's wrong with the way our world is currently being run (where only a few people have power because everybody
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There are two real options.
One is you attempt to use force, and then get gunned down in a blaze of stupidity by the military protecting the politicians, and be branded a terrorist yourself, and have your ideals associated with extremism, and thus debunked before sane debate can start.
Secondly, you pen a note to the representatives of your government expressing, as eloquently as you can, exactly why you think it's a terrible idea what they're doing.
Then you pen the media with the same.
And if you have a few s
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Informative)
Concerned? Nah, not really.
The current incumbents are so fekking incapable they would struggle to work out which end of a USB stick goes where. The chances of them implementing *any* form of large scale IT system is zero. Zip . Nada. Not gonna happen.
They'll be out of office in a year or so anyway.
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Re:Who cares (Score:4, Funny)
yeah, but no
but yea but no but yea but no but the government cant look at my page coz im not friends with them but that slag shelly who i hate has a crush on that fat brown and i cant block her cos then kelly will like, totally hate my guts!
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not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
I care. I care because they're wasting my tax money in order to spy on me for no reason.
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Forced to choose, I'd rather they wasted my taxes by (not) spying on me incompetently than used them more "efficiently" to track me and every other damn person in the UK in the name of counter-terrorism.
Of course, the terrorists have already won- because the UK government's actions were exactly what all terrorists want, to disrupt and alter the behaviour of an entire nation on the basis of a small number of attacks. Remember that the next time you vote.
This assumes that the government didn't *want* to do th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... you mean the CIA doesn't run it now? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought facebook was an intelligence gathering operation run by the CIA.
It might be good for gathering stupid, but hardly intelligence.
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Nope, it's mislabelled (Score:3, Interesting)
Orwell's approach took too much manpower (in principle you still need to trust a few people to do the monitoring).
What the UK Government is doing is imprisonment of innocent people: it is creating a Panopticon [wikipedia.org] out of a whole country.
The signs are all there:
- continuous, seemingly unbroken coverage of the people watching you (the idea is to make you feel you're always being watched)
- penalties of minor infringements (also easier than solve the odd murder*)
- pretty much random justice ("We're the state, we ha