UK Parliament Ignores Concerns; Moves Snooper's Charter Forward
from the sad dept
This isn't necessarily a huge surprise, but the UK's House of Commons overwhelmingly voted in support of the Snooper's Charter, officially known as the Investigatory Powers Bill. As we've discussed, this is a dangerous bill that will give the UK government significantly more surveillance powers (or, in many cases, will "authorize" things that the UK government has already been doing on dubious legal authority), with little to no real oversight. And despite people being upset about it, it still was approved by a vote of 444 to 69. And, yes, the current version of the bill still asks for backdoors to encryption, but leaves a vague exemption if a company claims that it would not be feasible or would be too expensive. That's better than the alternative, but it's still a step in the wrong direction. The bill still needs to be considered by the House of Lords, but it's disappointing that the House of Commons seemed so willing to cave to demands for more surveillance powers.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: house of commons, investigatory powers bill, ip bill, snooper's charter, surveillance, uk
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See this?
They could reign in the spy agencies but deliberately choose not to, and in fact bend over backwards to give those same agencies more and more power, so any whining about how they were treated the same as everyone else is good for a hearty laugh at their expense, but no sympathy at all.
And, yes, the current version of the bill still asks for backdoors to encryption, but leaves a vague exemption if a company claims that it would not be feasible or would be too expensive. That's better than the alternative, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
'Better' only in the 'One step forward two steps back' sense, because all it does is make it seem optional for companies to cripple their own security based upon whether or not they can afford it, but take a wild guess who's likely to decide what is and is not 'feasible'? If you said 'The very same people demanding crippled security' then congrats, you are almost certainly right and should be able to easily see the conflict of interest.
What you'll get instead is every large company will be forced to choose between either no longer offering service in the UK(with the immediate cost/losses that will bring) or intentionally crippling their own security(which will lead to even more long-term costs/losses), with only the smallest local companies allowed to argue that they can't afford it, and even then you can be sure that there will be heavy pressure applied in an attempt to force them to cave.
It's not 'better', it's replacing an obvious, immediate problem with a slightly more hidden problem that is if anything worse because it allows them to spin it so that the companies are being unreasonable for refusing('Company X cares more about their profits than preventing crime by allowing us to do all we can to stop criminals/terrorists/communists'), rather than the government for making the demands in the first place.
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'Feudalism 2.0' as it were, the idea that there are rulers and there are the ruled, that one group makes the laws but doesn't have to follow them while the other group is simply expected to obey the laws put forth by their betters, ideally as quietly as possible so as not to disturb those that of course know best.
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We have hired the best programmers who made this uncrackable encryption but they have assured me that they are too dumb to develop a backdoor. Sorry not sorry.
Would this be sufficient enough for the vague exception?
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The commons vote hasn't even been news over here.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 9th, 2016 @ 3:24am
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Sarcasm, I assume, right?
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Haystacks, Needles, Needles, Needles, Cash and Mind Games
Now the purses, searches and head swelling is surely being directed at the House of Lords members.
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Re: Haystacks, Needles, Needles, Needles, Cash and Mind Games
Both the Tories and Labour voted for this - hence the huge majority.
Just about everyone else (ie every MP who has any pretence of independent thought) voted against.
WS Gilbert had it right:
When in that House M. P.’s divide,
If they’ve a brain and cerebellum, too,
They’ve got to leave that brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell ’em to.
See http://www.bartleby.com/380/poem/596.html
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Re: Re: Haystacks, Needles, Needles, Needles, Cash and Mind Games
This is why the Labour party helped out in such a big way. There's also the problem of deliberate ignorance; they take pride in knowing nothing and won't listen to anything outside of their echo chamber. I saw one security expert giving testimony to Parliament get absolutely hammered in a disgraceful display of arrogance by members of both parties.
There's also a conflict of interest that's not getting a lot of press. I've actually argued with fellow Pirates over this who think it's a government-only problem: one of the former high officials of GCHQ runs his own security company now and is "advising" HM Government over security matters. As I have already argued elsewhere, this is surveillance for fun and profit, they're not interested in protecting us from terrorism.
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Only thing is, neither are very good at prevention and spotting the would be terrorist before the fact. But after the fact, they are hell on wheels once they know where to look. A sure sign that their haystack is so big that they can't actually do what they claim they want to do, which is find the terrorist before.
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A lot easier to strip someone of their rights if you do right after a tragedy instead of before 1 happens. Fear will make the common man give up everything for that illusion of safety that slave collar he willingly puts around his neck gives him.
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The United Kingdom sucks.
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Germany, next months
Rumor has it that it will be passed during the upcoming football(soccer) European Championship. Thought it would be nice if an international audience would know about it because Germany does still inquire about what the NSA did and how they spied on German citizens. Kind of funny they want to do the same now in my opinion.
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