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)
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.
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.
"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.
Note, I did not say that this government will cause less long-term harm than Trump. Only that our political landscape is not as divisive (although it may during Brexit be nearly as divided).
However I think we are on the same road to irreconcilable divisions, just a little less far along. But we should be doing all we can to not get there, and any such efforts are probably harmed by attributing "right-wing nationalism" as the motivation to half the voting populace.
While it may be that there are "right-wing" and "nationalist" tendencies in certain segments of society right now, the composite phrase "right-wing nationalism" is pejorative and evokes Nazism, or neo-Nazism, which clearly isn't going to encourage a rapprochement between voters for Theresa May and those who may otherwise convince them of the problems with some of her policies and politics.
When the public consider all of the competition a joke - however reasonably or not - it's probably good to remember that (especially since most people are not policy wonks, or even readers of much news, let alone unbiased news) this does not mean they strongly endorse any of Theresa May's policies, only that they prefer her over the alternatives.
So it may be better to prepare to convince them to join you in a few years time than label them the enemy today.
> 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.
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
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?
It's not scary, just look at the opposition. Corbyn is making up numbers to try and get a win with his completely false 'take from the rich, give to the poor' strategy, and then there's the Lib Dems who had their shot at power, and immediately went back on their promises and raised student loans through the roof.
> then there's the Lib Dems who had their shot at power, and immediately went back on their promises and raised student loans through the roof.
Does anybody (who can critically think) actually care about this? All political parties have made u-turns (for example, the current government changed their mind pretty damn quickly about the NI increase) and, at the end of the day, the Conservatives won a majority so it's their call.
I swear the whole "Lib Dem" == "Tuition fee liers" is just a meme created by journalists to sell papers and distract people from real issues.
Oh God, writing that out made me realise I sound like a bit of a conspiracy theorist...
> Also the tuition thing was if they won outright not formed a coalition, so they literally didn't go back on their word.
Hate to disagree here, but it wasn't the manifesto plan of free tuition (which is what they'd do in power) that was the problem, they also signed a pledge to vote against any increase in fees which half of them didn't follow through with (being part of government): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_for_Students_pledge
> Does anybody (who can critically think) actually care about this? All political parties have made u-turns (for example, the current government changed their mind pretty damn quickly about the NI increase) and, at the end of the day, the Conservatives won a majority so it's their call.
I care about it (and I barely read any newspapers, FWIW). Lib Dems MPs went above and beyond their manifesto and made direct, personal pledges not to vote to raise tuition fees. The coalition agreement did not require them to vote to raise tuition fees. Nevertheless, many did. This was an egregious deceit even by the standards of politicians. It absolutely deserved a massive electoral punishment, which thankfully seems to have been delivered.
(FWIW the NI U-turn was precisely because increasing it would have violated a manifesto promise, so not really comparable)
Both of these, and the strange discrepancy between them, can in some part be explained by the archaic first-past-the-post election system.
Apparently many of their loses to the conservative party were caused by a last minute rush of voters to labour. In a three-way contest that had the perverse effect of sending things in the opposite political direction.
Because people thought they were "Tory enablers" and the tuition fee thing was the perfect example of that. But comparing the coalition with the current Conservative government, I think it's clear they were actually beneficial to the country. Will be interesting to see how that attitude changes with time...
Yet. She's called a General Election while the only other party with a genuine chance of gaining seats are on its knees. Her party will win by a landslide this June.
I would rather be slaughtered than vote for Conservative, but I have to say, the NHS is already dead.
1. My nephew is 15 months old, sick and has to take tablet form which is almost impossible. The liquid one is beyond the budget.
2. My mum is having big problems with her knee due to arthritis, it has been going on for 4 years, and all they do is treat the pain. So now she is on boxes of Tramadol, and this is creating all kinds of new problems.
