Details of UK website visits 'to be stored for year'
bbc.com
bbc.com
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
No explicit ban on encryption, but the existing RIPA obligation to decrypt when you have the capability and are made to. Potential madness in the "Equipment interference" section, although the bill claims this is already authorised under different legislation.
The Bill uses "communications data" to mean what we would call "metadata", ie everything except the contents.
"Equipment interference allows the security and intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the armed forces to interfere with electronic equipment such as computers and smartphones in order to obtain data, such as communications from a device. Equipment interference encompasses a wide range of activity from remote access to computers to downloading covertly the contents of a mobile phone during a search."
Only the most stupid people are going to visit "verydangerousterrorismsite.com" without going through a VPN. And visits to Facebook or Google are just noise without the details.
It's hard not to suspect that the real reason for the legislation is to legitimise dissident profiling, voter sentiment analysis, and thoughtcrime tracking.
I'm expecting an attempt to ban personal use of VPNs (without a commercial license) by around 2020.
Note for Eurosceptics: you know what the last bastion against this autocratic movement is? Yup, the European Court of Justice, backed by all those highly-worded treaties. Lose that, and you'll get back being hostage of your national elites.
Yet here we are, anyway.
Remind me which government gave us the Data Retention Directive?
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive :
> On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Directive invalid in response to a case brought by Digital Rights Ireland against the Irish authorities and others.
If the Snooper's Charter makes it through, the ECJ is the only hope to strike it down and keep it down, considering how Labour is hardly free of authoritarian tendencies. That's the truth, as uncomfortable as it might be for eurosceptics.
Only several years late, of course. It's a bit weak to suggest that the EU is our saviour when it comes surveillance.
I'd rather place my faith in the ECtHR.
The EU is not perfect (the Commission in particular is the root of a lot of "evil" activity), but if you believe in checks and balances, it's yet another power you can appeal to when things look dire on the home front.
On another note, do we know yet whether the police could bulk ask for everyone's connection history or do they need 'reasonable suspicion of a crime'?
Police have to request the ICRs for an individual on a case-by-case basis, going through a 'senior officer' who takes advice from a single point of contact (SPoC), although I can't find any criteria for SPoC selection.
In any case, there's no judicial oversight on ICR requests as far as I can see.
So why ban VPNs when they are already expanding they're existing ability to:
a) get access to information held by service providers (which include VPNs)
b) "remote access to computers to downloading covertly the contents of a mobile phone during a search."
In practice, a VPN does nothing to prevent them from accessing the sites you visit. Other than requiring some additional paperwork to send an information request to VPN (not even a warrant) to fill in the gaps which passive surveillance can't provide. Plus the VPN will give people a false sense of security... so they wont think twice about visiting [verybadsite.com].
* "Warranted interception is used only for intelligence purposes." * "Warranted interception is governed by RIPA."
There is of-course, no mention of unwarranted interception. One must presume that there is no unwarranted interception of communications being actioned.
The problem I think is that ICRs don't fall under the rules for interception. They seem to be a part of communications data:
A kind of communications data, an ICR is a record of the internet services a specific device has connected to, such as a website or instant messaging application.
Communications data doesn't have the same warrant requirements.
So no warrant would be needed to get a list of domains a person has visited.
Which is a great idea, because what you really want is people in high stress jobs not turning to organisations like mental health charities or alcohol support groups for help because they fear being outed, or people concerned about medical conditions not using on-line services provided by the NHS for fear of putting up insurance premiums, never mind the obvious things like compromising the high profile, married political candidate who visited bestgaypornevah.com every day last month.
The idea that any information that would normally be effectively private should be subject to government snooping without a good reason and proper oversight is inevitably a chilling effect, and it's all too likely that in the worst cases some people in the kinds of situation I mentioned before will literally die because of it. As much as I hate over-the-top political rhetoric, if we're going to have this debate for real now, I suspect the civil liberties groups are going to have start making blunt, bold statements like that to make their case.
