ISPs: UK.gov should pay full costs of Snooper's Charter hardware The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA) today told a Parliamentary committee that the government should bear the full cost of extra infrastructure needed to support the snooping databases authorised by the Investigatory Powers Bill. The lobby group's response to the joint committee's call for evidence also claimed …
Even raising taxes aside, announcing what's essentially a government IT project which is anticipated to have a £2 billion price tag from the beginning is going to cause a significant amount of noise in the media, especially with how badly past ones have gone and how bad the overspend tends to be (what's the chances this ends up closer to £20 billion?)
I'm not so sure about that.
If every ISP put a line item on your bill "Expenses related to government spying" and all announced a 10% increase in monthly contract price the day the legislation takes effect, that would probably be more obvious to the population than silently paying for it out of our taxes, which are already pretty incomprehensible.
If every ISP put a line item in your bill "Expenses related to government spying" - nobody would notice. For statistical values of "nobody", at least.
Trust me on this, I've produced a lot of utility bills. And I'm here to tell you, the great majority of customers only ever look at the "how much you owe us" bit, and don't even realise there is a breakdown of charges on page 2.
"Costs" are a terrible way to oppose bad legislation - the signal is far too weak and too diffused. Talking about the impact on business is a little better. Talking about the impact on jobs would be better still.
Regrettably (because the line item does appeal) I have to agree. The only thing it might do however is get the Daily Mail to kick up a stink - because occasionally they do have someone who is paid to look at bills that have the key words government/NHS/welfare in the bottom line and get lively.
I might just about tolerate a tax, but only if it is for the £250M. The politicians that vote for this useless rubbish should be made jointly and separately liable for the shortfall, and for damages and compensation to every terrorist's victim when an explosion was not prevented by excessive spying.
Is for the government to take this in house as a Major Project, that way in 3 years time it'll have come to the attention of the NAO, who'll say it was poorly planned, poorly costed, lacked leadership and capability within senior management and will never deliver on budget or expected results.
"poorly planned, poorly costed, lacked leadership and capability within senior management and will never deliver on budget or expected results"
I hope someone has shown them how to set up macros, otherwise their ctrl, C & V keys must be knackered (or they are spending an awful lot of time rre-typing the same thing)!
... at which point, the spec will be rewritten, a new project manager appointed, and another ten billion thrown into it. And that will leave us... how much better off, exactly?
I guess the upside is that it'll never work. But it'll have all the downsides of "working" anyway.
And what makes you think that we will be able to elect anyone if the screening is truly successful?
Why would that be a bad thing? Civil servants would have to run the show. And whilst they are clearly inept, they would have no mandate for anything new and are also incapable of innovation, so at least we'd only be saddled with continuing the current crop of bad ideas and ill advised projects.
unless of course you assume - given the apparent continuity between this and the Labour snoopers charter - that is those same civil servants in Whitehall or more likely Cheltenham driving this.
Ironic since GCHQ already has most of this anyway - so its probably just an attempt to get the storage costs off their books and onto the ISP's.
@ Gordon 10 - unless of course you assume - given the apparent continuity between this and the Labour snoopers charter - that is those same civil servants in Whitehall or more likely Cheltenham driving this.
Ironic since GCHQ already has most of this anyway - so its probably just an attempt to get the storage costs off their books and onto the ISP's.
----
Well...firstly the previous Labour gov was Blairite. This kind of thing was/is literally right up their ally, given the enjoyment they seemed to have with their fear mongering. So for there to have been a continuation was quite natural as the Tories also enjoy rule through fear. These things will have the hand of the civil service in the game of course. However the lead is always from the politicians.
Having said all that I do think you are spot on with your last sentence
"The previous Labour gov was Blairite" - true enough, but the current non-Blairite Labour opposition is pretty squarely behind Ms May on this.
Labour - all flavours - are instinctively every bit as authoritarian as the Tories. The SNP last year talked a big game about defeating the charter (out of sheer anti-Tory spite as far as I can make out, there's not a principle among the lot of 'em) - but that would require Labour's co-operation as well as Tory defections, so really they're just blowing smoke.
