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The Internet Privacy Your Rights Online

UK RIP Bill Reintroduced 277

Posted by michael from the because-there-isn't-enough-spying-in-the-world dept.
AIM31 writes "The amendments to RIP bill in the UK, which gives the power to read email headers and history to such bodies as the Postal Service, is back. with amendments. Last time it was rejected after massive protest."
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UK RIP Bill Reintroduced More

UK RIP Bill Reintroduced

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  • Hi. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rkz ( 667993 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:38AM (#6951017) Homepage Journal
    I live in the UK but the number of stupid laws is approaching american levels. Can somone recomend a country I could move to which protects the civil liberties of its citizens; prefrebaly English speaking? Thanks in advance.

    • Re:Hi. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:48AM (#6951034)
      Canada. You can join the flood of "evil" potheads & free thinkers fleeing the police state that the US is becoming. And I know we aren't evil. But to George Bush and his cronies we sure are.

      • Re:Hi. (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Canada is part of the Axis of Evil and will be LIBERATED. Love GWB.

    • Re:Hi. (Score:5, Funny)

      by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:03AM (#6951063)
      Get yourself a boat, and sail the high-seas! With a satellite internet link you could become a real music pirate! Arrrr!

    • Re:Hi. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:10AM (#6951072) Journal
      The Isle of Man, where I live, is not part of the UK. We never implemented the RIP Act, and therefore this won't be implemented here either.

      There is one trouble: the island is full (you'll have a hard time finding somewhere to live). We've got lots of spaces, but planning regulations makes it incredibly difficult to build new houses. Unfortunately, lots of UK citizens have holiday homes here which are left empty most of the year, crimping supply for the rest of us who aren't afraid of Manx winters...
      • Prime example of a liberal, forward-looking society...

        I'm straight so this really doesn't affect me but tell me, is homosexuality still illegal and punishable by birching?
        • Judging by the ads for the Gay And Lesbian Switchboard that appear around the "Personals" section of the Manx Independent, no.

          Birching has also gone away too.

          However, apparently there's still a law on the books making it legal to kill a Scotsman if you catch him on the beaches wearing a kilt.
          • No point in throwing away the important ones, after all. Some protections are too fundamental to be discarded willy-nilly. :-)
    • "Can somone recomend a country I could move to which protects the civil liberties of its citizens; prefrebaly?? English speaking? Thanks in advance."

      You're welcome:

      http://www.sealandgov.com/ [sealandgov.com]
    • Most Continetntal Europeans speak English to some degree, and many very well. Even though I learned German and French at school (and had the German prize twice) whenever I go abroad, no one lets me speak to them in their language. They're always too keen to speak English. My sister lives in Germany and speaks German fluently. She loves it.
    • Canada. Our PM is a moron, and there is some government corruption, but civil rights are embedded in the constitution and are upheld. Fair use of copyrighted works is a law, and our justice system works rather well compared tot he US one. We also don't kill each other at an alarming rate.

      We also speak french here in Quebec, but a place like Toronto is nice to live. Mostly english-sepeaking, but still cosmopolitan enough to find different ethnicities represented, with little or no racism and segregation.
      • civil rights are embedded in the constitution and are upheld.

        Except that any province, on a whim, can choose not to honour any given "civil right", by invoking the notwithstanding clause of the charter of rights and freedoms.

        Welcome to Canada!

  • Power mad Blunkett (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:42AM (#6951025)
    This bill is yet another in a long line of bills being introduced by David Blunkett

    Compulsory ID cards being another.

    The fact that a local council can get the information disturbs me, as I have worked for one, and know how sloppy they can be.

    I only hope next election we vote them out, as all the promises they originally made (eg Freedom of Information) evaporated, and instead we get more draconian measures

    • Re:Power mad Blunkett (Score:5, Funny)

      by rkz ( 667993 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:58AM (#6951054) Homepage Journal
      We could steal his walking stick and feed his guide dog crack.