It would also help if the people debating these issues in Parliament better understood the technical implications of some of the proposals and therefore why some of the safeguards also proposed in this debate won't or can't actually work. For example, even if we accept that logging visited web domains and making those logs subject to warrantless examination is justified, I'd like to know what technical mechanisms the average MP believes to exist for identifying and recording the domain name of all visited web sites reliably but nothing more, and how much they think it would cost ISPs to implement those mechanisms across the board.
8:40 'Security risk' of storing communications data "A new law to govern how police and intelligence agencies and the state can access communications and data will be published today.
Preston Byrne from Eris Industries, a cryptographic communications company which is withdrawing from the UK because of the proposed law, says the government is going to be tracking metadata which is essentially "a map of what you're thinking".
He warns the data could be compromised - citing the recent TalkTalk hack - and says this could lead to blackmail. And he argues that criminals and terrorists" don't use normal communication channels" so only the law-abiding people will be affected by the bill."
Preston Byrne has a point.. even common people are using VPNs and TORs. How come the terrorists bare their communications for surveillance?
That part is true, and is known to government, the public (not at large, but it's no secret) and criminals.
The problem is a simple one, and identity checks at borders are a good example. You ask non-nationals, for example, to fill in a landing card to indicate where the traveller is staying during his or her visit.
If left blank the traveller is interrogated and risks deportation. If however the traveller lies and provides any plausible address, be it hotel or residential, he or she is allowed through without suspicion.
The manpower doesn't exist to verify these details. The technology doesn't exist that verifies these details.
The net result is that technical solutions will only catch stupid people. The outliers, the ones you really want, know how to game the system and don't get caught. No matter how much snooping, back-dooring, breaking of encryption or other nefarious thing is done.
It's economics + psychology. You spend what you have to ensure you cover 99% of the problem. The remaining 1% requires 1 or more orders of magnitude of resource to catch, which is simply not viable.
No, but that's not the point. The point is having yet another data point they can use to incriminate you, regardless of the actual crime they decide you must have committed. Say, you declare you'll stay at this hotel for a week, but actually check out after a day to [go sell drugs || see-sight in another city]; if they decide you must have been selling drugs, even though they can't prove it, they can get you for lying on your entry paper.
The more laws and regulations you have, the easier it is to punish anyone regardless of whether they can prove bad things actually happened. It's a degeneration of the "Capone" approach, and it's extremely common in authoritarian regimes. The fact that this sort of pointless law is becoming quite common across the EU is a worrying trend.
As an aside, while I used to be hugely concerned about this state of affairs, I am less so now. Maybe because I'm older and know a lot more than I used to. They may have the ability to "punish anyone", but not everyone. And while it is becoming more common in the EU, it is already fact in the US.
My reality is that I am unwilling to do anything about this situation, because I'm already devoting my time to other things - things I know I can influence. If I'm unwilling to do anything, I'm also technically disqualifying myself from advocating a course of action.
Of course they probably do use normal communication channels, just not for the command and control of their activities.
1. ban encryption (any encryption worth its salt)
2. ban anything psychoactive
3. detach us from the European Convention of Human Rights.
P.S. as I understand it 3 if achieved means that they either have to pass new almost identical legislation compatible with the UN convention on human rights or the UK would be in breach of our UN commitments...
They're rapidly arriving at fascism. The public seems listlessly along for the ride, as usual.
Which ones? The only one I'm aware of is revenge porn (with intent to cause distress).
While I get that it's not what you mean, I believe most of the world bans certain type of pornography - namely child pornography? (Although the world doesn't agree on what a "child" is in terms of age).
I'm not sure it's controversial to ban some forms of expressions that are considered to be more or less universally only possible by harming the innocent (see also: bestiality).
Personally I have an issue with possession of data being a crime, as it is such a dicey proposition when it comes to planting evidence etc. But I don't have any problem with it being illegal to eg: manufacture child pornography.
Never mind that this is totally unenforceable. I could write up a one time pad with pen and paper. Most won't. Crooked cops will sell data. They'll blame "hackers".
You only need look at the talktalk debacle to see how incredibly warped this govt's views are - they haven't arrested anyone at talktalk, who are tge ones who had such poor infosec that script kiddies could blow them wide open. Instead they're arresting children.
