
Leaked document reveals UK plans for wider internet surveillance - cmsefton
http://www.zdnet.com/article/leaked-document-reveals-uk-plans-for-wider-internet-surveillance/
======
vjvj
This will only get worse if Theresa May actually wins the vote / public
approval to be PM. As Home Secretary she came up with fantastic ideas such as:

* Let us monitor every single call, email, text and website to catch terrorists and peadophiles (1)

* Let us ban apps like Whatsapp and iMessage because terrorists might use them (2)

* Let us use tax payer money for a fleet of vans to drive around areas with a high % of non Brits telling them to "go home". Which to be fair did result in 11 people leaving the country. (3)

(1)[http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/03/theresa-may-
inter...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/03/theresa-may-internet-
snooping-gchq--ian-huntley-paedophiles_n_1398644.html) (2)
[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/new...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/news/investigatory-powers-bill-could-allow-government-to-ban-end-to-end-
encryption-technology-powering-a6725311.html) (3)
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/31/go-home-
vans...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/31/go-home-
vans-11-leave-britain)

~~~
petercooper
It's scary. People will vote for her in their millions, despite current Tory
policy being much to the right of, and even less pleasant than, UKIP's 2015
manifesto. Right wing nationalism has arrived.

~~~
_benedict
I wouldn't rush to call right-wing nationalism "has arrived". The reason she
will win a landslide is because she's the only credible-seeming candidate. As
such, it's hard to equate her winning with an extreme shift in public
attitudes. She would likely win without many of the stances we consider
extreme, given the current political landscape.

While I won't vote for her, I have to concede that the alternatives do not
instil any greater confidence despite being vastly more ethically aligned with
my views.

i.e., she just _happens_ to be a horrible person; she isn't winning _because_
of it

This is an important distinction, as we are (in my opinion) still a far cry
from the abyss of divisiveness currently entrenched in American politics, and
the best way to keep out of that abyss is not to demonise a majority of the
country for this coming election's outcome.

~~~
petercooper
_" still a far cry from the abyss of divisiveness currently entrenched in
American politics"_

I think we're in a _worse_ position. Trump will, all being well, go away in 4
years. The results of Brexit will last for decades.

Corbyn is dreadful in many ways, but ultimately I wonder who I could defend
voting for to my future grandchildren. An inept and eccentric beardy socialist
or a sly operator stoking up right wing nationalism? _That_ choice is easier.

May's "credibility" is hard to pin down. She changes her opinion often and
shows herself to be a sly and shrewd political chameleon than someone with
real convictions (other than for damaging civil liberties). Even where
Corbyn's convictions get kooky, at least he seems to stick with and believe in
them.

~~~
Ntrails
> Even where Corbyn's convictions get kooky, at least he seems to stick with
> and believe in them.

You mean except where he (poorly) pretends to follow Labour policy and claims
he will support things against his own beliefs... :p

Brexit is a God Damned mess, but it won't get any better by allowing
negotiations to be managed by a weak Government. I can see two likely
scenarios right now:

\- Non-Tory coalition government, high levels of capitulation and a deal that
is worse in every way that our pre brexit relationship.

\- Strong Tory government leads to a game of brinksmanship with the EU and
eventual no deal hard crash out.

It doesn't look great either way imho >_<

~~~
shawabawa3
I can't believe it.

The strategy of repeating "Strong and stable" at every single opportunity
actually works.

Theresa may constantly u-turns and contradicts herself, but hey, she's strong
and stable so we'll have a strong and stable brexit and become the greatest
britain there ever was.

If we somehow manage to get a non-tory coalition, we will very likely
negotiation for remaining in the EEA (aka soft brexit) which will be much
better than any kind of hard brexit, not to mention much cheaper

~~~
Ntrails
Strong refers to strength of majority, I'm making no comment on her quality as
a leader (but arguably I'm happy to posit that she's got better credentials at
it than the opposition).

> _If we somehow manage to get a non-tory coalition, we will very likely
> negotiation for remaining in the EEA (aka soft brexit) which will be much
> better than any kind of hard brexit, not to mention much cheaper_

Right, I'm not arguing against that - just that it's far far worse than no
brexit at all would have been. We will be paying more and getting less on
every useful metric. It would also ignore basically all of the core rationales
for those who voted Brexit (which Labour has asserted it wishes to respect).

