UK Government To Demand Data On Every Call, Email, and Tweet 199
judgecorp writes "The UK government is proposing a law that would require phone and Internet companies to store information on all communications, and hand it to the security services when required. The Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP) abandoned by the last government is back on the table, proposed as a means to increase security, and likely to be pushed through before the Olympics in London, according to reports."
Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you Tory Government for proving you're just as big a bunch of cunts as the others.
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish all the old WWII guys would get in their wheel chairs, walkers, and slippers and hobble down to Parliament and scream:
Bloody hell! What the fuck! It looks like we wasted our time and our buddies' lives fighting the Germans!
And then flog all the PMs with their canes.
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They'd all be wrong - there was no such war. We're at war with Eastasia, and we're friends with Eurasia. It's always been this way. You need to be reeducated.
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They were not fighting the Germans. They were fighting the Nazis. It just happened to be Germans who were the largest group under Nazi control at the time. The Nazis, had they been allowed to stay in power, would be a LOT WORSE than what the UK, USA, and some other countries are currently doing to rip off people's rights. Not that it is impossible for UK and USA to get as bad as the Nazis as this certainly could happen, and is the current direction of movement. But this proposal, while a big step in th
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, because the UK is famous for its death camps. Oh ... wait ... no it isn't.
Actually, we invented them during the Boar war [boer.co.za]
Actual death camps [holocaust-education.dk] tend to not leave any survivors. They fill up, kill everybody, and are filled up again to repeat. At least 75% survived the badly run, cruel camps that the British Army ran in the Boer War.
Africa Imperialism in the dock - the Boer War [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
10-Step Plan to Cure Cancer in UK and US
1. Nationalize our communication systems. Telephony, cable TV, and data transmission need to become the people's. If we stopped sending a great deal of our money into the coffers of a few corporations that have so much cash that they continue to expand their control, we would have more money for other things like education. If France can offer the big three communication needs (phone, internet, and television) for a fee roughly 1/3 of what we are paying, we should follow their example.
2. Immediately institute regulations on the amount of interest that can be charged on credit accounts. Make it the prime rate plus 10-20% - enough to make them money but not so much as to continue to fleece the population.
3. Regulate severely or nationalize the use of debit cards and force businesses to discount for cash commensurate with the fees that they are paying for using these electronic transfers.
4. Separate the banks from speculation and traditional banking. By allowing our banks to become addicted to gambling they are no longer serving the public's interest but theirs.
5. Immediately institute a transaction tax of less than 1% on each transaction. The only effect that people would ever see is when they sell a stock and have to pay this fee out of their proceeds. What this would do is stop the manipulation that major players in the market can perform to bleed money out of the system.
6. Immediately cease the speculative trading of commodities. As I have often stated if you want to buy oil or grains then you must have the facilities to actually accept delivery of such commodities. If you cannot then you have no business in this market.
7. Immediately treat all income the same whether from salaries or capital gains: treat everyone the same as far as the taxes in our society are concern. Let them contribute to the social security and medicare systems as well pay their fair share of the burdens we all should share for living in a modern society.
8. Break up the media conglomerates. There is no reason that all of our news should be filtered through corporations like Disney or Rupert Murdoch's Media Empire.
9. Treat our trading partners in exactly the way we are treated. Japan can export as many automobiles as we can sell in Japan. China the same. As is stands now all this type of trade is doing is stealing bread off our tables.
10 Stop the damned revolving door that spins riches to those who worked in government service regulating the same industries that enrich them. Forbid anyone working in a senior position in government from working for a private firm in the same area for a period of time no less than five years and have this same restriction apply to family members.
http://sideshow.me.uk/sfeb12.htm#1202200100 [sideshow.me.uk]
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Not bad.
Problem with number 1 though is that if all of our telecommunications had been run solely by the government we would have less and have it be more expensive than when getting ripped off by private corps.
Problem with number 3 is the government has no business forcing anyone to give discounts for anything. Sounds good on the face of it but really I want my government fucking shit up less. Power is something government should have very little of.
Problem with number 10 is I will be god damned if you can
Re:Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
> Power is something government should have very little of.
Power is something both goverment _and_ private conglomerates should have very little off. If you have a too weak goverment, private special interests can grab too much power and become de facto goverments piggybacking on weak official goverments, so you get the same negative results for the population. The key is to cut power everywhere before it starts reaching critical, self-sustaining thresholds. And this only works if the people are powerful enough to cut both the goverment and special interests. It works only with a more direct democracy.
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Mostly when I here this the poster goes on to show how strong private corporations fuck over the little guy.