Oh, and I'm seriouslt considering redomiciling my company - we only contribute a few hundred million quid to the UK economy.
Their previous one about UK gov "backtracking" on encryption backdoors was just as bad.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34691956
Read through it and see how 80% of it is the government's opinion about these things. It barely gives mention to what the civil liberty groups are saying.
Read the last four paragraphs of the article, for instance. They only deal with how much of a headache end to end encryption is for authorities - and leaves it at that. What about what the civil liberty groups say about how it protects security and privacy?
Sorry for this thread going maybe a bit off-topic, but this a subject I am pretty attached too. Again, I am not saying that the BBC is not doing great work, but just that it is not as neutral as what the opinion think it is.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/NEWSPEAK-21st-Century-David-Edwards/...
Having worked in news for some years and seen how (esp. online) news are produced and weighted for priority, it is to say, that it is quite a sad state of affairs.
I stopped reading the news, following any news at all. If news do reach me and my interest exceeds a internal threshold, I start investigating the topic further.
So having a view from outside my home country might be interesting.
For example, the most vocal people on privacy are an amalgam of independent thinkers on the "left" (The Guardian, etc) and independent thinkers on the "right" (Ron Paul, etc.)
While the "leftist" Hillary Clinton calls Snowden a traitor (so do a lot of "right"-wing people, too).
This is exactly what news should be. If you want more in-depth analysis or opinions, you should be looking elsewhere.
The BBC is basically going to be gutted by the current government, I don't buy into this world where they're pro government, I find they're fairly neutral while a lot of the people criticising it are almost certainly anti Tory.
The BBC should aim for their coverage to reflect facts, not just be a the-truth-is-in-the-middle triangulation of Labour and Tory positions. Their neutrality and balance mostly consists of getting a comment from the Tories and then getting a comment from Labour, with the assumption that doing so will cover all sides of any issue. One of the aims of any decent media organisation should be to challenge the establishment, but when the BBC is constitutionally unable to criticise positions where Labour and Tories both agree then it's unable to fulfil that role.
This is quite well known—at least to people who think about such matters. Strangely, it seems to have been missed by the majority of HN.
It's a state sponsored news agency: the BBC are the recipients of a "TV tax" (licence fee, if one watches TV).
You have to pay the licence fee even if you never watch any BBC broadcast material. A person who only ever watches ITV would have to pay the licence fee.
And non-payment of the licence fee was a criminal offence with fines, and non-payment of the fine sent many people to prison.
It feels like a tax.
[1] also tampons and sanitary towels, which probably don't feel like a luxury purchase.
I was informed by a TV license "officer" that provided you detune BBC channels you can still watch commercial channels. In the same way that I am permitted to listen to BBC radio channels (for which no license is required) via a Sky box.
TV licensing have to prove that you're watching on-air BBC broadcasts.
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/Li...
Best known one is having a car with a live video feed (e.g. a reverse camera to the dashboard) -first ones were Range Rovers and other luxury cars but these features are now arriving within more "bread and butter" cars as well.
Still better than in Germany where they recently turned it into a per-household tax to be paid even if you don't watch any TV / broadcast at all.
This isn't true.
You can quite happily watch iPlayer or 4OD or Netflix and not be liable to pay the license fee as long as what you're watching isn't live or being broadcast at that very moment.
I used to have a TV license and cancelled it. When they asked why I was cancelling, I said that I consumed my entertainment through non-live streaming services and they were happy. That was at the end of last year and I haven't heard anything since.
Do you drive a modern car, do you have surveillance cameras at your property / your offices? - Bang you have to have a TV license in the UK even if you don't watch any TV.
Every year thousands of people in the UK are pulled to court / persuaded to pay thousands of £s to settle enforcement cases against them (or even go to prison) because they only look at half of the rules.
Whilst true that in Section 9 (Part 3) of 2004 No. 692 ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS BROADCASTING The Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004[0] a 'television receiver' is defined as:
any apparatus installed or used for the purpose of receiving (whether by means of wireless telegraphy or otherwise) any television programme service, whether or not it is installed or used for any other purpose.
