MJackson writes "The Open Rights Group (ORG) has issued a public letter to the Chief Privacy Officers (or the nearest equivalent) for seven of the world's largest website giants (including Microsoft and Google), asking them to boycott Phorm. The controversial Phorm system works with broadband ISPs to monitor what websites you visit for use in targeted advertising campaigns. Meanwhile, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has issued a new report slamming the UK government's plans for a Communications Database. This would be designed to intercept and log every UK ISP user's e-mail headers, website accesses and telephone history. The report warns that the public are often, 'neither served nor protected by the increasingly complex and intrusive holdings of personal information invading every aspect of our lives.'"
If, for instance, your mommy says you are special; but nobody else does, your specialness isn't "controversial" in any useful sense, it's just a settled matter with a contrarian outlier. In this case, the only people who think Phorm is even remotely a good idea are A)Phorm and B)ISPs who Phorm has promised gobs of money. That isn't "controversy", it is a handful of money-grubbing special interests attempting to screw everybody else. To dignify Phorm as "controversial" is far more than it deserves.
It's more than that. It is controversial, I'm afraid.
There's the whole is it/is it not legal debate, the controversy over the police investigations, the government capitulation and potential EU investigation of the whole thing.
There's also the fact the Joe public has never heard of Phorm and wouldn't particularly care or work out the consequences if he did. So it's basically an argument between monied interests, the British police and government on one side and geeks. privacy advocates and the EU on the other.
1. A dispute, especially a public one, between sides holding opposing views. See synonyms at argument.
2. The act or practice of engaging in such disputes: writers skilled at controversy.
Regarding the OP's main point. Is there in fact controversy over Phorm? Is there a dispute between two sides holding opposite views. I would argue with the OP and say there is not.
Not certainly it looks like there is a dispute. But realistically, it's all just mummery or controversy theater if you will. T
There certainly is controversy over the handling of Phorm, if not on its intent and the acceptability of its purpose.
When Phorm was trialled without consent the police investigated both them and the ISP and dropped the case (or were asked to by government). The EU got involved and is still trying to get answers out of the UK government about why this happened, why there were no trials and why it's allowed to continue...
Bah, Maybe not controversial amongst the public any further than "they're watching us all
Well, they at least share part of the blame. The scumbags at Phorm get some of it, too.
If rules limiting the amount of sport, gossip and leisure stories were enforced, we would have better watchdogs.
Doubtful. And frankly, disgusting. There are plenty of news sources out there that don't have a lot of those stories (NPR, for example). But they don't have high ratings. Why? Because, sadly, people want sports, gossip, leisure stories, and don't care about their freedoms.
I would say that your concerns about the use of the word "controversial" are controversial, but I don't think enough people share your view to justify using that term.:P
If you don't like what your ISP is planning to do then change it. Personally I will be trying this:-
http://superawesomebroadband.com/ [superaweso...adband.com]
Does anyone have any experiance with them?
Good price, unlimited data quota, 24 Mb/s, free static IP, and they don't do anything to your traffic as far as I can tell. Oh and it's only a 3 month contract.
Um, They will censor wikipedia and are IWF shills. I'm on Be now, but I will switch away from them when I get a chance. Search for previous articles on Slashdot.
I have heard AAISP is quite good, but they are more expensive and have traffic caps.
The UK and France are slowly but surely turning into the totalitarian states that, prior to 1990, they despised. You can't carry a defensive weapon to protect yourself from a criminal attack. You can't walk down the street without a camera following you. You can't visit websites with nudity or other "harmful" material (censorship of the right to expression). You don't have a right to a trial by your peers (three strikes and you lose ISP access). Your biometric data is being recorded and tracked by the government, and soon I wouldn't be surprised if they make diets mandatory for people with BMI>25 (as has happened in Japan), or else get fined.
Well, one version of freedom won. The freedom that says you need the Government to "protect" you from every conceivable source of harm, ranging from fatty foods to cigarettes to automobile accidents to firearms. The sheep can't possibly be trusted to assume responsibility for their own actions/choices so we need to curtail those choices for the public good.
When will people realize that real freedom is the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, provided that it isn't harming your neighbor?
"When will people realize that real freedom is the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, provided that it isn't harming your neighbor?"
Never.
And even if they did, they'd keep expanding the definition of harm. I've heard people claiming harm for all sorts of things, like having openly gay individuals living next door harms their property prices, or somehow "gayifies" their children and thus harms them.