3. My father in law has a poor heart and he has medication but what they have given him creates a list of side effects so long that he visits the GP atleast once a week. If he cuts himself, he is in Hospital. However, there are alternatives, but beyond the budget to be prescribed to him.
This is my only experiences with the NHS and I don't think it is fit for purpose.
The desire of the common person to scream "PROTECT OUR NHS" is feeding into the problems. Now they are even paying Recruitment Agencies huge sums of money to find people remotely qualified, and they are absolutely raking in the cash (I know someone off to Miami with work in August as a perk holiday for working the NHS account).
> Now they are even paying Recruitment Agencies huge sums of money to find people remotely qualified, and they are absolutely raking in the cash
Now you know why the elite invested their own money into Brexit - Brexit is not just a pet ideology, it is an opportunity to make boatloads of money through privatization. While promoting a nationalist agenda, these well-heeled globalist gentleman will relocate to Monaco, Bahamas or some other sunny island at the first signs of Brexit failing. They will probably do so anyway even if it is a success.
This is the "starve the beast" strategy of the right. Defund a service until it's bad, then use the fact that it's bad to justify reductions in funding. Rinse and repeat.
This is my only experiences with the NHS and I don't think it is fit for purpose.
The answer to all your gripes above is to stop starving the NHS of funds in a climate where it has to take care of more and more elderly people, and simply increase funding - we spend significantly less on healthcare than other developed nations.
The gameplan is this:
1. Starve the NHS of funds for years
2. Create false crises by continually setting unrealistic budgets, putting hospitals in 'special measures', cutting GP funding etc.
3. Enforce longer waiting times, poorer service, and low morale by funding management and private partnerships but cutting front line pay.
4. Ditch the NHS, since it clearly isn't fit for purpose (nice sound-byte)
5. Make people pay for insurance to pay the private providers - and we get Trumpcare
Astoundingly, this seems to work, as evidenced by your post.
The NHS wasn't in this state in 2010 before Andrew Lansley got his hands on it. Maybe the problem lies with those who are managing it (somehow currently the imbecile fall-guy Jeremy Hunt...)
On top of that, stats like your first one are easily skewed because people in the US don't even get necessary surgeries because they can't afford it, so of course the NHS is going to have a higher rate of death afterwards!
You mean the ex culture secretary? With no experience of healthcare, finance, or anything else that the job entails? Crazy. The only thing more ridiculous is having a Chancellor with no real world business or financial experience who is known to dodge tax... oh... and now Editors a Newspaper.
I'll bite: across the population as a whole, the UK has much better health outcomes than the US despite spending a lot less money on healthcare. Of course, we should be spending more money, and then I expect we'd equal or even beat the US at the top too, because too much healthcare is also a bad thing, and with private healthcare that's what rich people get.
I don't know about that. May is socially conservative, not economically conservative. She believes in society - specifically, something resembling the society of the 50s.
The country is in a strange place, and getting stranger by the day.
The thing is we have a bigger problem: Brexit. Despite the fatigue of it, we now need strong leadership to exit the EU. If the vote is split, that'll weaken our country in a much more substantial way than any internet monitoring.
The UK's weakness isn't rooted in a belief that May's majority in parliament is too narrow. It's pretty clear that, given the referendum, even Labour would have a hard time voting against Brexit.
The weakness is that Brexit is simply 5x worse for the UK than it is for the EU, at least economically. The UK does around 50% of its foreign trade with the EU, while for the EU, which is much larger, this represents only around 10% of trade.
The result of failed negotiations is, for the UK, widespread economic depression. For EU countries, it's a slight economic road bump. It's the same mechanism that makes it a much bigger deal for you to get hired by Google than it does for Google.
There's no amount of nationalism, tough talk, bluffing, or posturing Britain can do to change the fact that, at the end of the day, Europe can walk away from these negotiations at any time. Indeed, given the wish to clearly show, once and for all, the benefits of EU membership, failure may already be close to break-even. And even bureaucratic monsters have feelings–the Daily Mail may end up creating true European unity as a parting gift.