It an offence to
* install or use a television receiver or
* possess or have control of a television receiver with the intent to install or use it or
* possess or have control of a television receiver and know or have reasonable grounds for believing that another person intends to install or use it without a valid TV Licence issued under the Communications Act.
This has been confirmed many times and directly by the BBC in this FOI request[2]
[0] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/692/pdfs/uksi_200406...
[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/part/4
[2] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/laws_on_tv_license
It basically applies to any TV being watched as it is being broadcast at the time so you are liable to pay anything if you only watch shows after they have been aired.
Myself I tend to watch Netflix, some iPlayer and 4OD stuff and I do not have to pay anything.
That doesn't stop them sending letters once in a while to check though.
The BBC is the only recipient of TV license fees in the UK - of course after plenty of cost created on the way between the consumer / license payer to the BBC / payee.
BTW the BBC is also the TV licensing authority in the UK and is authorised by the government via the Communications Act 2003 to collect and enforce the TV license fee. One of the companies in the Capita conglomerate has been "entrusted" by the BBC / the government to collect the TV licensing fees.
A lengthy correspondence with them led them to conclude that because my TV was not connected to a TV aerial or cable, and I only used it to watch Netflix and iPlayer from my computer, I did not in fact need a TV license.
I've been through this dance with them three or four times.
Has this changed in the last 2 years?
Previously, when I looked, the BBC stated that they received a substantial sum from direct taxation in addition to the license fee. On that basis you pay in part and the BBC is funded [partially] by tax payers. IIRC it amounted to about 5% of the take from license fee payers.
Ah, decided to track it down ... http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/annualreport/pdf/2014-15/BBC-FS-2..., p.34 - "grant-in-aid" funding £243.6 Million up to March 2015 (6.5% of the license fee income).
However it looks like this has stopped in 2015:
"Grants from Government departments For the year ended 31 March 2014, the BBC World Service received Grant-in-Aid from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Previously, BBC Monitoring also received a grant from the Cabinet Office. These grants have been drawn down to meet estimated expenditure in the year but unspent amounts do not have to be repaid, as long as they fall within predetermined limits. The grants are recognised as income in the financial year that they relate to."
Very minor nitpick: you should say "consume live broadcast TV" as blind people don't watch but still have to pay.
No, it's not.
The bill will say that "unbreakable" encryption is illegal - which means all encryption, as if it's breakable, well, it's not really encrypted, is it.
Source please – I've not seen this language indicated anywhere.
they haven't arrested anyone at talktalk, who are tge ones who had such poor infosec that script kiddies could blow them wide open. Instead they're arresting children.
Poor information security isn't a crime. Breaking into computer systems is.
TalkTalk did not take appropriate measures against unauthorised processing.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/1...
>Poor information security isn't a crime.
The Data Protection Act does not in practice criminalise poor information security – it does criminalise the lack of things like a risk assessment. Short of actual negligence, nobody will be prosecuted due to the hostile actions of a third party. Probably not a bad thing, as it would be obviously ludicrous to do so.
Actually, it can be, for example if it results in data protection violations[1]. However, UK law is slightly unusual in this respect, in that while there are technically criminal offences involved, at present the main ones can't lead to arrest or jail time, only monetary fines. A couple of years ago there was talk of consulting on changing this, though I'm not sure what the situation is following the recent general election.
[1] https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d_to_g/data_protection/#offence...
I've heard from sources inside the government that their intention is to maintain the legal status-quo dating from RIPA 2000. Which is to say that service providers have to disclose personal communications where reasonably practicable.
Since it's not possible for service providers to break end-to-end encryption, they will have a defence. Obviously this is a bit of a fudge and the position may need clarifying in court. But it's not the intention of this bill to change the legal status quo.
May lead to "implement backdoors and ban unknown ciphertext"
If they didn't mean to change the status quo, they wouldn't have introduced a bill.
As it happens, they do want to change the status quo, by making clearly acceptable for authorities to eavesdrop, something that was, er, technically illegal before, despite them doing it anyway.
