Changes to UK Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law
justsecurity.org
justsecurity.org
It's a fantastic way to see what gets memory-holed and where the gas-lighting efforts are spent.
Maybe one of us ends up as required reading for whatever civilization emerges from the ashes.
Compared to today. Even the major majority of the population can’t do a thing about the force propaganda, and the ones who protest see a million AI-generated flame pieces in newspapers.
I've never felt more politically empowered than during that time, it's been a steady slide downwards since. I now feel helpless and neutered. I just wish that time would return.
I'll continue to be political though. My survival and those I care about depend on it, as we are not the status quo. Hopefully you understand.
Political dissent was never tolerated. Some generations just claimed their right to it a bit harder than others, and even then it was always a minority doing it - most people (including me, more often than not) will just trade political cowardice for a quiet life. That's all there is. Just don't pretend that it's the result of some fine analysis - it's just plain cowardice.
Government has even banned the right to protest. Given the cost of living crisis and economy going down the pan, nobody wants to risk their job and roof over their heads to protest something that is going to happen anyway.
Everyone I know will be voting against Conservative party and that is currently the only way to stop them.
If Brexit hadn't happened, I would've tried to keep campaigning against the Investigatory Powers Act (that lets the Welsh Ambulance Service see which domains you've visited without a warrant).
I figured Brexit would make it impossible to undo; I think in retrospect I was right for the wrong reasons — I thought the rhetoric of Brexit would only be satisfied by also taking the UK out of all international human rights courts and treaties, rather than it would require 150% of all available political focus from basically everyone in the country.
"The government knows what a pivotal role cryptography is destined to play in the power relationship with its people. In April 1993, the Clinton administration unveiled a bold new encryption policy initiative, which had been under development at the National Security Agency (NSA) since the start of the Bush administration. The centerpiece of this initiative was a government-built encryption device, called the Clipper chip, containing a new classified NSA encryption algorithm. The government tried to encourage private industry to design it into all their secure communication products, such as secure phones, secure faxes, and so on. AT&T put Clipper into its secure voice products. The catch: At the time of manufacture, each Clipper chip is loaded with its own unique key, and the government gets to keep a copy, placed in escrow. Not to worry, though–the government promises that they will use these keys to read your traffic only "when duly authorized by law." Of course, to make Clipper completely effective, the next logical step would be to outlaw other forms of cryptography." -Phil Zimmerman, Why I Wrote PGP [0]
The worst part of it is that I'm not even convinced the Tories are going to lose the next election. People have such short memories or choose to forget the scandals come election time.
Dude - time to start your journey, out of Plato’s Cave! The lefty/righty paradigm, is old and dusty. Just one axis of thought, out of three.
It was David Blunkett, who wanted us all to show our: “papers, please!” - so don’t think for one moment, that the desire to renew, and transplant, a Stasi esque surveillance borg, stops at the Conservative corridors of power.
We are boiling the frog!
Iggy Pop ('Main Street Eyes'):
Boy, I feel so outgunned today
But I'll get up and fight back, anywayHacker News is incredibly fickle with what gets traction here; some days you'll have the site chock full of "US government trying to ban E2E" stories and other days they'll be sleeping on the exact same thing. I have a suspicion that HN is split into two audiences:
- Hobbyists, that use the website at random times of the day and get very worried about legal compliance and governance changes
- Businesspeople, that use the website when they're off work and don't care about any of that because they know they can just lobby away the things that hurt them specifically
Depending on which group is using the site at the time, HN's systemic biases change dramatically.
[0] Not the official name anymore but I'm the kind of person who specifically mods the CSS on their instance to bring back "Toot"
It's clearly the best name, and (if I wasn't keeping away from all similar products for my own sanity) I would be sad that they changed away from it.
In the UK, you could consider joining Liberty [0] who have had some significant wins. Here's an example [1] where EFF, Liberty and others were (and still are) defending privacy.
[0] https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/a-surveillance-n...
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/02/civil-society-organiza...
It's ironic that people use that Nazi phrase when it comes to actions of Tory government (and their faction called National Conservatives often use moniker Nat-C - try to say it loud...).
Your friends and colleages concern themselves with their next paycheck, the mortgage and which pub they'll have a pint at after work. If the government wants to bother with these details they should suit themselves. I'm not saying I support this line of thinking but it is what it is.
That's the problem, the overhead of living is difficult and distracting enough that the average person hasn't the time or commitment. In the past, there were fewer issues and lines were less blurred which helped waivers make up their minds.
Remember, distracting the masses isn't new, Emperor Vespasian built the Colosseum to distract Rome's population from troubles—grain shortages, etc.
That's never worked and generally made things worse. We don't need to go back to Fawkes, the recriminations in the aftermath of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich says it all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Reinhard_He...
Apart from niche online communities no one gives a damn about privacy here. These stories don't get reported on by the BBC or any mainstream media outlet in the UK. The only people who care are those not from the UK (like people on HN) or the odd privacy centric community / organisation within the UK.
None of our major political parties give a damn about privacy, and both labour and tories dislike privacy for different reasons. It really is hopeless. It's nice to vent about it on here with people who care every once in a while though.
