UK moves to restrict Internet freedom | Hacker News Reader

UK moves to restrict Internet freedom

aljazeera.com

240 pointsatlantic61 comments

The Internet may be too democratizing for any government to let stand. When citizens have transparent access to what their government is really up to, those inside the government may be held accountable, which is not something they will take kindly to.

All of this hubbub regarding the Internet has occurred because of a very small percentage of users making waves (whether positive like those reporting the Greenpeace images or negative like those "organizing" the London riot).

The only way governments can hope to control is through voluntary self-regulation as a result of fear of that government. We need everybody to be a thorn. That's the only way we won't end up in some Brave New 1984.

When citizens have transparent access to what their government is really up to, those inside the government may be held accountable, which is not something they will take kindly to.

I agree with this and want to expand on it a little. This is the way power works. If having a government, having a state, is to work at all, then those with power must be saddled with accountability. However, the track record seems to say that in the vast majority of cases, those who have power, immediately act to murder any ability to hold them accountable. Which is exactly why accountability must be enforced, as harshly as possible.

When normal humans are granted power without accountability, evil results. Insist on accountability.

in short; with the current set of humans complete freedom and lack of control tends to lead to mob rule, and complete governmental control leads to again mob-rule in the state.

To fellow UK citizens, http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ will be useful for you. Type in postcode, type in message and it emails it to the relevant MP.

Remember: you don't write to change anything, you write to establish that this is not ok and gives ammunition for the people arguing against this.

I contacted my MP about this last week, and he emailed back, pledging his opposition to this plan. I'm unsure what I should be doing next. Is there anything else I can do?

Informing your friends and relatives of the benefit of opposing this nonsense.

Well, yes, good question :).

You can contact your MEP (and other representatives) at (http://www.writetothem.com/). This sort of thing often pops up in Europe and it would be a Pyrrhic victory to stop it in UK and then it gets made mandatory across Europe.

You can try and convince those around you that this is an issue and that they should do the same. Parents, friends, but perhaps also work colleagues and clients. (Any tips here would be welcome, I am a developer, not a salesman, so I just get "here he goes again" rolled eyes)

You can write/contribute/donate to organisations like Liberty or EFF that fight this sort of encroachment on our lives.

You could also get more active in politics yourself. I hear the UK Pirate Party is always looking for support.

Regarding your first point, isn't this already an implementation of an EU directive? Specifically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

Or has that already got an existing UK implementation, and this is just another layer of restrictions on freedom?

Talk to as many people about this. It's pretty easy. One way is this: "have you heard about <topic>?" Then explain away.

Look for as many campaigns on this issue. There's likely several. Find the most simplest one, this will be your backup card if some people don't understand why you're upset.

Contact as many media outlets possible. Explain your issue with it.

Social media push; Tweet relevant campaigns, post and explain to people on social media (reddit/digg/forums/etc) on what to do.

Join a political party. They should typically be aware of a lot more issues and may know of ways for you to help. Sometimes the party needs someone to do a campaign, graphics, etc.

Or create your own campaign. Here's an inspiration: https://auinternetaccess.wordpress.com/ (Note: This for Australia's upcoming issues, not UK). This is USA's equivalent I think: http://www.reddit.com/r/fia

I'd love to know how they plan to block porn "by default." Either they'd have millions of people scanning requested images in real time or have a ton of false positives. Tumblr and Reddit, for example, are riddled with porn but are not "porn sites" per se. The same goes for many forums.

A UK judge recently sentenced a 21-year-old college student to 56 days in jail for a series of "racially offensive comments" written in series of tweets referring to a popular football player.

A lot of the laws outlined relate to filtering, tracking, and true violations of free speech. I think this example is poorly mixed in, however. It's certainly a British approach (and one I find many Americans friends have trouble getting their heads around) but having personal harassment as a criminal offence in the UK is a good thing, IMHO, and doesn't even come close to the problems of "free speech" (which is not absolute in any territory) - it's the textual equivalent of punching someone in the face.

Most of the mobile internet providers try to do this already in the uk. They do have lots of false positives, so you have to enable it to use the internet.

Not only are they full of false positives, they're full of false negatives.

Some sites that appeared to be a personal dump of harmless images were blocked, while sites with various 'porn words' in their domains hosting as much porn as their owner could fit in them were fine.

No, it is not the same thing as punching someone in the face. People need to stop taking offense from everything.

I want to know what all the fuss is about with Murdoch and co hacking phones, if the government and all its agencies are going open season.

Amazingly, I would rather a sleazy newspaper hacked my phone, than the government having complete unfettered access.

And if they have this access, why not bug all our houses, etc. I mean, if you have nothing to hide.....

It really is about time we people took our countries back.

They've decided that transparency is for the citizens and privacy is for those with power. Instead of the other way around.

"As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped.

Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.

