UK’s Investigatory Powers Act is set to expand
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
> None of the agencies would be required to apply for warrants to access people’s internet connection data, and they would be added to another 50-plus agencies that already have access, including the Food Standards Agency, Gambling Commission, and NHS Business Services Authority.
I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and for a chunk of my life we lived with this sort of government intrusion - nay, we expected it. We expected letters from abroad to be opened and read, we expected telephone calls to be listened to and so on. Obviously, there was no judicial oversight. I remember we looked at the West with something akin to awe and longing: in the West, they don't read your mail, they don't snoop on your calls and sure as st they don't confiscate subversive magazines sent from abroad. It was like a fairy tale; in the West, they took your rights seriously.
30 years on, I look at the UK, my adopted home like a lover who fell out of love with the object of his desire. It turns out that when presented with the technical means to do so, the West is just as keen to eavesdrop and hoover up all your data: emails, phone calls, text messages, the lot.
Freedom and privacy are like a sausage comrades: you keep slicing at it until there's nothing left!
My view is that people here are far too trusting of those in authority, and in particular counter-terrorist police and security services personnel. The attitude seems to be "if they think they need this then they know best". The collective psyche seems to take more comfort in the moral character of the people given the powers than in the safeguards against misuse.
On the positive side, almost noone I know thinks that it's appropriate that local councils or the Food Standards Agency have these powers. Those parts of government are largely viewed as "nannying busybodies" and the "nannying" bits of government are mostly distrusted - there does remain a British sense of freedom.
What's worrying though is that people don't seem to believe that minor agencies actually have been given these powers. When I've had conversations with people about this the reaction is "you're just exaggerating to make a point" or "they won't really do that, you're just concocting a far-fetched scenario that's technically legal but wouldn't happen in practice".
I always though "brainwashed by TV" was an exaggeration. But the more I discuss with people, the more I realize they think the police/hospital/army/court works like on TV.
E.G: they expect that if there is a murder, an NCIS like team with try to find the murderer, or if they get strange like disease, some Dr House will be assigned to find the solution, or that judge are impartial and mayors are competent to deal with the solutions their city require. The reality is that people are average human being with limited resources everywhere. They are lazy, have ego, have a small budget, are tired, have an agenda, have bosses and politics, etc.
"authority, and in particular counter-terrorist police and security services personnel" is no different.
The argument against government isn't that we have our shit together and don't need supervision, it's that the government doesn't have its shit together and is unfit to supervise, or that it will rapidly become unfit once a position of power is created and inevitably attracts those most interested in exploiting it.
Everything you've posted supports the latter argument: the Food Standards Agency wants in on the dragnet surveillance apparatus, which is not their job, while they can't even ensure basic traceability (as evidenced by your link), which is their job? Not only are they unfit to be a "nanny," they sound like outright crooks!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
I'm not aware of anyone in my circle seeing such agencies as being "nannying". I'm of the opinion that the Food Standards Agency improves life for everyone in the UK. I would rather put up with a little bit of nannying if it means I don't get food poisoning from restaurants.
I used to be all for freedom of speech and anti-censorship, but these days I've seen too many friends and family fall for miss-information. My university-educated brother-in-law believes in all the "5G causes COVID-19" nonsense. He even sent me a video on YouTube from a "Top American Doctor". Sigh.
ps. I think the solution here is to teach more critical thinking in schools.
But as someone who has looked at a wide variety of stuff from mainstream to far from mainstream, all I can say is that you really can't trust much at all, especially if it involves human issues (societal, political, etc).
Also the people who push for censorship and end up running censorship systems are exactly who you wouldn't want to run them. Foxes guarding the hen house and all that.
Completely agree with teaching critical thinking in schools. Also teaching people self defence from con artists and other malicious people they may be dealing with in everyday life would be great, something that would make them more prepared to live in a world where these things are common.
100% percent agreement. Specifically, as its own course. How this is not part of every democracy's required curriculum for at least 2 years (class in 5-8 grade range + class in 9-12 grade range) is mind-boggling.
Don't give me crap about "there's no objective critical thinking" or "such a class would be impossible."
Even a basic survey of logical fallacies, rhetoric, and source suspicion would be beneficial to society as a whole!
Is food poisoning from restaurants currently a problem for you? How will mass surveillance help?
