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UK Passes Surveillance Law For ISPs 308

Posted by Hemos from the bad-bad-new dept.
NoiseLesion writes "The Standard has reports on a new bill granting surveillance privileges to a new arm of MI5. Carnivore looks tame compared to this."
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UK Passes Surveillance Law For ISPs More

UK Passes Surveillance Law For ISPs

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  • Re:Encrypted Mail (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > If you have been following the progress of the
    > RIP bill you will know that failure to hand
    > over your encryption key leaves you in the
    > position that you must prove you NEVER KNEW IT

    If you have been following the progress of the RIP bill you will know that the House of Lords added some 50 admendments, one of which reverses this burden of proof issue. You won't have to prove you never knew it.

    Don't get me wrong I think this Bill sucks and I hope it gets declared illegal (and the Data Protection Commissioner has already said that - in her opinion - this bill breaks the European Data Protection Directive). But lets try to keep up with the facts when we critise it.

  • Re:UK's E-mail Scan Is Avoidable (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    For those residing in the UK, please have a look at FIPR RIP Information Centre [fipr.org] for a load of interesting article on RIP from British publications. Of particular interest is the RIP Counter Measures [fipr.org]! Read and follow!

    AC

  • Re:To spy on minorities, of course (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's a shame the people who funded the IRA don't know how importent this stuff is. They could fund a perfectly legal little effort to make shure that no email traveling between Irishmen went unencrypted.

    I love the way you seem to think the people who funded the IRA are so good - personally I think anyone responsible for the death and maiming of thousands of innocents and for allowing entire generations to grow up in fear of their neighbours to be far more morally repugnant than someone reading my mail....

    Freedom of speech is very important - the cornerstone of any democracy - but freedom to live without the threat of random explosions or punishment beatings or car bombs or any of the rest is far more fundamental....

    Beside which - why do you think the Irish need any help from anyone else - we didnt get to be the biggest expoters of software in the world by accident you know...

  • Great, in two weeks time I'm getting on a plane to move to London, in search of work. Now I read that the government is passing bills which will persuade all the high-tech firms in the UK to leave the country. Great timing on my part. :-(

  • Happy now?

  • That was sarcasm, right? I mean, there's no way Britian's government would want to impunge upon an English citizen's privacy, right?

    Yes, THAT was sarcasm, folks.

  • The Canadian government just hasn't gotten around to doing anything about it.

  • This is mostly from memory, so if it's wrong, let me know, but I suspect it's fairly correct.

    Their government makes not even a token gesture to any sort of rights beyond those government can give. There is no idea of an "inalienable right," it's all what we call "priviledge." IOW: anything a British citizen does is by the government's leave. If the government were to decide that officials didn't need warrents to search, suddenly officials don't need warrents to search *AT ALL*.

    There is no court deciding (in the U.S.' case, often deciding wrongly) whether something is illegal or not.

  • Subjects, yes (and yes, you are), but I didn't think the two went hand in hand.

  • Ok, now that's all very well, but think about this scenario: you have an acquaintance who, although you don't realise it, is a paedophile. He erroneously sends you some encrypted kiddie porn, encrypted with someone else's public key. The authorities trace the email, knock you up in the middle of the night, and demand that you give them the private key to unencrypt this mail, as they have the right to do under the RIP act.

    If you won't give them the key, and can't prove that you don't have it, you can go to jail. You also aren't allowed to tell *anyone* that you were asked for the key, so it's hard for you to get help.

    That's what's bad about this law.
  • I know it's a troll, but..

    Bear in mind that we didn't have firearms that were *suddenly taken away*. Because we haven't been a frontier state for centuries, gun ownership has never been part of British life. That's why it's not such a big deal to us.
  • As opposed to the US, where COPA of course wasn't passed as law because it was clearly unconstitutional, and didn't have to be sued out of the lawbooks by the ACLU.....

    Not that I'm against introducing an explicit written constitution in the UK, preferrably with some drastic reforms, but it's not the only way. People just end up sueing the government in the European court of human rights instead.
  • The warning on entering a secure session surprised me too. I think it's just a product of how the browser designers expect https to be used: very rarely, when collecting obviously personal information as you say. Given those expectations, the warning does make sense. It trains users to never assume they're in a secure session. If they haven't seen the warning, they know they're communicating in plaintext. Without this warning, it would likely be a regular occurrence for users to happily submit their credit card info unencrypted believeing it would travel to the server encrypted because they forgot or didn't know to check the key icon or whatever.
    --
  • The Register [theregister.co.uk] reports on how the bill was finally passed. A fine example of democracy inaction.
  • Interesting ... it seems that even fascists can't always be wrong ;
  • With all due respect to the gentleman who knows how to finely craft an argument, let's just try this out for size. Please select one answer per question:

    1. During era of the Civil War, which ultimately led to the freeing of American slaves, I would have chosen:

    a) freedom
    b) stability

    2. During the fight for women's suffrage, I would have chosen:

    a) freedom
    b) stability

    3. During the civil rights movement, I would have chosen:

    a) freedom
    b) stability

    Those are just a few examples - given that the government wasn't killing large portions of the population, so I assume that you would have chosen "stability" in all cases?
  • That's probably true, but there were certainly people who were happy with the status quo, and there were those who worked for freedom. Underground railroad, and such. My main point was that if you are afraid to rock the boat for fear of instability, you run the risk of giving up a lot. To me, leaving an entire culture in chains is a lot to give up in the name of stability.

    I wasn't saying that the Gov't at the time was fighting for freedom, pure and simple. But some people were.

    I was more interested in how Mr. Stability would have aligned himself during those times.
  • So are you saying that it's better to give up a little freedom and privacy, and let the Powers that Be listen to your phone calls, read your email, and go through your trash, on the off chance that some folk singer might get some people fired up to fight for a cause?

    What is worth fighting for, and rabble-rousing, and upsetting the status quo? Or should we be complacent in the name of stability?

    I mean, I get your point to a certain degree - stability is a very important thing. But what are you willing to give up for that? There are some pretty repressive regimes that are awfully stable. And perhaps the rougue militias won't come steal your food, but you just might "disappear."
  • Rest In Pieces.

    The bad thing for me is that a lot of the transit traffic from the Netherlands goes through transit routers in London, UK. I hope ISP's will pick this up and start to route around the UK.

    This also reminds me of the fact that this kind of taps might be very interesting for Echelon.

  • Wouldn't matter. Suits are the only ones who would be dumb enough to go click-happy on advertisements. And for the rest of us, it wouldn't be much of a probably to insert parenthesised URL's next to tagged words -- annoying, but hey, when you're the government -- and when it has to do with making money, who cares who it annoys!
    ---
    seumas.com
  • For what it's worth, Here is a link [homeoffice.gov.uk] to the full text of the legislation passed by the house of commons.
  • The damn thing is
    smaller than an oil derrick... [demon.co.uk]


    --
  • I suggest you take a look at the European Convention of Human Rights, which overrides national law in pretty much every nation in the EU - including the UK - and then re-evaluate what you wrote.

    There is no need for national level bills of rights in Europe.

    S.
  • Can anyone suggest a set of innocuous words which would trigger MI5's systems in the same way as echelon-baiting "iraq bomb IRA etc." sigs do?

    Something which would irritate them, while not actually making me look guilty of anything I'm not would be nice.
    --

  • It's been noted before in this thread, but add Martin Luther King jr. to your thinking, and it would indicate you're wrong. The same would probably go for Nelson Mandela, Steven Biko and Mahatma Gandhi.

    These people were simply figureheads for movements that represented changes caused by external pressures. (Colonialism falling out of favor, external economic pressures, international ostracism, desire not to be compared to Nazi Germany, etc.) They had no real power.

    You dramaticaly understate the complexity of "real power". Power, simply defined, is the ability to get your way. These people believed in something that did not exist in their world. The made changes and comitments in their lives that very much affected the real world. Gandhi exerted enormous power. Enough to change the government of an entire nation. That other people believed in him and his goals (and thus exerted the "external pressure") is a fact of human nature. Power is amplified by others following you, true. But to say Ghandi only wielded "fake power" and yet let a movement to free a nation means that we would have to throw out every rational definition of power. Would colonialism have been abandoned eventually? Yes, but on a much different timescale than Ghandi wanted and achieved.