> Labour - all flavours - are instinctively every bit as authoritarian as the Tories
Much more so, historically. It is easy to forget - given the ranting that ensues about anything the current government does - that in the grand scheme of things they are essentially centrist (as were Labour before Corbin started pushing them leftwards).
Where do think this is coming from?
Something like 8 UK sock puppets Home Secretaries have pushed for this since at least the time of Blair (which is probably about the time MI5 actually set up the system this law is designed to legitimize)
Most of those Home Secretaries would not know a database from a hole in the ground.
This comes from a collection of vermin unit within the Home Office and various current and former heads of GCHQ, MI5 & MI6
It sounds like you're suggesting that the FLA's/TLA's control the Home Secretary. Much like they control the Congress, etc. here in the States, perhaps?
Most of the elected officials have no idea of what they speak when it comes to anything internet, IT, or technology (any tech including toasters) matters.
@ Voland's right hand
Despite my loathing of politicians I do think that there are some who are not batshit insane. My fear is that we eventually end up having a political milieu like that in the US where the insanity is quite evident.
This kind of thing (topic) tends to engender, or perhaps empower the insanity.
Are all UK home secretaries unpleasant people before they take up the role, or do they suddenly become nasty on assuming office? If the latter, what's the mechanism? Perhaps something like Terry Pratchet's proposed Kingon/Queon effects the transfer from the old to the new incumbent. If it were to travel faster than light, that would be an added bonus, as home secretaries seem to be right behind breaking the laws of physics (while imposing many others).
@DetectiveEmil (curse the Reg poor comment system)
Perhaps something like Terry Pratchet's proposed Kingon/Queon effects the transfer from the old to the new incumbent. If it were to travel faster than light, that would be an added bonus, as home secretaries seem to be right behind breaking the laws of physics (while imposing many others).
I think that had the advantage that you had to keep both ends moving between dead and alive states - can't remember exactly, but I am sure that Vetinari's kittens might have been plausibly employed as part of the mechanism if Pterry had been given the time to elaborate.
I think the chap you should be looking at is Charles Farr Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Head of the Joint Intelligence Organisation at the Cabinet Office
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Farr
Shortly after a new Home Secretary is put in office he goes to visit them, very shortly after that they come round to the exact same viewpoint of the previous incumbent, regardless of their original stated position or party allegiance. So either Charlie tell them horror stories until they crumble, or Charlie being a spy, shows them all the dirt he has on them and makes them toe the line, or they areall spontaneously converted to the church of spying on the law abiding in a moment of epiphany & Charlie has nothing to do with it. I couldn't begin to say and I'm certainly not making any accusation, perhaps it's all coincidence.
However Mr Farr is responsible for the Prevent anti radicalisation program, both Labour & the Conservatives surveillance legislation, he also was responsible for siting missiles on London rooftops during the olympics.
I first heard of him when labour attempted to introduce ID cards & have watched with horrified fascination ever since, he always seems to be hovering in the shadows, he's accountable to no one and seems to always get his way unless there is concerted and determined opposition from the public, yet his name never seems to appear in the media. My money is on him being the puppet master.
"Charlie being a spy, shows them all the dirt he has on them and makes them toe the line"
I don't think he'd even need to show them it, just say he has access to it and thus can destroy their political career at a stroke. As could the parliamentary Whips, for similar reasons.
The idea that the Whips didn't know about the extra-parliamentary activities of some MPs who have recently been "investigated" by police is utterly implausible. But the purpose of the inquiry is not to find out what happened, it is to make it look as though Something Is Being Done.
What a team.
"I think the chap you should be looking at is Charles Farr Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Head of the Joint Intelligence Organisation at the Cabinet Office"
He'll definitely be in this "coalition of the willing" (as Shrub liked to call such undertakings).
But he won't be alone.
It comes down to this.
Forget the "right" and "left" tags. That's BS where this is concerned.
There are simply those who believe in the democratic process and those who don't. These are the authoritarians.
So far the authoritarians seem to have built better cross party support for this. The appeal is of course "It won't affect you, you're in power."
The fools who listen to this never seem to realize a)They don't control the system. They have no real power over it and b)When they leave office, they have even less pull than they think they have.
