…same as the old one, frankly.
Do you recall the Tories and the LibDems arguing against the control freakery of Labour when they were in power? Do you recall promises to roll back the database state? Well, yes, they did kill off the ID cards scheme, but left the architecture pretty much in place – not to mention the control freaks that lurk in the depths of the very uncivil service.
And now, another of Labour’s wet dreams comes true.
Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications in real time under new legislation set to be announced soon.
Maybe they are in the market for fake viagra or need penis extensions…
The problem, unfortunately is that yet again we have the hard of thinking seeking a needle in a haystack and their solution is to chuck another bale of hay onto it.
That, of course, is merely the pragmatic argument against this dreadful proposal. Unless there is a specific reason to suspect the planning and execution of criminal activity, what we do in the interwebs and with whom we communicate is nothing to do with the government and should remain private at all times. The state should never have the power to routinely spy on the populace.
My god, but Eric Honecker and his chums in the old DDR would have been positively wetting themselves over this one. If only they had been able to do this, the Stasi’s life would have been so much easier – not to mention a compliant population that thinks if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
Tory MP David Davis called it “an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary people”.
David Davis is entirely correct.
The Home Office said the move was key to tackling crime and terrorism.
Bollocks, frankly.
Attempts by the last Labour government to create a giant central database containing all UK web and telephone use were dropped after huge opposition, including from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
And how soon do they change their tune when the levers of power are in their hands, eh? Principles, they’ve got ’em and if we don’t like them, then they have plenty more where they came from.
And the prize for the most chilling comment on this article goes to Violet Mildred.
The peace of the UK is something to treasure. Just look at the world, so many places are infected with strife of one kind or another. We need to maintain peace. Freedom is relative, and we must consider socially and democratically imposed limits on our freedom which are for the greater good. These limitations secure our peace so there is a trade off between peace and freedom. It is a choice.
Jeebus! Ben Franklin eat your heart out.
And there they are in Violet Mildred’s comment, the four words that chill me to the bone: “for the greater good”
Remember, Joe Stalin starved over 1 million Ukranians and Belorussians “for the greater good”, Adolf Hitler had over 6m Jews, Gypseys and other undesirables exterminated “for the greater good”. Smokers, drinkers and fatties are being denormalised “for the greater good”. People who want policies enacted “for the greater good” are plain fucking evil. To the core.
The sort of people who would cheerfully report undesirables and dissidents to the authorities.
The sort of people who love those smart uniforms….. creepy.
LR,
Good post.
Let’s just hope some of the comatose crack an eye open soon.
(Please note the new email address. Any comments that do not have this email as a contact are from Fakes R Us).
CR.
Noted 😉
See Mildred got -175 so far 🙂 we’ll just have to give GCHQ some work to do,won’t we? Terrorist , bomb, fertiliser, farm supplies, AK47 etc etc words should be scattered about liberally in headers and content. Oop’s sorry Longrider … that’s you on the list! 🙂
If they really wanted to tackle crime they’d have a word with the tender-hearted judges who keep letting the bastard criminals go free with a slap on the wrist.
Trooper Thompson
Not even wrong.
In spite of the Daily Nazi’s screaming, crime is DROPPING, it’s just that this isn’t a convenioent agenda.
After all if there is so much crime on the streets we’re going to NEED all that surveillance, are we not?
Ahem.
However, I do note that the howls of protest, even before this piece of civil service control freakery (yes it’s them, not the ministers) MAY make them pause.
This, even if it is introduced as a bill will be bitterly fought over.
Then it will have to pass the Lords.
But it should never have been allowed out in the first place.
I suppose there are ways around this …
Proxy servers (how does one access one?) and PGP cryptogtraphy (how does one use it?)
But why should we have to?
It is easy to avoid too
https://www.torproject.org/index.html.en
(I’m really trying hard not to say ‘I told you so’ too! ;-))
Then don’t. We have already had that discussion.
I suppose this all could be ‘spin’ story to get people to stop thinking about the last weeks cock ups – granny tax, pastygate (and I hate the ‘gate’ suffix) and stocking up with Jerrycans of petrol in the garage.