So instead of punishing spooks for breaking the law, they're changing the law. Easy, innit?
Just strictly on this point, sometimes bills (or parts of bills) are introduced to clarify existing law. It may be a matter of subtle semantics, but this is often what is meant when it is claimed that a bill will not change the law.
So yeah, what they really need is a change, because current law is very clear that what they do is illegal.
And article 8 has an ill-specified "national security" exemption. http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/incorporated-rights/articles-in...
It's already being planned, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10498280
(a)to monitor or interfere with electromagnetic, acoustic and other emissions and any equipment producing such emissions and to obtain and provide information derived from or related to such emissions or equipment and from encrypted material; and
(2)The functions referred to in subsection (1)(a) above shall be exercisable only—
(a)in the interests of national security, with particular reference to the defence and foreign policies of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom; or
(b)in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom in relation to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands; or
(c)in support of the prevention or detection of serious crime.
Here, the definition of "telecommunications provider" seems (to my understanding) so broad as to cover any provider of an online service, paraphrasing section 193:
"Communication" is "anything comprising speech, music, sounds, visual images or data of any description" and "signals serving either for the impartation of anything between persons, between a person and a thing or between things or for the actuation or control of any apparatus."
And a "telecommunication service" includes "any case where a service consists in or includes facilitating the creation, management or storage of communications transmitted".
Section 189 titled Maintenance of technical capability allows the Secretary of State to make obligations on telecommunication services including (paraphrasing again):
* relating to apparatus * relating to the removal of electronic protection applied by a relevant operator to any communications or data * relating to the handling or disclosure of any material or data
in addition to requiring them to "provide facilities or services of a specified description"; the specification apparently being deferred until notice is served on the service provider.
Conversely, the Secretary of State is required to consult before serving a "technical capability notice" and section 190 lays out a number of considerations for the Secretary of State including "technical feasibility", "likely cost", "likely benefit" etc.
But other than these apparently very weak constraints, it appears to provide carte blanche for the Secretary of State to demand new technical capabilities of any service provider for the warranted access and interception of any user data they store or transmit.
It will not include powers to force UK companies to capture
and retain third party internet traffic from companies based
overseas. It will not compel overseas communications service
providers to meet our domestic retention obligations for
communications data. And it will not ban encryption or do
anything to undermine the security of people’s data. And the
substance of all of the recommendations by the Joint Scrutiny
Committee which examined that draft Bill have been accepted.
Granted though, that is the single mention of encryption in the entire speech.
Draft bill is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
The draft Bill will not impose any additional requirements
in relation to encryption over and above the existing
obligations in RIPA.
What is it?
27. Equipment interference allows the security and intelligence
agencies, law enforcement and the armed forces to interfere with
electronic equipment such as computers and smartphones in order to
obtain data, such as communications from a device.
Equipment interference encompasses a wide range of activity from
remote access to computers to downloading covertly the contents of
a mobile phone during a search.
Why do we need it?
28. Where necessary and proportionate, law enforcement agencies and the
security and intelligence agencies need to be able to access
communications or other private information held on computers, in
order to gain valuable intelligence in national security and
serious crime investigations and to help gather evidence for use in
criminal prosecutions.
Equipment interference plays an important role in mitigating the
loss of intelligence that may no longer be obtained through other
techniques, such as interception, as a result of sophisticated
encryption. It can sometimes be the only method by which to acquire
the data. The armed forces use this technique in some situations to
gather data in support of military operations.
This is really the bottom line here. The UK is moving towards a secret court, with secret decisions, copying the US style FISA. So long and thanks for all the cups of tea.
One part of the "snooper's charter" is that it makes the ISPs / providers liable ("their duty") to store the content of I-Net sessions and provide access to this data for service, police & the tax office (not clear how all of these entities will share the data between each other or with the outside).
De facto this makes any end-to-end encryption or zero-knowledge services impossible to provide from the UK. If this propagates across EU / US / other countries it will bring an end to many cloud-based services & many saving governments & commercial are planning or envisioning for the next years. Wild guess estimate in damages to the UK (five years) - £100Billion + long term effects.