    Do this for me, go on a hunger strike for a cause you believe and see who listens to you. Ghandi could stop eating and national borders would change. You tell me who has real power.

    Also remember that when a 'civilized' country like GB can do it, it makes it so much easier for dictatorships to do the same.

    The dictatorships would be doing it anyway.

    I will agree with your point here. Dictators do do this. Making it "easier for them to do it" is not an argument for or against these sorts of behaviors.

    But if these behaviors are wrong, then it does not matter who does them. They are wrong nevertheless. I'm responding to another one of your posts on that issue.

    --- Crulx crulx@iaxs.net

  • Actually, parts of the legislation may have been weakened by ammendments to the point of being unusable, judging by this [parliament.uk] excerpt from the discussions.

    It seems that because of conflict with a previously enacted law, the new powers will not be allowed to touch content of communications, only traffic/transport-related information/addressing. If so, that was one hell of an ammendment.

    On the other hand, the actual details of the law have never stopped those in power from doing what the hell they damn well want, regardless.

  • HAve you ever felt like you were observed ... as if someone was following you in every place you would go ... Well you probably were in UK.

    You don't see many cameras there (I guess they know how to hide them), but there sure is plenty of warnings ("CCTV"). You can't walk anywhere in London without crossing a dozen of those. Streets. Parks. Bathroom. Water Closets. Bedroom. Under the sheets. Inside the condom. They "MAY" be watching you.

    And stop scratching that nose.

  • All those communists in the McCarthy era got what was coming to them.

    They were undermining the stability of the state, a charge that most Westerners greatly underestimate the importance of.

    Whaouh, and you don't even seem to be trolling on purpose. What are you going to reveal us next, that the Protocol was not a hoax, and that jews are planning to take over the world RSN?

    True, theese people were charged for the wrong thing, but those were trying times for the American nation, and unruly groups causing chaos and unrest were the last thing it needed.

    Oh dear, most of those guys were sooo dangerous. Duh.

  • look into stegfs for plausible deniability.

    then go get gnupg [gnupg.org] for encryption and get mutt [mutt.org] for a mailer that makes it dead simple to use. drop me an email if you have an issue.
  • I live in continental Europe where we have this wonderful provision in our constitutions: the court may not request anybody to testify against himself or herself, i.e. to provide self-incriminating evidence. I believe this is in fact a standard in the E.U. law philosophy.

    I'm not sure whether Great Britain has any formal constitution at all but the law requiring citizens to reveal their encryption keys seems to me to encroach on this fundamental right of a citizen. Perhaps someone can enlighten me in this matter?

    OTOH, it's not all that surprising in a country where 500-year old precedents are still law.
  • Of course only honorable law-abiding agencies and agents will use this to fight eveil, evil I say.

    As the FBI forged evidence against Martin Luther King, Jr, not to bust him criminally, but to make him appear untrustworthy to his family, friends, associates, and the general public. Well, I suppose by your reckoning, James Earl Ray saved him the possibility of getting busted by killing him.

    As the Ramparts division of the LA cops framed untold numbers of people, killed others, stole pounds of cocaine from the evidence locker, and, gosh, nobody knew, wow, shocked, I am shocked, shocked. Round up the usual suspects.

    As Richard Milhouse "I am not a crook" Nixon and his gang of plumbers flouted the law in every which way, withheld TV broadcast licenses to punish the unfriendly press, and on and on and on.

    Don't forget Ollie North, fine upstanding American dealer in cocaine and truth and loyalty.

    There's the current Clinton and Clinton, investigating people they don't like, firing people they don't like, smearing them in public when they knew who the real liar was.

    Yes, we can certainly trust all these fine outstanding examples of people who have sworn to uphold the constitution and laws. Of course, all these fine people were Americans, so it's perfectly alright for the honorable Brits to have R.I.P., for they surely would never abuse it as we have done.

    --

  • Please. I never said it wouldn't pass. I have every expectation that it will pass. I wasn't even surprised when I first heard about it. Britain has been on the road to totalitarianism for years, regardless of the party currently ``running'' the country. (Who would have guessed that ``New Labor'' would have more success passing freedom-eroding legislation than the Tories?)

    All the same, the Bill is not yet a Law, and it's important to get the facts straight and not simply take a misleading article in a less than trustworthy publication (IMHO) for the truth.

    And while you're slagging Britain, don't forget to take a few shots at the United States, with the highest rate of imprisonment per capita, the highest rate of executions, and some of the most ridiculous laws on the books. Fascism was rather popular in the States before Pearl Harbor, and it was certainly looked upon more kindly than communism in the post-War years.

    And if you think there's no class system in the States, you're not paying much attention.

  • If "Sealand" became an issue, I'm sure that the British Royal Marines could "invade" it with minimal effort.

    I doubt it would create much trouble in the UN...


    --
  • Aside from encouraging everyone I know to use PGP

    One of the provisions of the Bill is that it gives the police the power to demand that you hand over the decryption key to any message that they have, if they believe that you are in possession of it.

    Refusal is not an option - that carries a 2 year prison sentence (just telling people that the demand was made carries a 5 year term) - and you have to prove that you don't have it (they don't have to prove that you do).

    I won't bother telling you how difficult it is to prove that you don't have something (especially when that something is just a collection of bits)...

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • Have you actually been to and seen these other countries? DO you know people from there? Do they tell you how 'horrible' life is for them without a constitution?

    Hey.. you know one thing lots of these countries have? A sense of *community*.
    Did I know that Scientology was outlawed in Germany? No.. but who cares? It's a bloody cult.
    Is it for the government to decide? Well.. who should decide? A pickup truck full of the good o'l boys and their shotguns?
    wonderfullness of their political system, their constitution, and other wonderful things, and put down other ways of doing things, without ever having actually *seen* what it's like to live in those other places.

  • You don't even need to encrypt your email to avoid this detection. They intend to install their black boxes next to the email servers themselves, and monitor all that traffic, so all you need to do is bypass the ISP mail server pools. If you run your own little mail server, and have it config'd to send mail directly to the recipient, which is something I usually do anyway for speed, then it will either go direct to the recipients ISP (possibly in another country, and therefore not monitored by this) or direct into their own server, if they run a similar config. This sort of thing will become very common once BT gets its act together on ADSL and/or cable modems become more common. The only thing you'd need to do is get your own domain, if you are assigned a fixed IP, or a subdomain off of one of the free DNS services that allow you to update whenever your IP changes. My ISP, one of the largest (demon.net), gives me a fixed IP and domain name, which means when I am online emails can come straight into my machine, bypassing their mail server pool, and they have used this config since before the RIP bill was even dreamt of.

    What can they do about this? Other than getting all of the ISP's to act against this sort of thing (mandatory firewall on port 25...), they don't have a change, they would have to monitor ALL of the traffic for email, and that would be hugely expensive. With IPv6 coming, with its included packet encryption, this would become completely impossible anyway. I intend to enable IPv6 on my own systems as soon as it starts to be used on the net.

  • I know I've replied to this already, but re-reading it the line below stuck out

    If they have even half a clue they'll monitor ftp too.

    I've seen enough of how UK government organisations work to know that assuming they have even half a clue on such matters is generous in the extreme. They are committee'd up to and over their eyebrows, and everything moves incredibly slowly. They don't stand a chance of keeping up with the moving target that is the internet, and will end up putting in place ineffectual 'solutions' that are massively inconvenient for the ISP's and/or users, give the UK a bad name, and do absolutely nothing to combat the people they claim to be after. Most of the people who make such decisions simply do not 'get' the Internet, and so make bad decisions based on out of date information, and that's before anything is implemented. Remember that they then need to develop these systems, and government IT projects are almost always delivered over time and over budget.

    Anyway, I though Eschelon did most of this stuff anyway, if the rumours are true, but I believe that is a US led project.