    • Re:Power mad Blunkett (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ella the Cat ( 133841 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:01AM (#6951058) Homepage Journal
      They suck, but if we vote them out what do you think will happen to improve matters? Changing to a new government party seems to press a reset button and everyone forgets (a) how they stuffed us the last time they were in and (b) lets the previous lot off the hook just as all the media evidence is building up to make them squirm.

    • Re:Power mad Blunkett (Score:4, Funny)

      by Felinoid ( 16872 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:11AM (#6951073) Homepage Journal
      Well actually it sounds like they're keeping the "Freedom of information" it just happends to be that they meant fredom of YOUR information.

    • Re:Power mad Blunkett (Score:5, Informative)

      by sh0rtie ( 455432 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:23AM (#6951102)
      absolutely MR Blunket has gone raving mad not only do we [as uk citizens) have this RIP bill to deal with again and private companies taking photos of its customers with RFID's [slashdot.org] but gems such as

      Police seek DNA database of every citizen [bbc.co.uk]

      GPS to track cars for road tax [bbc.co.uk]

      Police fit spy cameras in homes to catch burglars [bbc.co.uk]

      so with some people having big brother to deal with in homes in our towns on our motorways on our streets making us the most spied upon people in the western world, all in the name of "reducing crime" we have to deal RIP bills as well ?

      if this is what its like now can you imagine how much worse its going to get in the future ? i mean you have got nothing to hide so why worry right ?

      for us 1984 is well and truly here and has no sign of going away, maybe the Labour goverment should change its "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" campaign slogan to "War on privacy, trust no one"

      you say vote them out but do you think the conservatives can really be trusted as well ? maybe you dont remember they are the ones that made corporate and goverment corruption an art form, why do you think Labour have kept winning elections ? and they are still are promoting un-inspiring dead beat leaders without bringing in new fresh politicans and still touting their same old boy network who where voted out last time as a credible options !?! i wouldnt trust them as far as i could throw them either

      UK goverment is a mess and we are paying for it

      • Most of your links aren't inherently evil. The GPS tracking scheme is designed as a mechanism to deal with road tolls and the RFIDs are an anti-shoplifting measure. The issue is the uses they could be put to without any real diffculty, and without even telling us.

      • Re:Power mad Blunkett (Score:3, Interesting)

        by GregWebb ( 26123 )
        OK, so vote for the LibDems.

        No, they won't win the next election. But look at significantly less evil governments in Scotland and Wales as a result of coalitions between the LibDems and Labour - wouldn't it be nice to have that for the UK as a whole? Labour probably aren't going at the next election and we don't want the Tories so the best we can hope for is coalition government, surely?

        Plus, remembering we're not a country where it's possible to bribe politicians in the same way, they actually care about

        • The interesting thing is that there are two reasons people will vote against the incumbent government: either they prefer the advertised policies of an alternative, or the current government has become so unacceptable that they will vote for anyone as an alternative, and the most convincing "anyone" gets the vote.

          Labour may have finally lost it over the past month or so. Hoon and Straw are in trouble over Iraq. Blunkett is in trouble for just about everything. I can't even remember who the current transpo

    • I only hope next election we vote them out, as all the promises they originally made (eg Freedom of Information) evaporated, and instead we get more draconian measures

      Is it just me, or is tending towards the facist and totalitarian a pre-requisite of being a British Home Secretary? I'm 29 and spent most of my life growing up under the Tories [conservative.org.uk]. They weren't any better. The trouble is, it's swings and roundabouts and not enough people will ever vote Lib Dem [libdems.org.uk]. Even if they got in, I'm sure they'd end up being j

  • Real impact? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:45AM (#6951028)
    With issues like this I always wonder if there would actually be a real impact? If they started reading the message bodies I would begin to be upset but the simple fact is (legal or not) people can both read headers and bodies, if they so wish. Of course I am not suggesting that we totally ignore legislation like this (I for one will be opposing it, being a UK citizen) -- as a member of the Slashdot crowd I currently sign all of my outgoing mail with GnuPG. If the going gets tough I can just as easily start encrypting all sensitive email, but of course this doesn't protect my headers.