It sounds like you agree with me on the likely outcome of the election results
though, so cool?

------
teh_klev
And of course it's a Statutory Instrument which means these amendments to the
Investigatory Powers 2016 Act will be implemented with little or no
opposition. Parliament doesn't get to debate SI's and in the past 20 years
they've been abused by both Labour and the Conservatives to pass legislation
with little or no oversight.

Further reading:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_instrument_(UK)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_instrument_\(UK\))

[http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-
analysis/2015/01/14/a-war-...](http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-
analysis/2015/01/14/a-war-on-democracy-how-statutory-instruments-replaced-
acts-o)

~~~
eponeponepon
More to the point, they've already made plain that the EU repeals will be done
by statutory instruments in their thousands. Doubtless this one will find a
hiding place among them.

~~~
teh_klev
I know, it's madness:

[http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/04/11/great-repeal-
bill...](http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/04/11/great-repeal-bill-anatomy-
of-a-brexit-power-grab)

~~~
eponeponepon
I wish it was madness. It's terrifyingly rational. It is being done
deliberately.

~~~
dmix
Was the UK ever really much a beacon of democracy in recent years? It's seems
like they have just gone open with it and now have the opportunity to rule by
decree explicitly. Back to a monarchy for the Brits...

> [..] the great repeal bill is a very good name for it, because what this
> thing does is provide government ministers with extraordinary new powers to
> change or eradicate nearly half a century of law with almost no scrutiny
> from the press or parliament. It is shaping up to be the single biggest
> executive power grab in Britain's post-war history.

------
da_n
I am a British citizen. There will not be any significant public opposition to
this, a few articles in The Guardian and a small mention on the news between
Trump stories. I have only experienced apathy when I discuss mass surveillance
with people in this country. "I have nothing to hide, why should I care?".
There is a fundamental disconnect between real world privacy and online
privacy to most people in this country. At this point it is too late anyway,
May has gone full frontal assault on the internet and privacy advocates and
security experts don't have a hope. I just want her to go full-on now and
implement maximum surveillance, maximum snooping and maximum data retention
and profiling. All of this can only blow up embarrassingly in her face. It is
just a question of time. Sadly I have come to the conclusion this is the only
way that such powers will ever be opposed by the public.

~~~
dingaling
The public also have very little recourse in fighting such creep.

It's not politicians of one particular party or another who have an 'EUREKA!'
moment in the bath and rush into Parliament with ideas for new surveillance
powers. They are persuaded / cajoled / wearied in backroom conversations and
presentations by career civil servants who can outlast any uncooperative
Government ministers.

Teresa May might have a front-line political career of 15 to 20 years. A
senior civil servant is just starting his rise to power by then.

> "I have nothing to hide, why should I care?"

Alternatively "There's nothing I can do about it, why waste my energy fighting
it?".

That reminds me to update my archive of crypto source-code.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
The only real recourse is the Human Rights Act and the European Court of Human
Rights.

Both of which, of course, Theresa May wants us to get rid of, so UK citizens
will have /no/ constitutionally-entrenched rights.

------
jsnathan
It is not enough to develop technical solutions to circumvent the privacy
erosion, as these will soon be branded as aiding crime or the enemies of the
state, and eventually regulations like these will be passed almost everywhere.

Companies standing up for the privacy of their users should be held to a
higher standard than simply imposing limits on their own data collection.

They must band together to _actively lobby_ to counter these kind of policies
to not run the charge of moral hypocrisy.

Another problem is that the party leadership on all sides is often more or
less in favor of these policies.

If there is to be any effective political opposition to this it must be
organized from the bottom up.

~~~
noir_lord
I think I'm just going to leave in the next decade.

GF is Hungarian, speaks fluent German and I have a reasonably in demand
skillset (and frankly I'd rather wash pots in a free country than program in
what this one is terrifyingly rapidly becoming).

~~~
cJ0th
And what's the name of that magical place? The UK may be more extreme than
other countries at this point in time but "free countries" are a myth of the
past. Even the privacy conscious Germany is heading in the same direction. For
instance, many politicians of the current administration want to limit the
legality of encryption or demand video monitoring with face recognition in
public places.