  • Guess I should have looked up my MX record before I posted that comment :-)

    Fact is, most email that I consider sensitive goes to my own host box, which does have appropriately set MX records. Demon however is going to be part of the BT rollout of ADSL (whenever that happens), I would like to see more technical details of what they are offering, but I have heard tell of a fixed IP (or three). Demon's own internet suite (Turnpike) uses SMTP to receive email, so I would hope that, as part of a stand against this bill, they would be willing to alter the MX records for ADSL users to have email delivered directly. Of course this could be described as a means to a)Lower load on the Demon mail servers and b)Speed email delivery to subscribers.

    I have quite a lot of faith in Demon, at least the old pre-Thus Demon, and hope that they will keep making the right technical decisions about service provision. This is one of the reasons that I have stuck with Demon despite "Free" ISP's. I am however disappointed that they are only officially supporting Windows 9x or NT on ADSL trials, they have always been very cross platform in the past. Perhaps this Microsoft partnership they have going is starting to tell, or perhaps this is imposed by BT, in its normal blinkered manner.

  • Yeah, but that isn't what they are intending to do, or what the bill allows them to do as I understand it (IANAL). All this does is allow them to monitor those too technically innept, unaware of the monitoring, or just plain stupid. Now, if you were a terrorist organisation, child porn ring, etc, how would you have your people configure their systems? Assuming you didn't just set up some BBS or something for them out of the country?

  • Just disable smart-host in sendmail.cf, kill -hup sendmail and bob's yer uncle.

    Try doing that on some ISP's and it doesn't make a difference. Login to some of the free isps, and try and connect to a remote host on the SMTP port, and you'll find you're connected to your ISP's email server, not the one you asked for. I've seen this happen with at least two ISPs, and heard evidence of more.

    You turn off the smarthost? The ISP turns on packet forwarding.
    --

  • Now, if you were a terrorist organisation, child porn ring, etc, how would you have your people configure their systems?

    You use the assumption that communications are likely to be intercepted. Thus using a code which is deliberatly misleading to anyone intercepting.
    Another problem is that intercepted information would be imensly valuable to criminals...
  • Ever think about why we have stable governments in the West?

    Ever think that maybe it's because people perceive those governments as:

    • Relatively fair?
    • Able to take criticism without throwing people in jail?
    • More protective of rights than destructive of them?
    • Willing, at least once in a while, to follow moral principles?
    • Prepared to abide by their own constitutions?

    Maybe those are the reasons that the governments are allowed to stand, rather than having a revolution once a week, eh?

    I submit that it's very possible the places you mention suck so much partly because they have idiotic, repressive ways of dealing with dissent. If you look at places like that, they've usually been police states for a long time... over several changes of government.

    And the idea that the 1950s were any more "trying times" for the United States than, say, the 1940s or the 1960s, is just idiotic. As is the idea that Communists in the 1950s were any threat to the stability of the US government.

    Not that I'm saying that present Western government practices are really safe or acceptable, mind you.

  • <puts on "InfoSec Professional" hat>

    The following is not professional advice. I have not done an audit of Hushmail; I've looked at their code a little bit, along with how they handle messages and encryption.

    My impression is that there are some flaws in the design--lack of a security audit, lack of choice in ciphers, possibility of Trojaning, dependence on your browser handling HTTPS properly, etc.--but all in all, Hushmail (click here [hushmail.com]) seems to be the best option out there right now for secure Web-based email.

    I've used Hushmail in the past for email communications with my attorney (she's too tech-naieve to use PGP properly, but she understands "if I send him email at his Hushmail account from my Hushmail account, then I'm doing my part to keep attorney-client privilege secure").

    I've got to say that I feel safer with PGP/GPG, but Hushmail is a hell of a lot better than most of the snake-oil that's sold out there.

    I'm not saying Hushmail is good; I can't say that, given that I haven't done any hardcore analysis of it. I'm only saying that, based on my experience with it and based on what I've reviewed of their setup and policies, Hushmail seems to be the most clued-in of all the current secure Webmails.
  • That said, perhaps this should get people to chill out a little bit about carnivore, given that it at least opperates under warrent.

    This is not at all "given", in view of the FBI's disgraceful record [time.com] and its refusal to disclose what's actually inside the little black boxes. With the security-through-obscurity baloney [deter.com] they offer as an excuse for the latter, I can only assume that they're trying to pull another fast shuffle.
    /.

  • It's really easy to say that when you've got a full belly and a roof over your head for the foreseeable future, isn't it?

    That is the result of the prosperity generated by a free society. If you want to maintain a high standard of living, you must on no account permit the government to gain too much power. Even if one dismisses civil liberties issues entirely, politicians given too much power generally become kleptocrats who suck the life out of the national economy like so many vampires.

    The state had better be engaged in a damn good deal of wrongdoing before you start acting up

    Of course, responses should be kept in proportion and not exceed what is required to deal with the problem. (There is a saying, "Freedom comes in four boxes: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Use in that order.")

    sacrifices need to me made to keep the nation from sliding down a slippery spiral into chaos and lawlessness

    The way to keep a nation from sliding down a slippery spiral into chaos and lawlessness is to make the government obey the law. Your cavalier attitude toward one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization truly astounds me.

    that you're rich and content enough to not have to worry about whether rebel (or government) militia leaders

    See -- you already know the truth of what I've said above, but some bizarre disconnect has kept it from influencing your conclusions.
    /.

  • The rule of law is exactly what I'm defending here.

    The rule of law, as that concept is understood in Western Civilization, is a limitation upon the government, not carte blanche for the people in power to do whatever pops into their heads under color of "law".

    Your concept of "rule of law" reminds me of this quote:

    "What is your definition of justice?"

    "Justice, Elijah, is that which exists when all the laws are enforced."
    Fastolfe nodded. "A good definition, Mr. Baley, for a robot.... A human being can recognize the fact that, on the basis of an abstract moral code, some laws may be bad ones and their enforcement unjust. What do you say, R. Daneel?"
    "An unjust law," said R. Daneel evenly, "is a contradiction in terms."
    -- Isaac Asimov (The Caves Of Steel)
    /.
  • If I read the article correctly, then as long as some part of the network was in passed through the effected boundries, then MI5 would be able to gain access to all the keys. I'm gathering that from the statement shown by PSIX that they would ahve to mvoe their operation completly out of england.

    Once this is actually in effect, it will be interesting to see if the Brittish internet market takes a large hit and becomes somewhat of a dirty little island that you venture to at your own risk.

  • So it's like a dictatorship that changes hands every two or three years?
  • Here's exactly how it happened: http://www.theregister.co.uk/cont ent/1/12225.html [theregister.co.uk]
  • I don't have time tonight to write at my usual length, but this brings up a good opportunity to recommend that you read my web page on Why You Should Use Encryption. [goingware.com]

    I posted a lengthier discussion of this before with a link to the above page but it has fallen off my user info - it wasn't too long ago, maybe someone can find it in the archives and post a link to the archived slashdot discussion in a reply.

  • The easiest message to crack is the message that is not encrypted at all.

    Most encryption software is still too hard to use. This plays into the hands of those who would spy on us because they don't even have to try hard.

    PGP is more approachable now on Windows than it was back in the command-line-only days, but it is also a huge program.

    What we need is for everyone to be using encryption all the time. Encryption should just be the standard, not the exception.

    My client asked me to email her my source code, and I made her download PGP and send me a public key. It took some persuading to get her to do it. But I don't have the sense that she's going to be continuing to use it, I think that she only did it to humor me.

    I encrypt every thing of value on my laptop with PGPDisk [pgp.com] under windows and the Linux encrypting kernel [kerneli.org] under Linux - so if my laptop gets stolen the theives get nothing of value to them and my client's trade secrets are not revealed.

    A friend's office was once broken into and all of his computers were stolen. They got all of his source code, his customer sales database, and all of his sales and support correspondence.

    Are you protected against such an event?

  • The Foundation for Information Policy Research has the full text of a report [fipr.org] on how easy it would be to circumvent RIP, thereby rendering it an expensive and ill considered waste of taxpayers money.

    Regret for the past,
    Is a waste of spirit

  • I'll bite on some of this.