    As I see it the simple fact remains that there is a way around all of these measures -- I can easily forge headers, use another machine, etc. which essentially renders legislation like this useless. I'm going to be a lot more worried when they start to ``outlaw'' these workarounds, most importantly when encryption becomes a big ``no-no''.
    • As I see it the simple fact remains that there is a way around all of these measures

      If you check the article, it's more than email logs they will have access to. It also includes telephone logs, web site visits, and your location (via your mobile phone.) This is all automatic i.e. without any need for a warrent.

      Allowing so many agencies access to this information is unjustifiable, it's the job of the police to investigate crimes, not the fire station or local council!

      The doublethink comment that this is

    • "If the going gets tough I can just as easily start encrypting all sensitive email"

      But thanks to the RIP act passed a couple of years ago, if you don't decrypt them when asked, you could face two years in jail (even if you've lost or forgotten the keys). And if you tell anyone you've been asked for your decryption keys, that's five years in jail.

      "I'm going to be a lot more worried when they start to ``outlaw'' these workarounds, most importantly when encryption becomes a big ``no-no''."

      In some ways, i

  • Whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:51AM (#6951042) Homepage
    Any sensitive communication I don't send over unencrypted email anyway. I'm sure everybody that *really* has something to hide have clued in too. So, I'm just waiting for them to try to outlaw encryption, at least without any government recovery keys...

    Kjella
    • it's not for sensitive, mainly not at least. they would end up with all sorts of knoweledge that if they used they should be in trouble anyways(stock tips and such)..

      if they could read your email just because they feel at the city hall they will end up knowing pretty well what sites you visit and so on(of course, you could use a webmail based in china or something and have the commies benefit from spying you).

      of course, it's just so stupid to let such breach of 'letter-secrecy'(not sure of the proper wor

    • Re:Whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CaffeineFreak ( 650066 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:19AM (#6951093)
      Ah, but the RIP bill makes it an offence not to decrypt a message when requested.

      Saying you forgot or lost the encryption key is not a defence.

      Remember, under this law you are assumed guilty and have to prove your innocence.

      • Re:Whatever... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by netsharc ( 195805 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @08:34AM (#6951294)
        They should start using Rubberhose [rubberhose.org]. Basically, you have a partition that looks like it's filled with random data, but give a password, and you see some files, give another password, and there are other files, and so on, but the KGB agents won't know if there's still another cache of data hidden in there or if that really was all of it, and the rest is really just garbage.
        • Nice, but considering it'll be obvious from the start THAT you're using "stego" software, you might as well just make a number of encrypted partitions using linux cryptoAPI loopback, and only use a few of them.
          • Don't know a lot about CryptoAPI, but I assume you can still plainly see how many partitions the disk has. Rubberhose scatters its "segments" ("partitions") inside the disk/partition, so that no one knows how many partitions there really is in there.
            • A harddrive can only store as much data as it can store, so there's always an upper limit to the amount of data you can store. Using rubberhose you may be able to store even less than that (I don't know rubberhose), but that doesn't add any security. Once they know you're using stego (at which point it really isn't stego anymore), the two are equivalent.
    • They will not outlaw encryption because of banks and others - but they can already require you to provide a key or an intelligible form of the message (and make you keep secret the fact you have done so). See Sections 49 - 54 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 [hmso.gov.uk].

  • Much more information needed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlecC ( 512609 ) <aleccawley@gmail.com> on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:53AM (#6951045)
    From the articler Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: "These proposals are about vital investigatory tools being used now to prevent and detect crime and, in some cases, save lives."

    This is the kind of bland statement often used to justify invasions of privacy. We need evidence of the truth of this statement - evidence backed with numbers and convictions, not one-off anecdotes and hypothetical scenarios.

