Parliament Passes Snooper's Charter, Opens Up Citizens To Whole New Levels Of Domestic Surviellance
from the surfing-the-internet-with-The-Man dept
Despite loudly, and repeatedly, raised concerns from activists and members of Parliament, the UK's Snooper's Charter (a.k.a., Investigatory Powers bill [PDF]) has been passed by both parliamentary houses and only needs the formality of the royal signature to make it official.
These are the fantastic new things UK citizens have to look forward to with this expansion of government surveillance power.
The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer's top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand -- though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that that; and even disclose any new security features in products before they launch.
The list of new powers doesn't end with these. UK intelligence agencies are also given permission to perform "electronic interference" -- hack into computers and electronic devices belonging to UK citizens, not just individually, but in bulk. It also codifies secret (and illegal) surveillance of UK citizens that the country's intelligence agencies have engaged in for years without proper authority or oversight.
The government, of course, is trying to portray this as nothing more than a fine tuning of preexisting laws, specifically the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Glossed over in its perfunctory "nothing to see here" explanation is the fact that RIPA was also rushed into existence to codify other secret and illegal surveillance programs.
But it's no ordinary update of existing investigatory laws. Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group calls the Snooper's Charter "the most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy." Thanks to the new powers, UK intelligence agencies should be able to put together very extensive dossiers on pretty much anyone they feel like.
This is the collection of Internet Connection Records (ICRs)—a record of which services every citizen it is connecting to, logged in real-time. This unprecedented level of micro-surveillance is accompanied by a machine to make sense of the mass of data, called a ‘Filter’, but is in essence, a search engine. It can match these ICRs with your mobile phone location data and call histories. It can, we believe, be used to profile the social relationships and the sexual and political activities of every U.K. citizen.
That's how the UK government wants it, apparently: porn filtered out, but spy agencies let in.
Beyond the expansion of law enforcement and surveillance powers is the precedent set by the government in its continual codification of secret surveillance programs. Like RIPA before it, the new law sends a message to intelligence and law enforcement agencies that all misdeeds will ultimately be legislatively forgiven by their overseers. Agencies are implicitly invited to hide programs from overseers and explore new collection techniques without running it past anyone else in the government first. And years later, it will all be papered over by "updated laws."
This is also good news for other Five Eyes surveillance partners. The NSA and GCHQ's information sharing partnership means the US agency now has access to even more data on British citizens. Almost anything GCHQ can acquire, the NSA can access. And now GCHQ can access more than ever.
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Filed Under: data retention, gchq, investigatory powers bill, ipbill, metadata, parliament, snooper's charter, uk
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And that is what the politicians want, as then they can nip any opposition, or forming protest groups in the bud.
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Didn't somebody mention that *1984* was a cautionary tale and not an operations manual?
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Have a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail
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Nonsense, the intelligence agencies are loyal servants of the politicians, they would never turn around and use the absolutely gargantuan collection of personal information to protect and expand their power, that would be downright rude.
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Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group calls the Snooper's Charter "the most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy."
Democracy? Really?
That's the real issue here. There's no democracy.
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VPN
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Re: VPN
Assume if you VPN provider is in a five eyes country, you are not protected from those countries spy agencies, and also note due to gag orders, US providers may be compromised by their own government, and shortly you will also have to assume that UK providers are also compromised, and decryption of the headers eliminates what little protection the VPN offered.
Note that encrypted contents, while hiding exactly what pages you visit, or what your message contents are do not obscure your social networks and interest from the proposed spying.
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The other significant point of the snoopers charter, that renders all use of TOR, VPN's and strong encryption useless is the permission to hack into machines, and to do so in bulk. Protection against this requires a well protected offline machine, and use of some means of file transfer that is fully controllable, like using SD cards via an Arduino attached to the protected machine.
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So currently there is only a case by case basis of "we want your logs" followed "we don't keep logs".
On the day the UK Government goes after VPN services they will leave the UK and in more difficult times use a warrant canary.
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Satellite internet?
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Re: Satellite internet?
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ISP size?
Do the services provided actually have to hit an upper level ISP before they are required to be recorded or would a large school with thousands of kids have to track all internal only file transfers to and from students also?
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the overarching point...
as the author rightly points out, what else does this tell the spooks, other than they can do whatever the fuck they want, and the legislators will protect THEM, not US, their real (not) constituency...
upshot is, NO constitutional protection (on this side of the pond), and spooks run amuck with no effective oversight...
if that ain't the very definition of a police state, i dont know what is...
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Concern
I would be happy the day that they pull up my log to see zero connections beyond VPN servers. I am already sure this is about "metadata" but even that is a telling story. And for added measure I will also add a second encryption level should my VPN ever be compromised.
I have always liked the phrase "People should not be afraid of their governments when governments should be afraid of the people" but here now are afraid citizens as the UK Government exceeds "1984" and "A brave new world".
Even worse the Government under "terrorism" reasons make themselves more like an anti-social monster which even more people will grow to hate.
To end on a positive note at least this forms one more sound reason for the Internet as a whole to encrypt.
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You are right though that Governments are the best at hacking, viruses, root kits and more. It would still not be easy for them with a good firewall and a strict security policy.
I just wonder on days like this why the public don't find out where all this snooping hardware is and to give it a couple of sticks of dynamite. I am not sure how ISPs would feel about that one though.
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Which means that small closed groups of extremists, those most likely to use violence, can protect themselves, while ordinary citizens trying to organize a peaceful protest against some proposed government action are easily targeted. Often a protest can be headed off by targeting one or two leaders. Doesn't that tell you which the government fears the most?
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/3 1/poll-tax-riots-25-years-ago-political-awakening-carnage-trafalgar-square
Oh yes. Never rile a Brit. It's said that Margaret Thatcher shat briquettes over these.
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My other view is from my early hacking days when I compromised over one thousand computers simply due to bad security. I would not go as far to say the average user is a complete moron but they are very inexperienced.
Even at times I would myself strip out viruses and root kits on their computer and to patch the security holes even if that was to secure my own use of it.
My point here is that terrorists are no more computer savvy than the general population is. All evidence points to this fact meaning outside the core they use technology like everyone else. So their key plan is to not leak stuff on the Internet and to switch phones and SIMs as needed.
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He sported a massive boner over bringing back 12 year old chimney sweeps...
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Now to spread it to the rest of the world!
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We also know the Copyright Cartels have strongly supported such snooping just to get their foot in that door.
If we run that theme along further then now the Government has to power to quickly punish any online crime.
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As said once ISPs log this data then so can a Judge order them to hand it over. Suspension then becomes an open and shut case with the only doubt over who was using that computer.
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https?
Yes, they could look at packet destinations, but with much of the destinations being CDNs, there is going to be limited value in that information.
Only if they look for connections to one or more unusual destinations are they going to get any shred of information.
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If only the UK was staying in the EU
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This. Please can people stop saying that the EU would stop this, when we're still in the EU.
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Haha!
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Even if the UK leaves the EU, it'll still be subject to the ECHR.
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The Queen could stop this
It became very apparent in the debate about copyright a few years back, where the Queen was parroting the copyright maximalists, and you could see that she did not have any grasp on what was really going on.
The same will happen here; because the Queen lives in a very bad filter bubble.
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Wait no longer!
Let's not wait until they start article 50 procedures but pre-empt them.
Yes, it will be bad for the EU economy in the short term.
We will no longer have to carve out special advantages for them.
In the long run it will be better for the rest of the EU as a (much more unified) whole.
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1984, Animal Farm... Why not V for Vendetta at this point? At least that one had a snappily dressed anti-hero with a penchant for rhymes.
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