
Every Email In UK To Be Monitored - nreece
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/15/2222209&from=rss
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biohacker42
The saddest thing here is that the primary driver for this isn't true
malevolence. There's not an underground of fascists working to make fascism
happen.

This is just bureaucrats trying to cover their asses. Collecting more data is
something that you can measure and point to.

Look we collected all of this!

Never mind the fact that the real difficulty is in distinguishing the noise
from the signal.

And the more data you collect the harder that gets.

Never mind the fact the CIA was watching the 9/11 guys cross from Canada into
the US, and called the FBI and told them.

Never mind that there were FBI agents who were trying to get someone's
attention because they knew there was something fishy with all those guys
taking flight lessons.

Never mind that clearly the problem was not a lack of data collection.

Never mind all that because doing the smart thing is _hard_ and proving you're
doing something by being smart is _impossible_.

But data collection is easy and it's easy to prove you're doing all you can.

~~~
Caligula
"Never mind the fact the CIA was watching the 9/11 guys cross from Canada into
the US, and called the FBI and told them."

Nope. They came direct to the US.

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jgrahamc
Silly idea really because terrorists will just route around it.

My personal theory is that the poor quality of comments on YouTube is actually
a code system being used by terrorists to communicate.

All the sleeper agent has to do is visit a web cafe and watch the following
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpfYAghuNtU> while reading the comments. When
he sees the comment "ZOMG cutest eva" he carries out his attack.

~~~
skalpelis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_stations>

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mdasen
Am I the only one that thinks this plan is full of it?

So, an evil government schemes 1984-style to create a database of all your
emails, phone usage, and websites visited. So, they're going to spend many
times the budget of Google for practically no purpose? Do they not understand
how much data that is? I mean, Google doesn't even store that amount of data
given that they store a very small fraction of the internet's email. And the
UK government during a financial crisis is going to build something that
stores exabytes of data?

Not only the storage of that information, but how are they going to operate on
it? Looking for patterns in that much data? I just don't see it happening. I
mean, Yahoo and Google don't operate on nearly that much data and I'd say
they're probably the largest scale computing operations out there.

Anyone think this sounds like Reagan's Star Wars missile defense?

~~~
gaius
The purpose of Star Wars was to bankrupt the Soviet Union, at which it
succeeded magnificently. Cold War won, without a shot fired. _That_ is
strategy, my friend.

The purpose of this is to fill the pockets of EDS shareholders. No-one in the
government has the slightest clue about IT, they believe whatever the
consultants tell them. From the outside it's obviously a ridiculous idea. But
inside the civil service, you've got this budget, you've got to spend it
otherwise you'll get less next year, and it's not like you'll get fired
whatever you do.

~~~
goldsmith
I'm always amazed how many people buy into that idea- do you really think that
Reagan knew all along that it was a ploy to run the Soviet economy into the
ground? SDI was a huge wealth transfer to the defense industry. The fall of
the Soviet Union (if indeed you see that as a bad thing) had very little to do
with a need to increase their military spending to keep par with Reagan.

------
mixmax
_They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety._

Benjamin Franklin

~~~
PJGoldwing
Does anybody else fantasize about George Washington coming back and becoming
president?

~~~
zandorg
As a Brit, I think bringing back Thatcher would equal that.

~~~
handelaar
As a Brit who was actually an adult when she was in office (your answer
suggests incredibly strongly that you weren't), and one whose legitimate non-
violent political activities (and snail mail and telephone) were subject to
monitoring by an agency of the UK government, I think bringing back Thatcher
would be roughly equivalent to electing Dick Cheney to the premiership of the
UK.

Power, of an absolute nature, unchecked by any constitutional counterbalances,
and driven entirely by political fundamentalism, is what she introduced to
Britain. It got us a Poll Tax, two wars, and all the excesses of Blair -
including this one.

~~~
zandorg
I wasn't an adult, and my family weren't involved politically.

I don't want to veer off topic, but the RIP legislation has 'human
intelligence sources' who gather information on terror suspects, and I feel
this secret police squad is a huge threat on free speech.

I'm pretty sure that the cybercrime screenplay (a thriller) I sent to
Hollywood in 2006 got me unwanted attention from the secret services, and even
a veiled threat from a guy in a car (which then raced off) one night when I
went to post a letter. RIP (2000) is terribly intrusive legislation, and
possibly worse than Thatcher's.

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ksvs
I've always assumed that every email in the US is already monitored. And not
just since 9/11. I assumed it from the time I started using email in the
1980s. Maybe I was overly imaginative, but I suspect the only thing that's
changing is that they're doing it openly.

~~~
PJGoldwing
Openness is a step forward - the real shame is in doing it covertly, while
saying otherwise. Email records should be assumed in this day and age. The
electronic trail that everyone leaves through credit cards, atms, security
cameras in intersections (license plates). I didn't assume that it was as
early as pre-9/11, but electronic data is so prevalent now that it's hard not
to track people. Do you really care about the CIA/FBI having records though?

~~~
mindslight
However once the general populace is accepting that the government records all
of their emails, the next step is to vilify encryption and move towards
banning that.

The counter of course is to put email encryption in the hands of the general
populace so they feel empowered against such snooping in the first place
(hello major webmail providers. time for opportunistic encryption yet?)

------
blakeweb
A long way down the page at slashdot is a comment that points out that in
fact, according to the linked BBC article, they're not talking about storing
or monitoring content, just dates, times, locations, etc.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7671046.stm>

It's also not just a change to how they handle email information--the same
changes will be taking place with cell phone call information. Basically the
government is stepping in to personally handle the job of storing all that
information that has up to now been done by the ISPs themselves.

Still cause for concern, but not as big of a change as the title and comments
make it out to be.

That's a good reason to use a discussion system that functions like HN instead
of slashdot--I didn't find the comment pointing that out on slashdot until
skimming through probably 100 comments.

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Angostura
I wonder if we'll end up with the kind of movement that swept Usenet back in
the 80s when everybody's .sig seemed to contain content for 'the line eater':
Explosion, terrorism, Osama etc

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pmjordan
And encrypted email _still_ isn't catching on. Assuming RSA/IDEA protects
against GCHQ, NSA, etc. of course.

~~~
RK
Just FYI.

FireGPG (PGP with Gmail via Firefox):

<http://getfiregpg.org>

Enigmail (PGP for Thunderbird):

<http://enigmail.mozdev.org/home/index.php>

~~~
pmjordan
I actually use Enigmail (although only for signing, as nobody else I know even
has a public key) but FireGPG looks damn cool. I've been wondering for a while
how best to handle webmail encryption, given that you _don't_ want the server
involved. Looks like they've nailed it with FireGPG.

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fallentimes
Wow, we really are moving closer and closer to 1984.

Safety does not trump freedom.

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zandorg
The worrying thing to me is, if you're American and send an email to the UK,
that is monitored as being UK email traffic. This seems wrong.

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patrickg-zill
My question is, will the "quangos" have access to the information as well?

~~~
cabalamat
I expect so. And every local authority. (In the same way that local
authorities currently use "anti-terrorist" legislation to snoop on people to
make sure they are sorting their rubbish correctly).