    What makes you so much more fit to judge who's a criminal and who's not than your government?

    Everybody has to make that decision, one way or another. Most people make the decision to allow the government/media to decide for them, but they are ultimately responsible for the formation of their own opinion. Sometimes people decide that the people in the government are "criminals".

    They were undermining the stability of the state, a charge that most Westerners greatly underestimate the importance of.

    Well, they were trying to undermine the stability of the government anyway, the constituents of which would like everyone to think they are the sole defenders of the state.

    Isn't it amusing how often the people who are doing well in the society resist change, even at the expense of the people who aren't doing so well?

  • Yeah. In the US all it would take would be a judge ruling that encrypted communications are not constitutionally protected free speech. Or Congress passing a law to that effect. True, these would be subject to a series of legal tests that would probably wind up in the supreme court, but it'd be a long and costly battle. Unfortunately the Bill of Rights is starting to break down after over two centuries of pounding.

    If they'd had computers back in the days of the founding fathers, perhaps the king would have used them to collect information on the rebels in the colonies. Actually the rebels probably would have E-Mailed and said "Taxes really pissing us off. Give us a break." The whole thing could then have been averted and we'd still be a British colony. But assume that the king didn't read his E-Mail that day and they dumped the tea in the Boston harbor anyway, and information on everyone might be collected to try to find out who the rebels were.

    Had that happened, perhaps the bill of rights would have an explicit "Right to privacy" and "Right to private communications" listed in them. After all, the founding fathers obviously wanted to insure that it would be possible to revolt against a corrupt government again, should the occasion arise. It doesn't take much reading between the lines in the original bill of rights to see that. Though most schools won't mention that part. The right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assemble freely, the right not to have to incriminate yourself... all these implicitly guarantee the right to revolt. And they've all been subverted to some extent by future generations of lawmakers. Pity they didn't just come out and say why they were including these rights. It'd have made it a lot harder to subvert the constitution.

  • 53 (2) In proceedings against any person for an offence under this section, if it is shown that that person was in possession of a key to any protected information at any time before the time of the giving of the section 49 notice, that person shall be taken for the purposes of those proceedings to have continued to be in possession of that key at all subsequent times, unless it is shown that the key was not in his possession after the giving of the notice and before the time by which he was required to disclose it.

    IANAL, of course, but this looks to me like presumption of guilt in some cases. If you have a key, then forget your password, this is punishable? I think it may be time to get the European Court of Human Rights involved.

    Incidentally, the full text of the bill is on the UK Government website [parliament.uk].

  • ..that when the key(s) were demanded, no one in the company could be notified.

    WHAT?

    Okay, okay .. maybe that's what a phonetap is all about. Getting someone to say something when they think they're safe. This was specifically business. And as a business, I would refuse to send any e-mail through the U. K. - although the allegations are not proved, look at the "Echelon made French companies lose bids" info on the 'Net, and other corporate espionage. What's to keep someone in this new department from landing on the payroll of some big company that wants all of XYZ corp's e-mail?

    And if you can't find anyone how do you determine whether or not the request is real? Oh, yea, yer with the MI5 and ya need my code, even though I'm a VP of XYZ corp. Sure, here you go. You can't go the corporate attorney, you can't go here, you can't go there..

    Bloody well a major mess.

    (Yes, I'm paranoid. Yes, they're out to get me. No, I will only truly panic when these sort of laws go into effect in Russia.. heh.)

    Talonius

  • When some government or other decides to oppress their citizens, inevitably somebody insists that "this is insufferable--why if this [fill in title of legislation here] passes I'll be forced to move offshore." The politicians notice that the guy's total revenue the year before amounted to less than 100,000 [fill in name of local currency here] and decide that he's blowing smoke. He gets ignored, the bill passes, and in fact a year later the guy doing the hollering is still running an ISP on the second floor over a fast food [insert local greasy cultural delicacy here] shop.

    Except...

    In this case there are two companies to watch: one is hollering, and one presumably is rubbing its hands with glee. HavenCo [www.havenc...argetblank] is doubtless chortling as they finish their buildout of high-bandwidth connections. They'll be offering secure Email, and presumably will ignore requests for encryption keys from the UK MI5. Sure--the Royal Marines could invade: but the political costs, both nationally and internationally, outweigh any merits.

    What is particularly interesting, though, is that the ISP doing the yelling (in this article) not some one-man-band doing business from a flat over the local fish 'n chips. It's PSINet [www.psinet...argetblank]--a major international ISP. A major part of their pitch to businesses is the strength of their international presence--I'm a PSINet customer, and they don't let me forget how many points of presence they have worldwide. For PSINet to threaten to exit the UK market--entirely--is simply dramatic news.

    Frankly, I wonder if the Standard's reporter may have over-interpreted something PSINet announced. If PSINet is indeed serious about exiting the UK, it will doubtless enrage many PSINet customers, and cost PSINet a chunk of business. If PSINet is serious about this--and really did make the threat--we could see the UK become isolated as other international ISPs follow PSINet's suit.

    Watch both HavenCo and PSINet carefully
    As this legislation is enacted, watch to see what happens. Does HavenCo get inundated with business from people and businesses that don't want their email read? Does PSINet follow through on the threat, and exit the UK? And when does the UK arrest the first person to refuse to divulge encryption keys?

  • Please excuse me for reposting the following passage again, but I do believe that Phil Zimmermann's analogy is one of the best ways for people to realise why we should use encryption and protect it's availability:
    What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their email, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their email privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity.

    ---From "An Introduction to Cryptography" by Phil Zimmermann, the programmer of PGP himself.

    This is an analogy I remind myself each time one of my friends at high school ridicules me for being a paranoid "conspiracy nut" in using encryption. It concerns me greatly that most of the general public of my country, Australia seems to take a laissez-faire approach to their online Internet rights. For example, Australians have already lost their right to unmonitored and uncensored (but not yet implemented) Internet usage and our intelligence agency, ASIO now has the legal right to actually crack our computers and monitor communications without a warrant all for the sake of so-called "national security".

    I am dismayed when my friends exclaim that the CIA, MI5, or ASIO will never read my email, because I am not important, nor have I done anything wrong or have something to hide. I wish that they could see that if they we don't start fighting for our rights online now, such as the right to uncensored access, encryption, and online self-security then a time will come when it will be too late for everyone to start voicing their opinions without fear from those seeking to impose their wills upon us.

    Not too long ago I sent out an email to everyone on my email list telling them about the fact that you they should start using encryption in their email and use it in their correspondence with me. No one has started sending me encrypted email. All that I've received are questions such as "Why bother?" and "Who cares?" I was even more surprised that a few of my friends have even told me that too much privacy is abuse of power and even a threat to democracy! Banning encryption will not stop terrorists from gaining access to it. Like fighting disinformation with information, the best weapon against encryption is encryption. An enemy cannot attack you if he cannot find your weaknesses. Another has even said that he does not care if corporations or a government can monitor his communication because he naively believes that any information they gather about him can only used to serve (in a commercial sense) and protect him (in a political sense.)

    In ever more Western democracies, governments seem to be intent on limiting people from having access to encryption and electronic privacy. The United States has Carnivore watching its people with Echelon watching the world; the United Kingdom has Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill; and Australia now has The Telecommunications (Interception) Legislation Amendment Bill.

    Where is the democracy of the future heading? Is the banning of encryption an attempt to silence future attempts to make free speech when it would otherwise be contrary to the status quo or decree of the government; and thus an attack on the very foundations of our free societies? I fear for the future, and George Orwell's nightmare doesn't become a reality.

  • I have recently been working through Eric Hoffer's book The True Believers. In it he makes an interesting point. He suggests that the length of time the british have lived under a democracy has insulated them from mass political movements. maybe that explains why they have not been able to block this bill.
  • The UK has always been a little bit more "security" inclined when it comes to the general populous.

    I remember a special that noted on many street corners in the UK, there are surveilance cameras guarding against criminal activity. There are, in fact, thousands of these cameras all around the Britain. I suppose this data-snooping is just another step in the general direction the UK, if not the world, is taking.