Usually they fail to see that the big corp used its money to buy government which then fuck you over.
Strong federal government is a major problem.
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I'll be goddamned if you are guaranteed a job, because your uncle decided to run for office. ;-)
BTW: I find your response most effective, when I imagine it narrated by Stephen Fry. In fact, it becomes almost deightful to read! I should try the same thought-experiment with the Linux LVM HOWTO.
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Nice try, UK Government.
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You have consonantal ambiguity. I can't figure if you are nostalgic or nasty logic....
Re:Thank you (Score:4, Informative)
You're describing the situation in Argentina. Our government is doing many of the points you mention (8: war on grupo clarin, 1: nation-wide HDTV and fiber optics internet, 9: forcing importers to export in a 1:1 ratio)
they also closed down all private retirement funds overnight. it's all state-owned now.
it's not going so well... a lot of stuff is already missing. brazil (our main trading partner) is getting upset. you need authorization to import anything.
we're doing some other things too, like compulsive re-issue of all national documents (with biometrics like fingerprint and photo stored online). "electronic" receipts with an copy going in real-time to the tax collecting agency (AFIP), which also has access to all bank accounts...
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The solution is only one:
Flood them! Create that much data that they simply won't be able to keep it all.
Only thing that is needed is some background service that logs on to fake
facebook, email and twitter accounts and corresponds with other (also fake)
accounts while your laptop is idle.
Have fun sorting through the yottabytes UK gov...
Re:Thank you (Score:4, Funny)
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We need a very advanced AI to sort through all that data. Let's call it Skynet.
Replace 'Skynet' with 'G.C.H.Q.' and replace 'advanced AI' with 'tonnes of data entry work', and you're not too far off.....
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No thats up here in Canada. We are taking our lead from the UK and US mind you, the Harper Regime is all about removing personal privacy these days.
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Fuck privacy, this inches towards a freedom of speech restriction!
I always thought that Canadians had an open minded government...
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We did. Then the country's collection of social conservatives, conned fiscal conservatives, single-issue voters, and gullible people managed to get the Conservative party (formerly the Reform party) into a majority government.
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How will you know that you've succeeded in overwhelming them?
How will you stop the bastards from stealing an ever-increasing portion of your income in order to upgrade their surveillance infrastructure to cope with the traffic?
How will this deter unscrupulous, complicit telecomms vendors from creating increasingly efficient and intrusive forms of spy gear to meet the demand?
Technological workarounds -- Tor, PGP, and all the rest -- are important, but they're only stopgaps. This needs to be stopped at its s
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OK, solution might be a wrong term. Does retaliation sound better?
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How is it falsifying evidence? You're not generating false data ... about the data you generate. You're just generating useless data that no one in their right mind would care about. "Your honor, I am part of BardTweets, a non profit organization of Shalespeare Fans. We tweet all Shakespeare, all the time."
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Everything not forbidden is manditory. Welcome to Utopia.
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btw, its been tested in court (in the US) and its PERFECTLY LEGAL and FINE for cops to lie to citizens.
but don't dare lie TO a cop.
we have such a nice balanced world, don't we?
(cries a little)
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Why are you so surprised? Didn't you know that THE COPS are the single incorruptible, law abiding species in the whole universe?
Take this Terrorist into prison now!
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Coming next: The National Bandwidth Preservation Act, making it a terrorist crime to use more than X gigs per month, and for intentionally adding noise to the national security logs.
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I actually wonder why they didn't lead with that?
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Actually they are doing you a favor!
Next time you see them don't forget to thank them.
As for the annoyance just invest in some decent noise canceling headphones and you will be fine.
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grep huge_database mp3
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George Orwell - Animal Farm. Tells you a great deal about human nature and its response to power. All power corrupts, and unless you have functional reins and limits on those who are given power, it becomes, over time, ever more of a tyranny. Alas.
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And just as stupid. I'm pretty sure real terrorists don't transfer information that is not encrypted to military levels.
Sure....your low end terrorist wannabees will chat on facebook believing they're safe...but they're the types that will probably find something more interesting to do in a matter of days. At worst, they'll blow off their own fingers accidentally while trying to get it right.
Meanwhile, uk.gov will force ISPs to up prices to afford recording data for them - recording this data is hideously e
That'll be the scheme opposed by the CURRENT lot? (Score:5, Insightful)
When they were in opposition?
I guess whether it looks like a good idea or not largely depends on whether you're the one choosing the "preferred bidders". And thinking about your post-political career.
