
Internet data plan back on political agenda - whyleyc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30166477
======
k-mcgrady
It's interesting the the internet has been a tool that has allowed people in
repressive states to rebel and at the same time has made states that were
supposedly 'free' become more and more like that states those people were
rebelling against. The difference is that those other states were open about
their corruption - everybody knew it and understood it - and rebellion could
take place. The internet allows the 'free' governments to break laws in
relative secrecy and even when caught regular people find it difficult to
understand the details anyway.

~~~
adventured
It's not the Internet that made the US or the UK act less free. It's enabling
them to do things they wanted to but lacked the technology for.

Were this 1965 or 1970, and were the Internet deployed to the extent it is
now, Hoover and or Nixon would be all over these same types of programs. The
abuse would be rampant, the secrecy would be extreme. Echelon dates to the
1960s, but it wasn't capable of easily reaching into the pocket of every
citizen; they lacked the technology to record everything, and to automatically
sift through everything.

The sole difference between then and now, in terms of doing these programs, is
the technology 40 years ago made it impossible.

What the modern Internet has _exposed_ , is culture rot inside many countries.
That rot has existed in the US for a very long time. You're merely seeing the
military industrial complex laid bare; it has been there for 60+ years.

Rather than making the US or UK act less free, what the Internet is doing is
showing you the rotten insides.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Sadly this is probably true. So what do we _do_ about it. Conor Gearty (LSE
podcast) recently talked about the awful idea of UKs withdrawal from the EU
Human rights declaration.

To me (and I am still working on this) it seems we need to understand the new
and old landscapes and hopefully put in place trustworthy institutions (and I
would class crypto-currency as an institution too)

\- ensure we keep the 18th/19th/20th century evolution of human rights (ie
rights for white men through to rights for all)

\- expand (somehow) rights to privacy and rights to ownership and control of
data about oneself (I suspect commercial ownership of my data is a solution)

\- start persuading the new UKIP voters that print for a different set of
politicians is not the same as ending this.

In the end I think that the new Labour Party is really the Pirate Party

------
higherpurpose
I find it so depressing that the once beacons of "democracy" in the world, are
rapidly trying to catch-up to China when it comes to surveillance, and even
censorship, most of them already being _well past_ the level of surveillance
the Stasi or the communist states had.

UK is probably the most aggressive from the ones trying to "win" this race
right now with both its surveillance and its "porn & _others_ filter". But
Australia has been making some big moves lately as well trying to catch-up.

US, of course, already has a mature level of surveillance of everyone, and it
has also tried to introduce some censorship with with SOPA. It also has some
Kafkaesque measure in place such as the no-fly lists of tens of thousand of
people, put there with _no evidence_ , just some suspicions. Then there is the
TSA, the border checks where border can mean up to 50 miles from the border or
more, the cash seizing, the civil forfeiture laws, the militarization of
police and the increasing use of SWAT teams and "no-knock" warrants for non-
violent crimes and so on.

Canada has also tried a few times to introduce various surveillance laws, but
it has been stopped by the population for the most part.

What's even more worrying is that it's now pretty obvious all of these
countries are working together and _planning_ together when to introduce such
laws, which is why you see statements within days or weeks at most from US,
UK, Canada about "Tor being a threat" and online anonymity in general, and so
on.

They're also trying to introduce new surveillance laws more or less at the
same time, because then they can make it look more like it's a "natural thing"
to do - "hey, look, all democratic countries are doing it - how bad can it
_really_ be then?!". Except virtually none of them are doing it by _consulting
the population_. The governments in power simply decide by themselves to
introduce them, and that's it. At best, they try to push in the media some
more extreme murder as a "danger to the nation" \- and that _we need these
laws to protect against those kinds of murders_ ".

They're almost starting to turn this into a science. After all, they're
already researching how to manipulate the public through Twitter, Facebook and
so on. They're starting to figure out what "works" and how to press the
public's hot buttons in order to get them to support whatever they want to
pass.

~~~
tptacek
The argument in this comment is nonsensical. The UK's civil rights scheme is
significantly different from that of the US. The US and the UK do not in fact
introduce surveillance bills in any kind of synchrony. The US _funded_ Tor,
and continues to fund the security of Tor and tools like it (that might be
news to you; take my word for it, though: it's an overt, deliberate, and
important program). And appeals to "that's how they do it in the UK" or
"that's how they do it in the US" are more likely to alienate voters than to
garner support.

