Big Brother UK plc - out to get you? Or am I paranoid

[Carol Haynes]

New legislation planned by our 'democratic' government:

The plans in the draft bill include:

• Internet service providers having to store for a year all details of online communication in the UK - such as the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it was made.
• They would also be having to store for the first time all Britons' web browsing history and details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the internet and gaming, in addition to emails and phone calls
• Police not having to seek permission to access details of these communications, if investigating a crime
• Police having to get a warrant from the home secretary to be able to see the actual content of any messages
• Four bodies having access to data: the police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the intelligence agencies and HM Revenue and Customs

I don't think the government (Tory or Labour, take your pick) will be happy until everyone in this country has a GPS implant with wifi connectivity to all the devices you use in daily life!

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20676284 for full details.

Anyone know any good secure, quick anonymizer-type services that act by proxy?

By the way we already have the Digital Economy Act (passed in 2010) so this is anew level of snooping!

[40hz]

Anyone know any good secure, quick anonymizer-type services that act by proxy?

Have TAILS will travel. More about it here.

I'd stick to TOR for the time being. The problem with any anonymizing proxy service is how much you can trust that service. I occasionally suspect more than a few of them of being fronts. And if they're not, they might be eventually.

[Tinman57]

  In other words, GB is following in the U.S.'s footsteps.  How sad indeed, I would have hoped that the British gov't would have more sense than that.  Guess you just can't trust a politician no matter what side of the pond your on....

[Renegade]

For Labour, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government was "making a complete mess of a very important issue".

"It is important that the police and security services can keep up to date with modern technology, but this bill is too widely drawn, is unworkable and gives far too much power to the home secretary without proper safeguards."

She added: "It is astonishing that the Home Office have had so little discussion with the internet companies who need to deliver this legislation. The Government have been slipshod with this bill from the word go."

Government? Slipshod? A complete mess? No! You don't say?

As for "important" in red above...

NFSW

BULLSHIT!

There is no reason at all that the state should know anything about people's communications.

How about some turn about here?
How about less state secrets?
How about opening up with some transparency?
How about not being psychopathic, habitual liars?
How about CAT - Competence - Accountability - Transparency?

We need PEOPLE to know more about the STATE, and not the state knowing more about people.

And as for "safeguards"...

NFSW

BULLSHIT!

She's a complete moron to try and peddle off that crap. The entire premise is false.

The safeguard is called "limited government". Duh!?! This isn't that hard a concept to grasp. Giving the state more power only feeds the beast and makes it more and more rabid and prone to attack. The safeguard is limiting the power the state has in the first place.

She's trying to push that we need to give MORE power to government, but just not THAT much power. Just a little bit more. Just a tad... These psychopathic freaks fill the bucket one drop at a time. The technique has even earned itself a name:

The Totalitarian Tiptoe

The ONLY sane answer to these people is NO. No more power. Period.

They aren't protecting anyone! If anything, the people need protecting from THEM!

Who really needs to be under surveillance...

The only real 'terrorists' out there work for the UK, US, and Israeli governments, or are funded by them. If there needs to be any more surveillance, it needs to be on the government, and not on regular people.

[f0dder]

Internet service providers having to store for a year all details of online communication in the UK - such as the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it was made.

We've had this in .dk for several years now - every connection must log {src,dst}{ip,port} as well as timestamp, and a full packet dump of every... dunno, 1000th packet or something. It's something of a privacy violation, and utterly useless for police work - and costs the ISPs a truckload of money, both for paying database consultants (both storing and capturing that amount of data isn't trivial), expensive whOracle licenses, and a fair amount of hardware. It's insane.

Oh, and superfluous. The Danish PET have other much more efficient ways to intercept the data streams... and so have the NSA, obviously.

[Renegade]

Internet service providers having to store for a year all details of online communication in the UK - such as the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it was made.

We've had this in .dk for several years now - every connection must log {src,dst}{ip,port} as well as timestamp, and a full packet dump of every... dunno, 1000th packet or something. It's something of a privacy violation, and utterly useless for police work - and costs the ISPs a truckload of money, both for paying database consultants (both storing and capturing that amount of data isn't trivial), expensive whOracle licenses, and a fair amount of hardware. It's insane.

Oh, and superfluous. The Danish PET have other much more efficient ways to intercept the data streams... and so have the NSA, obviously.

I'm kind of wondering if they could get away with some kind of a shiny front end, and have nothing in the back end, then if they're ever asked for data, just plead incompetence.

[Carol Haynes]

How about some turn about here?
How about less state secrets?

That's why we now have the Freedom of Information Act - which basically acts as a gateway across anything the governemtn doesn't want you to see (yet more double speak).

She's a complete moron to try and peddle off that crap. The entire premise is false.

Rest of the sentence is superfluous.

The only person who is more moronic is Michael Gove!