Rights Groups Slam UK Government for RIPA changes

tenori writes "Want to intercept internet traffic but have a pesky public consultation to get out of the way? Just keep the consultation period as short as you can get away with and exclude the people it affects. Rights groups are questioning why the coalition government has only allowed a month for changes to the RIPA act. The Home Office continues to refuse to meet civil society groups, saying, 'We are focusing on those parties directly affected by the changes to the extent that those parties would be subject to the civil sanction or directly concerned with it, or are directly responsible, where lawful interception is taking place, for ensuring that consent has been obtained to the interception.' The ORG said, 'In other words, the many thousands of people who have been adversely affected by illegal interception, and those who seek to stand up for their rights, are not "directly concerned" according to the Home Office.'"

Incompetent Bumbling office is incompetent:

[Fluffeh]

News at 11.

Seriously, is anyone really ever surprised these days to find that government/large organizations are 1) Incompetent at what they do, 2) Try to hide it and 3) There to really do as little as possible, with as little resistance as possible?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. I guess that's why this is on a news site and not a surprising facts site!

Re:Incompetent Bumbling office is incompetent:

[mabhatter654]

They are HIGHLY competent at what they're doing... That's why they're doing this. They don't want "discourse" with the "subjects" they just want to clear things up with telcos, ISPs, and hardware makers to see if the Department has exposed them to any lawsuits.... and if so tweak the law so that the letter of the law matches current practice. In short this is most likely a CYA session, why would you want "civil rights groups" present while we're changing the law so we stop breaking it.

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[lsatenstein]

just a bit of feedback after being in contact with quite a few vendors of security products. If the information is private, it is encrypted, and it may be embedded with extraneous information (example merge a set of poems with your information, byte for byte, then compress and encrypt. If voice, use encrypted voice and vpn tunneling. If cell phone, use encrypted voice with algorithms that change keys every few time intervals. Only the naive use unencrypted communications.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more than a little scared. Over the past year, I've read several dozen mentions of a government (usually US, UK, or Canada) where the government is working on internet monitoring and interception, usually with input from big corporations, like the RIAA, and no mention of anybody representing the public's or private citizen's rights or interests. Considering how many groups there are opposing them, I'm beginning to think a coordinated legal effort might need to be made by the internet community to make

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[freedumb2000]

I agree. When did you last see a citizens rights group (a real one, not a shill group for a corporation) partake in a major policy decision anywhere (i am german)? I thought so.

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[freedumb2000]

These are civil rights groups that will try and fight a policy change. When was it the last time you saw them be sourced for advice on policy drafting? If they were, that would be awesome and I would love to see an example.

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[AmiMoJo]

Oh we partook. The government set up a website where you could post your views about that kind of thing, and people used it. There were hundreds of mostly negative comments. There was even a separate petition.

They ignored us.

Consultation is a con. They have to do it but are under no obligation to listen to anything anyone said. It doesn't matter how long it takes because they have no intention of taking any notice anyway, unless you happened to give them "donations" or shoved your dick up the minister's ars

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[PopeRatzo]

Consultation is a con. They have to do it but are under no obligation to listen to anything anyone said.

That's because we citizens (at least Americans) are too busy consuming and being consumed to exercise their franchise. The last big election, the one with the supposed "Republican Tsunami" only 40 percent of the voters actually took the time to vote.

An even more important franchise is the one where citizens actually show up whether it's in front of Congress or at the offices of elected representatives.

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[digitig]

What good would a legal effort do? They change the law so that what they do is legal. Unless it hits a constitutional issue, which it's unlikely to, then a legal challenge is pretty much doomed to fail.

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[PopeRatzo]

What good would a legal effort do?

None. A legal effort is just a stall tactic until more serious and disruptive measures can be taken.

I know that during this season of shopping and football I'm a minority voice, but I think it's long past the time for legal efforts. Now it's time for boycotts, strikes, disruption. They only thing that will get the attention of the tyrants now is a disruption of the profit stream.

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[houstonbofh]

You are looking at it wrong. This has been going on for decades. Only now it is starting to come out in public, and the average person is finding out. They are NOT happy. You should be happy that the sleeping bear is waking up. A few more flips of voting idiots out of office might actually start to change things.

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[PopeRatzo]

You should be happy that the sleeping bear is waking up.

If by "sleeping bear" you mean the anti-government teabaggers, you must be joking.

It's as if the bear woke up, ran up to the hunter, took away his gun and then blew its own brains out. Never has there been a political movement so bent on fighting its own best interests. I guess sometimes there has to be this kind of catharsis, where a group of angry people rise up to shine the boots of their masters. It's great as theater, but it's not actually helpf

Re:

[jimicus]

Those in power have been absolutely terrified of any means of free (as in speech, not neccessarily beer) communication since more-or-less forever. You only have to look at the history of the printing press to see that.

Usually some sort of compromise is thrashed out, and I'd be astonished if that didn't happen here. History has shown that some sort of attempt at control is more or less inevitable, the only question is "will it be subject to checks and balances or will it be a case of some unelected Interne

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[TheRaven64]

Or we could put the same amount of effort into encouraging people to use end-to-end encryption everywhere. Then they can intercept whatever they like, but the most that they'll get is the endpoints.

countries or cities, it's all the same

[Anonymous Coward]

We're facing the same sort of trouble down at the civic level here in Vancouver, Canada. City Hall has no interest in taking the opinions of the community and won't reveal any of the plans for the city. It seems to be the will of the mayor to do whatever is necessary to have Vancouver declared the World's Green Capital no matter what the citizens think of whatever changes are considered needed to achieve such a goal. He's been caught saying that he won't bother with public consultations any longer and al

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[houstonbofh]

SO we have totalitarian actions happening at all levels of government from the city to the country. Is anyone really surprised?