This reads more like free-association than truth-finding. But, good job for
working SOPA into it!

~~~
xnull2guest
> The argument in this comment is nonsensical.

If I were to summarize higherpurpose's thesis for him I would write:

Western governments once known for their commitments to freedom and civil
liberties are now losing their ability to rightfully claim these good
reputations. There are a number of current real world issues today, some
mentioned in the article and others closely related, facing modern individual
expression where the commitments that once gave these Western governments
their good names are in fact being actively curtailed. We've seen a
simultaneous rise in budding forms of both surveillance and censorship as well
as a rise in the militarization of police and invasive executive and judicial
techniques. Perhaps because Western countries share historical roots and
political goals these changes have been so correlated in them - we've seen a
lot of anecdotal evidence of this, some hard evidence in the form of reports
from oversight committees and more hard evidence from leaked documents/cables
and have good reasons to logically conclude that so partnering would be
efficient and desirable to the agencies in question (motive, opportunity and
evidence). I'm also starting to become aware not only of programs that watch
societies but also ones that have degrees of success in manipulating them in
targeted ways at scale. I am struck by how the nature of programs that seek
active manipulation of political expression and emotion conflict with the
commitments to individual liberty that I was raised to believe _is_ the
justification of the state.

> The UK's civil rights scheme is significantly different from that of the US.

He doesn't assume or state that. He merely states that both were examples of
modern states that enshrine some sort of civil liberty. It does not matter
whether the scheme is different or similar.

> The US and the UK do not in fact introduce surveillance bills in any kind of
> synchrony

I believe he's talking about the "UKUSA Agreement". At this level (the UKUSA
agreement dates back now 70 years) synchronicity is not a discussion of days
or weeks but of years.

> The US funded Tor, and continues to fund the security of Tor and tools like
> it (that might be news to you; take my word for it, though: it's an overt,
> deliberate, and important program).

I don't think this covers his point - he was using Tor as an example of a
subject of internationally harmonized political media coverage.

> And appeals to "that's how they do it in the UK" or "that's how they do it
> in the US" are more likely to alienate voters than to garner support.

I'm not sure how to understand this comment or how it fits the discussion? You
seem to be making a meta point about the strategic political value of invoking
certain topics? Wouldn't engineering a comment to exclude these divorce it
_more_ from 'truth-finding' and more toward overt political maneuvering?
Should we read your comments with the understanding you comb prose for how
appeals will affect voters?

> But, good job for working SOPA into it!

IMO SOPA is on topic as per the summary at the top.

~~~
tptacek
I'm sorry, but I can't figure out how to make a coherent response to this
comment.

Perhaps it's because you altered the arguments 'higherpurpose made, which were
the thing I was remarking on. In 4 of the last 5 of your points, you both (a)
change them so much that my response no longer makes sense, and then (b)
express surprise that I would have responded that way to the fictitious
comment you manufactured.

~~~
xnull2guest
I apologize if my summary significantly alters what higherpurpose had to say.
I do not believe it does, so I believe the rest of the comment makes sense.

Perhaps he will chime in to say whether he feels I captured his thesis or not.

Also a note. I wrote the rest of the comment BEFORE I decided to write the
summary, and then included it at the top. I made very few/small edits
thereafter. So theoretically the criticisms should still make sense. If it
helps, pretend I did not write the summary at the top.

------
peterkelly
Articles like this are truly surreal.

It almost feels as if the debate about whether this data collection should be
introduced is purely for the purpose of distracting from the fact that GCHQ
has already been doing this for years.

~~~
rwmj
Part of it is to retrospectively legalize actions that were (probably) illegal
or in a grey area. I say "probably" because RIPA gives wide scope for
"national security" actions.

~~~
mortov
Technicalities such as whether actions are 'legal' are of little concern to
the UK Security Service (their real name - for some reason, they don't like to
use their initials publicly as other departments do).

There is absolutely no possibility of any court review (not even in the new
secret courts the UK has started for trials [1]) so debate about ensuring
legislative cover is pure theatre probably to bolster the only press statement
they ever release in response to questions which always states their actions
are legally authorized and nothing else.

What this really looks like is a move to shift the data storage burden away
from CGHC offices and place it onto ISPs, Telco's etc. Direct access can then
be made to the data without any of the associated costs of maintaining multi-
PB databases which grow at eye-watering rates every day.

Passing this legislation is a simple government way of saving them money and
passing the cost on to business as a 'compliance requirement'.

They also get the added bonus of plausible deniability - 'don't be crazy - the
_Government_ does not store that sort of information on you!'. They don't -
they force your ISP to keep if for them.

Sadly the UK seems a great starting point for such measures - experience is
people are gullible and swallow the anti-terrorist cool-aid more easily than
most.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/jun/14/what-are-
secret-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/jun/14/what-are-secret-
courts)

------
badgersandjam
I wonder what Andrews and Arnold's approach to this problem will be. They're
the last bastion of common sense in the UK.

~~~
justincormack
See [http://aastatus.net/1984](http://aastatus.net/1984)

"Just to be clear on our policy here - when DRIPA comes in to force, and if
A&A become subject to a retention notice for all customers, we aim to work on
all practical legal means to minimise the amount of data retained under that
legislation - making full use of the bad wording in the Schedule in the 2009
regulations where possible. We also aim to clearly publish what is retained
under such a notice and what steps we have taken to minimise such data. Such
steps may mean separate companies running email or other services, or even
hosting some servers outside the UK, if those are practical steps we can take.

Why? Because blanket mass surveillance is illegal under EU law as it is
against our basic human right to privacy as decided by a court, that's why!"

~~~
badgersandjam
Fantastic - thanks for the link.

------
nly
Technically not the same snoopers charter, but it does sound like they want to
force ISPs to maintain DHCP and NAT logs. Despite a lot of the rhetoric about
stopping terrorism, a lot of the public support for this, and pressure from
this in the UK media comes, from complaints about abuse on Twitter (the
mainstream media has recently discovered the definition of 'trolling' and love
it). I have no doubt this will be one of the primary exercises for these new
powers.

A good showcase :
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+twitter+a...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+twitter+abuse)

------
okasaki
Huh. Don't all ISPs already keep these logs? I would be very surprised to find
one that doesn't.

~~~
nly
From what I've read, the soft spot for them seem to be mobile internet access.
Perhaps someone who knows a bit about mobile systems can comment on logging
procedures in the industry, but while I'm connected to 3G my phone has an RFC
1918 IP address, so presumably everything goes through some form of 'carrier-
grade' NAT.

This is actually pretty interesting, because once you get to the NAT level
you're logging every TCP connection individually...which has huge privacy
implications.

~~~
justincormack
VPN all your traffic?

~~~
nly
VPNs may be forced to log as well under this bill.