All this was obviously known before the referendum, which is why it's baffling to still not even see it being addressed in conservative circles, which instead continue to be rewarded for lying and riling up a nationalistic furore.
Have you seen the economic state of some of the countries currently in the EU? The UK props the EU up in a big way, we are a massive contributor to it (hence why the EU is currently getting so defensive about us leaving). Also trade deals are something that will be sorted out, and both sides will want to keep costs low for import/export. At least, once the EU is done with it's posturing that is.
The UK's net contribution is less than 4 Billion Euro, which is like 5 or 6 Euro per citizen/yr. I think they'll manage.
But you're not addressing my point, which wasn't that Brexit isn't going to cost Europe anything. It will. The point is that, because of the size difference, it will cost Britain much more, and that such facts have an effect on negotiations.
It does, because it means once the conservatives agree on something they have more sway to vote it in. And at this point in time I am tired of listening to Westminster fighting with itself, and making us as a whole look like a joke to the rest of the EU.
> and making us as a whole look like a joke to the rest of the EU.
Have you read the leaked details of the meeting between May and Juncker? [0] [1]
A lot of people on the continent already think May is a joke. What good does taking a "tough" stance do in negotiating with the EU? Sure, it looks good for the local electorate (especially as she's just called an election), but negotiations aren't about being "tough" they're about getting a good outcome for UK/EU citizens living in the respective countries (and a trade deal, if they ever get around to that).
Comments like "bloody difficult" [2] also don't help things. To those of us on the continent, it seems that the UK has decided to go with the "bull in a china shop" strategy with May.
The amount of animosity toward the EU coming from the UK is just stunning. We get it, you dislike the EU, hence why you voted to leave. But it seems like the UK government is intent to burn every last bridge with the EU through their rhetoric...
Admittedly I was unsure about Brexit to begin with, but ever since we said we are going to leave, the EU has been up in arms telling us we will be punished, and we have to pay €100 billion to even be allowed. Despite us being in the top 3 biggest contributors to the EU budget to begin with. I can firmly say since that this is not a group I want to be associated with.
> Despite us being in the biggest top 3 contributors to the EU budget
I've heard this argument given a lot in discussions about Brexit.
I don't agree with it, and here's why:
Yes, the UK is a top contributor to the EU budget. But view the EU as a marriage. When the UK joined, they agreed to pay their share of the living expenses (so to say).
When a human couple get a divorce, you don't get to go back and say "well I paid more than half of the living expenses, therefore they owe me X for all the excess contributions I made while we were married."
Nope, sorry. That's not how marriage works, and you can't go and say "well now that we're on worse terms, actually you owe me all that money back"
So, on to your next point:
> the EU has been up in arms telling us we will be punished, and we have to pay €100 billion to even be allowed.
Yeah, because the UK has made commitments before Brexit to fund EU programs. This is like a married couple buying a house together. When you split up, you either sell the house and split the proceeds, or someone buys the other one out. Since the EU isn't for sale, this is the UK buying out their portion of the commitment.
I just read today that the EMA faces $400 million in rent till 2039 on a London building they will be moving out of. [0]
So, please make up your mind. Either the UK has no responsibility to pay for its previous agreements, or the EU should also be allowed to break their previous agreements with the UK.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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've suspected for years that Americans would understand our government better if we had a domestic version of Yes, Minister. Not House of Cards or The West Wing (though that came closer), but something that captures the petty pressures and intransigence of an entrenched civil service.
So much this. The only thing that would be able to move the needle on public perception on this issue is wall-to-wall coverage in the written and televised press, and endless nameless talking heads decrying it on cable news shows. Only then would public opinion shift enough to pressure elected government officials to NOT try to do such things. And that will never happen, because the news organizations -- ALL of them, I'm convinced -- are at least influenced by the governmental parties, if not bought outright. Most of the time, I pick on the US, because I'm American, but I don't think that this is particular to the States. The notion of a "free press" is largely obviated by simple economics these days, because of the need for favorable treatment at the hands of tax codes and regulations to compete in the world economy. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."