'You can turn it off!' he said.

'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'"

This is from 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' by George Orwell. You should give credit to the author and more information to your readers.

He’s quoting, so that it’s obvious that he’s not the author. And I’d say that most people here know immediately where the quote comes from. If not, it’s trivial to find the source and more information:

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Julia+uttered+a+tiny+sound

"It's trivially Googleable" is not valid citation. Though I agree it's clearly a quotation, citation would still be preferable.

Thanks, I had no idea where this was from.

The new powers are a minor modification to existing laws. They aim to allow real time (that's the new bit, they already have retro-active) access to meta data, not content. That is, to details about when calls are made, who by, and who to. They still need a warrant if they want access to the content of the calls.

Can you really not see a difference between an over-sighted government spy agency looking at details of who made calls and a newspaper hiring unregistered private detectives to listen to content of calls?

Yes. The government agency is worse.

Ask yourself this: Whom is this agency over-sighted by?

Elected representatives at national level; elected representatives at international level; law enforcement; employees (through various levels of whistle-blowing); and clients.

I might not like the laws under which the various agencies (GCHQ; MI5; MI6; etc) operate, but at least they appear to be mostly legal.

Compare that to recent UK scandals where some reporters appear to be out of control and operating mostly outside the law.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/)

Sigh. It's sad that not a week goes by without having to defend internet freedom. ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, and now this retardation. Everyone expects this kind of crap from third world countries run by iron-fisted dictators or nutty religious strongholds. Not from countries that were once thought to be cilivised.

It's sicking that we always seem to be on the defending side here. Seems unfair, too. Is there no way that we can put a stop to this sort of BS for good?

+1. I think whats happening now is that people in the third world (Arab countries for instance) are fighting to gain rights they never had, and citizens of the developed world are fighting not to lose rights they already won. In any case the good thing is that there is a fight.

No. If you look at history everything we consider civilized have been a result of an effort or a struggle by the people that came before us.

Expecting the war against bullshit to end any time soon is naive. Civilization will always be on the defensive because the owners want more for themselves and less for everyone else.

Good article. I like the way they have divided the article into 'surveillance', 'censorship' and 'existing laws' (basically 'libel'), however I don't think they have made the most of actually treating them as separate issues.

To me, being able to bring a libel case against someone who deliberately spends their time slandering your name on the internet is one kind of law. Having a panel of people who decide what information you are and aren't allowed to access is something quite different.

Can we (disclaimer: I'm not British, but I live here) just create a background noise, like random automated emails containing "nasty" keywords that would trigger their filters? This would effectively render any detection system useless as it would tag everyone as potential "terrorist" and "threat".

I know, I know, it sounds childish, but if you think about it, what .gov.uk does is not that much different.

Or create better tools so that PGP encryption can be practical again.

This isn't about terrorism so it's a bit pointless. Like the previous RIPA laws - it was vital to fight international terrorism and actually used against people putting out their recycling bins on the wrong day or trying to send their kids to a better school.

If you really want to tweak the system you should seed your emails with "flying tipping, parking meters, potholes, councillor's expenses"

CULTURAL NOTE:

Just in case anyone is thinking that excuse-me is being hyperbolic -

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-10839104)

A council used powers under RIPA to surveil a family over 20 times because they thought the family did not live in the correct catchment area for a school.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8341197.stm)

You only need "service manager" level, not director level to use these powers of surveillance.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8258043.stm)

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8192636.stm)

Everyone says they are against surveillance, and then they get in power and 'forget' the promises they made.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8003123.stm)

A trivial strengthening of protection was rejected. A magistrate is not a judge. I could be a magistrate, I just need to apply and go through the training.

Not to mention the vital work of the security services in the international war on dog mess

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/may/22/localgovernmen...

There was a mail client ( or was it the server itself? can't recall ) that did essentially what you are after. This was around a long time ago - pre www web. It would append a paragraph of pretty inflammatory keyword-heavy text at the end of each email. Stuff calculated to false positive any monitoring.

Anyone remember/know what I am talking about?

"Our love will outlive us in their computers"

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=194

emacs : M-x spook

tyvm

Its seems like déjà vu now. Every quarter a new proposal to restrict Internet freedom from another part of the world.

Is this the beginning of the end of authoritarian governments? (well can we consider such Governments anything else?)

It's probably the beginning of the end of authoritarian political parties. First it was the social party, then the greens, then the pirate party.

Here's a speech if you want hope and inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCbRX1YEqrs

Well, I guess I'll be contacting my MP as soon as possible. As I suggest everyone else who is concerned, and a UK citizen, should.

What amazes me in the US, is we have a political environment where restricting marriage to a man and a woman is a huge political platform, but data privacy is barely even on the radar.

"Just recently, one man was forced to pay 90,000 pounds (plus costs) because of two tweets that were seen by an estimated 65 people in England and Wales."

