UK Plans More Spying On Internet Users Under 'Terrorism' Pretext 189
Wowsers writes "In vogue with other countries cracking down on freedom and democracy on the internet as discussed in Slashdot recently, the UK is joining in with plans to track all phone calls, text messages, email traffic and websites visited online, all to be stored in vast databases under new government anti-terror plans. As reported in The Telegraph, security services will have access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook, direct messages between subscribers on Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games. The scheme is a revised version of a plan drawn up by the ex-Labour government which would have created a central database of all the information. The idea was later dropped in favor of requiring communications providers to store the details at the taxpayers' expense."
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
1984 is here! 27 years too late, but it's here.
BB: "Inparty must continuebe goodthink!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Thinkpol report alarmwise, unveiling doubleplusungood possibility of Inparty ideodeviates. Goldstein connects possibility uneliminated. BB declared speechwise in VicPalace Ingsoc traitors must be detected and rehabed nodelay:
"Comrades, how will Ingsoc continuelive victorywise? Ingsoc will continuelive victorywise by vaporizing decay within Inparty core. Inparty exampleserve Outparty and prolemass and must causewise continuebe goodthink. Ignorance is strength, Comrades, unforget."
So..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
And ow we even have to pay for the noose they're putting around our necks: "requiring communications providers to store the details at the taxpayers' expense."
How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we so terrorized by terrorism that we are willing to put up with anything to avoid it? How far do we want to go to prevent terrorism. Should we just accept that sometimes it's going to happen despite our best efforts? It sucks if you happen to be a victim but terrorism can never do enough take down a country unless it overreacts and spends itself to death trying to counter it.
I'm not saying we should do nothing to fight terrorism but how far should we go?
Bad news for all (Score:4, Insightful)
The UK government has shown time and time again that this is going to be a bad thing. For one, they've had so many data breaches in the last few years (lost DVLA disks, tax details, NHS disks, god knows what else) that a single monolithic data source is just asking for trouble. Secondly, we've had plenty of cases in recent years of jumped up local officials and magistrates using "anti-terror" laws (which were no-doubt passed in good faith) to track people who put their bins out on the wrong week, or don't keep their allotments tidy, or any number of other petty nonsense.
And finally, I'd like to point out to any smug-feeling non-Brits reading this that it's bad for you too. If your communications pass through UK -based servers, odds are you're going to be logged and tracked too. And you don't even have the satisfaction of having voted for this rubbish!
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we so terrorized by terrorism that we are willing to put up with anything to avoid it? How far do we want to go to prevent terrorism. Should we just accept that sometimes it's going to happen despite our best efforts? It sucks if you happen to be a victim but terrorism can never do enough take down a country unless it overreacts and spends itself to death trying to counter it.
I'm not saying we should do nothing to fight terrorism but how far should we go?
What if terrorism is made to take our human rights away?
Re:BB: "Inparty must continuebe goodthink!" (Score:0, Insightful)
Your phraseology suggests that you think it's ebil commies behind this, but it's not. It's the right wing this time. Control is the goal of the rich sociopaths who rule the world, from up front and behind the scenes.
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
American here.
Let's assume they're telling the truth, that it is to fight terrorism and not free speech.
Let's also ignore the issue that terrorism is a blanket term for crimes committed to incite fear as opposed to simply being crimes.
The Internet is vast. There is so much information out there that any preventative measures seems utterly impossible. I mean, seriously, I can understand the information could be useful after the fact, but how do they know where to focus before the fact? Do they have a supercomputer to actively monitor every little thing on the Internet? How do they decide what is a red flag and what isn't? Won't those attempting to commit criminal acts just use code? Without knowing who is doing what, how do they know what code for which to look?
I think it'd be a better idea to look at the socio-economic problems leading to people willing to commit crimes (fear-incited or not) in the first place.
Only works against file sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Theresa May is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Jacqui Smith before her, a weak woman. She's shown the exact same pattern of fear, and the exact same capitulation to MI5/6/SOCA/London Police Chief Constable (who also heads anti-terror) as the person before her.
They talk all sorts of imaginary scenarios that may 'happen' as a result of failure to monitor everyone, and she can see her career up in smoke if they campaign against her they way the police have campaigned on other issues.
Similar things happened to the background check reforms, for people who deal with children. The police PR men went out on a PR campaign, and said that if the vetting procedure was removed then pedos would kill your children and it would be the home secretaries fault. So she toned down the changes to the vetting procedure to allow *some* vetting.
Labour of course will accuse Tories of *.*, they'll join in with any criticism of the Tories because that's all that pillock Milliband ever does. So the police can rely on the support of Labour no matter what they want to do, how outrageous the civil liberties violation or how many human rights are violated. Milliband will be there to join in the chorus of criticism.
The fix is to remove the police campaign abilities. They shouldn't be able to campaign as to how laws SHOULD be, since they have to enforce them AS THEY ARE. It's too tempting for seniors police and spys to extend their mandate by using their position to campaign for new laws.
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fighting terrorism is merely an excuse. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that treating the symptoms isn't going to cure the illness.