It seems the group of people pushing on this piece of legislation so heavily since years have not learned a bit from what is / has been happening in the UK and elsewhere for many years across industries (alternative reality: they want to create an very large income stream for themselves. This will nevertheless be most likely be short-lived at the cost of the overall UK economy / competitiveness - short- & long-term).
What has been proven over-and-over again in the UK (and certainly elsewhere as well) is that government or similar oversight is not working and is constantly abused by those given access to these means when large financial amounts / incentives are available to those who "bend" these processes / regulations / e.a. to their own benefit. At the same time those so far do not have to fear any reprisal / punishment. This is another shortcoming and clearly demonstrates that the true intentions of this legislation must be completely different from the labeling publicly provided - I'm talking about punishment along the line given to so called "hackers" in the UK / US - 10 years min. - but wait - it was the UK just recently that has removed all punishment for breaking the law 100'000s of times by some of its services (they couldn't make it legal without due process through the parliament so they just removed the punishment).
Let's have a brief look into how well "oversight" works in the UK:
- News of the World (data / access sold off by government employees)
- UK Mis-selling saga with PPI - unique case as almost £30Billion in compensations have been granted - non-working financial oversight
- Gold fixing scandal - non-working financial oversight for many years / decade
- FX fixing scandal - non-working financial oversight for many years / decade
- Bailouts / 2008 financial crisis - non-working financial oversight for many years
- NHS data leaks - no due process and proper data protection
- plenty more to add ...
... crime and abuse of the rules happens when an opportunity is provided with incentives and no reprisal.
IMHO - that is the biggest danger from all these almost limitless surveillance laws and powers provided without checks.
I can't see a lot of ISP staff being happy at having to be PV Veted (Top Secret in US terms)
It is trivial for anyone to embed hidden iframes or send silent ajax requests to child abuse and terrorist forums without giving the visiter the slightest clue what's happening. In the case of iframes, there would probably be cached 'evidence' left on the target's pc. Try explaining that as your defence in court when you get set up by some script kiddie.
We were warned of PIDE in school for a good reason (PIDE was the Portuguese Stasi). People will abuse it.
^ fixed link
I feel like the UK is slowly goose stepping its way to a Chinese style firewall.
Given the right's obsession with what I'm ordering on Amazon, and the left being essentially unelectable right now, I'm not really sure where to put my vote at the next election.
We must still remember, the UK people voted in this current government.
That actually wasn't the biggest quantitative statistical unfairness of the night -- that award surely goes to the dramatic under-representation of UKIP and the Lib Dems in MPs compared to the popular vote they attracted -- but given the implications of an outright majority in Parliament, the disproportionate Tory representation is probably the most practically significant of the statistical anomalies that night.
I think you could lump the Greens in with them too.
I did not vote for a furthering of authoritarian controls.
In any case, I suspect these would continue to creep in regardless of which party holds power.
That is a weak argument, though.
For one thing, the last election was the best (worst?) demonstration in recent history of how a first-past-the-post electoral system can lead to wildly disproportionate power (or lack of power) in Parliament compared to actual levels of popular support for the various parties.
For another thing, what the current party in power said to get people to vote for them and what they do once safely in government are not necessarily the same thing, and there is little practical way to hold them to account for deviating from their pre-election claims until the next election comes around five years later.
Having been fairly 'cautious' about the surveillance situation in China, I returned only to realise it isn't a whole lot better here, and not improving.
Kinda glad I won't be staying in the UK, this is not a good direction to be going.
In reality I don't think anybody is qualified to state as fact that Corbyn is "unelectable". To me it's much more likely a statement intended to influence rather than inform.
There are already well-documented examples of councils using terrorism legislation to spy on people 1)suspected of using the wrong type of rubbish bin [1] 2)sending their children to school outside of their catchment area. [2]
This type of abuse and overreach will happen frequently. Not to mention crooked police/council officials selling data, and others pursuing personal vendettas & checking up on current and former romantic partners.
The UK will become a horrible, paranoid place.
