Video: UK Home Secretary delays 1984 by a few years
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted April 27th 2009 10:06PM
posted April 27th 2009 10:06PM
The UK Home Secretary (whatever that is) has put the kibosh on plans for a giant government database that would track all of the country's emails, phone calls and internet activity. But not so fast, civil libertarians! According to the Telegraph, the onus will merely shift to the private sector -- with telecoms and Internet providers being required to retain the data, at a cost of around £2 billion (over $2.9 billion US). According to the plan, every Internet user will be given a unique ID code that the government can use to access the data in the event of a threat -- whether terrorist, criminal, or extraterrestrial. It just goes to show you how lucky Britons are to have a government that cares so much about their well being. Video after the break. 
Move to the Republic of Montanta!
Don't do it! It's a trick!
Don't think! We'll do it for you
-Mummy Government
There goes your privacy =P
Monitored everywhere.
Does this mean you'll be safer?
Who knows.
Nowadays , any info can leak easily.
I'm all for this. Security over privacy I say.
Wacko
Illusion of security != security
It is security versus freedom. One trades off the other in most things.
"People who give up their liberty for freedom deserve neither"
I think you mean "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
"To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men."
These laws that our country pass under the 'terrorism' threat are robbing us of our liberties as human beings. We are losing the right to protest, which is one of the founding elements of democracy. You can be arrested for peacefully protesting and under new laws have all of your personal belongings and those of anyone in the house taken, and seemingly never returned, I speak from experience. It is abhorrent that we live in a country that abuses it citezens right to question its government, this is a democracy why does it feel more and more like communism.
"To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men."
True, but if they are taking these measures to combat terrorism (or pedos), who is going to stand up and say they shouldn't?
I think this is apropos:
“…it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. … All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” - Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo.
If I were a rich man, I'd pay to take out a full page advert in every major newspaper, containing nothing but that Goering quote...
@Dylon the right wing version is called fascism not communism
But yeah the west lost another war, the one of them and freedom and liberty vs the muslim extremist and fascism.
And obama might not push it actively as much as bush and cronies, but he's not the resistance you'd hope for really, because he, like the majority of the population, is infused with a certain thinking as basis and it colors his actions, also he seems a bit too pliable and an easy target for certain political forces.
Welcome to the world of technology. Just like you track you...You can evade them.
Will hackers(white hat) Be the heroes of the Next revolution?
time will tell.......
Neo - If you're reading this, this is not a dream. We need you.
During WW2 if you didn't like living in Germany, you knew that somewhere out there, there was a country that was truely free ;and you could, if you wanted, leave the prying eyes of the dictatorship.
There no longer exists such a country. There are no borders unreachable, no lives unwatchable. The only solution then, comes not from without, but from within.
Spread the word.
Be careful - with your talk of "freedom" and "liberty," you'll get labeled a terrorist by the DHS and slammed by MSNBC and CNN.
Only right-wing extremists spout the tenets and values of freedom and liberty! Somebody call J-No!
On second thought, don't bother. I'm sure she's already compiling a list on us all.
...said the kettle to the pot.
Well, ok, your government isn't planning to spy on all of you anymore (or did they follow up with their plan?) The only thing you have to fear now is being detained without a court order for an indefinite amount of time and tortured. Yeah, I guess that's better than The Man knowing what particular sub-genre of porn I like.
And why the hell is my avatar gone again, Endgadget?
The avatar thing is crap. Sometimes my posts appear with avatars I've change multiple times since using.
I wish they would revamp the comment system, it's in dire need of an update.
Typical that my comment comes with an old avatar, just like I said...
fucking unnerving. i hope im dead before it all gets too intense.
:o
Clearly, our MPs have never realised that you can walk into a cybercafe (pay cash) or steal wi-fi and register a new Gmail account in 5 minutes. Similarly, you can walk into a phone store, buy a cheap £20 phone + Pay as you go SIM, pay in cash again, and they'll have zero trace of who it was.
Yeah, we're gonna stop terror....not with increased military spending in Afghanistan, but with a big database!
With measures like these, such luxuries would be targeted next. Anonymity and privacy will be taken away all in the name of security. Personally, I'd first and foremost like to be secure from my own government before letting them secure me from an outside threat. Protecting our way of life from being destroyed by terrorists is admirable, but not at the expense of destroying our way of life by our own government. I would imagine most in the UK feel the same way. I certainly hope as much.
"Similarly, you can walk into a phone store, buy a cheap £20 phone + Pay as you go SIM, pay in cash again, and they'll have zero trace of who it was."
I think I'm right in saying that Spain has outlawed this practice. Now you have to be able to provide identity before you buy any mobile phone. This was supposedly in response to the train bombing a few years ago, where the bombs were detonated by phone.
