British Government To Grant Warrantless Trawl of Communications Data

First time accepted submitter cardpuncher writes "Having opposed the previous government's attempts to introduce mass surveillance of Internet communications, the Conservatives are planning to introduce the very same policy they previously described as a 'culture of surveillance which goes far beyond counter terrorism and serious crime.' The plan is essentially to allow stored communication data to be trawled without the inconvenience of needing a warrant or even any reasonable suspicion."

I hope this is an April Fool

[Dark$ide]

If it's an April Fool, it's not funny.

If it's not an April Fool, it's not funny.

Whatever it is this Gov't won't be my Gov't after the next election.

Re:I hope this is an April Fool

[Artifakt]

You do understand that the real reason governments do things such as this is so they WILL be your government after the next election, and the one after that, ad infinitum?

Re:Yep, keep voting for higher taxes

[Nithron]

I agree. But what is the alternative? England, which is where this is happening, has an effective two party system. Like most places. On an individual basis, you realistically have two choices, and they will both lead to the same thing.

Theoretically, someone should be able to start their own party, and get voted into power by running policies specifically for the people. This is more difficult than it sounds, however, because you have to take into account that people do not vote rationally. Some might, relatively speaking, but probably the majority just vote for the same party forever.

A popular uprising is a route around this. This requires the populace to be angrier and less apathetic than they are now, though, and while we had some nasty riots recently, they were nowhere near the numbers required to actually pull off a regime change. To get one of those, the living conditions in the country in question need to be much, much worse than they currently are in the UK.

Blame can only be placed on the individual voter up to a certain point, as they have to work within the system they have, and with the people they are surrounded by. Of course, the people causing this problem are all individual voters too. But they are unlikely to be reading comments on slashdot. Even if you shouted this in their face, they would probably react with hostility, because their behaviour isn't really guided by stone-cold logic, and a lot of people don't like their behaviour being questioned. Also, you'd be shouting in their face.

This situation isn't as bad as it sounds, though. If quality of life here got really bad, a popular uprising would occur. It's self regulating - if the system gets that bad, it will get replaced. If it doesn't, then hey, things are going pretty well, relatively speaking. Unless technology gets so advanced that rebellion becomes impossible, in which case, we'll all be screwed.

Re:Yep, keep voting for higher taxes

[isorox]

I agree. But what is the alternative? England, which is where this is happening, has an effective two party system.

England doesn't have a national government. Local government tends to vary between the 3 major parties and often have coalitions and independent councillors.

The national UK government is currently a coalition. Sadly the powers that be in the media and government don't like this, and certainly don't want it to become commonplace as in the EU. They collaborated to fight the only chance of this generation seeing electoral reform.

Some might, relatively speaking, but probably the majority just vote for the same party forever.

This actually makes the small minority of swing voters think they're empowered (95% of the votes in the UK are meaningless, it's only marginal votes in marginal constituencies that count). And they are, they get to choose between Labour and Conservative.

A popular uprising is a route around this. This requires the populace to be angrier and less apathetic than they are now, though, and while we had some nasty riots recently, they were nowhere near the numbers required to actually pull off a regime change.

Those riots were generally people nicking TVs and trainers. Had they ransacked chequers and burnt parliament to the ground, or even just attacked a council office, or a job centre, I'd have been more sympathetic.

There was a lot of anger about bankers recently too, so occupy London camped outside of St Paul's, then enforced the view they were work-shy homeless hippies and fell off the the news radar before, quite rightly, being removed as the pointless eyesore it was.