    I seem to remember a quote: "Those who give up freedom for security get neither freedom nor security"


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Cringley posted the UK story a few weeks back, along with a tidbit about australia that's even worse.

    Apparently, down-under the government is trying to pass a law that allows the ASIO (the australian version of the CIA) to let some G-men crackers break into any web site that breaks the law in order to shut them down.

    Ostensibly, this is to prevent porn -- but the person quoted by Cringley feels that it is the government snuggling up to Rupert Murdoch to keep video off the net.

    Don't know about that... but its still worth a read. Check it out at: here [pbs.org]

    Suddenly, the FBI seems all warm and fuzzy....

  • Yeah, well, this is what happens when you lack an explicit Constitution and Bill of Rights.

    One must assume that the poster either has not read the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, or he is totally unfamiliar with life in the United States.

    This is what happens when people lack a committment to liberty, and to individual rights. Without the support of the people, no written law can protect freedom... and there can be no better evidence of this than the US Constitution.

  • Pity they didn't just come out and say why they were including these rights. It'd have made it a lot harder to subvert the constitution.

    Actually, I don't think that would have helped. It might have hurt. The doctrine of looking at legislative intent has become a tool for the adventuresome judge. Reference to the arguments of the legislators today gives a judge more leeway to construe a law to fit his goals; one more option, when deciding on a reading.

    If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might want to read "A Matter of Interpretation", by Antonin Scalia. It's a short, excellent work which provides a keen peek into judicial activism and the way laws are (mis)interpreted. It was one of the things which, for me, finally made sense of some of the craziness of the judicial system today.

  • FYI: "Sect" just means a group of people distinct within a larger one. It doesn't necessarily have to be used with regards to religion, though it generally is. Furthermore, Catholicism and Methodism are both sects of Christianity. The English usage of "sect" has no negative connotations, "cult"'s the word your looking for.

    Suppose im starting a cult or sect or whatever tomorrow and call it "the followers of satan". Since i might not be the only one who likes to - say, rape maidens at full or something like that, i might find some followers. Does this make me the leader of a religion? No.

    As a matter of fact, if you have articles of faith, you would be a religion. Don't expect your religious freedoms to protect when you commit illegal acts harming others, though. THAT's where the line should be drawn when it comes to seperation of church and state.

    No. Simply because religions tend to have a history (sometimes of a few thousand years).
    Im not denying someones rights to express his own belive in public but Scientology simply is not a religion per definition.
    And thats it. In Germany religions have special rights. They get Taxes from their followers and dont have to pay taxes themself. Thats why Scientology is "outlawed" as a sect... Because the typical german John Doe doesn`t want to assist a sect with his tax-money. And they are viewed quiet closely by the german police because the tend to suppress their members. Did you know that the german chapter of S. is terrorising former members (by telefone) after they left?
    You have to distinguish between sects (or cults) and religions.


    The definition of "cult," as far as I can tell: a religion, usually with a small group of followers, that I, personally, disagree with. It's just a convenient term used to deny people any religious freedoms their country recognizes. "Hey, it's a cult, not a religion! We can completely ignore the 1st Amendment here!" (Yes, I'm an Amurrican.) Bullshit. Religion is religion, it's *always* been used for mind control. Chrisianity, Islam, your name it; none of them has historically been any better than Scientology. Furthermore, there are plenty of Christian groups who will harass members who leave; Catholics who leave their church can definitely expect a certain degree of ostracision from friends, family, and associates who remain with their church. And yes, in some cases, that may extend to harassing phone calls.

    Furthermore, isn't harassment illegal in Germany? Do you really need to pass additional laws to cover that? All that this constant "It's unpopular, so let's pass a law against it" crap leads to is the situation we have in the US today, where it's basically impossible to lead your life without violating any laws. Since everyone is a criminal, anyone can be legally persecuted at any time by the authorities for any reason. Thus anyone who holds views those in power don't like can be quickly, quietly, and legally supressed, and discredited in the process. Since everyone breaks the laws, of course the authorities need more power to stop it, so let's make more stuff illegal, thus perpetuating the cycle and leading the country straight towards a police state.

    Finally, what difference does it make if a religion has a history? NO religion had a history when it started. Are you going to say that it was perfectly legitimate for Rome to imprison (we'll leave torture and killing out of this argument) early Christians simply because they were cultists and were attempting to recruit others? Are you saying that all those martyrs that Christianity (or Catholicism, at least) reveres should actually be remembered as common criminals? Because according to your arguments, that's exactly what they were. After all, Rome had every moral right to declare the Christian cult illegal, didn't they? They were a small, unpopular cult with no history, after all.

    --
  • > During era of the Civil War, which ultimately
    > led to the freeing of American slaves, I would
    > have chosen:
    >
    > a) freedom
    > b) stability

    FYI, the civil war was not about freeing slaves, it was about keeping the Union together. The slavery issue was just a narrative alibi. It was mostly about the northern Anglo-Saxon puritan and austere way of life enforcing its domination toward the more latin South. Northern had very few slaves because agriculture was in the South, plain and simple. And today, you hear assholes talking about freedom, 1st amendment and such and in the same time, seeing no problem in the censorship on American TV and movies when it comes to sex or to "explicit" vocabulary.

    Ab. Lincoln said "If I should have saved the union without freeing any slave, I would have have done it". History has forgotten this sentence. As usual in America which has always been on the edge of historic falsification.

  • Whenever someone "h4x0rs" a box it adds to the horror stories governments can reiterate to justify legislation like this. As we all know, these laws only hurt crackers and child pornographers .

    Of course some of the cracks and DOSSes have been linked to governments opposed to the site attacked (hmm makes you wonder about all these attacks on the free speech news sites, eh?). But the greater part are likely bona fide script kiddies. And the end is the same: those who do it serve to support legislation like this.

    The comment about this not hurting e-commerce is BS. Obviously internet traffic will double, which will affect bandwidth pricing and availability. This will certainly hamper e-commerce, as will the exodus of isp's and colocation services from the UK and the migration of users to site that will not cause them to cross the uk borders in their access paths.

  • Not only is the bill technically in-ept there are heaps of other problems with it.

    Imagine they do intercept a peice of ciphertext from me, they then require I give them the key that I used to encrypt that with. Now i'm no encryption expert but afaics I have the choice to give them my public key, or just the IDEA key that PGP uses for that particular mail. In addition I could just give them the plaintext, but I fail to see quite how they can ever prove that a piece of plaintext can be linked to it's ciphered version.

    As for the legal problems... if someone registers a public key in my name on a server and then starts emailling encrypted mail to me using my public key then I will be expected to supply the key or plaintext to the authorities (if they suspect i'm a lil' bit dodgy). If I fail to do that then I can get 2 years in prison. (and if I let anyone else know that I've been asked to surrender my key then I can get another 5 years).

    There was a nice demonstration of this carried out by Stand [stand.org.uk] in sending stuff to jack straw (the uk home secretary).

    Now what if someone actually does have something illegal encrypted on their pc... by not surrendering they key you can get max 2 years of prison life... which is a nice way out for paedophiles and the likes.

    Personally I think this is a complete shambols and I really hope we can stop it from becoming law in october.

    I will be writing to my mp.
  • You wanna know the really annoying thing about those cameras? I used to
    live in a flat that had one pointed at it (it was above a shop in the town
    centre) and I got broken into. So I 'phoned the cops. "I'm sorry, there's
    no film in those cameras" I was told, when I asked them to review the
    tapes...
  • Can't happen in the USA, you say? Listen to this scenario:

    The RIAA will begin to team up with major ISPs and get them, or have the government get them, to become piracy police. I'm sure companies like Time-Warner/AOL will want the RIAA's interests protected. In fact, MediaOne/AT&T, my ISP currently has it as one of their terms of agreement that "thou shalt not download illegal MP3s with your connection or we mightest terminate your service." The policy already exists, now it's just a matter of MediaOne/AT&T enforcement.

    For those ISPs that do not cooperate, the RIAA will have to apply a little more force (such as a federal law requiring ISPs to monitor customers).

    In other words, this can happen in America because there are powerful financial forces that will make it happen. Don't be so naive to think the government is the only fucking thing you gotta be worried about.