These systems are like the results at the end of "War Games."
The only winning move (for privacy and freedom) is to not build them in the first place.
"Given the amount of false positives such a snooping program would provide, I can see the cost of investigating each one costing the taxpayer much more than that."
As it turns out the investigation bit isn't really necessary and it's sometimes bungled/subverted anyway. These day (having passed a bunch of loosely written laws over the past decade) King Hameron and Queen Theresa can simply lock you up for an fixed period of time without trial, and that detention can be extended for as long as a Judge can be whipped into signing their name on a bit of paper.
If that's too much paperwork there's always the option of sending the pleb off to another country for a lifetime of incarceration, neglect and torture. I am not even speculating, that is exactly what has been going on before the legislation to make it "kosher" was passed in the first place. Anyone who is proven innocent will have to accept it their lives were destroyed by mistake and continue their lives without so much as an apology from the folks who conspired to lock them up in the first place...
1. Start a virtual ISP company
2. Start an ISP-customer-monitoring-cosultancy company
3. Sign up to the virtual ISP company
4. Virtual ISP co gets told by gov.uk to snoop
5. V-ISP contracts consultancy to provide snooping
6. V-ISP bills gov.uk for extremely high-cost^H^H^H^Hperformance snooping
7. profit
So what they're proposing is vexatious fishing. They have no reason to suspect the people being spied on, they want blanket surveillance of everyone. Theresa May rejected requests for her web history calling it 'vexatious fishing' hypocrite!
It strips away the judicial control. A judge no longer issues each warrant and determines if the person is suspect enough to be spied on. Because they've done nothing to justify loss of their privacy right, and Cameron knows this.
It requires ISP backdoor encryption, which will be used by foreign powers against us. A multinational like Microsoft cannot resists Chinese demands for access to backdoors you require it to put in. All our trade commerical political secrets exposed.
To implement it, the ISPs want a $2 billion bribe. Lets not kid ourselves that is the cost, that is their 30 pieces of silver.
There's zero protection for journalists, campaigners, MPs, lawyers, judges, tv and newpaper editors, wanna-be politicians, or anyone with a view that the government disagrees with. We wouldn't know about all the illegal stuff you were doing without Snowden and the Guardian, and you want to spy on newspapers without a warrant? No.
Surveillance is kicked off by a politician in power against *.* with zero accountability and no means to check they comply.
This has been rejected 3 times by Parliament ALREADY, and the reason its come up again is because GCHQ has been doing it in secret and lobbying in secret to legalize it.
GCHQ have no business doing propaganda or lobbying against UK, using secret info only they have, against MPs who don't know the same secrets. They would be the biggest political party that isn't elected.
We found out that prosecutors have had access to this surveillance database, but yet that fact hasn't been revealed to judges in their cases. (I don't believe it was only ever done for innocent people, that's just cover for purjury, parallel construction and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice).
NSA no doubt had access to this database, and UK Parliament was lied to to conceal it. Which countries *NATIONAL* security do you lot represent?? We get it, you were elected under a system where Obama gets a report on UK politicians secrets, and thus his CIA and diplomats have had undue influence. So now we have a surveillance puppet government acting against its own people. No different than Eric Honnickers STASI was used against the East Germans to support the KGB.
You may think that this is far-fetched but bear with me.
1. Get everybody's data
2. The U.K. either gets invaded or capitulates to a superior force or a mad General stages a coup.
3. Stage 2 might have already happened. (search for "Blair Poodle")
4. Imagine if the Stasi or Gestapo had that sort of power.
5. Everybody's fucked.
So where is the big red button that will delete all of this data in an emergency?
(think: big nuke under GCHQ)
In Orwell's 1984, we were presented with an established scenario; and there were only minor details on how the political situation he wrote about had actually developed.
What we have been seeing with this and all the other similar schemes, is possibly the prequel to that novel.
Except.
It's a government mandated distributed database with remote access (well it's distributed, how could not have remote access).
Abuse is guaranteed.
BTW that phrase "Communications Data Request Filter" just wreaks of some civil servant weasel told "We can't call it a database, we can't call it a database"
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