    The strikes me as paying a high price in privacy. Not an impossible price, but whatever we are paying for had better be worth it - and the Powers That Be have not made that case yet.

    • Re:Much more information needed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by blibbleblobble ( 526872 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:31AM (#6951122)
      Home Office minister Caroline Flint said: "These proposals are about vital investigatory tools being used now to prevent and detect crime and, in some cases, save lives."

      F.F.S., sheer luck saves more lives than all the snooping they could ever do, combined. Increase the amber-light time on traffic lights if you want to save lives, Ms Flint. Illuminate road junctions and pay your traffic cops. Hell, even consider paying for railways and underground railways that don't break and cause major "accidents" every year and a half. But reading email? Get a clue.

  • encryption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Neophytus ( 642863 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:54AM (#6951046)
    As protest last time a group sent the then home secretary a bunch of encrypted emails. It would have actually been illegal for him to recieve them because of the poor wording in the bill - you had to be able to decode anything that you recieve.
    • It was illegal for him to recieve them. That part of the bill had already been passed into law
    • In his defence he could claim that they weren't intended for him. If they had been , they would have been encrypted with his own public key so he would be able to decrypt them.

      • Re:encryption (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Phroggy ( 441 ) *
        In his defence he could claim that they weren't intended for him.

        Even if the senders insist that they were?

  • Encryption (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kazymyr ( 190114 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:57AM (#6951049) Journal
    Time to wake up and generalize the use of PGP/GPG and toher tools. Right now if you send an encrypted email, chances are the recipient won't even know what it is and delete it as spam or a virus.

    Educate the masses.
    • Encrypting your email dosen't protect the headers as only the message body would be encrypted. They'd still be able to tell who you contacted and when, just not what was said.
      • Of course, but consider the following. The header and the body aren't really separate, are they? What's to stop a "designated official" to slip an eye over the body of the message too, since they opened your email anyway. Encryption will stop such abuse. I for one wouldn't be comfortable at all knowing that my emails may be read by some policeman who'd getting bored on duty someplace. It'd be pretty much as if they took naked pictures of you and posted them on the internet.

        Of course, I'm not familiar with

  • What's going on here? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joshsnow ( 551754 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:59AM (#6951055) Journal
    What is Blairs government up to? Compulsory ID cards - which I read that Blunkett is still trying to get introduced, monitoring car speeds via satellite transmission/receivers, mobile police radar "saftey" (speed) cameras used by illegally parked police who refuse to divulge the amount of revenue they raise from issuing tickets etc.

    I'm beginning to think that Blair is big brother. Next time, I won't be voting for his lot or any of the others. They're all as bad as each other.

    • Not voting is not the answer. What is needed is a "none of the above" vote, which I don't recall seeing on my last voting sheet.

      By not voting you increase the weight of the votes by all of the country's idiots.

    • Re:What's going on here? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mickwd ( 196449 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @08:32AM (#6951288)
      "Next time, I won't be voting for his lot or any of the others. They're all as bad as each other."

      Why ? Just because the Conservatives and "New" Labour are as bad as each other ?

      What about the Liberal Democrats ? Or the Greens ? Or one of the regional parties (if such a thing exists where you live) ? What about an independent candidate ?

      Sometimes I get the feeling that there are millions of people in the UK all thinking "I can't vote for the Lib Dems because they have no chance of winning". If half of them bloody voted for them, then they might have a chance. On the other hand, not voting for them because you don't agree with their policies is something I can easily accept.

      (For non-UK readers, the Lib Dems are the third-largest national party here, and seem to get roughly about 20% of the vote in recent times - nowhere near enough to challenge the two main parties in terms of the number of seats they win at parliament).

      If all a government has to face as a result of introducing unpopular policies is someone saying "They're all as bad as each other. I won't vote for any of them next time" then that is no disincentive to them whatsoever.

      • (For non-UK readers, the Lib Dems are the third-largest national party here, and seem to get roughly about 20% of the vote in recent times - nowhere near enough to challenge the two main parties in terms of the number of seats they win at parliament).