Re:That'll be the scheme opposed by the CURRENT lo (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a side effect of two-party/adversarial politics. The party in power only opposes stuff because they see it as their job to. If the current government proposed a law outlawing the mistreatment of kittens Labour would probably find an angle to argue against it. It's because party politics isn't about serving the people any more (if it ever was), it's about beating the other party at the next election, and that means scoring points wherever possible.
The only thing more depressing than a situation where one side opposes the exact same thing they supported when on the other side of the chamber, is when both sides agree on something, and it gets rushed through without any of the issues being examined.
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Sad thing is you can argue against pretty much any good idea by saying there's not enough money to fund enforcement of it.
At least you can use the same argument against bad ideas fairly effectively too. But this is the main reason even good ideas rarely make it into law.
Oh noes! (Score:2, Insightful)
For the sake of the Olympics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For the sake of the Olympics... (Score:5, Insightful)
The threat of terrorism is a lame excuse for mass surveillance.
Copyright protection is a lame excuse for mass surveillance.
Child porn is a lame excuse for mass surveillance.
The Olympics!? They're not even trying any more.
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If you don't support this surveillance, you stand with the terrorists and child pornographers who want to keep the children from watching the Olympics!
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UK is no different than the rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
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did you just compare CCTV inside of stores to CCTV in public spaces... seriously?
Re:UK is no different than the rest of the world (Score:5, Interesting)
did you just compare CCTV inside of stores to CCTV in public spaces... seriously?
You know all those statistics you hear about how many cameras there are in the UK -- originally they said 4.2 million, but more recently that figure has been debunked and replaced with one around 1.5 million -- you do realise they include store cameras, right? In fact, that almost all of them are store cameras.
There are only around 60,000 public cameras in the UK. The largest deployment is London's (10,000 cameras - similar to the size of the deployment in Chicago, with a population less than a quarter the size of London's). The remaining 50,000 are scattered across around 800 smaller deployments. Most towns don't have any.
It's harder to find information on US deployments. Chicago, as mentioned, has about 10,000, with the mayor expressing a desire to "put one on every street corner". New York also has a large deployment (3,000 - larger than any in the UK outside of London). Beyond these, figures become scarce. A number of cities published figures for trial installation sizes in the region of 30-50 cameras, but it isn't clear whether these deployments were increased in size beyond this. It seems likely that there are similar numbers of public cameras in the US versus UK (although probably not on a per-capita basis).
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thanks! I had no idea store cameras were included in those figures, that's kinda silly.
Unprecedented level of security (Score:3)
"The project appears to have been resurrected over fears of a terrorist attack at this summer’s Olympic Games in London and security services’ inability to track terrorist’s communication over the internet. The government has already pledged ‘unprecedented levels’ of cyber security for the event."
And they're right! Once the Anonymous take down their systems, they will be completely secure. A malfunctioning web site has never exploited anyone's browser.
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You can also blind a CCTV camera with a towel or a brick...
Clearly, towels and bricks are tools used by terrorists and pedophiles everywhere. Therefore, we must outlaw all towels and bricks! You don't want to enable the terrorists and pedophiles, do you?
CCDP? (Score:2)
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AKA the Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik AKA the Soviet Union.
(CCCP is the acronym for the Cyrillic spelling. My attempt to copy/paste that failed)
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My steampunk styled nixie die uses chips of a design so old, the datasheet has the CCCP symbol on. I like to brag that it is made with genuine Soviet engineering. This is half-true: The chips are actually manufactured more recently, but the mask was designed by Soviet engineers.
decentralized communication needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Governments will never stop seeking more and more power over individuals. Corporations will always serve the will of their plutocrat masters.
Anonymity is the ONLY effective defense against power, that is why powerful interests do everything they can to eliminate it.
"The People" who aren't in either of those camps need a means of anonymous, distributed, communication that is outside of anyone's control.
Imagine a box anyone with a little electrical knowledge can wire into a hot outlet. Or a solar powered "wifi grenade" that can be thrown on a roof to make a node in the mesh and last until someone finds it. Set these up to connect to existing hotspots to piggyback on the "plutocrat" internet. Configure them to be low noise enough that they are difficult to distinguish from regular traffic. Add a little onboard storage and files can be "cloud stored" and impossible to remove.
We are coming to a crossroads. The future will be either the one of the boot stomping on the face like 1984, or one where the evil men who seek power are constantly frustrated by freedom loving individuals who have a greater understanding of technology.
time to start encrypting everything (Score:5, Insightful)
encrypt your phone calls, email, everything
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Some people (your friends, family) may decide it's easier to just not talk to you any more.
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Sensible idea, but in the UK you can be forced to tell the court your password. So if you were ever accused of something they could get the private keys of everybody in your address book and decode all your past traffic.