What can I do to protect myself? Use a VPN for all internet access? Use Tor (which seems too slow for most practical purposes)? What else can we do?
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-counc...
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922427...
EDIT: added links to sources
All irrelevant really since anyone can arrange to communicate via an innocuous looking one-time pad whatever the weather irrespective of any possible moves that a government can make short of shutting everything down!
I am a member of the Open Rights Group. I make monthly donations and attend their conferences. I petition and write to MPs and MEPs and nothing works. I don't even get replies.
Which is why I am now considering moving out of the country. I'm currently weighing up my options.
There is very little about Britain, its politics and the majority of the voterbase that I have anything in common with, apart from being born on the same patch of dirt.
Some of these countries are worse than others when it comes to similar surveillance or civil liberties issues but they all at least appear to be very much preferable to Britain and the path it is on.
The language barrier in issue in some of these places more than others, although I am open to learning a new language. I began taking German lessons recently just for fun.
The actual process of gaining citizenship or even residency can be difficult too, especially for somewhere like Iceland from what I have learned.
It's obviously a massive decision to make and not one that can be made quickly and rashly.
I just can't see myself wanting to stay here in the UK much longer. I don't feel any kinship with this place.
I think that I would have some problems socially though. Naviagting my way around the country, buying goods and just trying to talk to people would pose more of a problem.
I don't really know much about the process of moving there to be honest.
I'll have to read into it.
But I'm also on the "get out soon" train.
Finland, Switzerland, Czech Republic or South American countries (Costa Rica, Panama, etc) are the countries I have in mind. I'd gladly move to Switzerland but it costs too much. Romania appears tech friendly but it's too poor there. South America is nice but it's too far away from the UK, so going to my family for Christmas would be a problem.
The Open Rights Group are more or less the UK equivelant to the EFF.
Surveillance bill to include internet records storage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872
The way this is worded makes me wonder if the 'detailed content' will be harvested with everything else and then retroactively looked at with a warrant.
Paedophiles! Terrorists! Criminals! Oh My!
joking aside, facial recognition has still some challenges, it can track a face wherever it goes but it's hard to assign a face to an identity unless it's constantly retrained (especially as people age/change)
It seems they want historical data so that they can run algorithms on large datasets and identify potential threats. In theory it's great as it will catch your average low level idealists, so rationally we can conclude that they're trying to focus on identifying, for example, potential IS recruits rather than organised crime.
Also noisy pubs and bars, because they provide an excellent environment for criminals to converse without people overhearing them.
And possibly the postal service, because criminals can use them to send messages, explosives, drugs and children to other criminals, without the police knowing the approximate contents of the communications.
A few years ago it seemed like the answer was "because TERRORISTS", now they're also talking about organised crime and child abusers.
This government have already branded the leader of the opposition a 'treat to national security'. Which leads me to concluded that they are either lying, incompetent, or reading all his internet history too.
Furthermore, I've heard no compelling arguments as to why the idea of an independent judiciary (who should be the only people who can issue these warrants) is broken, or how it should not apply when it comes to the online world.
But the drip drip drip of obfuscated and fear motivated erosions to the balance of powers continues, and it's making me deeply worried about what kind of country my grandchildren will live in.
Am I right in understanding they will have access to this data without a warrant? And then any 'further' data would then need a warrant.
>"For more intrusive surveillance - involving the detailed content of the communications - security services need to obtain a warrant."
So with more and more websites using https, where does this 'detailed content' come from? Is the Government expecting ISPs to collect data that doesn't exist? As far as I was aware, as long as you view a website in HTTPS, there was no way your ISP knew what individual pages you are visiting.
Again, it's likely unenforceable, in no small part as there's no such thing as a "communications provider", which is the term they keep on using. Skype, Apple, etc., don't work in a vacuum - data transits via peers (are they communications providers?), your computer (is that a communications provider?), your ISP (they're almost certainly a communications provider), and so-on.
The purpose of this bill is likely to break large tech corps, rather than smaller operators, but it could also have the effect of essentially closing the technology market to all but large operators who can afford to be compliant.
> Am I right in understanding they will have access to
> this data without a warrant?