Get everyone pissed off about the idea of ‘Big Brother’ state (and I have not seen a serious argument pro snooping on personal internet communications) and after a couple of weeks of hoo-ha and never-ending ‘debate’ on the topic, Wallace Milly-Band and his bunch of purile idiots will be up to something equally as daft or the Euro will imploded again or Iran will find they have a bomb after all and it will be announced that it is going to be dropped because of ‘cost implications’ and it will be forgotten until the next crisis that needs the public’s attention diverted.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to fight something like this. For years I toiled away on No2ID stands, gathering signatures and generally fighting the good fight, knowing that when push came to shove, the system countn’t work unless we acquiesced and registered for an ID Card. This is different. How does one fight it? OK, I can implement a socks proxy and a vpn, but it doesn’t quite have the same impact as a public expression of defiance such as refusing to register for an ID Card. Of course it is possible that it might be made illegal to circumvent the surveillance. Another thing that is coming up is individual voting registration, which is the national identity register by the back door. But not many of my comrades at No2ID seem to vexed about it. Perhaps they are all just exhausted.
Exhaustion in the face of an implacable foe is inevitable, I guess.
The alternative is to fight the system by overloading it.
The powers that be want to find bogeymen behind your door? Put your own there for them to find. Highly encrypted emails with nothing but ‘Hello Mum’ or idle gossip in the body text (They’ll think it’s in code). Waste their time. Make the watchers look paranoid and foolish, for this is what this legislation is. The epitome of paranoia and foolishness.
The other would be to CC every email message you send to Theresa May ([email protected]) as well as to your local MP.
If you did that, I suspect they would prosecute you under the Computer Misuse Act for attempting a denial of service attack on her email account. However the idea of encrypting banal messages is a nice one and is immune to prosecution. However you would need hundreds of thousands of people doing it and, frankly, its too much of a pain the arse for most people to bother.
Look at the bright side. At least there will be plenty of hiring for all this monitoring. Ooops denies liberty and adds to government spending. Sorry, my bad.
XX My god, but Eric Honecker and his chums in the old DDR would have been positively wetting themselves over this one. If only they had been able to do this, the Stasi’s life would have been so much easier – not to mention a compliant population that thinks if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.XX
I think I have already said here, that I know quite a few ex Stassi men, who’s opinion it is, that they only WISH that they had had the same powers and laws, that Britain now has, Spy cameras, internet spying, police, and other “Government” body, arrest powers, etc?
You are not only CLOSE to the truth with that statement. You have hit the nail firly and squarely on the head.
Meanwhile in the Land of the Free, it is becoming more common for employers to demand that their employees hand over the credentials for their Facebook and email accounts. Because people have wised up over Facebook privacy, it is becoming more difficult for HR personnel to monitor employee activities through their social media accounts.
http://blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-schumer-employer-demands-for-facebook-and-email-passwords-as-precondition-for-job-interviews-may-be-a-violation-of-federal-law-senators-ask-feds-to-investigate
I guess that’s a difficult one for many libertarians, as they would hold that an employer has the right to make any demand it likes upon its employees, for they can leave if they don’t like it. However not being a libertarian, I have different take on it. In many respects, employers have similar powers to the state. They can exert coercion on the employee, which the employee has little option but to accept or choose penury in tough economic times. That is hardly a free choice. Authoritarianism and loss of privacy is no more acceptable if it is a private sector employer do it rather than a government. And of course, in many regimes, there is little distinction between the two!
My view is pretty straightforward – it’s none of their business, period. No equivocation, no ifs, no buts. What an employee does in his own time is his business and no one else’s. It only becomes the employer’s business if the employer is brought into disrepute. If the employee keeps his accounts private and out of the public domain, it is not something the employer need concern himself with. If it is in the public domain and the employer has acceess through the normal channels, then he may at his discretion take action if his business is brought into disrepute.
No one gets my email log on details. Ever. That is a serious security breach and any rational person should realise this. No employer has any right to demand such information under any circumstances. The very suggestion is an outrage.
As for contractial arrangements between employer and employee, this is clearly an unfair contract and as such, should be unlawful – even for a libertarian.
XX Meanwhile in the Land of the Free, it is becoming more common for employers to demand that their employees hand over the credentials for their Facebook and email accounts.XX
And, how that works here, is now, if you really do NOT have one, they do not believe you and either you do not get the job, or you are sacked at the earliest possible moment.
I have the problem with telephones as well. I HAVE no fucking telephone(!!!) But getting an arsehole boss to believe that, or more to the point, to drill it into the thick bastards head, is more or less impossible.
Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications in real time under new legislation set to be announced soon.
Believe this is being fought tooth and nail though from many directions.