        Also for the non-UK readers, we don't have proportional representation, we have "first past the post". That means winning votes from 20% of the voters doesn't guarantee you 20% of the seats in parliament. In fact, you'd be lucky to get half that, and curren

    • Tories and Labour aren't the only parties though. By pretending they are when we vote we remove any strong incentive for either to behave as if they can be taken out of office and shouldn't do this sort of thing.

      It _stinks_ that these proposals are appearing, but if we vote for Labour we implicitly support it and if we vote for the Tories, well, we saw what they came up with last time. Always makes me chuckle that the name is a corruption of an old Irish word meaning 'bandit'.

      Personally, I'll be voting fo
    • I'm beginning to think that Blair is big brother. Next time, I won't be voting for his lot or any of the others. They're all as bad as each other.

      So why don't you start your own political party that promotes what YOU believe in? We have the internet nowadays. Use that to spread your message and gain support.

      This "I refuse to vote" is such a cop-out and solves nothing. If you feel that strongly, get off your behind and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

      • Oh yeah everyone should just quit his job and become a politician. It's not that people's jobs are important or anything.
        • People often have time off work, like at weekends, Christmas, bank holidays, annual leave. If they feel that strongly, they can form an interest group, a pressure group or a political party. Or, maybe like you, they should sit back, steaming at the ears and hope that someone else does it for them?
    • " What is Blairs government up to?"

      Boiling Frogs.

    • Of course this government needs all these expensive high-tech solutions in order to combat tax evasion. How else are they going to be able to afford to buy all this technology?

  • WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:00AM (#6951056)
    They will be able to use the powers to collect taxes.

    What have my email headers got to do with taxes?

    Agencies will be given training on the law and how to maximise privacy, it continued.

    Maximise privary?! Stop trying to spy on us!!

    I'm not suprised by this at all, the government here seems to be doing everything it can to track and control it's population. The only thing that does suprise me is they didn't include the word 'terrorist' in there somewhere.
    • KGB = Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti = State Security Committee

      Let's equate State to Homeland and Committee to Department, what do you get?

      Yes I realise this bill is happening in the UK not the US, but who was it that commented "I wouldn't be surprised if Blair started a speech by saying 'My fellow Americans...'."

  • I would agree... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Czernobog ( 588687 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:02AM (#6951061) Journal
    If Blair, Blunkett and the rest of them were _forced_ to reveal both their email and snail mail to the public and there was no way round it like national security and the rest of the crap they will sell....
    But no. Nevermind this is morally wrong (yes they have morals, that's why they shoot democracy onto people), the reason they would refuse would be because something like this would annoy them immensely, since their privacy was grossly invaded, it would never happen.

    Seems to me Big Brother needs to be disowned and punished by Big Father (us).

  • Not a Bill (Score:5, Informative)

    by 00_NOP ( 559413 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:03AM (#6951062) Homepage
    Point of fact: this is not a Bill, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has already passed into law. What this is about is the statutory instrument needed to gave various parts of it effect in law.
  • David Blunkett is watching you! OooOooOoOo. Well not literally.

  • whistleblowers look out (Score:5, Insightful)

    by close_wait ( 697035 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:06AM (#6951067)
    Suppose I worked for a local council.
    Suppose I suspected a council officer of corruption.
    Suppose I tipped off a journalist from my home phone or email account.
    That council officer can now obtain a complete record of everyone I've phoned or emailed in the last year, plus the fact that I recently visited www.howtoreportcorruptcouncilofficials.co.uk.

    This is scary.

  • Cold war generation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:23AM (#6951104)
    Perhaps i'm slighty too young to really remember the cold war, but i'm not so young not to remember the schools here in america teaching us about the evils of the big bad(sic) soviet empire. One issue that was commonly brought up was the right to privacy.