> The police and security services will have to get
> permission to access the content and councils will be
> banned from trawling the records.>"Police will be able to see websites people have visited but not the specific pages they have viewed without a warrant, under new government plans."
Different parts of different articles seem to hint at different things. I guess we wont know everything until the final proposal is released.
No worries, there is another paragraph for this.
> The new powers could include giving Britain’s spying agencies the power to take over a phone remotely and access all of the documents – including text messages and emails – and photos that are stored on it. They will then be able to install software that will allow them to look in on the messages and data of people at any time, according to reports.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/1...
Also, in regards to data retention - I thought the CJEU made it clear that it's against the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Is UK seriously pretending that never happened? It seems their strategy is "we'll just use this new law for 2 years until it gets invalidated, and then we pass a new one that we can use for another 2 years". And so on and so forth.
U.S. companies, please stop establishing headquarters in the U.K. It's on an authoritarian path as much as Russia and Turkey is (certainly under David Cameron/Conservatives, at least).
I have no better explanation why UK is pushing so hard on its own populace.
Maybe the tories are just plain evil?
Maybe there doesn't need to be a grand reason and explanation behind it all, maybe they just have a hunger for harming others?
Doesn't matter who the serving minister is - the agenda and means are always the same.
Here's the current chap at the Home Office,
My explanation is that we're reaching the final stage of capitalism -- its inevitable collapse -- and they're going to need some way to keep us all from climbing the fences of their gated communities slitting their throats in the night.
It'll probably work, for a little while.
Nor does it define the exact kind of Internet Service Provider that the law is suppose to be enforced against. (Is this only suppose to apply to those supplying bandwidth or do all websites/services count?).
> Law enforcement agencies would not be able to make a request for the purpose of determining – for example – whether someone had visited a mental health website, a medical website or even a news website.
This seems to imply that there must be a whitelist of domains for which ICR collection is required. But there is no mention of such a list nor how it would be curated.
Section "3. The information we collect" then "5.iv. To third parties from whom you have chosen to receive marketing information."...
Which means they can give your browsing history, numbers you call etc to any company who you have agreed to receive marketing information from. Eg: Tesco Club Card, that-random-website-you-forgot-to-untick-the-box-on.com etc.
WTF!
Am I right in thinking this is a proposal that is yet to be passed into law?
There is a lot of these kind of news coming out of UK in the last few months.
So they are now moving forwards with a bunch of things like this that they wanted to do previously but were unable. See also: repealing human rights legislation.
It's worth pointing out that they only got 37% of the votes, but ended up with just over 50% of the seats in parliament because of the first past the post system. So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them.
> So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them.
You also cannot infer that the majority of people disagree with them. By making the subject "the majority of people" you could imply that the British public agrees with no one party. Which would be correct.
But the Conservative Party forms HM Government at present because more "agree with them" than with any other party.
It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks.
The majority of people voted for non-Tory politicians.
>It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks.
I'm not at all sympathetic to your argument. Especially when the Tories said that a Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 2010 would have been illegitimate since it didn't have over 50% of the popular vote. What's so bad about coalition government anyway?
In 2015 the Tories got 36.8% of the vote and ended up with 330 seats (50.8%). Labour got 30.5% of the vote and got 232 seats (35.7%). The SNP got 4.7% of votes for 8.6% of seats. UKIP got 12.7% of votes for 1 seat. The Lib Dems got 7.9% of votes and 1.2% of seats. The Greens 3.8% of votes for 1 seat.
So you have a situation where 24.4% of the voters are represented by only 10 seats, which is only 1.5% of the seats! That kind of democratic deficit isn't sustainable.
Imagine a full list of sites you visit being stored by your ISP and now available to your government when necessary. Wow.
Does this mean users will be flagged automatically if they visit sites that offer pirated software/movies and the like?
It is urgently alarming when a government has access to that same information.
Governments have a long, proven history of abusing that information in ways that result in undermining of democracy, immoral imprisonment of political opponents, mass murder and genocide, and other niceties.
Governments should be afraid of the people, not the other way around.