From our delightful government – gross intrusion of civil liberties without justification

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/stop-government-snooping#petition

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jwvqzJkMvKlX_kl-qLz-t8cxNRNg?docId=N0365961334719589010A
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17580906

Yes, train an army of carrier pigeons to bypass the snoops.

FYI,
I’m writing this all down in a notebook.

Thats illegal Ian!

A pointless waste of taxpayers cash. Anyone with malicious plans can use encryption or a darknet to evade it. The tech already exists and is freely available.

Seems heinously impractical to me. They probably do it already anyway, and the real terrorists can evade it. I think even I could figure out how to register a bogus IP address. Or jump on the neighbours wifi.

Can you imagine the data storage requirements ??

IanMunro – don’t forget to eat the piece of paper when you have finised it. And poo into a shredder, just to be sure.

hels – Member

IanMunro – don’t forget to eat the piece of paper when you have finised it. And poo into a shredder, just to be sure.

Just watch out for dangleberries.

Yes, train an army of carrier pigeons to bypass the snoops.

Our pigeons have been nearly all wiped out by a sparrowhawk. Arm your doos.

TJ – funny, I didn’t see you protesting it when Labour set about the biggest programme of denial of civil liberties since the reformation!

In the words of the Guardian

The party has created a country where half a million people come under some kind of official surveillance every year; where emergency terror laws have become part of the normal policing arsenal; and where jury trial is under attack, total surveillance of communications and movement is proposed and secret courts meet to decide house arrest, without subjects ever being told what the evidence against them is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/apr/28/labour-civil-liberties-election-campaign

where were you and 38 degrees when we were scrapping trial by jury, imprisoning people without trial and getting people repatriated to Libya?

🙄

Zulu-Eleven

Bit out of order there. Attack the argument, not the man.

He was probably busy when the Government took away free milk for schoolkids, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a valid point about internet monitoring.

sorry, you really think that I should sit here and be preached to about civil liberties by the man who told us

Tandemjeremy – member

Gaddaffi was not as bad as many. He has been demonised by the west for decades

Both of which are fair points. You don’t have to agree with them. Still not cool to knee-jerk attack everything TJ says.

Its pretty common practice here though, repeatedly attack anything TJ says, then barrack him for sticking to his guns.

It’s getting very close to being a gang of bullies.

Anyone who snoops on my emails is going to be seriously bored.

Honestly, I dont see why being snooped on is such a big deal, unless you’re secretly hatching some dastardly plan.

johnhe +1

Really can’t see what the fuss is about to be honest.

Nor me, I’ve got nowt to hide anyway, if it’s used for intelligence gathering on organised crime or terrorists then I’m all for it, never had an issue with cctv either. Surely it’s there to protect civil liberties?

Rewski – thats the excuse but it is disproportionate. How about your freedom to do what you want so long as it harms no one. How about the fact this will cost huge amounts of money – for no purpose.

Its an attack on civil liberties not protecting them

thats the excuse but it is disproportionate

what else do you think they’ll snooping for, serious question by the way, am I being naive?

…there’s a lot of evil and sick people out there abusing and hiding behind email, websites, social networking sites, forums *cough* etc etc, if this helps track them down then I happy to give up some of my online freedom.

what else do you think they’ll snooping for, serious question by the way, am I being naive?

Well, considering a lot of this is being instigated by the Americans, and much of it is more to do with copyright and IP theft and piracy, driven by the big Hollywood media conglomerations, the danger, as one Brit has already found, that anyone can be accused by the Yanks of media piracy and extradited to America just on their say-so, no actual proof needed. SOPA and the various other Internet censorship devices are being foisted onto international governments by the Americans with no overview by parliaments.
The NSA’s Utah Data Centre will have Yottabytes of storage for every electronic transmittion in America, and it won’t be long before they start studying and storing data from Europe.
The three men who were extradited to America and jailed over supposed financial irregularities with Enron committed no crime under English law, but their emails ‘passed American borders’ so they were arrested and jailed.
We do what the Americans tell us to do, and this is just part of their surveillance.
No, I don’t wear a tinfoil beanie, it’s pointless, because this will happen regardless.

their emails ‘passed American borders’

If any of your Internet data packets, legal in the UK, but deemed illegal in the US happens to pass though a US-located router, then you are a foreigner who has committed a crime against the US. You may not have realised your website was hosted in the US. It does not matter that you have no control of how you packets get routed around The World. You become an American criminal.

They will apply to the UK for extradition and you will be shipped to the US for American justice. If your offence was politically motivated you will go to an American Supermax prison.

God Bless America!

Sorry buzz, i don’t accept that any uk judge will extradite me for something which is clearly legal in the uk. In fact, that sounds right daft.