People will never give up on their drive to interfere with and disapprove of other people's lives. More'
It is *physical* harm not abstract harm. That's why the KKK is allowed to go-around calling people the N-word and burning crosses. Although you might find this offensive, they have the right to say or do whatever they wish, so long as they don't cause physical harm to your body, your land, or your property.
"No man has a right to attack another. And that is all the government should restrain him." - Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic party.
But that's the point, you'd never get anyone to agree to that, and then over time they'd stretch the definitions to the point of the ridiculous.
Isn't my mind part of my body? It distresses me and makes me ill to know what's gong on next door....
I don't subscribe to these bullshit arguments myself, but they do crop up. There are huge proportions of the population of the western world that would be horrified at the idea of just letting people do whatever they want. Like the drug thing - many folks consider dr
You should read up about the "tragedy of the commons" sometime.
So my smoking pot in the privacy of my own home leads to a tragedy of the commons? My being overweight leads to a tragedy of the commons? My ownership of a firearm leads to a tragedy of the commons?
Harm to your neighbour is sometimes difficult to pin down
IMHO, if you can't pin it down you have no right to tell me that I can't engage in the behavior you are seeking to regulate and/or prohibit.
You can't walk down the street without a camera following you.
I'm quite skeptical about this being as generally true as you make it out to be.
You can't visit websites with nudity or other "harmful" material (censorship of the right to expression).
Visiting websites isn't actually exercising a right to expression. Barring such websites from being run might be considered such, yes. Expression is solely on the speaker's end, not the reader's.
You don't have a right to a trial by your peers (three strikes and you lose ISP access).
Like it or not, ISP access is not a right. They are not punishing you for a crime, so you haven't lost any right to trial. It may be underhanded, you may not like it, but it has nothing to do with a right to trial.
and soon I wouldn't be surprised if they make diets mandatory for people with BMI>25 (as has happened in Japan), or else get fined.
The ongoing authoritarian creep, the increasing censorship, growing economic and social conservatism, the worsening impotence of our media, all can be traced back to the collapse of the Soviet empire and the second world. Without that counterweight, without that foil, the western world had not standard against which to measure the worth of its society. Since then, our freedoms have been proclaimed only in our own propaganda and not in
Links to the Rowntree report: executive summary [jrrt.org.uk], and the full report [jrrt.org.uk]. (Both in PDF format). It's worth mentioning that their report doesn't particularly single out the communications database. They assessed 46 databases across all the major UK government departments. They found that at least one quarter "are almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law", and that these "should be scrapped or substantially redesigned", while over "half have significant problems with privacy or effectiveness and could fall foul of a legal challenge". Less than 15% were believed to be "effective, proportionate and necessary". They had some equally damning things to say about the cost of IT projects in the public sector, and the high failure rate of the projects (only 30% succeed).
I highly doubt that some of the largest website giants are going to provide active discourse to boycott all of this invasion of privacy of traffic logging and email snooping. Look at how these large internet conglomerates get their money: from ads specifically tracking where you click your mouse on their website.
But anyway. Gee, look at the time! 1984 all ready.
The only real hope, from people like Google and their fellow analytics and ad mongers, is that they'll oppose Phorm because it represents a competitor to their existing line of business.
Clearly, anybody who sells ads and click data is not a warm and fuzzy friend of privacy; but I suspect that most, if not all, such really don't want a third party, in collusion with ISPs, to gain a superior position.
Firefox plus any number of anti-advert plugins stop most adverts, so the system would be self-defeating to what is an ever larger percentage of people dumping browsers like Internet Explorer.
Don't expect the UK's privacy head to do anything, he makes a lot of noises like over the adding of 1 million innocent people to the DNA database (which is the largest in the world and larger than all 26 other European countries combined), but has let the government carry on. Deliberately toothless, a good PR job is all
I found this comment in TFA (I believe it's taken from the Roundtree Report) intriguing:
"One of them (the National DNA Database) has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights, and both the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats have promised to scrap many of the others (emphasis mine)."
Is the an instance of the Tories saying simply "we're not Labour," or is this some new-found attachment to civil liberties by a party previously known for devotion to monarchy and deference to authority?
The Conservatives have never been very fond of Brussels either, so I'm guessing it's not a new-found devotion to the concept of EU-wide human rights that trump the authority of the member national governments.
This, shows up in my news feeds, on the same day that the Tories declare that they are considering repealing the Human Rights Act if they come to power...
It's seems the UK government is constantly trying to do some and more to stop it's citizens having any kind of privacy.
While it's great that people like the ORG and JRRT are standing up to them and other organisations doing the same, you have to wonder, what can they really do when half the population is too ignorant to care?