Anyway, they can't store that much data, and they are not actually proposing to: "databases would not record the content of the customerâ(TM)s communications but would store the numbers and email addresses of the sender and the recipient and [...] Facebook communications".
So really
Re:time to start encrypting everything (Score:4, Informative)
jfij2oijf93j(*J#*(@(#*&$@#*(&JIEWJFiofjeoiwjifojio
The prevalence of *, (, o, i, and j indicate that you are right handed. The proximity of £, @, and #' indicate and American keyboard setup.
Either way, this isn't encrypted text, and can be rejected as worthy of analysis.
If they snoop the Queen, is it treason? (Score:3)
So the conent of every phone call, email and tweet (Score:2)
should be "Dump your Member of Parliament."
Don't just complain about it. Run for Parliament and throw the corrupt government out. Shut down the program.
Unfortunately you won't be able to penalize companies for cooperating with the law. But you may be able to prove corruption of your current MPs and lock them the hell up for taking or soliciting bribes.
They hate us for our freedoms... (Score:2)
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Like most such spin, it makes much more sense if you turn it around. In this case, a neocon saying, "We hate our own people for their freedoms" makes a heck of a lot more sense.
Wow, just one digit off (Score:2)
CCDP vs CCCP. So close. (CCCP was better known in the west as the USSR, you can see it on aircraft and cosmonauts)
Right to be forgotten (Score:2)
Good luck (Score:2)
I got a better idea (Score:3)
how about we make all communications of public funded government, public....
EU too? (Score:2)
Not a dupe! (Score:5, Informative)
If you're referring to this [slashdot.org], it's not in fact a dupe, because the other story is about the Canadians trying to do exactly the same thing as the UK is doing here,
Re:Not a dupe! (Score:5, Informative)
It's a dupe, it was on the front page on Sunday
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/19/034209/uk-plans-more-spying-on-internet-users-under-terrorism-pretext [slashdot.org]
Re:1984 (Score:5, Funny)
Nope... it starts in England. Didn't you see 'V'?
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Didn't Nineteen Eighty-Four also take place in England? Right in London as I recall.
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Was 1984 itself being in England not enough of a clue?
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I always thought Big Brother would start in the US.
The funny thing is so did I. But, come to think of it the D.C. Comics guys also thought it would start in the U.K. with their V for Vendetta movie. And, in actuality, the whole surveillance camera moves began in London.
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You know it kinda makes me wonder how much more the average Brit will take before they simply riot the hell out of the place. Then again, there might not be that many actual brits left, in the last 3 years I've had 104 families move into my neighborhood that came from there to Canadaland.
Re:1984 (Score:4, Funny)
We tried that last year.. everyone just nicked sportswear from Soccer World :(
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The world in 1984 is a global symmetric system.
You have some of the prerequisites for that system in place:
Perpetual war on X
A vast military-industrial complex to destroy the excess of human production.
Choice between two indistinguishable political ideals.
However the 1984 world is also in equilibrium. Once big brother exists, he will always have existed.
You're discounting the possibility of being conquered from without.
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No, it starts where the power is concentrated. And the greatest power in the world right now is corporate; which is still somewhat decentrailzied, but does spread all over the Western hemisphere.
Re:Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious or just trolling?
The reason for this is simple. If your child is kidnapped by an insane pedophile, you want the Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) to use everything they can to find that guy.
Sure, within the limits of the law and, in the US at least, the Constitution.
If a record of tweets, blogs, phone calls and IMs helps them do that, it could save your child.
So could putting cameras in all our houses. Where do we draw the line? I'd rather not live in a police state for the few times it may be convenient.
Privacy is a great idea, but there are a lot of bad guys out there and we want to keep tabs on them. I think a better solution is to find a government we can trust.
Good luck with that.
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So, what's your plan in the much more likely event that the LEO sticks your child in the same cell as that psycho because they consider him a terrorist after reading his tweets, blogs and IM's?
See, if it's just the insane guy you have a chance. If it's the government, you're going to join the suspect list for complaining. Heck, we've already heard here that you're of the opinion that doing whatever it takes to get him back is ok, so maybe you're planning violence.
Re:Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a better solution is to find a government we can trust.
The only answer to that is: A government that doesn't have such powers. Sorry but you can't have your cake and eat it... You either accept that your rights are in someone else's hands to be abused, or yours to defend. The middle ground situation you're looking for is never stable enough to last more than a generation, if that.
