Proposed UK Communications Law Could Be Used To Spy On Physical Mail 125
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that the UK's Draft Communications Bill includes a provision which could be used to force the Royal Mail and other mail carriers to retain data on all physical mail passing through their networks. The law could be used to force carriers to maintain a database of any data written on the outside of an envelope or package which could be accessed by government bodies at will. Such data could include sender, recipient and type of mail (and, consequentially, the entire contents of a postcard). It would provide a physical analog of the recently proposed internet surveillance laws. The Home Office claims that it has no current plans to enforce the law."
Be very afraid... (Score:5, Insightful)
"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stop depending on classic mail and Post offices (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone actually believe that what's... (Score:4, Insightful)
on the outside of an envelope (or any part of a post card) has ever actually been private? Certainly not I, even before I knew enough to care about privacy.
It's just not been technologically practical to store all that info, but with 3TB HDDs stuffed into 42U SAN racks, it's more than doable. And with modern CPUs and high-density RAM, OCR on even the worst penmanship is probably practical.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Silk Road? Bath Salts? Snail mail would also become an attractive method of communication amongst bad guys if the internet surveillance bill goes through (and it probably will).
Well, mail service only verifies the delivery address, and if that fails, attempts to verify and return it to the source address. My point was that establishing a source/destination registry is not reliable like it is within a packet-switched network. The entire message is contained within a single packet, and there is no handshake or anything else in the exchange to verify the source. So the only part of the registry of high reliablity would be the destination and the size/weight of the package.
And even that's easy enough for a criminal to forge; You don't have to deliver stolen goods to your address. Any address will do for a drop shipment. So this bill is really only for the surveillance of average people, who are probably not criminals, but who might need to become criminals if they became, say, politically active.
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
They say "no current plans" not "no current intentions".
They have the intention of using it, they just haven't got around to drawing up the plans yet.
Politicians lie. Even when they're telling the truth.
Re:What are Brits control freaks? (Score:4, Insightful)
(1) Political apathy
So, which party can Britons vote for which doesn't want this stuff?
And even if they could vote for someone, most seats are so safe that it would make no difference. Where I used to live in the UK I could vote for any party I wanted and the Tories would still win.
Re:Does anyone actually believe that what's... (Score:5, Insightful)
on the outside of an envelope (or any part of a post card) has ever actually been private? Certainly not I, even before I knew enough to care about privacy.
You are overloading the term "private" - no one thought it was a secret, but only the crazies thought that the information on every single envelope was permanently recorded in a database. Crazy is the new normal.
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
Both liberals and conservatives screw the population as a whole. The liberals tend to lie about it and act like they want to do some good, while the conservatives are rather brazen about giving more money to the wealthy, but they both ultimately do the same thing - concentrate power and money into a small elite group.
In the end, what trickles down to the rest of us isn't green - it's yellow.
Back to 1654 (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the key reasons that Royal Mail ( which originally conveyed the King's post ) was granted a monopoly on inland mail delivery in 1654 was so that the Private Office could intercept and read / decrypt communications as instructed by warrant.
Additionally the Secret Office was established to covertly intercept letters; whilst the activities of the Private were recorded and acknowledged, the Secret didn't even appear on Royal Mail's expenses.
La plus ca change...
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:4, Insightful)
We have reached the point where you can safely assume anything a politician says they won't do is what they intend to do. The Torys said they gad no plans to put up VAT, then one week later put it up. The Lib Dems signed a contract guaranteeing not to put student fees up, then a few months later tripled them.
It's like a Freudian slip where they accidentally reveal their plans.