Take all the data that the government is collecting and make it public information that any citizen can view. Then, the population will not have an excuse to be ignorant. I thi
It's seems the UK government is constantly trying to do some and more to stop it's citizens having any kind of privacy.
Privacy? That really depends on who you are. If you're a "nobody" then expect none, but if you're the rich and powerful that set the bullsh*t laws then you hold all the aces on privacy.
From The Daily Mail newspaper [dailymail.co.uk]
Google was at the centre of new controversy last night after pictures of Tony Blair's London home were mysteriously removed from its Street View web service.
Images of the House of Commons, the entrance to Downing Street and several Government departments were also blacked out.
And it also em
It is interesting that the government seems to think that whilst the population should be monitored as closely as possible when it comes to their own activities they clearly take the exact opposite view and fight tooth and nail to keep their own details secret. They also appear to want to take this inbalance even further since according to a government minister defending the government from this report on the radio this morning...
"the benefit of these systems outweighs their illegality"
They appear to think they can also completely ignore the law if it suits the interests of Wacky Jacky and the rest of them.
Personally I can see the benefit of centralising government databases, done correctly it should save money and allow the government to work more efficiently which can only be a good thing. However, and it is a big however, I would only support the creation of these central databases based on the following ground rules being enforced:
1. I want to be able see every single piece of data the government is holding on me myself and I want an audit log showing me who has accessed this data and a reason as to why they had done so.
2. In tandem with the above I would want a swift and effective system to impartially consider any complaints I might have that my data was not being accessed for a good reason and the ability to correct any incorrect data I came across and I would require the impartial authority to actually be impartial and have the power to block access and effectively punish those responsible if they agree people have abused their priviledge of access to my data.
3. I would want the ability to remove my data completely from government systems should I choose to do so and not suffer any discriminatory restrictions to my access of government facilities if I chose to do so. Obviously I'd accept things may take them a bit longer to process without access to the electronic data but I wouldn't want to, for example, lose my driving licence.
4. I would have to trust the government and believe that they held themselves to the rule of law and did not undertake nefarious and underhand schemes to abuse my data and to be honest about their intentions.
Sadly I don't think the circumstances will ever be met which would allow the above to happen, particulary points 3 and 4 and especially not under the current morally bankrupt bunch of incompetents.
Good idea, but it's a pipe dream. Here in the US, Congress spends a lot of money on public research, but we never see most of it. Technically it's public domain, but you can't use the Freedom of Information Act on a document you don't know about.
A tiny percentage makes it to wikileaks anonymously through various senators and representatives, but only when it makes some of their opponents look bad. Reports that reflect poorly on the US government as a whole, especially Congress, quietly disappear.
Moral:
Yeah, I'm fine with having my eyes poked out so long as everyone else gets their eyes poked out too.
Don't know how you go from "everyone has the blinders torn off at the same time" to "everyone gets sticks in their eyes". Do you have reading comprehension problems?
Where else are they going to get their political donations from? Having decided to offshore every other form of manufacturing, the only "manufacturing" industry left in the UK is the generation and analysis of personal data. Any company can use the "it will help in the fight against terrorism and child porn" justification for getting access to collect the information in the first place; the data; web browsing, car journeys, public transport journeys, supermarket purchases, mobile phone communications.
I see you've been modded (0). Dear moderators, simply because you disagree with someone is Not a valid reason to subtract a point. Making a person effectively invisible by plummeting their score to 0 or -1 is censorship in my humble opinion. If you disagree, that's fine but the disagreement should come through a *reply* not through punishment of the speaker.
>>>by acquiescing to the surrender of a right you held for hundreds of years
To clarify, the right is not the right to own a gun. The right
Yeah, I'm not surprised. I should have protected myself with a shield of "go ahead, mod me down, I've got karma to burn!" in the original comment;)
To clarify, the right is not the right to own a gun. The right is the right to protect your person, your family, or your home from criminal attack, whether it's using a gun, or sword, a stunner, or a very large bat. It's an inalienable right. An instinctive right. A government may suppress the right through force, but it cannot take it away because it is an innate quality of all living things - the right to self-ownership of your body, and the right to self-defense of same.
What kills me is that the right to keep and bear arms has it's origins in the English common law. They literally had that right for hundreds of years until they surrendered it in the 20th century. Then they act surprised that the Government (having seen that the populace willingly surrenders such a right) seeks to curtail other rights. WTF? You set the pre
This isn't about rights, it's about your contractual position with your ISP. Does your contract allow them to interfere with the packets you receive from the network? Maybe, maybe not. Reserving the ability to shoot BT repairmen on sight will not really do much for you here, either way.
you know it was 1903 when they outlawed firearms in the UK right?
