Jimmy Wales Threatens To Stymie UK Snooping Plans By Encrypting Wikipedia Connections
from the take-that dept
The draft bill of the UK's "Snooper's Charter", which would require ISPs to record key information about every email sent and Web site visited by UK citizens, and mobile phone companies to log all their calls, was published back in July. Before it is debated by politicians, a Joint Committee from both the House of Commons and House of Lords is conducting "pre-legislative scrutiny."
As the list of questions on the Joint Committee's Web page makes clear, it seems to be doing a thorough job, exploring every aspect of the proposed legislation. As well as a public consultation (now closed), it is also taking oral evidence from a wide range of interested parties, both for and against the plans. Yesterday, one of the people who spoke before the Committee was Jimmy Wales, who did not mince his words:
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has sharply criticised the government's "snooper's charter", designed to track internet, text and email use of all British citizens, as "technologically incompetent".
He went on to suggest that other Internet companies would do the same, forcing the UK authorities to resort to what he called "black arts" to break the encryption. As he pointed out: "It is not the sort of thing I'd expect from a western democracy. It is the kind of thing I would expect from the Iranians or the Chinese."
He said Wikipedia would move to encrypt all its connections with Britain if UK internet companies, such as Vodafone and Virgin Media, were mandated by the government to keep track of every single page accessed by UK citizens.
To a certain extent, this is just bluster: Wales has no formal power to instruct Wikipedia to encrypt its connections, and even assuming that happened, it's not certain that companies like Google and Facebook would risk fines or imprisonment for their staff by refusing to hand over encryption keys. But Wales' intervention had a big symbolic importance: he's not only the co-founder of Wikipedia -- which even politicians have heard of and probably use -- he's also one of the UK government's own special tech advisers, appointed back in March.
His comments are, therefore, a real slap in the face, and a useful reminder that by pushing for this kind of total surveillance the UK government is not only making itself look oppressive, but stupid too.
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Filed Under: encryption, jimmy wales, privacy, snooper's charter, snooping, uk
Companies: wikipedia
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It is the kind of thing I would expect from the Americans, Iranians or the Chinese."
FTFY
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This should be universal
Hell, at this vary moment I'm watching Youtube in HTTPS.
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Although it only takes proper encryption keys to snoop on my reading =/
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That's not in anyway creepy. Nope.
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FTFY
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Whether or not he's grandstanding (or a "douchenozzle" which is a perfectly useless ad hom, which suggests the level of discourse you're seeking), looking over the coverage and discussion of Wales testimony suggests that no one seems to be "laughing" at his claims. For whatever reason, as much as you may dislike it, people tend to take Wales fairly seriously.
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Sir Tim warned that plans to monitor individuals' use of the internet would result in Britain losing its reputation as an upholder of web freedom
The plans, by Theresa May, would force service providers to keep records of every phone call, email and website visit in Britain.
Sir Tim told the Times: "“In Britain, like in the US, there has been a series of Bills that would give government very strong powers to, for example, collect data. I am worried about that."
Is he also a grandstanding douchenozzle? Would it be Sir Grandstanding Douchenozzle?
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For those wanting it to be done for them just Google (gasp!) "https everywhere". Which will take you to the EFF (double gasp!) page where you can get the add-on that will automatically load the HTTPS version of sites for you. Available for either Firefox or Chrome.
Note: Gasps placed in comment for bob and a few ACs' sakes. Because we all know Google and the EFF are evil. /s
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Tea Party!
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Can someone explain to me what Moody means here? I'm assuming that Wales' argument is that Wikipedia over SSL. Which, by my understanding, means that whenever someone requests a page from Wikipedia, they first obtain Wikipedia's public key, encrypt their page request, and send it to Wikipedia. Only Wikipedia can decrypt this request, because only Wikipedia has the corresponding private key.
At what point does it matter what Google and Facebook do? They shouldn't be able to interfere in this process.
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If we allow governments to have their way with the internet it will become sesame street. Safe for kids and mildly entertaining but hardly useful for an adult.
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http://xkcd.com/576/
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On another note I am trying to figure out what the best VPN Service is at this point.Living in the USA and wanting to make myself more unseen to the World.
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:-)
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http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/
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