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lifeisstillgood

Well I am drunk, so my ex Deputy PM gets the alcohol version of constituency letters

Attn: Lord Prescott House of Lords

Saturday 24 January 2015

Paul R Brian 18 Regent Way Kings Hill Kent ME19 4EB

Paul@mikadosoftware.com 07540456115

Dear Lord Prescott,

On Monday you have the opportunity to oppose a bill forcing ISPs to hold excessive amounts of private information in the hope some will be useful in the fight against crime and political crime.

This information may indeed be useful, but allowing only police and intelligence services to access it steps down the wrong path.

Please consider opposing this bill until sufficient steps can be put in place to allow full and unfettered access to everyone's data - by everyone.

A kingdom of the blind policed by the sighted is not free. A kingdom where all have eyes is equal, and can strive towards free.

Yours sincerely,

Paul R Brian

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Assume I live in a rather secure hole underground, by myself. There are very few things I can do, short of connecting to the outside world and interacting with something in an illegal manner, that can constitute a crime. Maybe I build something that can harm someone remotely, but that requires intent to do something to interact with the outside world, so I'm discounting that here. I'm talking about doing something in my own hole, by myself, with no intent of leaving or interacting with anyone else.

Should the data that constitutes my actions be available to 'everyone'? I argue it does not. It's not your data. It's my data.

Now if I decide to leave my hole and go out into the world and interact with others, things get more complicated. If there is an opportunity where my information becomes entangled with others, I'm all for sharing it with everyone, with one caveat. I'd like to know who accessed my data, and if they accessed it simultaneously with other people's data, I'd like to know their data as well. I'm down with charging for it as well. Keeps the costs of doing surveillance on everyone high.

BTW, I'm well aware of the dilemma you are attempting to put your Lord into here. I just don't think it's that easy to dispel.

I like the idea of Prezza being lifeisstillgood's own Lord

My own, personal, Jesus. With Jags :-)

I'm up for charging for personal data, for making entangled data available and many other options - what I don't see is a binary choice between "we need access to everyone's data to catch the bad guys" and "liberty means anonymity"

Neither seem correct in our new world, and one of the many problems with this salvo in the "2nd crypto war" is it assumes the fight is on those grounds.

I think that means I am agreeing with you.

Do you get cable in your hole? It sounds like a nice place to retreat to :-)

If you consider personal data as unknown to everyone and public data known, it sorta ends up looking like randomness and order, with the opportunity for chaos to exist in between.

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