Proposed UK Communications Law Could Be Used To Spy On Physical Mail 125
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that the UK's Draft Communications Bill includes a provision which could be used to force the Royal Mail and other mail carriers to retain data on all physical mail passing through their networks. The law could be used to force carriers to maintain a database of any data written on the outside of an envelope or package which could be accessed by government bodies at will. Such data could include sender, recipient and type of mail (and, consequentially, the entire contents of a postcard). It would provide a physical analog of the recently proposed internet surveillance laws. The Home Office claims that it has no current plans to enforce the law."
Be very afraid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Be very afraid... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, but that's a petition to "Scrap Plans to Monitor all Emails and Web Usage". If they only monitor 99.999% of them they can still say they accepted the petition. :)
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Re:Be very afraid... (Score:5, Interesting)
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If it were Cheryl Cole or Simon Cowell, they'd listen.
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Tim Berners-Who...?
Never heard of him.
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Someone should tell all the peaople waiting for others to save them that they should quit wating and put the politicians supporting this crap in the street, eviscerated, en route to a morgue. Or keep waiting around for the Americans. To save the day (we won't for we have the ssame apathy and complicit losers pretending to care). Watch our 99% use facebook after the IO and wonder why they are censored.... lol. Feeding the lions while complaining about lions.
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CEREAL: Snoop onto them... ...as they snoop onto us!
NIKON:
"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've noticed that the left always go crazy when the working class vote conservative because people who actually work for a living know that most 'progressive' policies are just a means for the middle class to give their kids well-paid government jobs to tell everyone else what to do. The working class are naturally conservative, which is why the left have done their best to destroy working class culture and turn them into the welfare class, who will keep voting themselves more free stuff.
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
Both liberals and conservatives screw the population as a whole. The liberals tend to lie about it and act like they want to do some good, while the conservatives are rather brazen about giving more money to the wealthy, but they both ultimately do the same thing - concentrate power and money into a small elite group.
In the end, what trickles down to the rest of us isn't green - it's yellow.
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Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Insightful)
They say "no current plans" not "no current intentions".
They have the intention of using it, they just haven't got around to drawing up the plans yet.
Politicians lie. Even when they're telling the truth.
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Politicians lie. Even when they're telling the truth. :P
I once read that lie detectors must never be used on politicians, cos they overload and blow up. hinting at just how much they lie, and yes I do know it was a joke. or was it?
Using a lie detector on a politician is pointless. They'll never set it off because they never stop lying long enough for you to calibrate it.
Really no need anyway. You can always tell when a politician is lying. How can you tell? His mouth will be moving.
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:4, Insightful)
We have reached the point where you can safely assume anything a politician says they won't do is what they intend to do. The Torys said they gad no plans to put up VAT, then one week later put it up. The Lib Dems signed a contract guaranteeing not to put student fees up, then a few months later tripled them.
It's like a Freudian slip where they accidentally reveal their plans.
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Politicians that tell the truth don't stand a chance of getting elected.
We, the electorate, get exactly the "leaders" we deserve.
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"The Home Office claims that it has no current plans to enforce the law."
Rough translation:
"The Home Office will start next week making plans to enforce the law."
Re:"no current plans to enforce the law." (Score:5, Informative)
It is enabling legislation - a statute that allows particular laws to be passed by secondary legislation (also called a statutory instrument - basically legislation that is 'passed' by a minister or a committee of ministers rather than the entire Parliament). It may sound undemocratic but it's inevitable - Parliament could not possibly scrutinise and pass enough legislation to deal with the pace at which the world changes. The power has to be devolved somewhere, and devolving it to Ministers at least has the advantage that someone visible is accountable for it, which means that the power is generally used sensibly and sparingly.
In this case the power, to my mind, seems more extensive than is appropriate for secondary legislation - I'm not defending it, just explaining why it is being done the way it is. There is some comfort in the fact that the Bill is still in the very early stages of the process and extensive secondary powers are the sort of thing that are often removed or curtailed during the debates.
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Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Potential Terrorist 391,496, mail log:
Received junk mail from Direct Marketing Alliance.
Received junk mail from Insurance company
Received junk mail from Direct Marketing Alliance.
Received junk mail from "V14GR4 4 U"
Received junk mail from Derp's Amazing Electronics.
Received copy of Harry Potter 4 via Netflix.
...
Well, on one hand, a warrant should be needed for any kind of surveillance. Monitoring activity pre-warrant shouldn't be legal. That said... snail mail is dying. It's mostly just junk mail, bills, and packages ordered online. I can't see how this would have much intelligence value.... Especially since, at least in the US, if you simply reverse the sender and receiver and leave off the stamp, it'll happily go to its destination as long as it's in the same geographic area. Oh wait... was that helping the terrorists? My bad.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Silk Road? Bath Salts? Snail mail would also become an attractive method of communication amongst bad guys if the internet surveillance bill goes through (and it probably will).