Actually no, it wasn't until 1997 that they outlawed whole classes of firearms. My understanding is that the previous bits of legislation regulated them but did not outlaw them. In either case, how does that change my original point? When the populace meekly surrenders one right why should they then act surprised when the government seeks to curtail other rights? You set the precedent -- don't be surprised by the results.
I also can't help but notice how my original comment has been modded into oblivion
After 1997 around 125K have firearm licences. The difference is that they are now not allowed handguns.
1997 is not a significant date for this "rights" discussion. You had zero right to defend yourself with those firearms for a long time before that. The handgun ban was brought in to stop nuts shooting up schools. And it did.
The British public has no appetite for guns and hasn't had for many years and I sure as fuck don't want armed chavs roaming the streets.
It doesn't matter what your "appetite" is. You've missed the point. The point is that you voluntarily surrendered a right that you held for hundreds of years. Now you act surprised that your Government seeks to curtail other rights? Can you not see how you set the precedent?
but your NRA talking point about 1997 is just plain wrong
I'm not parroting NRA talking points. I'm talking about the voluntary surrender of a right that the populace held for hundreds of years and the precedent that such surrender set. I could make the same point about the right to a tr
The 1997 myth is a favourite of US gun associations.
"I'm talking about the voluntary surrender of a right that the populace held for hundreds of years and the precedent that such surrender set."
Then find another example, there are plenty. 1997 is not an example of this. There was no right to use firearms destroyed by the law brought in then. There was no ability to use firarms to defend yourself before then. We did not give up any "rights" in 1997. For a long, long tim
For a long, long time before that licenses for firearm ownership were only available at the discretion of the police.
Then that's where you went wrong. I'm sure that you realize that the police (indeed, all organs of Government) work for you and shouldn't have the right to dole out permission to exercise your inalienable rights, correct?
Just please, please, please, would Americans stop crowing about nineteen ninety bloody seven when FUCK ALL happened to impact anyone's rights.
Would it make you happier if I just said that you set the stage for it when you willingly surrendered a right sometime in the 20th century that you had previously held for hundreds of years? I honestly didn't set out here to debate the merits of gun control, just to point out that the UK
Then that's where you went wrong. I'm sure that you realize that the police (indeed, all organs of Government) work for you and shouldn't have the right to dole out permission to exercise your inalienable rights, correct?
So carrying a lethal weapon is now an 'inalienable right'? I'd rather most of my fellow citizens did not have that right thanks very much, and it looks like the stats on violent death in the UK and US per capita agree with me.
Government is the voluntary surrender of certain rights in return for security. Thus we give the police the power to lock us up, confiscate weapons, etc etc, governed by certain laws. So giving up certain rights is not some kind of watershed moment, it is fundamental to the social cont
So carrying a lethal weapon is now an 'inalienable right'?
Yes, actually it is. The right to keep and bear arms originated in the Common Law, alongside the right to self-defense.
and it looks like the stats on violent death in the UK and US per capita agree with me.
Correlation != causation. And what other kind of death besides 'violent' death is there? Is there a nice way to die that I'm not aware of?
Ask yourself when you would ever use your gun against your government, and you realise pretty quickly that if you don't want to end up like those at Waco, you wouldn't. Further, if you feel gun ownership is a fundamental guarantor of other rights, why has the US seen the biggest erosion of civil rights in its history in the last decade?
Nice way to repeat all the gun control talking points but if you had bothered to read any of my other posts you would have found that wasn't the point I was attempting to make.
"Would it make you happier if I just said that you set the stage for it when you willingly surrendered a right sometime in the 20th century that you had previously held for hundreds of years?"
That would certainly please me more, I dislike this focus on that one piece of legislation that had very little real effect on the rights of UK citizens.
"just to point out that the UK populace set a precedent for surrendering their rights long before the surveillance society came onto the scene."
The 1997 ban also explicitly excluded black powder weapons. I shot rifles regularly when the ban came in, so I had the opportunity to talk to a few people who were affected by it. They generally went in one of three directions:
High-powered air pistols. These are surprisingly fun, but a lot of effort to load.
Carbine (short-barrelled) rifles. These can fire several shots between reloading, with a simple wrist action to chamber the next round.
Black-powder pistols. Often these are revolvers, so you loa
The structure of the society we have built is there to protect us from sociopaths. Vigilante action is not.