Call it for what it is. A ploy to pass undesirable laws in an effort to assimilate even more power in the government institutions. First, the new system is there to fight "terrorists". Then "child molesters". Then "pirates". Then all "criminals". Then "thought criminals".
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
If fighting terrorism involves violating people's rights, then I'd rather we not fight terrorism.
Re:News Flash! Britain sinks under server farms (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the Telegraph, take the story with a pinch of salt. I don't think that even the UK government is mad enough to try this.
Parts of it don't make sense anyway. For example why log Twitter private communications when Twitter already logs them anyway. They can just demand Twitter hands the data over, no need to duplicate it at enormous expense.
'preventing terrorism' rather than saving lives (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Theresa May is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The fix is to remove the police campaign abilities
100% agree, but Theresa May (alone) isn't "the problem" - she's just Home Secretary. I can't remember in my lifetime ANY Home Secretaries that have given a shit about civil liberties. Either they're weak-willed and cave into ACPO as you said, or they're strong willed and think up the Orwellian ideas themselves (think David Blunkett, Michael Howard). There's no such thing as a good Home Secretary.
Re:Only works against file sharing (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not after data anymore. Terrorists aren't that stupid and learned about cryptography too. The thing intelligence agencies do theses days is map relationships so they can get a view of terrorist networks and cells.
After that, it's all down to what you consider to be a terrorist...
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
American here.
Let's assume they're telling the truth, that it is to fight terrorism and not free speech.
Let's also ignore the issue that terrorism is a blanket term for crimes committed to incite fear as opposed to simply being crimes.
The Internet is vast. There is so much information out there that any preventative measures seems utterly impossible. I mean, seriously, I can understand the information could be useful after the fact, but how do they know where to focus before the fact? Do they have a supercomputer to actively monitor every little thing on the Internet? How do they decide what is a red flag and what isn't? Won't those attempting to commit criminal acts just use code? Without knowing who is doing what, how do they know what code for which to look?
I think it'd be a better idea to look at the socio-economic problems leading to people willing to commit crimes (fear-incited or not) in the first place.
All your points are logical and right on target. Excellent summation.
However, none of those things are important or relevant to politicians. Only the possibility to increase their (and therefor the government's) power, and remove power (and wealth, which could be argued is the same thing in many ways) from regular citizens.
The problem that citizens of Western countries are facing, as they all seem to be headed in the same general direction of reducing citizen's privacy & freedom, is a common one...that of government that's gotten too large, powerful, and centralized...and therefor more corrupt and tyrannical.
Government is like fire, and should be treated very much the same, and for nearly identical reasons. Both are extremely useful, but at the same time extremely destructive, dangerous, swift-spreading, and hard to control, particularly the larger either grows. Both governments and fire, once either has grown to a certain size, becomes impossible for the ones who started it to control and morphs from a useful force for good and champion for freedom and the Rule of Law, to a force for tyranny, evil, and the capricious rule of men.
Strat
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Laundering for the GCHQ? (Score:4, Insightful)
My theory? Because corporate sociopaths don't give a crap about national defence. They have no loyalty to king nor country, no sense of patriotism or empathy, and they've accumulated enough power from their corporate divide-and-plunder schemes that they have moved onto their inevitable target: the nations that birthed them.
Data-mining, open-cut style, benefits corporate profiteering more than anything else. Big business knows your teenage daughter is pregnant before you do (google: Target data mining babies). And I daresay it's a lot easier to fight a foreign terrorist than it is to tackle wealthy "pillars of the community" who have the ear (and dirty laundry) of your civilian leaders - if they're not part of the hierarchy themselves.
Re:BB: "Inparty must continuebe goodthink!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's well-policed
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe it was "made" for it, but it sure as hell is being milked for all its worth by the people in power.
So the terrorists win afterall (Score:5, Insightful)
With a minuscule investment of resources, they were able to completely destroy the "free world's" way of life. They could not have ever done it via direct hostilities, but instead used the back door and got us to do it to ourselves. ( with our power hungry governments help.. )
Social engineering at its best. ( or worst i guess..)
*sigh*
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:2, Insightful)
If fighting terrorism involves violating people's rights, then I'd rather we not fight terrorism.
Why not fight the actual terrorism, rather than the population oriented one defined by govt? From the beginning of the war on terror, followed by the rise of the surveillance state I wondered about this massive clamp down on everybody when there's likely only a few actual terrorists in the world. It's like trying to shoot a fly with an elephant gun, right? That's actually the point: to deter anyone from the masses from even contemplating challenging authority. It's collective punishment on a massive scale, but that's not really the point. See, it's not terrorism if the govt does it, there are no repercussions or punishment either. If it was politicians wouldn't feel confident about invading other nations, implementing torture policies, or brutalizing it's citizens. Until then they'll never have to take responsibility for their actions whatsoever.
I thought it interesting Robert Anton Wilson saying the US govt's first response to any crisis situation is to suspend civil liberties.
Re:How far do we go to fight terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are the British, who fought Hitler and the Nazis, and then the red communism menace, so hell bent on emulating and surpassing, the spy on our own people methodologies of both evils? The boogeyman (aka 'terrorist') is winning and he/they don't even have to do a damn thing...