
UK police seek powers to access browsing history of computer users - anon1385
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/30/police-seek-powers-to-access-browsing-history-of-uk-computer-users
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junto

      He accepted it would be “far too intrusive” for officers to
      be able to access content of internet searches and social 
      media messaging without additional safeguards, such as the 
      requirement for a judicial warrant.
    

When you need to scale the walls of a seemingly impenetrable castle, it is
easier to slowly and quietly dig under the foundations until they fall of they
own accord.

Once they have this, then don't be surprised that in a few years time they
will need some kind of "temporary emergency powers" that actually end up
lasting 45 years, allowing them to access the data without a warrant.

Which funnily enough they are doing already. They just get the NSA to do it
for them on UK citizens and GCHQ return the favour.

It's like asking for a apple after you've stolen one already.

As a side note the Anti-Tertorism legislation was supposed to be temporary
emergency powers. They got extended and extended and expanded and expanded.
Didn't matter which government came and went. They all bent the knee.

~~~
gopowerranger
You skipped this part:

“Five years ago, [a suspect] could have physically walked into a bank and
carried out a transaction. We could have put a surveillance team on that but
now, most of it is done online. We just want to know about the visit.”

Willie sutton robbed banks cause "That's where the money is". When bad guys
use the internet to do bad things, you have to go 'where the money is' or
suffer the consequences if you don't.

~~~
pilsetnieks
That "physical transaction" analogy would be correct if it was putting a
surveillance team on every single person in the UK 24/7/365 recording
everything they do, just in case any man, woman, or child turned into a bank
robber at any time.

~~~
andy_ppp
Sounds like the Starzi.

~~~
kaybe
You mean the StaSi (Staatssicherheit - state security)?

~~~
andy_ppp
Pedanzi.

~~~
kaybe
I went on a google search to figure out what you could have meant. There are
many things I do not know, and a single word without context is seldomly
enough to assume. (Starzi appears to be a last name and not much more.)

Also, if I'm googling it, most of the time there are others wondering.

~~~
andy_ppp
Fair enough :-). I just assumed everyone knew who the Stasi were! I can't
recommend the film The Lives of Others enough. Really is a scary insight into
the end game of a surveillance state...

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madaxe_again
I can see it now.

A wizened old judge sits in court, looming down on the accused (the term
defendant implies they have a hope in hell of defending themselves), presiding
over a trial he doesn't understand. A young man did something dangerous with a
computer.

There is no jury, because this is a secret trial - what is being discussed
here is a matter of national security. The young man is suspected of some kind
of technological terrorism, the judge understands. The young man looks
unhealthy, sallow - the judge doesn't consider that he has spent a month in a
holding facility being politely but forcefully questioned about his political
beliefs, his thoughts on terror, his religion, his economic orientation.

The trial proceeds. Great stacks of print-out of browser history are wheeled
out on trolleys. The volumes are enormous. The young man must be pathological.
The security cleared expert witnesses explain that this young man clearly uses
the internet heavily, he is possibly an addict, many of these "URLs" are very
technical, possibly dangerous. It appears he has been hacking thousands of
websites. He is clearly a threat, a dangerous product of a world gone mad that
the judge only knows to fear. His wife is making casserole and he wants to get
home.

Sentencing is passed. The young man is not allowed to talk about these
proceedings lest a harsher sentence yet be meted out. He is sentenced to
prison and is thus conveyed. His life in this society is effectively over, and
his future holds only scrutiny and prejudice, to which he is not permitted to
respond, and cannot even have the solace of mute rage, as the drugs he is made
to take by the state for his dangerous addictive and compulsive tendencies
prohibit such.

In his cell he sits and reflects on his crime - being a web developer who
retweeted a link to a leaked GCHQ document.

With enough data and the right apparatus, you can achieve political harmony
within your populace in the matter of a generation.

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walshemj
How long until News internationals pet bent coppers are selling the browsing
habits of celebs - sounds like the MET police is getting overmighty again -
time to let Therasa of her leash.

For those not familiar with history post ww1 the Met Police wanted to take
over MI5's job.

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SixSigma
> were they on Facebook, or a banking site, or an illegal child-abuse image-
> sharing website?

well, that escalated quickly

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Got to toss that last one in so people toss their reasoning out and go with
pure emotions. Sometimes I wonder if such material was made as offensive as it
is currently viewed as a tool to spearhead attacks of this nature. It wouldn't
be the oddest social engineering a group like the CIA has done (look at the
abstract art discussion on HN from earlier this week).

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papaf
I am not sure if dnscrypt helps much, but it at least makes them work a bit
harder. Here is a guide for getting off your ISP's DNS and encrypting the
traffic:

[http://blog.lowsnr.net/2014/08/08/dns-privacy-using-
opennic-...](http://blog.lowsnr.net/2014/08/08/dns-privacy-using-opennic-and-
dnscrypt/)

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biafra
It would be nice if I could access this article with https, so that my ISP
cannot see what I am reading at theguardian.

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tdy721
How polite, the British police ask for access, while the Americans just barge
right in.

I mean, I don't have proof, beyond my experience when the police came a
knocking.

~~~
ascorbic
They've asked for access, but this doesn't mean they're not doing it already.

------
dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10478677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10478677).