    An ISP has access logs listing the sites you visited, can easily monitor your activity, and have the best ability to police what individuals are doing. Will this kind of monitoring get people really fucking pissed off? Absolutely. Will there still be ways to get free music? Absolutely. Will it be considered a hard core criminal activity (the equivalent of child molestation and drug dealing). Absolutely. Will that get even more people pissed off? Hell yes. It's a vicious circle, ain't it?

  • oh pluueeze! as someone who has lived in Northern Ireland all my life, and suffered in terrorist attacks, will you please lose this romantic vision of minorities fighting for equality. I have the freedom to walk down my street without fear of being shot at, and if that means that the government are going to listen in on a few emails, then so be it. Just think of all the crap they'll have to wade through first...
  • Caustic sarcasm of the SlashDot vein.

    Dense.

    There, request granted. Moving right along..
  • I looked, but could not find in the story anything about the pre-requisite, "evil corporation(s)" behind this bill.

    I find it hard to believe any presumably, benevolent government would do anything like this, therefore, there must be some mondo, meganational, profiteering, heartless, corporation behind this.

    If there are any links or hidden messages in this story, can someone point them out to me?

    Thanks!
  • Man, if this means I get one of those cool telescreens things like Winston in 1984 then who the hell really cares if we're under surveillance?

    -Antipop
  • The irony is that this bill does severely damage the future for 'ecommerce' in the UK at a time when the government should be trying to make things easier. It's almost unbelievable.

    Rest In Peace the UK IT industry.

    P.S. Encryption does you no good. Special branch can come and break down your door, demand the keys and slap you in prison if you don't comply. They can slap you in prison if you tell anyone that you've given them the keys.

    1984 here we come. George was prophet. Just got his date wrong by a few years.

    My company have already identified alternate countries/locations for their datacentre. Luckily cos I'm Unix bod, I'll still have a job but the NT bods are toast.

  • I agree with you completely about using encryption. I don't really care too much about governments intercepting packets because it's no big secret that almost anyone can do so anyway, just as you say. (What I don't like is when governments tell me I'm not allowed to speak in a language until they know what it is. To me this is a very fundamental invasion of free speech.)

    Besides governments though, there's at least one very simple thing that's holding it up.

    By default, both Netscape and MSIE warn the user before entering a secure session. I can understand why it might warn when leaving a secure session, but I've never understood why it should warn on entering one. I think most people would be perfectly happy with an icon somewhere on the status bar to say if the session was currently secure.

    I suppose this informative warning about encryption can be turned off, but I wonder how many web-media providers don't offer secure sessions by default because of how many potential viewers these popups that they can't switch off will turn away. If at all, they only offer it when collecting obviously personal information from people by which time customers have usually been ensnared into the site already.


    ===

  • Apparently, down-under the government is trying to pass a law that allows the ASIO (the australian version of the CIA) to let some G-men crackers break into any web site that breaks the law in order to shut them down.

    Maybe I'm missing something and I don't want to provoke too much, but what is wrong with this?

    If a person breaks the law, government agents (usually police) are authrised to break into that person's house to arrest them - usually for good reason. If a business is selling illegal goods that breaks the law, government agents are authorised to use force to sieze the goods so they can't be sold anymore.

    If a website breaks the law, what is so exceptional about it that it should be a special case from these other examples?

    As I said I'm not trying to provoke, but I think it's the laws that are being broken that should be targeted if someone has a problem, not the fact that government agents can be authorized to use sufficient force to stop it.

    Otherwise what can they do? Ask nicely? The only alternative I can think of is to confiscate someone's computer and it sometimes frightens me the way they can actually do that. Of course if they destroy the property without a proper trial to confirm that it was actually breaking the law, that would be something bad.


    ===
  • It doesn't make much difference if we use encryption now, because if you are asked to hand over your public key and passphrase by the police you must do so. Not this is a criminal offence punishable with two years in prison. Moreover you are not allowed to tell anyone else your key has been comprimised and so continue using it. Not doing this is pusishable with a further 5 years in prison If you cannot prove you do not posses the passphrase/and or private key then it is also two years in prison. Before prosecuting under these laws it not *not* needed to prove that you are hidning evidence of another criminal activity so paedophiles etc.. would gladly go down for 2 years rather than hanidng over there passphase and going down for at least 10.
  • I'm Bond, James Bond.. and my next sequel is "The Internet is Not Enough". Coming soon to a court near you! Only $5.95 for offical transcripts!

  • Quite a lot of those alleged CCTV cameras are dummies. I had a job installing them during one of my college vacations: the dummy cameras have all the effect of the real thing (driving crime somewhere else) with none of the hassle - (changing tapes, actually watching fourteen hours of boring footage etc.,) for a fraction of the cost - four coach bolts and the thing was done.

  • Yes, it's still there.

    Although given the usual stance on these things at the Department of Timidity and Inaction, our foreign competitors are safe for a while yet.

  • I didn't say the UK sucks. I'm just tired of all the +5 messages from Europeans generally about how shitty the US is and how Americans have no rights.

    Here's the great part: the act is likely to come into force on 5th October this year. Three days after the Human Rights Act 1998 comes into force and renders it a dead letter in advance.

    I will say this for HMG; when it takes it into its pointy little head to indulge in wholesale repression, it usually has the good grace to make an utter hash of it. (Which comment I make without reference to the technical failings of the Bill, on which I am less competent to comment than most others here)

    And, of course, unlike the US, I can go and badger the minister responsible for the wretched thing in his constituency office without an appointment, wherein I have the advantage that said office is less than a hundred meters from my own.

    Try getting that kind of access to most US politicians!

  • No, it's an offence not to decrypt material obtained lawfully by the police or security services on being ordered to do so in the proper form. The offence is almost certainly not extraditable, so it only works on people in the UK at the time the warrant is served and unable to get the hell out before they have to comply. Citizenship doesn't matter: the fact that you're within their reach is all that counts for criminal jurisdiction. Where domicile (not citizenship) matters is in your right to bail. If you can readily abscond by going to your home outside the jurisdiction, they won't give you bail without you surrender your passport and post a whopping surety.

  • Can't happen in the USA? Already has. What the RIP Bill (soon to be the RIP Act, and in force shortly thereafter) does is make Carnivore legal and indeed mandatory in any ISP in the UK.

    My own ISP (ClaraNet [clara.co.uk] has threatened to relocate overseas if it comes into force rather than let anyone snoop on my email.

  • Despite your attempt to sound righteous by mentioning the role of the FBI in domestic surveillance, you pass over the largest of their crimes: their spying and disruption of the Puerto Rican independence movement. The surveillance to which the FBI submitted the nation of Puerto Rico was proportionately far higher than that which the US ever had to deal with, up to USSR levels.

    Learn fully about the crimes of your country before speaking about them.

  • I mean, everyone knows that whenever a government practices surveillance on its citizens, it's only if that citizen is truly a dangerous criminal. A quick scan of history reveals that, right off!

    What makes you so much more fit to judge who's a criminal and who's not than your government?

    All those communists in the McCarthy era got what was coming to them.

    They were undermining the stability of the state, a charge that most Westerners greatly underestimate the importance of. True, theese people were charged for the wrong thing, but those were trying times for the American nation, and unruly groups causing chaos and unrest were the last thing it needed.

    And those damn Japanese-Americans during WWII.

    This was out of line, agreed.

    Arlo Guthrie most certainly deserved to have his life on file at the FBI. As did Pete Seeger. Damned agitators...

    Once again, most Westerners take a stable nation for granted. You grossly underestimate the value of this privilege. Imagine living in Afghanistan. Or Sierra Leone. Or even Fiji.

    Not pretty alternatives, are they?

  • Stability? (Score:3)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @08:02PM (#898704) Homepage
    most Westerners take a stable nation for granted. You grossly underestimate the value of this privilege. Imagine living in Afghanistan. Or Sierra Leone. Or even Fiji.

    To which I'd say... most Westerners take a free nation for granted. You grossly underestimate the value of this privilege. Imagine living in Afghanistan. Or Sierra Leone. Or even Fiji.