I wouldn't be surprised if the UK follows. If it thinks that the public would protest at such measures, the government just needs to get MI5 to bomb something, and say it was Al Qaeda using cell-phones.
it also says "unique ID code" so perhaps you'll have to log onto the internet using your unique ID everytime.. then again that would be stupid wouldnt it?
@smaa
That's because it is stupid. I remember reading some story book about the internet in the future, and how everyone had to log on using an arm-implanted chip. Some psycho guy in a MMORPG started causing havoc with other players, and killed a few. Why did it take so long to trace him? He simply had two chips implanted in his arm to switch identities.
The unique code can simply be tied to the IP given to you by the ISP on a level you never see, each time you get a new IP the ISP just has to add the user's unique ID to the db, that way it's easier to find complete histories even when ISP's use dynamic IP's. by simply using the userID.
IT's all very basic but shows unfortunately that the lawmakers are getting too tech-savvy to give the internet much of a future.
You can out law anonymous paygo phones, ban cash payment in cyber cafés and put through a law to secure all WiFi APs..
The thing is: terrorists are not above killing some old granny and stealing her phones/computer/internet ID number.
The only people this will effect are law abiding citezens, or help MA/RIAA types track terrorists... I mean file sharers.
"The thing is: terrorists are not above killing some old granny and stealing her phones/computer/internet ID number."
Watch much TV do you? Or should I say movies.
@r3loaded
Incidentally, 'walk in a store' eh, now only to find one in britain that doesn't have 20 cameras on the street (with facerecognition) that can track your walk straight to your house, and there are cameras inside stores most often (and I hope you left your RFID'ed ID and RFID'ed creditcard and such at home too).
But you are smart to walk, because driving without being tracked would add a challenge to the anonymity attempt that is just too much.
As for gmal, we all know google 'complies with local law' and hands over your data in a sec, and when you signed up you were logged doing so in this scheme.
But say you got that sim card and a phone without registered phone-ID, what then? You'll still have to use the cell network and be logged doing so, and be flagged as not known meaning they will be on everything you say like mad.
And let's face it, most people, including criminals and nefarious characters, aren't that into keeping on top of these things in real life, and willing to go through the lengths and keep it up.
There goes the last bit of your freedom, USA citizens.
UK citizens... sorry.
"UK Home Secretary delays 1984 by a few years".
Reading; you're doing it wrong.
LOL you got in a second before my pedantry.
:-)
Considering that GCHQ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCHQ) in the UK is already part of ECHELON (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON), I find this statement to be a contradiction in terms.
All data pulled into GCHQ is analysed and anything interesting passed to our "cousins over the water" for further analysis should that be warranted.
At the end of the day, the only thing that this could mean is the the UK Government has decided to save money by outsourcing the data storage element to the private sector. All you have to look forward to now is someone leaving their laptop on a train (you just know it will not be encrypted!), or the loss of backup tapes sent by normal post (couriers were too expensive for the lowest winning bidder of the Government data storage contract).
Makes me kinda glad that I left over 12 years ago.
ECHELON and the like is international communication snooping, this stuff adds the in-country data of nations that participate.
Next it's placing mikes on streets so the human to human stuff is covered. And I'm sure some proud students are already designing systems to automatically scan and transcribe it all, with student volunteers testing it, sigh.
But let's face it, people carry cellphones with GPS functionality they demand to be included everywhere, and RFID's and swipe cards and and and, seems they WANT to be tracked and monitored at all times
Maybe because for some reason people STILL think politicians (and their assistants) are somehow supernatural and special and better and more trustworthy and you should surrender to them, even though the freaking news is showing their real nature every hour of the day with new examples of the reality of it for centuries already.
this is ridiculous.. i dont know if anyone watched question time last week (from the UK), but vince cables was talking about when he was on a protest which involved throwing "paper darts", and a police officer read out part of the anti-terrorism act. If they can misuse these laws so easily, whats to stop themdigging up your internet usage at will..
I'm not worried about the government watching me, I'm worried about it being illegal to encrypt transmitted data so that they can't see it.
Ever since they suddenly stopped bitching about PGP I'm assuming they cracked the common encryption methods and can read along over there at the NSA/CIA.
I wonder if the Home Secretary went back on this idea, after it recently immerged about her husband's porn viewing habits - perhaps she was slightly concerned about what might be unearthered a little too close to home!
"The UK Home Secretary (whatever that is)"
C'mon, guys, this crazy thing called the 'intarwebs' or something lets you look this stuff up. Home Secretary is a high-ranking cabinet position in the British government with responsibility for crime and punishment and domestic security. There's no direct analogue in the American system, think a combination of Secretary of Homeland Security and Justice Secretary, but with rather more oomph.