> I used to be all for freedom of speech and anti-censorship, but these days I've seen too many friends and family fall for miss-information. My university-educated brother-in-law believes in all the "5G causes COVID-19" nonsense. He even sent me a video on YouTube from a "Top American Doctor". Sigh.
What are you suggesting the state should do to/for your friends and family who’s opinions you dislike?
Do their views mean that they are undeserving of human rights?
Yes it is - if health & safety and food quality are not set to a high standard (this applies to everyone BTW). Organized criminals will break all sorts of rules to make a quick buck - including selling horse meat as beef. How do you suggest the Food Standards Agency tackle this problem in the absence of a functional police force?
> What are you suggesting the state should do to/for your friends and family who’s opinions you dislike?
> Do their views mean that they are undeserving of human rights?
I have little patients for people who ignore basic scientific facts and believe the utter nonsense of so-called conspiracy theorists. It's their choice to ignore reality, and bring it on themselves to loose human rights.
I've tried pointing that out to people in the past (when the post Snowden legislation was being scrutinized by Parliament to try to encourage people to write to their MPs about it) and the reaction tended to be "see, they got caught and hardly any of them were doing it anyway so it proves that the system works". It's depressing.
It is probably not technical means, they always existed, the telephones could be listened to, and letters could be always opened.
Forgetting the history and not learning from it. The West has lived in more or less peaceful democracy since WW2, two full generations have changed, and the memory has faded. We, easterners are still the generation which grew up in totalitarian regimes, we do still remember it.
It's not as bad as poland yet but it's getting there, slowly.
I would not call that totalitarianism, more like moving fast and breaking things, with no clear knowledge where they're going. The government is trying to avoid visibly mistreating anyone (aside from lots of verbal abuse on state media), they just want to do whatever they want. As to the longer term effects of such tendencies, I leave it to the reader's judgment.
As to surveillance, it was dug up by NGOs that provincial government offices are collecting cell network localization data on quarantined people. Apparently the emergency statute lets them do it even for everyone in an "anonymized" fashion.
This is definitely not specific to Poland, and unfortunately very typical across entire political spectrum and countries. I cannot quickly recall any European country where opposition is given meaningful part in government.
> totalitarian government doesn't require surveillance
I might disagree with you on this. That is what actually is very much required.
As said, if you take away dislike for left or right and look from politically neutral point of view, you can see that power corrupts politicians regardless of their affiliations.
Just checking that you know "communications data" in RIPA excludes the content of the message, and it refers only to the meta data?
That's why I find the article so frustrating.
"Here's a list of all the organisations that can get a warrant to get your metadata" would be a good, interesting story and we (us in the UK) need to have that discussion and hold politicians to account.
That job - holding MPs to account - is made harder by stories like this, because people write letters saying "stop reading my emails" and they get a reply saying "we never were reading your emails".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1499466/Heckler-82-w...
Notably in that case the police yet again reflexively denied actually using the power:
"At first Sussex police denied that Mr Wolfgang had been detained or searched but a spokesman later admitted that he had been issued with a section 44 stop and search form under the Terrorism Act."
which rather suggests that they used as a convenient way to stop the government being embarrassed, as opposed to its proper use of frustrating serious crime (if they really thought he was a terrorist he'd have been processed with more diligence).
Since food is so very cheap in todays world, a country has to be in a very dire economic position before the government can't provide the people food and they overthrow it.
Even so, most governments will happily use their army against their own people, and with modern weapons being so efficient, even failing to feed your people doesn't necessarily lead to a change in government. Modern governments are very stable, except for outside influence.
It was all so predictable, and yet so little has been done to prevent this.
Apathy is a powerful tool, how depressing.
What would be some practical solutions since democracy doesn't seem to prevent this from happening?
It isn't obvious to me that the proper fix for the police being inadequately resourced for investigating crimes is to grant policing powers to a wider range of departments. In principle the police receive both specialist training and supervision to ensure that their powers are properly used; abusive use of the earlier RIPA legislation by councils became notorious, e.g:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-coun...
> abusive use of the earlier RIPA legislation by councils became notorious,
But this is RIPA working as intended. Pre-RIPA those councils were engaging in this kind of surveillance unchecked. After RIPA they have to justify the surveillance, and we the public now have a way to stop them if they're going too far.
RIPA was never intended as "anti terror" law, it was designed to reduce surveillance and bring the rest under a regulatory framework.
I would presume local police forces could handle these requests if they had adequate resources to do so. They frequently do not.