Let me know how well the structure of society works out for you when someone breaks into your house at 3:00 and starts stabbing you. Sure the police will be there in a few minutes -- by which time you will be dead or dying. And I'd really like to know how self-defense qualifies as 'vigilante action'. Vigilantism was already illegal before the advent of gun control you know.
The 'strong case' is the fact that you historically had the right and now you don't
Historically, land owners had the right to unilaterally increase their tennants' rent or throw them off without notice, now they don't.
Historically, men had the right to rape their wives, now they don't.
Historically, employers had the right to refuse to employ women, Jews, or black people, and shops had the right to refuse to serve people on the basis of their faith, creed, gender, or colour, now they don't.
Historically, fathers had the right to decide who their daughters married, now they don't.
Historically, rich men had the right to horsewhip peasants who were rude to them, now they don't.
We've given up all of these rights, but I don't see you many people claiming that society would be improved by getting them back. If you think the right to carry a gun around with you would be worth reintroducing you need to give a better argument than 'well, that's what it used to be, back before 1903 when society was basically rubbish for anyone below the upper middle class'.
My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce
and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side.
-- Senator Hubert Humphrey
Can we stop this use of "Controversial"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we stop this use of "Controversial"? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more than that. It is controversial, I'm afraid.
There's the whole is it/is it not legal debate, the controversy over the police investigations, the government capitulation and potential EU investigation of the whole thing.
There's also the fact the Joe public has never heard of Phorm and wouldn't particularly care or work out the consequences if he did. So it's basically an argument between monied interests, the British police and government on one side and geeks. privacy advocates and the EU on the other.
I'd call that a bit of a controversy.
Parent
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Regarding the OP's main point. Is there in fact controversy over Phorm? Is there a dispute between two sides holding opposite views. I would argue with the OP and say there is not.
Not certainly it looks like there is a dispute. But realistically, it's all just mummery or controversy theater if you will. T
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There certainly is controversy over the handling of Phorm, if not on its intent and the acceptability of its purpose.
When Phorm was trialled without consent the police investigated both them and the ISP and dropped the case (or were asked to by government). The EU got involved and is still trying to get answers out of the UK government about why this happened, why there were no trials and why it's allowed to continue...
Bah, Maybe not controversial amongst the public any further than "they're watching us all
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The media is to blame for this.
Well, they at least share part of the blame. The scumbags at Phorm get some of it, too.
If rules limiting the amount of sport, gossip and leisure stories were enforced, we would have better watchdogs.
Doubtful. And frankly, disgusting. There are plenty of news sources out there that don't have a lot of those stories (NPR, for example). But they don't have high ratings. Why? Because, sadly, people want sports, gossip, leisure stories, and don't care about their freedoms.
I'm
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Wow, that's quite a controversial statement you've made there!
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I would say that your concerns about the use of the word "controversial" are controversial, but I don't think enough people share your view to justify using that term. :P
Change your ISP (Score:3, Informative)
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I recommend Be Unlimited: www.bethere.co.uk
Good price, unlimited data quota, 24 Mb/s, free static IP, and they don't do anything to your traffic as far as I can tell. Oh and it's only a 3 month contract.
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I have heard AAISP is quite good, but they are more expensive and have traffic caps.
--Coder
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True, but nearly every UK ISP does this:
http://www.iwf.org.uk/funding/page.64.htm [iwf.org.uk]
And I've looked at the IWF blacklist. I don't think I'll be missing any of those sites. What sites do you want to access that the IWF blocks you from?
Looks like Eastern Europe and Soviet Union won (Score:3, Interesting)
The UK and France are slowly but surely turning into the totalitarian states that, prior to 1990, they despised. You can't carry a defensive weapon to protect yourself from a criminal attack. You can't walk down the street without a camera following you. You can't visit websites with nudity or other "harmful" material (censorship of the right to expression). You don't have a right to a trial by your peers (three strikes and you lose ISP access). Your biometric data is being recorded and tracked by the government, and soon I wouldn't be surprised if they make diets mandatory for people with BMI>25 (as has happened in Japan), or else get fined.
Yay. Freedom won. (cough). Or maybe not.
Re:Looks like Eastern Europe and Soviet Union won (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom won.
Well, one version of freedom won. The freedom that says you need the Government to "protect" you from every conceivable source of harm, ranging from fatty foods to cigarettes to automobile accidents to firearms. The sheep can't possibly be trusted to assume responsibility for their own actions/choices so we need to curtail those choices for the public good.
When will people realize that real freedom is the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, provided that it isn't harming your neighbor?
Parent
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"When will people realize that real freedom is the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, provided that it isn't harming your neighbor?"