The criminals will always find a way - but everyone else will be screwed. Apart from the polticians and the rich, of course.
This said I believe it needs to start with education. However there's not enough focused effort.
Powerful AI coupled with weak privacy can have dire consequences. Privacy must, and I hope it will become a top priority.
A basic site with a manifesto or RFC (like 12 factor, semver, etc.) that can easily be shared and evolved would do it. It should be backed by EFF, Bruce Schneier etc. Maybe it already exists. If so, let's learn about it.
Can they only see which servers / domains / ips I interact with or can they actually see the paths / endpoints / request-params I use when interacting with exhentai.org?
Isn’t the only way to avoid this to assume that the UK can block such updates…globally? Which is on the surface absurd; we settled the “can an island rule a continent?” question centuries ago…
And if you point out how small "5th largest economy" is, or that last time trident missiles (which aren't even British) got in the news was them going the wrong way when test-fired, or that the UN criticism of the UK (Assange and Austerity come to mind) is so important that it has resulted in zero changes, or that the commonwealth isn't very influential or powerful and that's why the UK needed to join the EU…
…they don't take it well.
If you studied history, this should ring all possible alarm bells.
Unfortunately as things stand, other than dismissing this government through elections, there is not much anyone can do.
What is more worrying that the opposition party that is poised to win the next elections generally also supports the current government in those matters.
A general strike would be a good option, but I doubt that people are angry enough for that yet.
While I'm not fully committed to the "all encryption privacy absolutist" viewpoint, I am convinced we're sleepwalking into dark times for democracy and having a shared reality.
Go to a far-right corner of the web, and ask how they feel about mass surveillance and privacy rights.
Edit: I did it for you. On https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1388551/ , of the 17 posts in that thread, not one was in favor of surveillance. Not even with a "but it's okay for the blacks" disclaimer.
In fact, here's a less-discussed thread specifically on immigrants privacy, and the literal white supremacists at stormfront are still against surveillance: Homeland Security Want to Collect Immigrants’ Social Media Information, But Privacy Groups Are Fighting Back - https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1225961/
One of the replies: "It starts with "immigrants" and then it'll be everyone."
Another anti-surveillance article, by another white-nationalist site: https://www.amren.com/blog/2023/01/big-brother-surveillance/ In fact, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=surveillance+site%3Aamren.com&ia=w... does not return a single article supportive of mass surveillance, and several opposed to it.
Do you have a reference, or is it just your projection of “my political opponent is stupid”?
I’m adept of “Walk two moons in your enemy’s shoes” (Tibetan proverb); If you explained your opponent’s logic, would they agree with your articulation of their logic? In a staged debate, would you be skilled enough to defend your political opponent’s point of view?
Until you are, is it worth holding your side of the argument? I’m saying that because I have seen people swap sides when they see the horrors that are generated by their own camp. Did you list the negative consequences of your own ideas, or do you endorse your opinion only at the exception of people who rape, kill each other, forget them in caves, fire live bullets in demonstrators, and mug journalists isolated in a dark room in Paris, as it happens today? Would you support your camp if gays were regularly killed on your town’s central square, as the consequence of the criminality you are inviting?
But pressure for surveillance, withdrawal from ECHR, scapegoating "illegal" immigrants is just one part. Another is fascist policy when it comes to economy - drive out small and medium business and give preferential treatment to big corporations while reducing workers' rights to zero.
I am pretty sure you would also find staunch Nazis in the 30s who were also against surveillance.
This is mostly because they actually have something to hide.
I don't know much about surveillance in Nazi Germany, but do know that East Germany and the Soviet Union were infamous for it. So if you define present-day political factions based on the actions of their near-century-old relatives (and ignore their present-day preferences), then surveillance is both far-right and far-left.
Then look at how moderate parties simply go along with increasing surveillance, or how bipartisan PATRIOT act extensions are, and conclude that surveillance is also a centrist position.
Attributing mass surveillance to any section of the 1-D political spectrum is misleading at best, deceptive at worst.
That said, I have ventured on some far-left forums being curious about how that side of the political spectrum view those policies and I was quite surprised that they generally approve of them and think that if ever a far left government comes to power, they will be able to use those powers to the benefit of their agenda.
But there is no denial that current Conservative government is far right leaning.
Violating international law is actually a feature for the current Tory government, who has made it a fetish of asserting sovereignty, forgetting other nations are sovereign too and Britain can hardly afford the consequences of retaliation by the US or EU (as the Northern Ireland peace agreement is explicitly conditioned on the UK's continued membership in the ECHR).
The only thing that could cause a reconsideration is that UK politicians are very fond of evading accountability by using encrypted messaging services, in total violation of public records law, like Boris Johnson's use of WhatsApp.
The Tories, on the other hand, have demonstrated they can happily double-down on the worst history-making decisions, if they get them one vote more. They also have nothing to lose now; a desperate animal is the most vicious.
But just because it has "law" in the name doesn't mean it's at all the same kind of thing as the "law" we usually think about.
Call it "international common ground" if it makes you feel better or understand what it actually is better.