Online Activities To Be Recorded By UK ISPs 312
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."
Re:Summary is misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
no, but it will.
It may take several attempts, but it eventually will.
The reason is simple: the powers that be *want* this. Much like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and whatever the current generation mutant strain is, keeps getting brandished about like a giant black rubber donkey dildo. The public says no, but the powers that be want to fuck us. They keep whipping out dildo after dildo, refusing to take the hint that we *DON'T WANT ANY* dildos, not just that specific one.
When they finally manage to snooker us into taking it (all the way I might add, without any lube), then they tell all their friends about it, and from then on, that type of dildoing becomes standard practice, for everyone, everywhere.
What we need is to propose counter legislation FORBIDDING proposals of this type. Simply defeating every proposed terror dick they whip out of their rape kit won't work.
Re:Be good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate it when people say this. At the risk of feeding a troll...
You might be doing nothing wrong and still have plenty to hide from some people. I don't consider going on vacation wrong but I don't broadcast to the internet that my house will be vacant.
What if you don't support the controlling political party? You might value some anonymity.
Sure if the government, and all the individuals within it that have access to that data, are always perfectly honorable you might never have a problem. Does this seem like a likely situation for you to stake your life or wellbeing on?
Giving that much power to the government is just begging one power hungry corrupt individual to abuse it to gain more power.
Re:Be good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every hear of a guy named Matthew Shepard? [wikipedia.org] He didn't hide the fact he was homosexual, and was kidnapped, robbed, chained to a fence, and brutally beaten to death for it.
"Something to hide" != something illegal or wrong, jackass.
Re:Deluge (Score:5, Insightful)
Send emails that contain as much information that you can cram in there from wikipedia.
No, use high-entropy random numbers ... much harder to compress/deduplicate :-)
Make sure you invest in all the storage companies first.
Re:Riots (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes what the hell happened? The Tory party when in opposition opposed the National ID Card scheme, on the basis of privacy concerns and cost. They and their supporters often quoting George Orwell. As soon as they were in power they cancelled the scheme.
Now the very same part are going to spy on what everyone does on the internet, and it's going cost 1.5 billion UKP. At a time when all public services are being cut back.
Even accepting the fact that they are huge hypocrites, this does not make sense.
So what manner of corruption is going on here?
Re:Summary is misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is simple: the powers that be *want* this.
Even that isn't true. The Lib Dems are pretty strongly opposed to this, as are some high profile Tories, David Davis being probably the most obvious figurehead.
This is the usual power grab by police/security services/whoever, backed by the usual FUD about terrorism and organised crime. It's probably also something of a "We can still be friends, right?" from the Home Office to the police, whom the government in general and the current Home Secretary in particular have annoyed a lot in recent weeks.
Something might get through, but I very much doubt it will look anything like this by the time it's been done over by civil libertarians, ISPs who would have to foot the bill, and people who actually have a clue about technology. We as a nation might be far less protective of our privacy than I personally would like, but we're not completely clueless. Look at the way ID cards were beaten down, despite a huge push from government. More recently, look at the way the way the government at EU level has turned against ACTA, despite the national governments of almost every member state already ratifying it and publicly claiming they support it.
Even in the US, where the popular claim is that the government don't care about anything much any more, look how fast the politicians got educated about SOPA and PIPA and in many cases completely flipped their position after the entire Internet decided to teach them that these things matter. A lot of the time, the problem is that the legislators are naive and just listen to the loudest voices; never attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by incompetence, as the old saying goes.
You're right that certain organisations will keep trying. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. It's not exactly the spies' job to look out for people's privacy, after all. We just have to make sure that the other side of the debate is heard as well, and that anything that reaches the statute books is a sensible balance between the competing interests.
Re:Riots (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of the children? These people should be thinking that they've just robbed their children of the right to privacy. They're most certainly not thinking of the children.
Re:Be good. (Score:5, Insightful)
All criminals wear clothing. Clothes can be used to hide weapons or drugs, mask your identity, and blend into crowds.
Therefore, we should make it unlawful to wear clothing. It will make it easier for the police to do their jobs. After all, if you've done nothing wrong -- and you've been to the gym and haven't been at the crisps again -- you've got nothing to hide, do you?
Re:Summary is misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think that the powers that be are the representatives/senators/MPs/whatevers?
Multinational interests have powers that flow fluidly accross multiple political jurisdictions. They are the ones that want the dildo in your hole.
They won't stop until they are either told sraight up that they can't, or until they succeed in getting one rammed in there.
Despite what they might say, multinational corporations are not people. They are not human. They don't tire of devising ever more terrifying dicks to aim at you. They never get tired of trying, because they know that as long as they keep at it, they will eventually succeed.
If you think accepting a tiny dildo as a compromise is a sensible solution to the problem, I have only one thing to say:
Enjoy.
Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see their working on the financial figures. According to the document the Bill "is estimated to lead to an increase in public expenditure of up to £1.8 billion over 10 years from 2011/12. Benefits from this investment are estimated to be £5 – 6.2 billion over the same period."
Exactly what financial benefits? Where's the saving?
Otherwise, the question we should all, in the UK, be asking our MPs is which hospitals are going to be closed to pay for this?
Re:Summary is misleading. (Score:2, Insightful)
They won't stop until they are either told sraight up that they can't, or until they succeed in getting one rammed in there.
since dildos are the analog: i knew a guy who knew a guy who was in prison, and apparently, you don't "tell" people not to rape you... you stop them.
Re:Be good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't be a shame if some browsing histories were faked for all of the current MPs and leaked, and nobody could tell the difference?
Re:Offshore VPN (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly, Communists in 1917 Russia used their free speech (not really a right, but they had it anyway) to kill tens of millions in 20th century. A certain other person, let he remain unmentioned here, used his right of free speech (which he did have) to construct one of evilest empires in history of the planet. (Pol Pot is nervously smoking in the corner.)
Inverse it is, yes.
It's not those you've mentioned whose power of free speech is the active vector here.
It is the elimination/suppression of other speech that is the evil part, and enables further evil.
The answer to speech you dislike/disagree with is always *more* speech (voice your views as well), not less (suppressing/silencing opposing voices/opinions), in any society that could reasonably be called "free".
The US is falling into this abyss as well as the UK, under an ever-expanding government. To my "scoring", the UK is ahead in blatant, "in your face" public domestic surveillance, but the US is far ahead in covert domestic surveillance.
And please, let's not bring out that tired "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater" thing in this thread. That's been rehashed to death on /. and elsewhere. This is about political speech.
Strat