Wow. That is scary. How do these laws work? What if my allegedly libelous statement is a "friend's only" post that somehow gets around to the supposed victim? Do the courts even make any distinctions regarding technical details?

Finally seems like will be true the need that some people were claiming last years. We need a citizen network.

This seems so outrageous it could be a political tactic, door in the face style. Start by claiming to block porn everywhere, read everybody's emails and IP addresses, and "settle" for just uncontrolled access to emails.

when it comes to surveillance the british have a history of intercepting communications.

like intercepting most phone traffic from ireland using a legal loophole from 1985. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/may/31/northernireland.ric...

so fingers crossed the british public make their government back down but i wouldn't believe that it would stop them.

I promise you, we wont. We Brits tend to take what ever our Oxbridge regime dictates.

Many people in the UK cant really be bothered to do anything anymore and the whole place is under a kind of drug induced malaise, possibly because after the whole Empire malarky, most potential projects seem relatively futile and unambitious.

So only the people at the bottom and the top take any interest in politics or industry really. To be honest I think it is a miracle the place manages to run at all, our three biggest industries being finance, then betting on house prices, and third being arms manufacture and export. Ordinary manufacture is sixth in that list, yet pays more tax than the finance industry, last time I checked.

Remind me again why attending Oxford or Cambridge is:

- Bad - In any damn way related to this discussion

Minus 2? Explain yourself.

Are there any stock letters to send to my MP?

Stock letters are often a bad idea. Whether true or not, they consider it fairly weak support for your cause if you merely have to sign your name on the bottom.

Write your own. It doesn't have to be long, a single direct sentence is fine. But MPs do take notice of these letters as they use it as a useful barometer on their constituents (and how they may vote at the all-important election).

Be honest - how many of you that live in 'free' societies have, in the past, looked down on people who live in less free societies? Or perhaps thought it was some kind of intrinsic quality of culture / race that some people live in less free societies?

How did your thinking change in the past 10 years when torture, kidnapping, murder, private imprisonment, and restriction of free communications started becoming common practices of our governments?

And to the apologists - political discourse on the internet in less free societies DOES exist - you just don't know how to read any of it.

I think the amount of torture, kidnapping, murder and other government "evil practices" hasn't increased as dramatically in the past 10 years as public exposure to these issues did.

Good question, I'll try an answer:

Personally, when I ask myself this question, "Oh no! How could this be happening to my goverment/society, we are supposed to be better than that"; I simply remind myself of all the terrible moments in past generations -- McCarthyism, American-Japanese Internment Camps, Vietnam, Kennedy Assassination, South American US-Friendly Puppet Dictators -- and tell myself, "Nothing has changed, it's always been like this, its just now with the Internet, you know about it whilst it's happening".

I am becoming quite frightened with the direction that, seemingly all western nations (USA, Canada, UK, Eurozone, Australia) are heading toward. All are implementing authoritarian fascist policies on their communications simultaneously in what I think is an effort to pre-empt or be able to crush any sort of "Western Spring" revolution.

If this continues we are definitely heading directly into a Orwellian-style dystopian future, where a World Government is capable of spying and controlling every action of society.

Yeah, the New World Order - that folks were once dismissed as crackpots for suggesting could be a threat - seems to be being implemented quite steadily. Terrorism is the perfect guise for building counter-insurgence and domestic surveillance infrastructure.

I disagree. I think we're heading to a "Huxleyan" distopia were any "Spring" or uprising can be preempted by promoting rampant consumerism and the infinite distractions of the internet.

Food for thought: http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/08/24/huxley-...

But the actions of these governments recently says otherwise. They all clearly want to implement the Orwellian big brother system. All of them are working together to lock down every from of communication, and make complementary laws that target cybercriminals that might circumvent the system. These governments are demanding total power. If you encrypt the data on your data on your hard drive, or use a PGP-based email system you WILL be deemed a terrorist, and subject to all USA anti-terrorist laws. You don't even need to be a US citizen in this scenario, any member of this World Government will gladly hand you over to the Americans and send you to Guantanamo for not relieving your hard drive's PGP encryption key.

This is absolutely NOT the Huxley scenario.

Is telling that my mate complained when I looked at this article, as he is worried about people looking at aljazeera on his ipad

You know that you can watch aljazeera on your smartphone? Aljazeera is one of most professional media agencies out there.

Yeah, I know that, but this is the general state of paranoia by a lot of people. You dont want to be caught in possession of a beard while watching aljazeera on your ipad in many airports, necessarily. Or singing any songs by The Clash.

[edit] the largest and most insidious form of censorship doesn't exist in people putting a stop to things, but rather in people not doing or saying things in the first place out of fear of being laughed at or getting into trouble. It doesn't matter if there is noone watching the data, as long as people feel they are being watched and judged it has more or less the same effect.

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