Online Activities To Be Recorded By UK ISPs

SmartAboutThings writes "The United Kingdom online monitoring law just got published, showcasing some disturbing facts. The paper is 123 pages long and is actually a draft of the Communications Data Bill. You might not be so happy to find out that from now, every single thing you do online will be recorded and stored by the good old Internet Service providers (ISP). What do we mean by online activity? Well, everything."

The only answer

[nospam007]

www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

Summary is misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is apparently a Bill that has not actually been passed yet.

Re:Riots

[newcastlejon]

Why aren't their riots in the streets over this? For years I have heard about Europe being very pro-privacy. I have even worked with their privacy standards from a professional standpoint.

Because this is a bill that hasn't been voted on, much less passed and will more than likely be knocked back by the House of Lords so many times it'll be re-drafted into something impotent. The summary isn't merely wrong, it's practically as bad as the Daily Mail in terms of hyperbole:

"You might not be so happy to find out that from now, every single thing you do online will be recorded and stored by the good old Internet Service providers (ISP)." (emphasis mine)

What went wrong? Seriously, how on earth did this ever happen? Your cars and your online activities are all being monitored by your government with your blessing!

By cars, I expect you mean the ANPR cameras that check for valid tax and insurance. These are always accompanied by signs letting you know they're there, just like speed cameras.

The communists never had it that good, all they got were phone calls and letters.

Indeed, I imagine that very few people in Soviet Bloc countries had access to the Internet or their own cars

You gave your own government a blessing to invade your privacy at a level the East German's could have only dreamed of.

Yeah... sure.

Something is very, very wrong in UK today. What the hell happened?

Nothing happened; the press still use sensationalism and the people are still subject to about the same level of surveillance as in most other First World countries. And before someone trots out the millions of CCTV cameras thing again, let me just say that it's been debunked so many times it doesn't even merit a citation.

Thoughtful paper on why privacy is important

[dalosla]

A paper on privacy [ssrn.com] and why "monitoring is no problem because only criminals have something to hide" is a poor justification. If you compare the benefits of monitoring for the good of society against the usually slight or non-existant damage to an individual from being monitored, society always wins out. However, privacy is not just monitoring. What affect does it have on society when everyone is aware that there are large databases of information about your life and people will use to make decisions about you, but you can't know what is in it, you have no means of making sure it is correct, and you don't know who is using it and for what purposes? There is much more to it than this, and the paper is worth reading for a deeper view on privacy issues.

Re:Be good.

[frostilicus2]

Depends if you filmed him... http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/aug/31/do-we-have-right-to-film-police [guardian.co.uk]

Re:The only answer

[Isaac Remuant]

You just use it to surf like you always do.

But if you surf exactly like you always do you're not going to use tor efficiently.

Tor full list of warnings [torproject.org]