~~~
lostlogin
Aiming for a perfect solution doesn't mean you can't start with one that's
good enough and work on it.

~~~
cJ0th
I don't mean to be snarky but where exactly would you start to work on it?
Every major scandal so far has shown that society by and large doesn't care
about privacy (or isn't even willing to learn about the implications which
could result from reduced privacy) and these very same people go to the polls.

~~~
lostlogin
I'd start at home - that's New Zealand for me. Unfortunately it doesn't seem
that easy to change the government but I wouldn't say I'd given up on it.
Quite how the current government got in with the scandals revealed during the
election is beyond me, but says a lot about their opposition.

------
SimonPStevens
I will literally vote for anyone to get the converatives out.

I have several usually fairly liberal friends saying they are going to vote
Tory because we need strong government for the brexit negotiations. This is
complete and utter nonsense. We are screwed when it comes to brexit whatever
happens at this general election. The EU have zero insentive to give us
anything (we are a small and insignificant minor annoyance to them), the
government we have will make no difference to what they offer, and we have no
cards to play to make them budge.

What will make a huge difference is the government we have in place after
brexit completes, and how that government takes us forward from there. May and
the conservatives completly terrify me. Do you know the very first EU bill
they announced to be repealed from UK law will be the human rights bill that
protects citizens from their own government. Just stop for a minute and
consider that this is the number one most important thing the conservatives
decided needed to change when we leave the EU... Our protection from them. It
is literally the very definition of abuse of power. We need a more middle
ground government to bring some sense back to the UK for after brexit
completes. Not 5 more years of Tory profiteering.

I urge everyone being swayed by the conservatives waffle to really think about
what a long term Tory government will mean. Look into the strongest
competitive party in your local constituency and vote for them.

------
abdias
There is absolutely no reason for any government to have this capacity unless
it is to target potential dissidents and critics of their political agenda (as
well as training "pre-crime" tech).

Intel regarding terrorist-attacks and crime comes almost exclusively from
HUMINT, not SIGINT.

This type of installment (which is basically already in place) reverses, in
effect, the principle of a person being innocent until proven guilty (by due
process) by deeming anyone a potential criminal as default. This is highly
unacceptable in a society claiming to be free.

This reminds me of East-Germany's Stasi police - on steroids.

------
dijit
They already do a lot more than the US do, Edward Snowden even said GCHQ do
metadata and data collection wholesale.

Not to mention the random SSL downgrades that happen when you're going via UK
transit links. (Which I have experienced myself!)

The UK should be considered dangerous. And the current government is only
going to make it more dangerous.

There is also little to no hope of the current government being ousted during
the next election.

I'm quite upset that my home country has to be so anti-freedom and anti-
privacy.

~~~
turblety
It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of this.
Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why are
people not outside parliament protesting? Why are there no big
campaign/organisations in the UK trying to get people together to protest
this? Are we already too late and the government is now censoring and breaking
apart potential protest groups.

People have got to get away from this idea that they should trust the
government. Maybe this government is mildly democratic however it doesn't mean
in the future it always will be. Protections need to be implemented now to
protect from future governments not just the current.

~~~
DanBC
> It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of
> this. Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why
> are people not outside parliament protesting?

People sometimes volunteer to have their DNA taken and matched against the
police DNA database when there's been high profile crime of sexual violence.

People just don't care. They think (mostly correctly) that the Government
knows everything about them anyway, what does it matter if they get metadata
too.

RIPA made things a bit more complicated - it meant that in theory everything
now had controls and checks and balances on it. But we know that those were
boken, and that the oversight of GCHQ / MI5 / Special Branch / etc was rubber
stamping stuff that should not have been happening. But because of RIPA people
vaguely think "they get it all with a warrant".

It's important to recognise that approximately zero people care about this,
and it's not going to feature in any election manifesto (except for niche
parties such as the greens).

Many people don't care that the NHS is being destroyed, and that's a much
bigger problem.

~~~
arethuza
What I wonder about is what people are going to do when they find out that
maybe it wasn't the EU or immigration that has been causing the problems with
the NHS but straightforward bad management by a succession of governments and
not so subtle attacks from right wing that can't stand that we have a much
loved and successful service that is explicitly socialist.

The crisis in the NHS is _intentional_.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I'm 36 and I don't remember a time when NHS wasn't about to collapse, or be
destroyed by the Tories.

Meanwhile, the NHS has been around for about 70 years, and nearly two thirds
of that time was under the management of the Tories.

I'm pretty sure, 50 years from now, when I'm 86, people will still be telling
me that the NHS is about to be destroyed by the evil sinister Tories.