The fact that so many people adhere to this statement indicates the point at which society currently is in its downward cycle:
Pretty much at the beginning.
Once the general statement turns into "I just can't take the pain anymore" it means that society will have reached the bottom of the cycle. From there on out, the real fight will begin and things will start to improve again.
The UK has been rather effective in preventing other terrorist attacks since the metro bombings. Just look at France. Ok, nobody expected terrorism by car until 2016 but there are also solutions to that one.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Hungary may not be the best option, unfortunately. Germany is certainly a good option in terms of sane politics, job opportunities, and only hating foreigners a little bit (on average–find the right neighbourhood/friends and you'll have no trouble whatsoever).
If only the weather were better... Another option may be going to South Africa, and just not caring about politics.
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.
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.
Google-fu is failing me to, but I've seen this personally so I know it's real.
I'll try to emulate the test case and submit to HN. I think it's somewhat likely that google has removed the links to this in the interest of national security.
>I think it's somewhat likely that google has removed the links to this in the interest of national security.
This sounds highly unlikely considering Google is one of the main contributors to solutions to mitigate this problem. Also, I think you are referring to this:
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)
> Why are people not outside parliament protesting?
Because it requires effort. And if the british people go through with that effort, the government will wait, and do it later.
It's a cat & mouse game except there's one cat and 200 mice. And the mice can fly. And throw the cat in jail.
People aren't going to fight to delay issues. Hell, I'm very much an activist and I sure as hell don't have the will to fight for delays, how would you expect the general population to?
If there's a solution, a real solution, people can fight for it.
> 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?
Because they don't realize what it means. Maybe doxxing a John Doe (with his approval, of course), and then saying "now, Internet companies and intelligence agencies can do ten times more because they have even better tools and/or have access to even better data" - that may open some eyes.
Maybe someone should open a "doxx-me.org" website, that would let you doxx yourself. Of course this means it lets you doxx anyone, so it would be ethically questionable (well maybe that's more a suggestion for 4chan than for HN).
On the other hand, I think it's important to know what others can know about you using these tools - in other words which parts of your privacy are exposed.
The first-past-the-post voting system is to blame.
Politicians need only argue in the newspapers (mostly owned by Murdoch), once they've won the election they can mostly do as they please.
In a functioning democracy, the politicians would need to debate and compromise in Parliament, not in Fleet Street.
The difficulty is in changing the voting system. Both the Tories and Labour were too shortsighted and greedy when the referendum was held. If it had passed, then soon after the Tories wouldn't have felt so much need to appease UKIP voters, and Labour could perhaps now split into two.
It happens, but usually on traffic passing through the UK from europe on it's way to USA, and I don't know the intricacies of how it works but it doesn't downgrade high profile ports/IPs (like google, facebook).
in my case it was a IRC server which was built identically to another 2 nodes in other parts of the world- When I looked into why I found no good reason so I dug in to it and was presented with a GCHQ/NSA project called "Tempora".
I ran a bunch of tests using the popular `openvpn` software suite and a bunch of VPS providers who were cheap enough (tilaa, vultr, linode and AWS) and the common trend was exactly what I described.
If I pinned the ciphers then the data would not be tampered, if I allowed a weaker cipher then my "response" would say the server was only capable of TLS1.0 despite me connecting to the same server minutes earlier on a different port with TLS1.2.
I will do a write-up on this and submit to HN as I assume this is still in place and all references to what I describe seem to have been removed from google.
I'm beginning to feel like one of those tin-foil hat people since I spent considerable time looking at documents surrounding this before and it's just vanished. :(
In 2003-2004 I had a non-SSL IRC server in a German datacenter and found that something between my server and large British ISPs was rewriting all "ISON <nickname>" strings in TCP streams to "PRIVMSG <nickname> :!kapa". I moved the IRC server to another IP address and never had this problem again.