Well, mail service only verifies the delivery address, and if that fails, attempts to verify and return it to the source address. My point was that establishing a source/destination registry is not reliable like it is within a packet-switched network. The entire message is contained within a single packet, and there is no handshake or anything else in the exchange to verify the source. So the only part of the registry of high reliablity would be the destination and the size/weight of the package.
And even that's easy enough for a criminal to forge; You don't have to deliver stolen goods to your address. Any address will do for a drop shipment. So this bill is really only for the surveillance of average people, who are probably not criminals, but who might need to become criminals if they became, say, politically active.
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Why do they need a law? (Score:1)
Can't they just open the letters up anyway?
Really, if you think your mail is secure, I've got a bridge that was just mailed to me from London to sell you.
Re:Stop depending on classic mail and Post offices (Score:4, Insightful)
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I finally found an acceptable solution for this. I have three types of encrypted file containers:
Type 1: That for which is worth giving the key to authorities or under limited circumstances is worth unlocking.
Type 2: That to which if my computer is compromised I accept as permanently lost.
Documents and files in type 1 include things like my bank statements, financial records, and other information which frankly anyone with sufficient power or authority can obtain if they absolutely have to
Documents and file
We've heard this before (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We've heard this before (Score:5, Interesting)
Greetings from post WWII Europe and East Germany. Where the STASI did exactly this, and neighbors spied on each other. I wonder how long before the underground springs up and things start getting smuggled around? Well I'm sure there's a few ex-east germans who would be more than willing to give the Brit's tips on how to do it.
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No need for that, the US intelligence agencies opened mail of citizens of East Germany who wrote to the West as well. That is, IIRC they had the BND carrying the sacks from the post office, opening the envelope with a bit of steam or whatever, taking note of anti-government jokes (i.e. there wasn't really ever anything interesting in them), closing them and bringing them back. That actually routinely happened (not "opening ALL mail", but open some, randomly stabbing in the dark as it were) according to to a
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I wouldn't be so quick to talk. Hitler was fond of air-conditioning as well, from what I understand.
What are Brits control freaks? (Score:1)
Constantly in Britain you hear of control freak legislation and technology proposals and laws. I thik they have the most CCTV per capita, they are happily extraditing any of their fellas to any country claiming IP infringement, and you constantly hear of such obsessive control of the individual. In a country with a lot of parliamentary direct democracy (they vote individual people, not party lists, and the one with most votes wins), the only logical conclusion is that the citizens want to be controlled at t
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(2) "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear"
(3)People seem to believe that there's a terrorist on every street and a pedo under every bed.
Re:What are Brits control freaks? (Score:4, Insightful)
(1) Political apathy
So, which party can Britons vote for which doesn't want this stuff?
And even if they could vote for someone, most seats are so safe that it would make no difference. Where I used to live in the UK I could vote for any party I wanted and the Tories would still win.
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It used to be the Liberal Democrats, then they finally got some power and decided that civil liberties weren't so desirable once they were in the government.
Re:What are Brits control freaks? (Score:4, Informative)
they are happily extraditing any of their fellas to any country claiming IP infringement
That's news to me. Scary if true.
In a country with a lot of parliamentary direct democracy (they vote individual people, not party lists, and the one with most votes wins)
I'm guessing you aren't a Briton, because people do tend to vote for parties. Hell, I'd be surprised if more than one in ten voters could actually name their MP a week after the election; the only reason I can (it's Chi Onwurah, by the way) is that I read Hansard a lot. When I last checked there were less than a dozen independent MPs. Britain has representative democracy, not direct democracy.
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Britain has representative democracy
No they don't with having First Past The Post as their method for electing members of Parliament.
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No they don't with having First Past The Post as their method for electing members of Parliament.
They truly do. The system used for electing representatives is not relevant; one could, for example, have a representative democracy where representatives are elected by sortition.
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It's actually the US that has the most CCTV per capita, *and* armed police everywhere ready to shoot you if you cross the road in the wrong place, or say something bad about the president.
I live in the UK, and there isn't a CCTV camera within 50 miles of this place. I wish there was, it might stop manky bastards dumping rubbish at the foot of our road every other night.
Re:What are Brits control freaks? (Score:5, Interesting)
We didn't vote for it, and we actually voted against it. None of this stuff was in the manifesto of either of the parties in the ruling coalition. They were highly critical of similar legislation when proposed by their opponents, who were turfed out in the last general election. We've had such a long run of crazy authoritarian Home Secretaries now that it's pretty clear somebody or something is getting to them, possibly through their office (or bedroom) window.