Lots of people are surprised. That is a good things because they are now starting to pay attention, and might even start to vote on actual issues.

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[zmollusc]

Well, good luck with
a) getting a chance to vote on any actual issues
b) being allowed to see data (as opposed to heavily tweaked interpretations of data) in order to make a decision about a)
c) having a fair vote casting process ( ie who gets to vote and how many votes they can cast )
d) having the votes counted fairly
e) having the result of the vote acted upon. ( ie if the totalitarian policy is unpopular and is voted down, keep having referenda on the issue until it finally scrapes through, enact it, then ne

Yeah righ

[SmallFurryCreature]

The most recent elections elected the tea-party. That is the party that wants LESS government oversight on the banking industry, the financial industry and on oil companies. Because the bank collapse, the housing collapse and oil disaster in the gulf all happened because of to much government interference and not enough free market.

I am not suprised goverments are reluctant to talk to voters. After all, they know the people that put them in power. Would you want to talk to someone who put the tories back in charge of the british economy? Why not just re-surrect reagan and thatcher and just kiss our asses goodbye.

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[aztracker1]

As for the banking/finance industry... I would have rather let them fail, and bottom out over the bail outs myself. Part of a free market, is letting failures happen. As to Reagan and thatcher, aside from the anti-communist extremism, I think he was one of the better presidents in the recent past.

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[didroe84]

The problem is that the banks that failed were massive and would have taken the rest of the economy with them. You basically have a choice of regulating the size of the banks and letting them fail or removing regulation and potentially having to bail them out. Either way, an unadulterated free market won't work.

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[houstonbofh]

Washington Mutual was not massive. And it was bought by Chase, which is massive, and did not need a bailout. But thank God that we saved the economy, and that it did so well after the bailout! ... What do you mean it got worse?

Re:Yeah right

[lsatenstein]

Interestingly enough A survey of multi-millionaires asked that they be more heavily taxed. They felt that they were accumulating too much wealth and that the middle class and poor was being asked to pay for their undeserved benefits.

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[houstonbofh]

Interestingly enough A survey of multi-millionaires asked that they be more heavily taxed. They felt that they were accumulating too much wealth and that the middle class and poor was being asked to pay for their undeserved benefits.

Citation needed... Asking George Soros is a survey of multi-millionaires... Just not a representative survey.

I thought UK was a monarchy?

[c0lo]

Just nit-picking. TFA:

[Terri Dowerty director at ARCHRights] ...added that the fact that there is not a 90 day consultation "sets a dangerous president and is a very depressing sign of the new Government, which promised transparency."

Would a consultation of 120 days will still set a president that's dangerous?

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[sincewhen]

I thought that a president was set for 4 years, sometimes 8.

M-O-N-E-Y

[repetty]

To borrow a lyric from The Fabulous Thunderbirds:

How do you spell love?
M-O-N-E-Y.

They want to end network neutrality in the UK

[arkhan_jg]

Arghhggh. It's the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIPA. It's not the RIPA Act but the RIP Act. It makes it sound like a bad slasher film. "Coming to a cinema near you - the most talked about horror film of a decade.... It's the Ripper Act."

Back on topic; the Minister said:

"We are focusing on those parties directly affected by the changes to the extent that those parties would be subject to civil sanction or directly concerned with it, or are directly responsible, where lawful interception is taking place, for ensuring consent has been obtained for the interception"

So basically, they're talking to companies like BT, and Phorm, who broke the law in trialling deep packet inspection and altering (and recording) their web traffic without asking their customers permission. Companies they want to give the green light to, to use DPI to change how the internet works in the UK, throwing out network neutrality entirely [guardian.co.uk], and relying on 'competition' in the UK to keep companies honest and not screw with customers traffic too badly for their own profit. The same competition that is now pushing 12, 18 or even 24 month minimum term contracts for broadband such that it's damn rare to find a 30-day rolling contract ISP any more.

Of course they don't want to talk to people affected by these changes, or about their right to privacy. There's money to made in the private sector, and that's who they want to talk to, to eliminate the parts of the RIP act that actually protect individual privacy, and stop their personal data being sold off to the highest bidder. Can't be having that, now can we!

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[mr_jrt]

Don't know what ISPs you're looking at, but every one I've seen has a monthly contract option. You usually have to pay a setup fee to cover BT's extortionate 'cut', but getting out is easy-as.

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[AmiMoJo]

Competition doesn't work anyway but to even have it there has to be a choice for consumers. My choice is a barely working ADSL line that cuts out all the time and "delivers" about 2Mb down and 128Kb (!) up, or Virgin Media. I live in a major city on the south coast, about 2.2Km from the exchange.

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[bedwards]

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 grants PUBLIC bodies the right to use covert means to spy on it's citizens - not private entities such as people or companies.

Police organisations can use RIPA to bug, wiretap, intercept communications of whover they damn well please for crime prevention. Military organisations can do the same for national security.
That won't change as long as government minsters know one huge terrorist incident in the UK will be the end of their careers.

HMRC (the tax of

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

RIPA?

[srealm]

The Raping Internet Privacy Act?

Re:

[imakemusic]

Fear the RIPA.

ORG

[Cederic]

Thank you ORG - I'm delighted that the Open Rights Group are actively campaigning on this issue.