Never.
And even if they did, they'd keep expanding the definition of harm. I've heard people claiming harm for all sorts of things, like having openly gay individuals living next door harms their property prices, or somehow "gayifies" their children and thus harms them.
People will never give up on their drive to interfere with and disapprove of other people's lives. More'
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It is *physical* harm not abstract harm. That's why the KKK is allowed to go-around calling people the N-word and burning crosses. Although you might find this offensive, they have the right to say or do whatever they wish, so long as they don't cause physical harm to your body, your land, or your property.
"No man has a right to attack another. And that is all the government should restrain him." - Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic party.
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But that's the point, you'd never get anyone to agree to that, and then over time they'd stretch the definitions to the point of the ridiculous.
Isn't my mind part of my body? It distresses me and makes me ill to know what's gong on next door....
I don't subscribe to these bullshit arguments myself, but they do crop up. There are huge proportions of the population of the western world that would be horrified at the idea of just letting people do whatever they want. Like the drug thing - many folks consider dr
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You should read up about the "tragedy of the commons" sometime.
So my smoking pot in the privacy of my own home leads to a tragedy of the commons? My being overweight leads to a tragedy of the commons? My ownership of a firearm leads to a tragedy of the commons?
Harm to your neighbour is sometimes difficult to pin down
IMHO, if you can't pin it down you have no right to tell me that I can't engage in the behavior you are seeking to regulate and/or prohibit.
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You can't walk down the street without a camera following you.
I'm quite skeptical about this being as generally true as you make it out to be.
You can't visit websites with nudity or other "harmful" material (censorship of the right to expression).
Visiting websites isn't actually exercising a right to expression. Barring such websites from being run might be considered such, yes. Expression is solely on the speaker's end, not the reader's.
You don't have a right to a trial by your peers (three strikes and you lose ISP access).
Like it or not, ISP access is not a right. They are not punishing you for a crime, so you haven't lost any right to trial. It may be underhanded, you may not like it, but it has nothing to do with a right to trial.
and soon I wouldn't be surprised if they make diets mandatory for people with BMI>25 (as has happened in Japan), or else get fined.
No good rights tirade i
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Not quite. The Soviet Union fell.
The ongoing authoritarian creep, the increasing censorship, growing economic and social conservatism, the worsening impotence of our media, all can be traced back to the collapse of the Soviet empire and the second world. Without that counterweight, without that foil, the western world had not standard against which to measure the worth of its society. Since then, our freedoms have been proclaimed only in our own propaganda and not in
Rowntree Reform Trust (Score:5, Informative)
Privacy Schmivacy (Score:2, Insightful)
But anyway. Gee, look at the time! 1984 all ready.
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Clearly, anybody who sells ads and click data is not a warm and fuzzy friend of privacy; but I suspect that most, if not all, such really don't want a third party, in collusion with ISPs, to gain a superior position.
Asking Google to respect the users privacy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get back to you when my sides stop hurting from laughing.
Changing content (Score:2)
Firefox plus any number of anti-advert plugins stop most adverts, so the system would be self-defeating to what is an ever larger percentage of people dumping browsers like Internet Explorer.
Don't expect the UK's privacy head to do anything, he makes a lot of noises like over the adding of 1 million innocent people to the DNA database (which is the largest in the world and larger than all 26 other European countries combined), but has let the government carry on. Deliberately toothless, a good PR job is all
Tories as the new protectors of personal freedoms? (Score:3, Interesting)
I found this comment in TFA (I believe it's taken from the Roundtree Report) intriguing:
"One of them (the National DNA Database) has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights, and both the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats have promised to scrap many of the others (emphasis mine)."
Is the an instance of the Tories saying simply "we're not Labour," or is this some new-found attachment to civil liberties by a party previously known for devotion to monarchy and deference to authority?
The Conservatives have never been very fond of Brussels either, so I'm guessing it's not a new-found devotion to the concept of EU-wide human rights that trump the authority of the member national governments.
Re:Tories as the new protectors of personal freedo (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Take all the data that the government is collecting and make it public information that any citizen can view. Then, the population will not have an excuse to be ignorant. I thi
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It's seems the UK government is constantly trying to do some and more to stop it's citizens having any kind of privacy.
