News - UK Government takes another jab at internet privacy

[HEXUS]

Intends to propose 'CCDP' in May.

Read more.

[aidanjt]

It's funny, when individuals or companies do this against anyone, it's veritably labelled as a crime against humanity, but when a government does this against everyone, it's for our own good, and if we're not doing anything bad we've nothing to be worried about.

[shaithis]

Ridiculously huge waste of money for a scheme that will never work technically, let alone get past privacy groups.....all while setting off data protection alarm bells.

Makes me angry just reading it.....how much time, money and effort has been put into this crap already?

[edvinasm]

One must remember the age and IT knowledge of government employees. No wonder we are going back to "good old days". Just my opinion..

[Arthran]

and yet anybody with a shred of IT savy who wanted to hide their information, would get a secure VPN via another country such as those offered by TPB. Thus making the whole system irrelevant let alone wrong, immoral, illegal and idiotic

[AlexKitch]

SSL - problem solved.

Yes, there are many inherent flaws with using SSL for everything, but as every week goes by I grow more and more inclined to just adopt SSL on as many services as I possibly can.

Governments need to realize that they're fighting wars that they simply cannot win (and not only digital ones...)

[AlexKitch]

SSL - problem solved.

Yes, there are many inherent flaws with using SSL for everything, but as every week goes by I grow more and more inclined to just adopt SSL on as many services as I possibly can.

Governments need to realize that they're fighting wars that they simply cannot win (and not only digital ones...)

I ought to read the story before I post - they're talking about forcing the websites themselves to retain activity logs? Different situation - my bad.

[crossy]

Despite having shot-down Labour plans just prior to the shift in government, the Conservative government is expected to revive calls for mass monitoring of internet traffic

Ah, I see - so when it's the other bunch of clowns in power it's a "unforgivable, and expensive, invasion of privacy", when you're in power it changes to a "necessary tool to fight organised crime and terrorism". Nice to see that breathtaking hypocrisy and double-standards are alive and kicking in the HoP.

One question - are they going to slab some government cash to the ISP's and teleco providers who will be required to store all this data. Or are they going to expect them to pay for it themselves as a "necessary part of doing business in this country"? Either way, you can guess who will actually end up paying for it ... us punters!

And anyone care to start a bet on how long before this data finds it's way to being used for copyright theft prosecution, or gets leaked to News International?

"Communications Capabilities Development Programme" my a**e, more like "Communist-like Capturing of Data Packets". Still, I'm sure the "Supreme Leader" will come on the tv to say how necessary and unobtrusive it all will be.

[father smurf]

Would people running forum or community sites also be expected to log all their members activities? Insist on real names? Remove the right of anonymised discussion?

[Tpyo]

Silly question from someone who is most definitely not law savvy, but between this, data protection and the new European 'right to be forgotten'. Which would take precedence? If a user were to automate a request asking them to delete any info they hold on me on a regular basis, would the ISP be force to keep it or forced to delete it?

[crossy]

Silly question from someone who is most definitely not law savvy, but between this, data protection and the new European 'right to be forgotten'. Which would take precedence? If a user were to automate a request asking them to delete any info they hold on me on a regular basis, would the ISP be force to keep it or forced to delete it?

The article I saw about the "right to be no-one" said that there were specific exclusions on this provision for civil security and law enforcement purposes. So no relief there.

Good piece of thinking though - since I'm sure it can be argued that this is an organised "fishing expedition" - effectively a low form of wiretaps without the need to do all that tedious court thing. I suppose that we should be grateful that it's "merely" the transaction logs that are to be stored, rather than the actual messages. Although I'm sure the latter would have been good news for folks like EMC, IBM, etc who sell disk and tape libraries.

[Djini]

FFS! Leave it alone. How many times do we have to put this down before this government gets it?

[andyb123]

i'm already using a VPN thanks to BT's insistance on cutting me off from iplayer at 6pm-midnight every night and not letting me play Battlefield Bad Company 2 of a weekend

[mercyground]

They dont have a damn clue. all it will do is make casual citizens "criminals" to protect their privacy. All cos daily fail readers think there are pedos, perverts and terrorists in everydamn bush.

and with the media mogels pushing for tighter controls to up their monopoly? pfft. balls to the lot of em. Time to raise the black flag and become wanted citizens for standing up.

[Saracen]

I just wonder how long it'll be before the people they actually claim to be targeting take defensive measures? My bet is they have been for years.

For instance, sending emails via an anonymiser. Or encrypting them, Or both. I've been using email encryption for some messages for, well, significantly overt a decade.

To be honest, I don't much care about transaction logs, largely because I've assumed for years that if the government wanted this, they're already doing it. This would seem to be merely off-loading the bulk log-keeping to third parties. i.e. they're "privatising" it.

I do know that if I was doing anything illicit, I'd be assuming that the authorities were capable of intercepting it, and that if it provided evidence of something that might be "awkward" in court, I either wouldn't out it into those media, or I'd be doing it in such a way as to either appear innocuous, or at least, have a perfectly legitimate alternative explanation. Or I'd do it in a way that cannot be traced to me. There's still a lot of unsecured wifi networks around, or publicly accessible ones.

So you need to be pretty thick to leave an evidence trail the authorities would find useful. So I suppose it's a good thing a number of the nefarious types out there do seem to be pretty thick. But it's also natural selection - the ones that are really worth catching aren't thick, or they'd have been caught already. And they aren't likely to leave digital fingerprints that this will catch.

And I'd really hate to be the poor sap tasked with the mind-numbingly tedious and thankless task of wading through my transaction logs.

[crossy]

I just wonder how long it'll be before the people they actually claim to be targeting take defensive measures? My bet is they have been for years. For instance, sending emails via an anonymiser. Or encrypting them, Or both. I've been using email encryption for some messages for, well, significantly overt a decade.

With my tin-foil paranoid hat on I've got to wonder how long it'll be before doing that marks you as "suspicious"? Running on the "justification" that you only go to lengths to hide/mask activities if you're guilty of some crime.

As you rightly say, the real villains will just piggy back on a public wifi, use "burn" email accounts the same way that "burn" phones are used (the latter being a great favourite of shows like NCIS and CSI), etc.

And I'd really hate to be the poor sap tasked with the mind-numbingly tedious and thankless task of wading through my transaction logs.

If the UK follows the US pattern then the majority of that will be dealt with by some heuristic running on an expensive cluster deep in the bowels of some Home Office site. Human inspection will be last resort.