The UK’s Secretive Web Surveillance Program Is Ramping Up

In my opinion, most of the governments must have obtained access to numerous Certificate Authority private keys by now. As a result, they would not only be logging DNS records but also the entire unencrypted data transfer.

I think lesson to be learned here is that centralized systems such as the internet, due to CAs (including Cloudflare) and ISPs, are unsuitable for private communications.

It is so sad that so many people won't experience late 1980s and early 1990s era of the internet, which was devoid of extensive surveillance and censorship.

Hopefully, humanity will somehow figure out a superior, decentralized communications platform to ensure privacy. However, the current internet offers no such guarantees.

My recommendation at this stage is to assume that government and supranational organizations control the entirety of the internet and act accordingly as if internet had no privacy.

> ICRs can include that you visited Wired.com but not that you read this individual article

So obviously it's just DNS records they look at, unless they look at other metadata? I know that DoH encrypts your DNS queries, but still leaks the site you're visiting via the TLS handshake.

There are further developments in this space which mitigate this weakspot, namely ECH[0] and Oblivious DoH[1]. Combine a VPN that you trust with these and you've essentially gone dark to this sort of surveillance apparatus.

[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted-client-hello/

[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/

Well, the widespread data retention in Europe is well-documented; most countries have even explicitly refused to comply with ECJ's decisions on the matter. To my understanding, geolocation data in particular is quite useful in investigations. Browsing and search histories and such frequently also appear in media pieces about convictions; he or she is said to have been interested in this or that. These cases certainly raise questions about the qualifications of such data as circumstantial evidence (unless someone is searching for guidance on how to build a bomb, etc.).

Imagine how different the world would be if some equivalent of this existed prior to the American Revolution.

I wonder about this...sure there are plenty of people who are older and less knowledgable about government surveillance; but as these programs ramp up, so does VPN usage.

Is it secretive if everyone knows they're doing it? We known what they store and how long for, it's stated in the article. The only thing we don't know is whether much use is made of it or whether the companies are providing it. Safe then to assume you're being monitored already. Which is actually the case in relation to private US multinational companies.

Note their argument:

> Haidar of Privacy International says that creating powers to collect more of people’s data doesn’t result in “more security” for people. “Building the data retention capabilities of companies and a vast range of government agencies doesn't mean that intelligence operations will be enhanced,” Haidar says. “In fact, we argue that it makes us less secure as this data becomes vulnerable to being misused or abused.”

What's most important is what they don't say, and that they don't say it: It's a threat to the minority's freedom and safety, their right to hold unpopular views, dissent, and protest. That is the definition of freedom. Saying something 'acceptable' is allowed with or without free speech. As Isaac Asimov (supposedly) said: "Politically popular speech has always been protected: even the Jews were free to say ‘Heil Hitler.’"

But they've given up on that argument, which means they implicitly communicate that they don't believe it, and support the notion that the majority is all that matters.

The only way to defeat these authoritarian, anti-free movements is to stop accommodating them (and thus signaling acceptance of their rule) and to talk assertively and confidently and knowledgeably about universal freedom.

This is why I've been using VPN services for 10 years. In the very list it's a significant extra hoop someone has to jump through to correlate and read my ICRs

who actually thinks internet communications need to be policed? did phone calls need to be policed in the payphone days?

no actually, explain h0w that works

i dont know a single person these days who thinks that the police need to monitor chat and shit online, yet the police keep adding more and more of this around the world. is it just like in software where one autist is given power over a project and masturbates adding new features to it every day at the cost of anyone who needs to verify the code, because he has nothing else to do? like in governments do legislators just hire some kid with no idea what hes doing out of school and he just creates shit law for the rest of his life and thats the sole way this shit works?