Privacy? That really depends on who you are. If you're a "nobody" then expect none, but if you're the rich and powerful that set the bullsh*t laws then you hold all the aces on privacy. From The Daily Mail newspaper [dailymail.co.uk]
Google was at the centre of new controversy last night after pictures of Tony Blair's London home were mysteriously removed from its Street View web service. Images of the House of Commons, the entrance to Downing Street and several Government departments were also blacked out. And it also em
Re:I need to find a new country to live in. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is interesting that the government seems to think that whilst the population should be monitored as closely as possible when it comes to their own activities they clearly take the exact opposite view and fight tooth and nail to keep their own details secret. They also appear to want to take this inbalance even further since according to a government minister defending the government from this report on the radio this morning...
They appear to think they can also completely ignore the law if it suits the interests of Wacky Jacky and the rest of them.
Personally I can see the benefit of centralising government databases, done correctly it should save money and allow the government to work more efficiently which can only be a good thing. However, and it is a big however, I would only support the creation of these central databases based on the following ground rules being enforced:
1. I want to be able see every single piece of data the government is holding on me myself and I want an audit log showing me who has accessed this data and a reason as to why they had done so.
2. In tandem with the above I would want a swift and effective system to impartially consider any complaints I might have that my data was not being accessed for a good reason and the ability to correct any incorrect data I came across and I would require the impartial authority to actually be impartial and have the power to block access and effectively punish those responsible if they agree people have abused their priviledge of access to my data.
3. I would want the ability to remove my data completely from government systems should I choose to do so and not suffer any discriminatory restrictions to my access of government facilities if I chose to do so. Obviously I'd accept things may take them a bit longer to process without access to the electronic data but I wouldn't want to, for example, lose my driving licence.
4. I would have to trust the government and believe that they held themselves to the rule of law and did not undertake nefarious and underhand schemes to abuse my data and to be honest about their intentions.
Sadly I don't think the circumstances will ever be met which would allow the above to happen, particulary points 3 and 4 and especially not under the current morally bankrupt bunch of incompetents.
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Spot on. I'd also be fine with CCTV if all streams were public and all access logs available.
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A tiny percentage makes it to wikileaks anonymously through various senators and representatives, but only when it makes some of their opponents look bad. Reports that reflect poorly on the US government as a whole, especially Congress, quietly disappear. Moral:
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Don't know how you go from "everyone has the blinders torn off at the same time" to "everyone gets sticks in their eyes". Do you have reading comprehension problems?
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Where else are they going to get their political donations from? Having decided to offshore every other form of manufacturing, the only "manufacturing" industry left in the UK is the generation and analysis of personal data. Any company can use the "it will help in the fight against terrorism and child porn" justification for getting access to collect the information in the first place; the data; web browsing, car journeys, public transport journeys, supermarket purchases, mobile phone communications.
Then o
Re:this won't win me many friends.... (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, a GE Minigun [wikipedia.org] is a pretty efficient way to mass-uninstall Windows from a server farm. :)
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I see you've been modded (0). Dear moderators, simply because you disagree with someone is Not a valid reason to subtract a point. Making a person effectively invisible by plummeting their score to 0 or -1 is censorship in my humble opinion. If you disagree, that's fine but the disagreement should come through a *reply* not through punishment of the speaker.
>>>by acquiescing to the surrender of a right you held for hundreds of years
To clarify, the right is not the right to own a gun. The right
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I see you've been modded (0)
Yeah, I'm not surprised. I should have protected myself with a shield of "go ahead, mod me down, I've got karma to burn!" in the original comment ;)
To clarify, the right is not the right to own a gun. The right is the right to protect your person, your family, or your home from criminal attack, whether it's using a gun, or sword, a stunner, or a very large bat. It's an inalienable right. An instinctive right. A government may suppress the right through force, but it cannot take it away because it is an innate quality of all living things - the right to self-ownership of your body, and the right to self-defense of same.
What kills me is that the right to keep and bear arms has it's origins in the English common law. They literally had that right for hundreds of years until they surrendered it in the 20th century. Then they act surprised that the Government (having seen that the populace willingly surrenders such a right) seeks to curtail other rights. WTF? You set the pre
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you know it was 1903 when they outlawed firearms in the UK right?
Actually no, it wasn't until 1997 that they outlawed whole classes of firearms. My understanding is that the previous bits of legislation regulated them but did not outlaw them. In either case, how does that change my original point? When the populace meekly surrenders one right why should they then act surprised when the government seeks to curtail other rights? You set the precedent -- don't be surprised by the results.
I also can't help but notice how my original comment has been modded into oblivion
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In 1997 under 125K had firearm licenses
After 1997 around 125K have firearm licences. The difference is that they are now not allowed handguns.
1997 is not a significant date for this "rights" discussion. You had zero right to defend yourself with those firearms for a long time before that. The handgun ban was brought in to stop nuts shooting up schools. And it did.