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In the long run, you're probably right. In the short run,
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Re:welcome to the NWO (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude I think the right-wing with their obsession with big-business, concentrating wealth in the hands of a few and assuming people are worthless unless they have money has kind of helped. As for this libertarian bollocks about people fending for themselves, well I wonder how many of you lot work for the government in some manner or other (military, security, university researchers, politics, military contractors - jeez even computer companies probably sell half of their shit to the public sector). Remember throughout the entire of human history since the discovery of agriculture there existed a parasitic ruling class that sucked up the surplus production from the masses in order to build its castles/temples & live a life of luxury. This goes on for thousands of years in different forms - nobility, emperors, bankers.... and when someone suggests a century or so ago 'Hey, lets take some of this wealth and give it back to the people' the supposed freedom-loving right-wing scream "SOCIALISM!!!"
As for this law, well thats being pushed by a Tory government. The last Labour government were also quite right-wing & like most of your US politicians in the pockets of big business. So if you're remotely bothered about this then perhaps you'll start fighting against the global corps who control your life instead of sounding like an Alex Jones wannabe. You lot are going to keep screaming about socialism until every last fucking right you have has been taken by the rich at which point it'll be too late to do anything at all...
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Anon parent and grandparent - Although I'm sure you both feel like your side is less to blame than the other, I think that the anger shouldn't be against the ideas of the opposing side. I believe it should focus on the execution by the corrupt few who chose to implement the policies. Honestly, conservatism, libertarianism, liberalism, and even socialism all have advantages and could probably work if it weren't for asshats. That's the rub, there's always going to be some asshats. Anymore, I think policy s
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As for this law, well thats being pushed by a Tory government. The last Labour government were also quite right-wing & like most of your US politicians in the pockets of big business.
The suggestion that either Blair's Labour or Cameron's Tories are 'right wing' makes me laugh. They're only right wing when compared to Stalin and Mao, and not by much.
Re:welcome to the NWO (Score:4, Insightful)
Name-calling aside, I think Parent has a point. I'm pretty sure it's the responsibility of the people to keep government power limited and we definitely have been slacking off lately in favour of all the wonderful handouts. We ask that it runs everything then we complain that it does so for its own sake rather than ours. We kid ourselves if we think government any less selfish than those evil corporations. We're too lazy to vote with our dollar against the latter and too lazy to change the former and keep it in check. Bottom line is that we get what we deserve.
I see this as a natural reaction: The Internet has caused a little surge of activism lately and we can very well see how that has the government running scared.
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Name-calling aside, I think Parent has a point. I'm pretty sure it's the responsibility of the people to keep government power limited
And how do you plan to do that? Labour were authoritarian scum, and they were replaced by Tories who are authoritarian scum.
There is no electable party which is not full of authoritarian scum, which is why so few Britons bother to vote any more.
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Form your own party? Become active in one of the smaller ones that might actually be better? Fight tooth and nail for whatever little issue you consider most important? Activism?
By lazy, I meant in the broadest sense... Both the people as a whole and the individuals. The majority of people are still too comfortable to take real political action and such is the wonder of incremental encroachment. The new 'normal' gets shifted further and further into oppressive, but too slowly for people to notice... o
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to THE KLOUD, Alice! (Score:2)
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Well why do you think there is so much talk and push to store your data in "the cloud"? Once all your data is backed up in the cloud they can just cut off your access to it and then scan it at their leisure :P
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Look to where the real power is; that is, who pays off the politicians in those governments. Look to where the politician's loyalties lie (hint: for the majority, it's not to the people who elect them.)
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sigh...
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in a past job, I used to travel to the UK several times a year for a few weeks at a time. I got to know the UK fairly well (for a yank). I liked the place and the people.
I will not travel back there, though. its been over 10 years since I was there last and its only gotton more spy-happy, not less. just not the kind of place I want to willingly go.
sad thing is: the US is not far behind. I've read the same exact thing by non-americans said of the US. they refuse to travel here and I actually don't blam
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why are we so hell-bent on destroying all the progress we made over the past 50 or so years?
'We' aren't. Governments are.
Fortunately most of them are bankrupt and can't sustain a war against their people for long. The EU is collapsing, the USA is reliant on China buying their bonds to keep them afloat, and most Western nations have only sustained their economy over the last decade by printing money to fund non-jobs.
The great thing about economics is that you can only ignore reality for so long before it comes back and bites you.
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Handguns and hunting rifles are pretty much useless against tanks and even armored cars. A .22 Long Rifle is pretty much useless against body armor. You'll also need something against the drones the cops are buying up.
You'll need explosives, EMP weapons for the drones, communications gear for when they cut the phones and internet off, all kindsa stuff. A lotta this stuff is not just laying around.