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All that means is that this programme is embedded in the Home Office civil service, and they'll keep re-proposing it under various headings until it passes one way or another. As far as they're concerned, the politicians' job is to pass the legislation they want passed.
Next up: the National Identity Register. Remember that? I'll be astonished if the Tories don't reintroduce it in their next term, assuming they get one.
The only cure for this sort of thing is to purge the Home Office civil service, which (in
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new stationery (Score:2)
Would the government consider it a threat if people started marking all their posts "death to fascists"?
Oooh, rife with opportunities (Score:1)
if people started marking all their posts "death to fascists"
Hey! Who said you were allowed to think like me?
How about marking posts with phrases like "Top Secret Plans To Bring Western Society To Its Knees Enclosed" and then inside put your own instructions on how to kneel for prayer services?
Or mark the outside "Private" and inside just put a note that says "Your wife's been screwing a guy half your age and a willy twice as big as yours!"
Does anyone actually believe that what's... (Score:4, Insightful)
on the outside of an envelope (or any part of a post card) has ever actually been private? Certainly not I, even before I knew enough to care about privacy.
It's just not been technologically practical to store all that info, but with 3TB HDDs stuffed into 42U SAN racks, it's more than doable. And with modern CPUs and high-density RAM, OCR on even the worst penmanship is probably practical.
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For post code sorting, as has the USPS for zip code sorting. It's why ZIP+4 was created. I'm sure every other 1st world PTT does OCR, too.
But only now is it practical to OCR the whole front and back and then store the images and text.
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Storing this data as text isn't a problem, but even a small country such as the Netherlands has literally millions of pieces of mail d
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Re:Does anyone actually believe that what's... (Score:5, Insightful)
on the outside of an envelope (or any part of a post card) has ever actually been private? Certainly not I, even before I knew enough to care about privacy.
You are overloading the term "private" - no one thought it was a secret, but only the crazies thought that the information on every single envelope was permanently recorded in a database. Crazy is the new normal.
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With a strong enough light (especially laser or x-ray) you can see through the envelopes and look at the contents. All it would really take is enough sensitivity and some post processing which could probably be automated.
If you wonder when they implement this within 5 years why the implementation costs $500k per device and a couple of data centers you might remember this.
One's right to life, liberty, property, speech... (Score:3)
press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote
But it must be seized by force from oppressors, and is given away by the apathetic and scared.
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I don't think that this is about maintaining an elite. It's mostly a consequence of having a risk-averse population who are distanced from politics, are not scared by an invasion or privacy because they've never actually experienced an oppressive government (unlike pro-privacy Germany) and generally aren't too interested in thinking about deeper issues (Britain has given the world some great thinkers and scientists but most of its population are suspicious of "pretentious intellectuals"). There's the "Nothi
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So if Some Bloke is messing around with my wife, all I need to do is send a postcard ...
Ah, screw your wife. No really, screw your wife.
Dear Al Qaeda HQ,
The bomb is in the mail, it is sure to make a bang.
Some Bloke
There's bigger fish to fry. How about:
Dear ${EachBritishMPAndMembersOfHouseOfLords ...}
The bomb is in place and is sure to make our mutual friends and sponsors very happy. The ensuing destruction will cement your career for years.
Yours truly,
BlahBlahBlah
This is completely ILLEGAL under the UDHR (UN) (Score:5, Informative)
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That is why there is such a campaign at the moment, amongst certain groups, to scrap the UK Human rights legislation,
Because it keeps getting used by all these people with funny names and dark skin, you understand?
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Daily Mail readership: 4,371,000 (http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/do/live/factsAndFigures?newspaperID=10#readership)
The Sun readership: 7,652,000 (http://www.mediauk.com/newspapers/13707/the-sun/readership-figures) [A lot of these people will only look at the tits and sports]
UK population: 62,232,000 (http://data.worldbank.org/country/united-kingdom)
UK electorate in 2010 general election: 45,597,461 (http://www.ukpolitical.info/2010.htm)
Votes in 2010 general election: 27,833,834 (http://www.ukpolitical.info/2010
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It would cause a serious uproar by human rights groups worldwide, were something like that to be done in a major country like Britain.
Oh, the horror.
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What I implied is that an established Western Democracy like Britain cannot pull out of a major Human Rights treaty without causing a huge bruhaha in the international media.
Like I said. The horror.
No serious government gives a crap about what 'human rights groups' say unless what they're saying is promoting whatever policy the government wants to impose. Sadly, Britain hasn't had a serious government since the 80s.