I think this is probably more about money and control than fighting terrorism.

sold to prevent terrorism but used to make money from joe blogs for ilegaly downloading music/games/video.

It will be hailed a success with a reduction in internet crime but not actually doing much to prevent terrorism or serious crime

who has visibility and control of all this data, how do they intend on using it? There will be so much of it, many many many people will have access to it, can they be trusted or influenced/blackmailed into disclosing it?

with so little idea on how all this is going to work, a stupid snap decision by government, how can we be assured that this data wont be abused in the future?

Has a government website or data center ever been hacked? and will googling it cause you to be detained for 6 months whilst they ascertain if you are a terrorist..

no doubt the likes of google will have to censor/block searches to prevent any comeback or ties to ilegal activities.. (i think they do now)

johnhe – Member

Sorry buzz, i don’t accept that any uk judge will extradite me for something which is clearly legal in the uk. In fact, that sounds right daft.

It has happened and will continue to happen. thats the nature of the extradition treaty we have with the US

Name one case please. There was one case recently, but that was a businessman selling products to Iran, an embargoed country, which is hardly the same as buying a data package from O2.

Nor me, I’ve got nowt to hide anyway, if it’s used for intelligence gathering on organised crime or terrorists then I’m all for it, never had an issue with cctv either. Surely it’s there to protect civil liberties?

Go and post your entire browsing history and address of everyone you ever emailed on here then. What could go wrong?

But seriously, playing the terrorism card is pathetic and it’s used to give the authorities totally out of proportion powers. They would save more lives and make us all safer by making pedestrians and car drivers wear bike helmets http://www.theinsider.org

Babar Ahmed

I should be clear that I have zero sympathy for this individual. His hateful website was built in the UK for a UK audience but was hosted in the US.

Surely this guy is in danger of being extradited for something far different than having the wrong Internet package. I also note that he was arrested in the uk, so whatever he was doing wasn’t so legal here either.

I’m afraid this backs up the point I’m trying to make. I honestly think we’d all be better of if the authorities did have access to what my Ahmed was emailing and saying. The courts can then decide if it’s legal or not.

Do you not agree that people like this should not in fact have guaranteed anonymity and safety to carry out their nefarious plans?

I honestly think we’d all be better of if the authorities did have access to what my Ahmed was emailing and saying.

They do have access if they need it. They can intercept all of his emails if they want – they just need a warrant. No problem with that

He committed questionable acts in the UK and should be required to face British justice IMO.

But that is not the point. Because his data packets were served via the US, they claim jurisdiction. The special relationship requires the UK to arrest him and send him over.

What if you posted revolutionary, direct action, anti-American political rhetoric on this forum? Are the packets passing through the US. Will you be taken?

There are already ISPs offering ways around this SABB

I think this idea will go down a BOMB. Lets not beat abut the BUSH on it, Its time to EXPLODE these myths about the US
🙂

Checkthis chap BTW – no crime committed in UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17820402

Surely there could be a timed protest agreed across the world that everyone would send each other and plaster message boards with misinformation to clog the analysts machines or something?

They wouldn’t know what was real and what was not and then turn the results of watching into rubbish.

The technology in use to monitor internet and voice transmissions is very, very advanced. It’s not just looking for the word bomb or government, it will follow trends and apply heuristic analysis to monitor flows of suspicious tranmissions going in particular directions from particular sources.

A good example of that would be observing encrypted traffic flows passing between two parties on a regular basis. Refuse to hand over the encryption keys? The RIP already took care of that one.

What I think is very quaint is that you think it’s not already happening. This bill is not about allowing the government to monitor what we say, that’s been going on for many, many years. This bill is about allowing them to act immediately when they see something they don’t like and use it to drive legal action through. There’s probably a whole load of legislation they do have to jump around to monitor their own country and store the information ready for judicial process but the USUK agreement allows us to watch the Americans and them to watch us and then share that information.

When the internet was first created, security was not high on the list of requirements. If we designed it now, security would be very high and that would include the ability of the various international organisations to lift the data from the net.

The internet is NOT secure. You can encrypt the data you send, so that it will take a while to break, but it is traceable. You should regard the internet like a pub. What ever you say can be overhead, misunderstood, repeated, etc.

Your ISP can tell you where you have been, what you have downloaded, who you have called. The Government can already access this. The government do plan to save the content – only links.

My real concerns about this is that no one can assure me that it will be used for finding terrorists. The US film companies will demand access to find out who has been downloading their films, hackers will access it to find out what pron our politicians are accessing, etc. Until these issues can be addressed I cannot and will not support this.

Samuri are you saying that government agencies break the law and flout the RIPA legislation ?

If so do you have any evidence of this ?

Hi Buzz. I have to conced that you have a point. I wouldnt like to be extradited. It still seems fanciful to me that I would be extradited for something innocent, but I agree that there is a risk.