The British public has no appetite for guns and hasn't had for many years and I sure as fuck don't want armed chavs roaming the streets.
I'm sorry,
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It doesn't matter what your "appetite" is. You've missed the point. The point is that you voluntarily surrendered a right that you held for hundreds of years. Now you act surprised that your Government seeks to curtail other rights? Can you not see how you set the precedent?
but your NRA talking point about 1997 is just plain wrong
I'm not parroting NRA talking points. I'm talking about the voluntary surrender of a right that the populace held for hundreds of years and the precedent that such surrender set. I could make the same point about the right to a tr
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"I'm not parroting NRA talking points."
The 1997 myth is a favourite of US gun associations.
"I'm talking about the voluntary surrender of a right that the populace held for hundreds of years and the precedent that such surrender set."
Then find another example, there are plenty. 1997 is not an example of this. There was no right to use firearms destroyed by the law brought in then. There was no ability to use firarms to defend yourself before then. We did not give up any "rights" in 1997. For a long, long tim
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For a long, long time before that licenses for firearm ownership were only available at the discretion of the police.
Then that's where you went wrong. I'm sure that you realize that the police (indeed, all organs of Government) work for you and shouldn't have the right to dole out permission to exercise your inalienable rights, correct?
Just please, please, please, would Americans stop crowing about nineteen ninety bloody seven when FUCK ALL happened to impact anyone's rights.
Would it make you happier if I just said that you set the stage for it when you willingly surrendered a right sometime in the 20th century that you had previously held for hundreds of years? I honestly didn't set out here to debate the merits of gun control, just to point out that the UK
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Then that's where you went wrong. I'm sure that you realize that the police (indeed, all organs of Government) work for you and shouldn't have the right to dole out permission to exercise your inalienable rights, correct?
So carrying a lethal weapon is now an 'inalienable right'? I'd rather most of my fellow citizens did not have that right thanks very much, and it looks like the stats on violent death in the UK and US per capita agree with me.
Government is the voluntary surrender of certain rights in return for security. Thus we give the police the power to lock us up, confiscate weapons, etc etc, governed by certain laws. So giving up certain rights is not some kind of watershed moment, it is fundamental to the social cont
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So carrying a lethal weapon is now an 'inalienable right'?
Yes, actually it is. The right to keep and bear arms originated in the Common Law, alongside the right to self-defense.
and it looks like the stats on violent death in the UK and US per capita agree with me.
Correlation != causation. And what other kind of death besides 'violent' death is there? Is there a nice way to die that I'm not aware of?
Ask yourself when you would ever use your gun against your government, and you realise pretty quickly that if you don't want to end up like those at Waco, you wouldn't. Further, if you feel gun ownership is a fundamental guarantor of other rights, why has the US seen the biggest erosion of civil rights in its history in the last decade?
Nice way to repeat all the gun control talking points but if you had bothered to read any of my other posts you would have found that wasn't the point I was attempting to make.
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"Would it make you happier if I just said that you set the stage for it when you willingly surrendered a right sometime in the 20th century that you had previously held for hundreds of years?"
That would certainly please me more, I dislike this focus on that one piece of legislation that had very little real effect on the rights of UK citizens.
"just to point out that the UK populace set a precedent for surrendering their rights long before the surveillance society came onto the scene."
These precedents have b
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The structure of the society we have built is there to protect us from sociopaths. Vigilante action is not.
Let me know how well the structure of society works out for you when someone breaks into your house at 3:00 and starts stabbing you. Sure the police will be there in a few minutes -- by which time you will be dead or dying. And I'd really like to know how self-defense qualifies as 'vigilante action'. Vigilantism was already illegal before the advent of gun control you know.
Re:this won't win me many friends.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The 'strong case' is the fact that you historically had the right and now you don't
Historically, land owners had the right to unilaterally increase their tennants' rent or throw them off without notice, now they don't.
Historically, men had the right to rape their wives, now they don't.
Historically, employers had the right to refuse to employ women, Jews, or black people, and shops had the right to refuse to serve people on the basis of their faith, creed, gender, or colour, now they don't.
Historically, fathers had the right to decide who their daughters married, now they don't.
Historically, rich men had the right to horsewhip peasants who were rude to them, now they don't.
We've given up all of these rights, but I don't see you many people claiming that society would be improved by getting them back. If you think the right to carry a gun around with you would be worth reintroducing you need to give a better argument than 'well, that's what it used to be, back before 1903 when society was basically rubbish for anyone below the upper middle class'.
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