~~~
DanBC
There's a clear difference between the problems in the NHS today and the
problems in the NHS 5 / 10 years ago.

No one who works in health and social care is asking for unconstrained
NuLabour style funding sprees. But now that they've made the NHS ruthlessly
efficient, and we have NICE, it'd be a good idea to pay for what we know
works, rather than weird ideas like 8 - 8 GPs, or 7 day services. (Especially
since the information used to push 7 day services is a lie, and we've seen
people die as a result.)

------
iovrthoughtthis
I know it keeps being said that we can't produce technical solutions to the
problem of state surveillance but the political changes we're advocating for
that would fix this are akin to the "re-write the product" arguments.

The people you want to change are such a vast system of people, views, beliefs
and incentives that changing them will take an inordinate amount of time (
_this is an assumption_ ).

Though the effort required to build an environment frustrating enough to make
technical state surveillance infeasible is perhaps huge it would seem that the
impact any individual can have in that area is vastly larger than in the
former ( _also an assumption_ ). This would suggest to me that more could be
achieved to frustrate the process of automating state surveillance in a
shorter time span through technology than can through government reform.

~~~
deadbunny
This is the result of frustrating their efforts, strong encryption is being
used enmasse so now they are outlawing it. Unless we take a massive stand and
keep using unbackdoored encryption enmasse they will win. However most people
don't know that they are using strong encryption, they just know they are
using whatsapp. So unless these companies try and take a stand these people
will slip into backdoored encryption without knowing and be just as happy.

------
noja
Is this a "leak" or a "let's test the reaction and amend" leak?

~~~
hacker_9
Yep standard practice thesedays. Got a controversial bill? 'Leak' it and see
what the reaction is. Get a bad reaction? "I've never even heard of that
bill!.."

------
vixen99
What about cost analysis? To what extent would such surveillance actually
enable the forces of law and order to reduce or stop terrorist outrages and
thus death and destruction in society? We would at least have an balance to
consider. My guess - zero. It's not that difficult to imagine that those
intent on mayhem can plan and execute an attack without using electronic media
at all.

~~~
cryptarch
Fighting terrorism has never been about saving lives or reducing human
suffering.

It's part of an ideological war between democratic and totalarian ideas,
backed both by coporate interests (the "defense" industry) and Russia.

It's all about power and it has always been that.

------
mirimir
I wonder about the full story. Are any UK ISPs already cooperating? I mean,
the NSA has many^N intercepts. So maybe this isn't about interception, but
rather about how intercepts get managed and queried.

~~~
lurker456
Yes, and it's been going on for at least a decade. It's why they rushed
through an emergency bill with support from both parties in 2014 to
retroactively grant immunity.
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/10/uk_government_rushes...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/10/uk_government_rushes_through_emergency_law_on_data_retention/)

~~~
mirimir
It's funny how the NSA doesn't seem to worry about immunity.

------
Crosseye_Jack
The highlighted part in the doc on the zdnet site. (italic emphasis my own)

"To provide and maintain the capability to disclose, where practicable, the
content of communications or secondary data in an intelligible form and to
remove electronic protection _applied by or on behalf of the
telecommunications operator to the communications or data_ , or to permit the
person to whom the warrant is addressed to remove such electronic protection."

Sounds to me that it applies to what the telco's apply. Now does the term
"telecommunications operator" apply to services running on top of the internet
(iMessage, WhatsApp, Etc). Because to me "telecommunications operator" are the
people running the networks that connection people to the internet (Sky, BT,
TalkTalk, Virgin, etc) not the companies that provide services on the
internet.

I'll have to have a read though it in full later to see if I can get a better
understanding of this document.

~~~
anon1385
The definitions are in the original act here:
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/261/enac...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/261/enacted)

It's very broad:

A 'telecommunications operator' is somebody who "offers or provides a
telecommunications service to persons in the United Kingdom". A
"'Telecommunications service' means any service that consists in the provision
of access to, and of facilities for making use of, any telecommunication
system ". And a "'Telecommunication system' means a system that exists for the
purpose of facilitating the transmission of communications by any means
involving the use of electrical or electromagnetic energy."