    And who are you to judge the importance of the stability of the state? What if the state is engaged in wrongdoing? Should we preserve stability at all costs? Seems like a strange end to strive for...

    Depending on your definition of "stability" I might have to say I'd pick freedom over stability. If the opposite of stability is chaos and anarchy, that's one thing. Often, though, "stability" is a placated populace, happily listening to Britney Spears and munching on Cheetos, and threats to that notion of "stability" are dealt with severely. That sort of stability generates the big bucks.

    Now you've done it. I'm ranting all paranoid-like... :-)

  • Solution To Funding Government! (Score:3)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @08:07PM (#898705)
    Okay. Carnivore and this new M15 system is a wonderful way for the governments to fund themselves!

    All they have to do is follow what Dejanews.com does -- filtering messages and embedding links in Usenet posts. Carnivore could scan every single email sent through America and replace common words and product names with hypertext links that would allow the recipient of messages to automatically be transported to the site of a company paying the government for advertising!

    Example:
     Jim, Thanks for lending me your car [slashdot.org] lastnight. Hopefully I will have mine back from the body shop [plasticsurgery4u.com] in time [slashdot.org] for the game tomorrow. I owe [slashdot.org] you big time. Remind me to give you some of these great cigars [slashdot.org] when we meet up at the game -- it's the least I can do!

    Thanks,

    Ted
    ---
    seumas.com

  • While HavenCo. and Sealand must insist that they are a sovereign country/principality/whatever, a number of people expressed the opinion (which I tend to agree with) that Sealand's status is only uncertain because Britain hasn't yet felt compelled enough to push the issue (the shots fired off Sealand notwithstanding).

    I wonder if anyone in either of the Houses ever brought up HavenCo to support arguments in facor of the bill. After all, it's not just about email, but includes "other encrypted Internet communications". It would be ironic if the need for services like HavenCo. is in part perpetuated by the existence of services such as HavenCo.

    Incidentally, what are the latest conspiracy theories around the integrity of PGP? I haven't been paying much attention since the U.S. started relaxing export restrictions on strong encryption, but whenever news like this hits Slashdot we always get the usual spate of "just encrypt all your email" and it would be interesting to hear the conspiracy theorists on how that's really just not satisfactory....

  • Re:Please Learn to Use Encryption (Score:3)

    by mpe ( 36238 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @05:08AM (#898707)
    Which is yet another reason this country needs a Bill of Rights or equivalent.

    Except that such a document is only as good as the body which enforces it.
    The USA has shown that it is utterly trivial for a government to violate a written constitution. Also that police and judges will attempt to enforce statutes which are in direct violation of the consitution.
    A "Bill of rights" is useful if it is backed by a government (and an army.)

  • Extremely false. (Score:3)

    by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Thursday July 27, 2000 @07:47PM (#898708)
    Speak for yourself.

    During the years when export of cryptography was illegal, I was habitually encrypting everything crypto-related which I sent to other people via email. After all, the government went after Phil Zimmerman, and once tried to tell a group of mathematicians that they couldn't deliver a presentation on RSA. The government was very interested in export-control, and using crypto on email conversations about crypto was just a prudent way to keep myself safe and lawsuit-free.

    Let's also not forget the business world. My previous job was for an Internet start-up which was going to be expanding quickly to Europe and the Pacific Rim. Certain countries (France among them) have industries which are partially or wholly owned by the government; and the governments of certain countries (France among them) have histories of using their intelligence agencies to gather economic intelligence on the competitors of these government-owned industries.

    Were we concerned about the DGSE eavesdropping on our plans to set up shop in Europe? Damn straight.

    And let's not forget the fact that you don't have to be important to warrant being searched. Let's say that you're a journalist and you're a big nobody. The government doesn't care about you. You're talking via email with someone, using them as a reference for a story, or maybe they're providing you with leaks, or whatever.

    Let's say your source is also under investigation for drug smuggling. The FBI can eavesdrop his emails, but that might tip him off. Instead, it's easier to eavesdrop on the emails of the people he talks to.

    After all, drug smugglers tend to take extreme precautions with their communications. There's no guarantee that the people they talk to do. It just makes sense.

    ... I qualify on all three points listed above, you see. I was violating ITAR/EAR before it became fashionable, and I was very concerned about getting a call from the FBI.

    I worked for an industry in which we had very real concerns about foreign governments eavesdropping on our electronic communications and giving our secrets to competitors.

    And I talk with a few lawyers and a journalist, and in 1993 I had a pretty long set of email conversations with Phil Zimmerman. I know that at least one of those people was under government surveillance at the time, and I don't know about the others.

    So your statement--"I don't think anyone reading Slashdot is important enough that the government would want to read through his or her e-mail"--is quite false.

    Also keep in mind--in every one of these events, what I was doing was legal. ITAR/EAR was struck down as unconstitutional in its control over computer source code; my business was totally legal; my communications with lawyers, PRZ and the occasional journo are all completely, totally legal.

    Just because you're one hundred percent legal doesn't mean the government isn't going to snoop.

  • Re:UK's E-mail Scan Is Avoidable (Score:3)

    by KahunaBurger ( 123991 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @01:20AM (#898709)
    Allegedly, the technology is extremely easy for savvy computer users to avoid (i.e. the sort of people that the government hopes to catch in illegal acts). If the cybercriminals can bypass the tap with ease, then whose e-mail gets scanned? Answer: ordinary people.

    This seems like quite a leap. One might just as well say that people trying to rip off the phone company can avoid having their calls traced, so wiretaps or traces are only useful against "ordinary people". Just like phone taps or any other survelance method, the is a huge gulf of situations between "cyber-criminals" and "ordinary people" (implying no criminal concerns) where email survelance could prove useful.

    That said, perhaps this should get people to chill out a little bit about carnivore, given that it at least opperates under warrent. Look objectively at the two programs and gain some perspective. Law enforcement has a right to monitor communications of those individuals who a judge will give them a warrent for. But depending on how UK LEOs will be able to use this stockpiled info, this seems much more of a concern.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • Re:My goodness, yes! (Score:3)

    by Skald ( 140034 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:43AM (#898710)
    What makes you so much more fit to judge who's a criminal and who's not than your government?

    Actually, here in the US, there's a long tradition that holds that the citizens are more fit than the government to judge who's a criminal and who's not. We call it, "trial by jury".

    They were undermining the stability of the state, a charge that most Westerners greatly underestimate the importance of.

    *ahem*

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    True, theese people were charged for the wrong thing, but those were trying times for the American nation, and unruly groups causing chaos and unrest were the last thing it needed.

    Or in other words, in times of trouble, freedom's fine, except when the going gets rough. Your words are inspiring.

    Booker: And those damn Japanese-Americans during WWII.

    This was out of line, agreed.

    Why? This seems very much out of line with the rest of your reasoning. WWII was a much more troubled period than the early Cold War. Potential enemies at home were the last things America needed.

    Once again, most Westerners take a stable nation for granted. You grossly underestimate the value of this privilege.

    And you grossly undervalue those things which make stability of value, the freedoms which make America a nation worth protecting. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

  • Re:Encrypted Mail (Score:3)

    by Shimodasan ( 187467 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @09:44PM (#898711)
    This story seems to believe that encryption is the answer to all your privacy problems.
    If you have been following the progress of the RIP bill you will know that failure to hand over your
    encryption key leaves you in the position that you must prove you NEVER KNEW IT. Seeing as this is probably impossible, you will face the
    mandatory jail sentence or up to two years. Very draconian.

    Does anyone have any comments on the security of services like hushmail? [hushmail.com]

  • Re:Please Learn to Use Encryption (Score:4)

    by MoOsEb0y ( 2177 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @08:27PM (#898712)
    The problem with this, however, is the fact that if you encrypt your communications as you suggest, you face a 2 year jail sentence for refusal of giving them the keys. Furthermore, you can't tell ANYONE that you have given them the keys (if you decide against a 2 year sentence). If you do, you face a 5 year jail sentence. This kind of crap literally SCARES me. If the US ever thinks of pulling that, I'm moving to sealand to work at Data Haven [havenco.com].