    It was sugested that the soviet union on a regular basis snooped through postal mail, which was considered to be repugnent by western nations. Am I to believe that in the UK that e-mail snooping is being sugested? Not that e-mail is remarkably private in the first place, it just seems to be such a violation of human rights to give automatic access to this particular medium, and a complete hypocrisy to consider telephone taps off limits but e-mail which often times goes over traditional telephone lines.

    I can appricate the fact that if there is enough evidence to convience a judge, one can get a warrent to search someone's residence. What the hell is wrong with that old procedure.

    • Let's not forget, it's not just e-mail, it's websites you visit also, which strikes me as synonymous as spying on what books and magazines you read.

      Then there's the essential element of tracking who a person is corresponding with: mass surveillance of association.
      You can send a letter to someone, and they won't track that, but do it "on the internet" and it's fair game for being spied on and monitored. All without warrants [for the police, anyway.]

      Ooh... data trawling, imagine the possibilities. We're fu

  • They can read my outgoing email if they really want to. Boredom will brainlock them fairly quickly.

    As for incoming email, the signal to noise ratio is getting smaller every day. Good luck getting any useful intelligence outta that stream!

  • Oceania (Score:2, Funny)

    by RexHowland ( 71795 )
    So, uh... When are they changing their name to Oceania?

  • Amount Of Data (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nightgeometry ( 661444 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:30AM (#6951121) Journal
    Is it possible (well, I know it is, I guess I mean how difficult is it -IANAC-), to build a reasonably simple programme that would just sit in the background requesting web pages.

    Gazillions of them.

    Constantly...

    Surely the weight of data would flood ISP's.

    Okay, problems with this:
    Bandwidth - I am on DSL, so not such a problem, but do we need to retrieve all the data? No, just pull the text. And have the thing running in the background. If you have a permanent connection (a la DSL), then run it constantly, whilst you aren't surfing / downloading et cetera. The bandwidth cost to ISP's would rocket, and thus cause fiscal issues for them.
    Other problems: None that I can think of - enlighten me.

    As for e-mail: Get a pgp key, and send random emails. If you had a key that was specifically used for this then somehow the receiving party could know to just delete all mails sent with that key. Rotate the key every couple of weeks, and voila (oops - wrote viola, thank heavens for preview), the mail can't even be filtered by key.

    Seems viable. The big issue is bandwidth usage, both locally and as an issue to the community as a whole. But it puts such a strain on the system (i.e. the monitoring) that monitoring becomes non viable.

    Comments?

  • RIPA is LAW (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:48AM (#6951155)
    RIPA is and has been law in the UK for several years now. The implementation of the latest revisions is designed to give legality to practices ALREADY underway with the UK government and local agencies.

    Everything the ammendments legalise is already in progress - ILLEGALLY.

    Oh how I wish I had a spare couple of million pounds... OH HOW I WISH!!!!

  • This Labour party (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mantera ( 685223 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:52AM (#6951166)

    I wonder what George Orwell would've said about this.

    What really pisses me off is that this second coming phenomenon has been used too often by labour to pass unpopular bills. When something proves massively unpopular, yield to public pressure and withdraw it, sleep on it for a while till people forget and then slip it when they hardly notice and public momentum has faded.

    Blunkett has introduced the most ludicrous of suggestions and laws. I really don't see how he be a minister of anything. He has no respect for people. Not teachers or police officers. How is expanding investigatory powers to 500 other bodies, 500 other bodies!, will contribute to reducing crime and its prevention?

    Oh wait, it's to help collect taxes, oh, wait, it's to save lives. Such sloppy excuses. Throw in your "noble" excuses, guys!

    Crime in the UK is bad! bad! and the police aren't too bothered about it, most of the time they don't bother to investigate anything, they just take over the phone and advise you to contact your insurane company. Have you ever contacted the police about a theft or a burglary? They just don't give a damn! and yeah like any criminal would use email now that they know it's being snooped! Soooo retarded!

    DAMNIT, I'M ANGRY!!!