I think that GCHQ was monitoring the network traffic and had a bug in their IRC protocol implementation.
I am also very interested in proof of this. So far we have no evidence of mass downgrades on TLS, its not in any of the leaked docs. Tempora is a GCHQ/NSA passive capture technology.
Edit: Are you sure it isn't an old version of OpenSSL on your host? Last time i checked most IRCd's did SSLv3 (IRC crypto is awful btw.. stop using it)
This is something I am certain of. They were running exactly the same software, I was running FreeBSD 10.0 at the time with libressl 2.1.1 and irc was using gnutls 2.8.1
I'm going through my IRC logs now and this was my response to the same question. Regardless I was using the same server with the same versions and different cipher sets and a different port with the same software and getting inconsistent results _only_ when the path went via the UK.
The same connection from Haarlem, NL to Sydney, AU was not affected by this inconsistency.
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.
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.
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!.."
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.
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.
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.
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."
Could a CA count as a telecommunications operator? Would this mandate a MIM attack if the government fancies a look at what you're up to in your online banking?
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".
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.
Ironic that if the big tech companies paid their taxes in the way the rest of us have to, they would have better leverage. Threatening to take millions/billions out of an economy probably gives some clout.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They are, but their health care systems are everywhere on the scale from textbook socialism to capitalism-with-lots-of-rules. The UK's NHS, for example, employs the doctors, paid out of general government revenue, and provides otherwise-free health care.
That's not the point. The GP's error was calling the policy in question "socialism". It is not. Even if socialism->bad were always true, that doesn't imply the reverse, i. e. bad->socialism.
Spying on citizen has historically been used by every non-democratic regime, from the right-wing fascists to left-wing communists and west-wing Nixons.
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.
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.
An economic system regulating common business interactions and transactions among citizens and civilian organizations is not to be equivocated with a system of government exercising authority and enforcing behavior through police, military and state apparatuses.
A system of authority and security does not operate at an economic level of autonomy. A regimented heirarchy differs from the conceptual model of interaction among autonomous individuals and organizational collectives.
However, I think I was trying to make a different point, although failed in my writing. A big reason policies like this get passed, without protest, is because the people of the UK trust the government to "look after them" as a parent would do. It's all about (don't worry about thinking or using your brain, we'll do that for you).
The snoopers charter was met with protest, it got struck down and blocked by the Lib dems, so they shoved it through with minimal debate and no meaningful public consultation once they got majority power. This is a proposed law which has been leaked (why do laws need to be leaked?) which they will force through, public opposition or not.
So was Nazi Germany, Spain under Franco, pre-WW2 Japan etc. All claimed to be temporary technocracies, even when the technocrats are essentialy the military.
I'm sorry, I just don't understand how (presumably) an adult can make a comment like the grandparent's, conflating socialism with dictatorship, in earnest. It frustrates me to see people believing such obvious propaganda.
I think you give the conservatives too much credit. They legitimately think that giving police/MI5 these abilities will tackle terrorism, and that the downsides of these policies are being exaggerated by internet companies/experts and that we're simply not willing to make a golden key because it's expensive/a little hard. They also think that the relatively small impact of terrorism is worth a far more impactful cost.
The scariest thing about this is not the proposals but the wilful ignorance of those in power.
You lost me when you took a slight at "socialism".
Can't you see that the very same establishment that is attempting to install a totalitarian corporate regime (a political contribution of Benito Mussolini, by the way) is the one that has indoctrinated you with this anti-socialist rhetoric?
Aren't they all very similar though? "Trust us, we know what's best for you and as long as we all pool together we can be one big team that has everyones best interests at heart. Oh wait, we just need watch you take a shit every day to make sure you're not straining too hard".
* 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... (2) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... (3) https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/31/go-home-vans...