Take your pick from the following: The economic fallout of the pandemic -> failed states -> more migration waves..... Don't forget the ongoing climate catastrophe.
All things that could be solved without resorting to authoritarianism if we were a little less of an, to paraphrase Q from Star Trek NG, "adolescent child race".
Paint me a cynic but I'd not be supprised if we don't see the headline of "Terrorist pandemic" used in headlines within a few years as the definition of `terrorist` is expanded to include everything upto and including a badly worded tweet that is open to strawman interpretations.
> the British government is asking that five more public authorities be added to the list of bodies that can access data scooped up under the nation's mass-surveillance laws: [including] the UK National Authority for Counter Eavesdropping (UKNACE)
For example; "And lastly, the Pensions Regulator, which checks that companies have added their employees to their pension schemes, need to be able to delve into anyone’s emails so it can “secure compliance and punish wrongdoing.”
The phrase "delve into anyone's emails" here is an absurd mischaracterisation
The Register have a good story if they focus on that access to metadata -- I don't think organisations should have access to meta-data without justification. But they haven't done that, they've said "rifling through your emails" and the implication (see other comments in this thread) is that this means access to the content of the email. That's untrue, it's misleading, and it's yet another example of piss-poor quality reporting from the Register derailing a thread by generating very many comments that miss the point.
And what is the definition of metadata? Is it just email addresses and dates or is the subject line included? Does it include any data extracted from email such as the names of other people or links to web sites? Does it just have web server IP addresses or the URLs and if the URLs does it have referrers as well.
Exactly where is the line drawn?
And yes El Reg is scare mongering as usual, but at least they stirred up some debate.
Not to say there isn't a large amount of discussion to be had around it, but if you got all your info from an el-reg article, you would be ill-equipped to have that discussion.
The real danger is IC getting at the data in your accounts, which VPNs won't help with.
but then it is not so useful
I don't think this is unique to the UK, it's just the UK is at the forefront overt public surveillance. CCTV has been extensive in the UK since the early 90s. Fighting crime with the "if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't need to worry" Orwellian attitude is generally accepted.
This is misleading. All requests for any kind of Communications Data require authorisation [1] and need to outline necessity, proportionality and collateral intrusion, including details of less intrusive means already tried. This is a similar process to the warrant application process - the difference is that a Warrant is authorised by the Secretary of State (the Home Secretary) whereas the CD authorisation is granted by the Investigatory Powers commissioner - previously Sir Adrian Fulford and currently Lord Justice Levison.
To say that any agency can get without a warrant is misleading. Also, none of the agencies cited (Food Standards Agency, Gambling Commission and NHS Business Services Authority) will have the authority to request to ICRs [3].
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for-commu...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Leveson
[3] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/62/enac...
The "warrants" offered by the IPA are meaningless and undeserving of the name, given that they're issued by the Secretary of State and not a court. The "judicial commissioner" process is equally farcical, since it basically just ensures the SoS filled out the paperwork correctly.
What is notably absent from any of this is a judge making any finding of evidential basis for warrant issuance, which is supposed to be the very premise of a warrant.
For a particularly amusing example of this, consider the fact that the new UK-USA CLOUD Act cooperation forced the UK to create a new kind of warrant which, unlike all other IP warrants in the UK, requires the involvement of an actual judge. I guess the US looked at the UK's notion of a "warrant" and was having none of it. Ironically, this means the UK is actually holding itself to a higher standard when asking other countries for data than when doing so domestically.
The requirement for "proportionality" is equally farcical. This is, as I understand it, a result of the ECHR striking down previous legislation on the grounds that it is not "proportional". The UK's "solution" to this is, AIUI, to add a line to the law saying "any usage must be proportional". It says it has to be proportional, thus it's proportional, right?
Edit: I'm sure they retain the right to inspect the evidence if they want to
Speaks for itself I think.
"communications data" does not mean the content of the message. Communications data is strictly about the meta-data. None of these organisations are given access to the content of messages.
And intercepts (the actual contents of the messages) are inadmissible in court.
It's been a short-term cost-cutting measure that is now basically killing people and damaging the economy, on top of what Brexit already cost them.
But hey, a handful of people made a bit of money off of it, it was totally worth it.
Laughable number of mischaracterisations in there. Focused entirely on oft repeated spurious memetically distributed fake news items. Which no doubt you would Google and paste to support your assertions.
Political hatchery 101
No guessing involved either thanks to China