    And this retarded idea that "if you have nothing to hide you it shouldn't bother you" shows great ignorance of privacy rights, as if those concerned about privacy are actively criminal or have things to "hide". DAMNIT!!!!!!!

    aaaaaaargghhhh i hate them!! i viscerally do!

    • What really pisses me off is that this second coming phenomenon has been used too often by labour to pass unpopular bills. When something proves massively unpopular, yield to public pressure and withdraw it, sleep on it for a while till people forget and then slip it when they hardly notice and public momentum has faded.

      For my favourite recent example of that behaviour, check out this [theregister.co.uk] article ("The Incredible Shrinking Consultation") (linked from this one [theregister.co.uk]).

  • A relevant quote adjusted for different technology (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward


    If police and governmental agencies are not required to obtain a warrant before recording travels and communications of a citizen's computer, then there is no limitation on the State's use of these methods on any person's computer, whether criminal activity is suspected or not. The resulting trespass into private affairs of UK citizens is precisely what article I, section 7 was intended to prevent. It should be recalled that one aspect of the browser and email surveillance in Young that troubled us was t

  • Just aimed at the home user ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @08:50AM (#6951336) Journal
    As part of my work, I have a rack at a co-lo. There are no services other than bandwidth provided by the co-lo (Level 3). I run DNS, mail, web, ftp, etc. etc. on machines at the co-lo for all the domains I use.

    How likely is it that Level-3 are actually storing anything - they'd have to put a transparent proxy in front of my systems, and it would have to be fast enough and good enough to handle the 500 or so racks in the room the my rack is in. Each rack is served with 100mbit (which I use) and 1Gbit endpoints.. .The potential bandwidth this room can saturate is pretty F'ing big - /. effect, eat your heart out! My personal best peak so far has been 76 mbit/second throughput ...

    They could always have one proxy per customer, I suppose, but that's a lot of rack space going to "waste". I suppose if you use blade servers, you could fit ~120 or so in a rack, otherwise at 1U proxy-machine per customer, you're looking at 13 racks for my room. Did I mention there are several other rooms just as large or larger ?

    So, how's it going to work for businesses ?

    Simon.

  • E-mail Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ultrasound ( 472511 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @08:51AM (#6951340)
    Prior to the RIP act, (it is speculated that) the UK and US have had for many years reciprocal agreements to spy on each other's populations using Echelon, neatly bypassing any issues regarding spying on ones own population.

    However i think that since 11/09/03 no one gives a toss about the niceties of civil liberties, i.e. Dept. of Homeland Security and RIP. Your privacy has been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.

  • Time to mail those mps (Score:5, Informative)

    by griblik ( 237163 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @08:52AM (#6951346)
    Full list of MPs and email addresses [parliament.uk]

    Seriously people, I've mailed my mp about a few things, and had an smail reply each time. Keep it polite and sane, because you know they'll ignore an uninformed rant, and you don't want to waste your time, right?

    I suggest simply dropping them a few lines to explain that Blunkett's been pushing several highly unpopular ideas and blatantly ignoring public opinion, and if he continues, well, I for one will be voting for the opposition purely to get rid of him.


    • I agree. Contact your MP. The easiest way to do this is via the faxyourmp.org website (courtesy of stand.org.uk - thanks guys).

      I've used that website a number of times to contact my MP, and received a written reply on each occasion.

      ~Cederic

  • 1984-Blair (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > I'm beginning to think that Blair is big brother.

    George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. /me thinks he's come back in his time machine and is now prime minister.
  • What I'm dying to know is how on earth did this get past the house of Lords (They're supposed to stop stupid laws) to the best of my knowledge the parliament act wasn't even invoked (the one that means you can pass a law directly from the commons if you wait a year and vote on it again) and finally, does the Queen even read these things, were I her I'd be ashamed to sign such ridiculous laws.
  • (Disclaimer - haven't read the article yet, but in case they don't mention this...) I assume the UK would have have to comply with EU privacy statutes....

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