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Well, I have to say that the US (where I am at the moment) is worse off than the UK
I went into a store a few hours ago and tried to buy a replacement PSU for my laptop. The jerks from the TSA damaged the original at LAX yesterday.
I was regarded with suspiscion when I wanted to pay for said item with cash. 'Can I have your phone number and zip code please' asked the cashier
'Why?' I asked
'It is warranty purposes'
'I don't have a zip code, I'm a visitor to your country'.
'I will have to check with the manager to
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Re:This is completely ILLEGAL under the UDHR (UN) (Score:5, Informative)
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So UK Home Office, how the hell are you going to explain to the UNITED NATIONS that your little mail-snooping project violates ARTICLE 12 of the UDHR?
Two points. Firstly, they have to explain it to the UK Supreme Court first, since the UDHR is incorporated into UK law (though I forget as which Act). Secondly, it's the Home Office: they can't explain shit to anyone. It's the part of government where incompetent bureaucrats are shuffled off to in order to serve their time and get to collect their pensions. They've a history of being bad at proposing legislation proportionate to actual requirements, and they're always keen to have far more powers.
That said,
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Two points. Firstly, they have to explain it to the UK Supreme Court first, since the UDHR is incorporated into UK law (though I forget as which Act). Secondly, it's the Home Office: they can't explain shit to anyone.
That said, they've got another problem: implementing the proposed act is going to require a lot of money at a time when the Treasury is exceptionally keen on departments cutting their spending and the public disinclined to be keen on further security restrictions. Getting the Act through Parliament without significant neutering is going to be very hard, and articles like TFA are going to encourage the emasculation process.
Firstly, the UDHR isn't the ECHR. The UDHR has the effect of a treaty, so is only binding on the Government, and governments are perfectly happy to ignore it, with little interference from the UN. The ECHR is sort of binding on the UK via the Human Rights Act, and yes, the UK Supreme Court (or even the English High Court) would be within its power to declare this law incompatible with the ECHR, or overturn any order issued by the Home Secretary under it. However, for that to happen, orders have to be issued
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The UDHR is NOT "international law".
It isn't even a Treaty, for god's sake.
So, no, it's not especially binding on anyone.
You might also be interested in reading Article 29 (2). In case you're not aware, it's the escape clause - it lets you do pretty much anything by claiming it's necessary for "just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society"....
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Response (Score:1)
Might I recommend chaff.
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Might I recommend chaff.
Envelopes made from aluminum foil might work. Put addresses on stickers so they're easily read by humans, but the foil in the scanner probably will reflect so badly that no useful image can be gotten, at least not without manual intervention.
Perhaps a protest of mailing aluminum foil envelopes, or postcards with one side painted with metallic paint, sent to Parliament might achieve something.
Or alternatively you could just use one of your many spare tinfoil helmets, stapled into an envelope shape.
Surveillance symbolism (Score:2)
PGP (Score:3)
You have to write vewy, vewy tiny, though...
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Print them as PGP encrypted datagrams. They'll carry more text and require more storage as bitmaps until they figure that one out, which could take a while.
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Just PGP the contents of your postcards. Should drive them crazy. .
And obviously that wouldn't mnake the security services even sightly nervous and interested in both the sender and recipient?
Oh no this would be terrible 20 years ago (Score:2)
Holy shit the right to read our personal mail? Next they'll grant themselves the ability to read our telegraphs or message pigeons!
Glad I don't live in the UK (Score:1)
I am so glad I live in America where we have freedom and the fourth amendment of our constitution explicitily forbids this type of thing.
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I am so glad I live in America where we have freedom and the fourth amendment of our constitution explicitily forbids this type of thing.
You're forgetting one huge advantage the UK has as a place to live: it's not full of Americans..
R.I.P Privacy (Score:2)
Back to 1654 (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the key reasons that Royal Mail ( which originally conveyed the King's post ) was granted a monopoly on inland mail delivery in 1654 was so that the Private Office could intercept and read / decrypt communications as instructed by warrant.
Additionally the Secret Office was established to covertly intercept letters; whilst the activities of the Private were recorded and acknowledged, the Secret didn't even appear on Royal Mail's expenses.
La plus ca change...
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Maybe they won't lose as much mail then (Score:2)
I send and receive small packages to/from the UK occasionally, and the failure rate has been atrocious. Something like 50% never arrives.
I use registered mail by default now, even though the price of the mail service exceeds the value of the package. At least that way I can file a complaint (and receive some compensation) when the mail doesn't arrive.
Naive nonsense (Score:1)
Postcards (Score:2)
Another non-story from thel libertarian tinfoil hat department.