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
Cheers

------
coldcode
The UK doesn't have the pesky Constitution we have in the US; however its only
a slight obstacle if they can keep it out of the real justice system. I think
the banning of encryption is the real kicker; if they can accomplish this (not
sure how that would work) it will only wake up the people once they realize
their bank accounts and other important personal connections are being stolen
by people who have hacked or stolen the backdoor keys. Once people lose their
money then it will dawn on folks that this is wrong. Without such a personal
connection its just "I have nothing to hide".

------
easilyBored
Apple stops iPhone sales to UK due to encryption backdoor requirement.

What would happen? Would the government back down? No doubt if Google,
Microsoft and Google joined it would be easier. China wouldn't care but UK is
different politically and much smaller to have it's own replacements.

~~~
gunnyguy121
Google, Microsoft, and Google?

~~~
easilyBored
Google's so big it needs to be mentioned twice :)

I meant Facebook. If they all stopped their UK services for a few days, they
/us might win. FB + Google want to spy on us to sell ads, but I doubt they
want the gov to do so. So we have a common enemy.

------
type0
> which critics called the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a
> democracy".

When a Government of a country takes such steps it's no longer should be
called a democracy. It doesn't matter that they were democratically elected,
what matters is what they do to their citizens, NSDAP was also democratically
elected and I wouldn't call Third Reich a democracy.

------
velox_io
Politicians medaling with technology rarely ends well..

If they force ISPs to keep detailed logs and ban encrypted messaging Apps,
more people will just start using VPNs.

RE: Brexit, there where so many lies during the referendum, if they ran it
again the result would be very different. This whole thing feels like a death
march.

The EU cannot let Britain exit cleanly as it will destabilise the union.

Don't get me started on May or Corbyn.

------
dmix
If I'm reading this right they basically want to set up ISP survillence system
similar to Russia? Installing some black boxes for a direct backdoor into the
raw data.

Beats having to tap cables/backbone, plus they don't need to look for metadata
identifiers in the data to ID each user.

------
cm2187
But what can they do exactly? Most of the https websites I connect to from the
UK are based outside of the UK. My ISP won't be able to MITM this traffic.

------
turblety
I think the title's wrong here. This is North Korea implementing the policy,
right? Not the UK?

All sarcasm aside, this is horrendous. But let's not pretend this is to curb
"terrorism", for whatever that means. It's simply a way to slowly erode the
peoples democratic rights. Very sad times to be in.

~~~
Xophmeister
> slowly erode the peoples democratic rights...

Yes

> ...until we become a socialist (possibly communist) state.

Erm, what?

There's nothing about socialism (or even communism, in principle) that
precludes democracy. "Dictatorship" is the term you're looking for.

~~~
gambiting
Hmmmm, I come from a former socialist republic(Poland) that definitely wasn't
a dictatorship, and yet the survailence was extremely widespread(each
telephone call would begin with the operator announcing "this conversation is
being monitored"), you had secret police keeping secret files on citizens
along with the doctrine of "no one is innocent, you just need to gather enough
data about someone". Protesting the ruling party? We'll find this one time you
did something 6 years earlier and put you in jail for it. Completely unrelated
to the protest, of course.

I live in UK now and it's absolutely terrifying how every move by the UK
government reminds me of the stories told about the communism back home.

Sure, communism itself might not be about reducing democracy, but I guess it
would be very hard to find an example where it didn't.

Edit: ok, according to wikipedia, I'm wrong:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_United_Workers%27_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_United_Workers%27_Party)

"Until 1989, the PUWP held dictatorial powers"

~~~
matt4077
Loving the correction! The world needs more people like you!

I believe there are two separate axes. You can have a free market without
civil liberties (i. e. Singapore, or Germany ca. 1933-1945), or a less-free
market with civil liberties (maybe the Nordic model). "Dictator" is really
only concerned with the latter, apparently, although I have always associated
it with the political right.

You're right in thinking that it appears hard to be truly democratic without
(some form of) a free market. At least I can't think of an example. And I've
met many eastern Europeans with an aversion to even slightly left-of-center
economic policies because of their history. But communism doesn't have a
monopoly on being terrible to its citizens.