  • Re:Stability? (Score:4)

    by crulx ( 3223 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @12:21AM (#898713)
    booker said: To which I'd say... most Westerners take a free nation for granted. You grossly underestimate the value of this privilege. Imagine living in Afghanistan. Or Sierra Leone. Or even Fiji.

    Richard Stevens said: It's really easy to say that when you've got a full belly and a roof over your head for the foreseeable future, isn't it?

    There is this thing in logic called an Ad Hominem fallacy. You just used it. You didn't mention anything about why you thought that the author's premise that Westerns feel that freedom is taken for granted by most Westerner's, including yourself. Instead, you claimed that it was easy to say this because of certain conditions about booker's life. I imagine you wanted to tie that into your earlier point about stability, but instead you went arwy and made a logical fault. Please try to avoid these sorts of errors, or people will start to think you are a troll as that tatic is often used by them. If people think you are a troll, they will stop listening to you (that is the internet standard way of dealing with them). If your point is to communicate on /. , then this will be counter to your goals and thus unbenificial to you.

    And who are you to judge the importance of the stability of the state? What if the state is engaged in wrongdoing? Should we preserve stability at all costs? Seems like a strange end to strive for... Sigh. You really have no concept of the real world, do you? The state had better be engaged in a damn good deal of wrongdoing before you start acting up, because chances are you'd make matters much worse in the process of trying to "improve" things.

    Again, an Ad Hominem. What does his haveing "no concept of the real world" have to do with his feelign that freedom is more important than stability? I can think of a few reasons, but you make no clear arguments. Do you mean to tie it in with your next point about the state needing to "be engaged in a damn good deal of wrongdoing ..."? Is that what you claim "real world" knowledge to be? I'm sure you can see that many people would disagree. If you want to make any points, you need to elaborate.

    And look at your logic in the second line. If you start "acting up" before the state is "engaged in a damn good deal of wrongdoing..." then you will end up making "matters much worse".

    This seems to be the fundimental premise of your argument. Thus the rest of your argument suffers from a falicy know as petitio principii, Begging the question. Your argument looks like this..
    1) The government is not "engaged in a damn good deal of wrondoing. (supposedly proved by the fact that things are stable and not every person in the nation is complaining)
    2) If you act up and the government is not doing wrong then you will make matters much "worse in the process of trying to "improve" things. "
    3) You do not want to make matters worse (definition of worse for most rational people)
    Therefore, do not act up. (I think that conclusion can safely be implied by your comments. Especially comments below about people who have the power to make life miserable for everyone)
    You have not shown 1 to be the case. Nor have you explained why 2 is correct. So your conclusion has not been shown. Please explain the following.

    1. Why is invasion of not a "damn good deal of wrongdoing"?
    2. What is a good deal of wrongdoing?
    3. What is the definition of "acting up"?
    4. Why is premise 2 correct? Why is acting up only good for for large amounts of wrongness and not small amounts.
    You need to prove your premises.

    Often, though, "stability" is a placated populace, happily listening to Britney Spears and munching on Cheetos, and threats to that notion of "stability" are dealt with severely. That sort of stability generates the big bucks.

    That's all what you've chosen to do with the fact that you're rich and content enough to not have to worry about whether rebel (or government) militia leaders are going to come to your house and steal all your food (at best).

    This is a non sequitur. How does this follow from his statements above?

    People in the Western world (especially the US) are generally well-off enough that freedom can coexist with stability. They don't want to lose what they have. However, when you start getting desperate elements in the population (who have the power to make life miserable for everyone), the story changes.

    Both you and the poster make several arguments with the argumentum ad numerum fallacy. Just because most people are complacent with stability, does not justify your arugment that stability is more important than "not acting up". booker makes some of the same arugments.

    Please, if you want to prove your point, choose a logical standpoint to go from. Your arguments will sound more professional and will less likely get you labled as a troll. (And there is somethign I hope we can both agree upon.) ---
    crulx
    crulx@iaxs.net

  • My goodness, yes! (Score:4)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @07:35PM (#898714) Homepage
    I mean, everyone knows that whenever a government practices surveillance on its citizens, it's only if that citizen is truly a dangerous criminal. A quick scan of history reveals that, right off!

    All those communists in the McCarthy era got what was coming to them.

    And those damn Japanese-Americans during WWII.

    Arlo Guthrie most certainly deserved to have his life on file at the FBI. As did Pete Seeger. Damned agitators...

  • Make a stand... (Score:4)

    by gi_wrighty ( 152031 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @09:46PM (#898715) Homepage
    I've read through the posts and no-one has mentioned http://www.stand.org.uk [stand.org.uk]. At their site you can webfax your local MP and they have a good source of information about the effects of the bill.

    Another useful site is http://www.fipr.org/rip/RIPcountermeas ures.htm [fipr.org]. No explainations required.

    wrighty.

    (Is it me or does the lameness filter add in spaces to long strings?)

  • Hasn't passed yet... (Score:5)

    by SamHill ( 9044 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @08:10PM (#898716)

    Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill hasn't passed yet.

    What happened is that the House of Commons discussed and accepted the amendments to the bill made by the House of Lords. No vote to accept or reject overall passage of the bill was made.

    You can read the discussions [parliament.uk] for yourself.

    For up-to-date tracking of the bill's progress, see the Home Office's RIP page [homeoffice.gov.uk].

  • UK's E-mail Scan Is Avoidable (Score:5)

    by qbasicprogrammer ( 200734 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @07:27PM (#898717)
    Since Britain passed its Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill, security experts have examined the technology behind the e-mail snooping that is allowed in the law. Allegedly, the technology is extremely easy for savvy computer users to avoid (i.e. the sort of people that the government hopes to catch in illegal acts). If the cybercriminals can bypass the tap with ease, then whose e-mail gets scanned? Answer: ordinary people. That's why a number of experts are explaining to citizens what steps are necessary to remain invisible to the RIP's black boxes.
    Full story at ZDNet [zdnet.com.au] or BBC [bbc.co.uk].

  • Rumour Control on the RIP Act (Score:5)

    by AndrewD ( 202050 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @10:40PM (#898718) Homepage

    OK, here's the basics:

    Here, we have the Bill itself [parliament.uk] as it emerged from its report to face it's third reading (last stage in parliament before Royal Assent and passage onto the statute book: it comes into force on a date to be fixed thereafter)

    Thi s [parliament.uk] is the complete list of amendments, and you'll notice that Lord Bassam and chums seem to be out with their castrating knives and good on 'em, ain't it handy to have legislators who aren't going to have to face re-election.

    This schweinerei [parliament.uk] is the really offensive part.

    Things you ought to know about this Bill:

    1. It's already been beaten back once. The really offensive stuff started out in the Electronic Communications Bill (now the Act, minus all the nasty parts and as such totally useless and unlikely ever to be brought into force)
    2. On and from 2nd October 2000, when the Human Rights Act 1998 [hmso.gov.uk] comes into force, it will be more or less impossible to get convictions under clause 53 (it may not retain that section number in the Act-as-it-passes) since the threat of a penalty for non-disclosure amounts to a violation of the privilege against self-incrimination. This particular legal device - questioning under compulsion, a rather genteel and bloodless form of torture - resulted in the defendants in l'affaire Guinness getting judgments in their favour in the EHCR. Because compelled answers to a (non-criminal) DTI inquiry were used as evidence in their eventual (criminal) trial, they were found to have had their human rights violated.
    3. The Encryption stuff isn't the big deal. It's the government's automatic right to install whatever variant of the carnivore system they want into any ISP, telecom provider, whatever so that they can monitor whenever they like without prior judicial restraint. The warrants are to be signed by the Secretary of State. And how much scrutiny is he going to give them?
    4. There's a Commission going to be appointed to hear complaints. Sure, right. Fact fans, listen carefully: this is what they did last time around, when they passed the old Interception of Telecommunications Act fifteen years ago. In those fifteen years, the Commissioner has heard four (4) complaints. And rejected all of them. Can you say "dead letter?"

    I could, and at very small provocation will, go on.

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