Home Sec: Let us have Snoop Charter or PEOPLE WILL DIE Home Secretary Theresa May today claimed in The Sun that her draft law to massively ramp up online surveillance of Brits will "save lives". The Tory minister managed to squeeze in a bit of last-minute lobbying ahead of the publication of a report by peers and MPs scrutinising her controversial communications data bill. In an …
The language is definitely Orwellian. A "child" in England & Wales is now defined as someone who is under 18. In some cases the definition is "looks under 18". They ignore the nuanced differences between paedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia.
An official member of a child protection group said a surprising thing on radio recently. He said that hebephilia and ephebophilia are natural human reactions to signs of sexual maturation - and are common in most people. As regards the laws - he said that our modern UK society has chosen to require adults to refrain from acting on these instincts.
It seems that the basis for these laws was originally economic fears as much as morals. A new generation every 14 years is economically unsustainable - unless it is a low technology culture with a high mortality rate and short life expectancy.
I understand the Home secretary has yet to detail how these enforcement agencies are using the laws and tools they already have in this fight.
If they can't hit a proverbial barn door with a proverbial shotgun, wouldn't it be better to invest in shooting lessons, rather than a howitzer?
Right! Up against the wall, Magister! Quoting a known terrorist like that! With them, treated like them, I say! Against the Crown, the whole lot of ye!
(considering that, from the Crown's perspective of the time, Dr. Franklin was indeed a traitor, and would doubtless be branded a TERRRRRRRROOOOORRRRIIIISTT<fnord!> in today's world, by quoting him you would be proving yourself to be a "Person Of Interest" yourself.)
And many of you wonder why we Americans are so mistrusting of Government....
It's not the police who are the problem. They do the best they can, in spite of dwindling public support, reduced numbers and resources, and the shackles of bleeding-heart liberalism and eurocourts which hold the rights of criminals above the rights of victims and their families. Law is not a deterrent to crime, police are not a deterrent, an elected "Police Commissioner" certainly isn't; it's fear of the consequences of getting caught that serves as a deterrent, and those consequences can only come from the Courts.
And the Courts are become "Another Last Chance Saloon", thanks to successive Brawndo-drinking Home Secretaries and the likes of Ken Clarke.
I'm willing to bet that if the legislation was in place already you would have seen the electronic communications of that heinous UKIP couple monitored by the Labour run council. After all, they are a massive threat to disadvantaged children by taking them in and trying to give them a life where they don't have to rely on the state. A future life time of not living off the state might even lead them to becoming Tory voters and Daily Mail readers which is reason enough to throw everything in the arsenal at them......
Are we sleepwalking into a situation where YOUR email could be read for party political purposes?
Where the hell do these ideas come from? Someone has to plant the idea in the first place.
Furthermore, I can never understand why people who know sweet FA about the subject at hand are allowed to have control over it. I just don't get how or why people get these cabinet jobs when their expertise in the area amounts to checking their online mail, is it jobs for the boys?
Theresa May is busy destroying the police service by cutting office numbers, and increasing paperwork. The police are stretched beyond breaking point and morale is at rock bottom and now she wants to give them something else to work at. With that resources?
I say fix regular policing first by giving back the 30% cut from the budget and then add another 10% on that, and then worry about passing new legislation increasing the work of the police!
"Let us do X please, we'll only use it for this wee thing"
is constantly their cry.
And time and time again, they are given power to do X, and after a short interval make use of it wherever they can possibly use it.
I'm always stunned at the way Britain in the past 20-30 years seems to have totally abandoned all principles of 'seperation from the state'. As a previous commentard pointed out - we used to uphold our principles of privacy and freedom of speech.
Yet now we are all happy to be videoed 24/7, monitored about where we go, what we buy and who we do it with, and are quite happy when people get locked up for having something written on a t-shirt.
Have we invented a new kind of democratic fascism ?
In a sense I hope it all blows up in their stupid faces and they get what they all deserve.
Unfortunately as I live here too, I'm sure I'll also be its recipient.
stu
This all sounds a lot like the arguments the USA used to pass the Patriot act and any number of other laws that violate peoples human rights.
Get the law passed whilst the sentiment is in its favour, once its on the books its almost impossible to get rid of and will end up spawning British Equivalents of the Dept of Homeland Security
What makes anyone think that similar laws in the UK wont be abused just as severely?
"This all sounds a lot like the arguments the USA used to pass the Patriot act and any number of other laws that violate peoples human rights."
It is.
Factoid about the PATRIOT ACT. 100s of paragraphs drafted and passed 6 weeks after 9/11/01/
And 5 of them were probably to think up the BS backronym that makes up its name.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s "The Right, the Left and the State", which is actually meant for the US, explaining HOBBESIANISM:
"Conservatives have become addicted to entertainment radio and television as the source of their news, and the underlying philosophy seems not to have any connection to history in any way. But because we are all intellectually indebted to some body of ideas, we have to ask: which one is it that informs modern-day conservatism?
What we have at work here is a crude form of Hobbesianism, the political philosophy hammered out by the seventeenth-century Englishman Thomas Hobbes. His book Leviathan was published in 1651 during the English Civil War in order to justify a tyrannical central government as the price of peace. The natural state of society, he said, was war of all against all. In this world, life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Conflict was the way of human engagement. Society is rife with it, and it cannot be otherwise. What is striking here is the context of this book. Conflict was indeed ubiquitous. But what was the conflict about? It was over who would control the state and how that state would operate. This was not a state of nature but a society under Leviathan’s control. It was precisely the Leviathan that bred that very conflict that Hobbes was addressing, and he proposed a cure that was essentially identical to the disease.
In fact, the result of the Civil War was the brutal and ghastly dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell, who ruled under democratic slogans. This was a foreshadowing of some of the worst political violence of the twentieth century. It was Nazism, Fascism, and Communism that transformed formerly peaceful societies
into violent communities in which life did indeed become “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Leviathan didn’t fix the problem; it bred it—and fastened it on society as a permanent condition."
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The people who say they’re for this bill need to look victims of serious crime, terrorism and child sex offences in the eye and tell them why they’re exploiting their suffering for invidious political ends.
But like the other guy said, I'll assume she isn't pure filth and is instead just incredibly stupid.
You ask: "The people who say they’re against this bill need to look victims of serious crime, terrorism and child sex offences in the eye and tell them why they’re not prepared to give the police the powers they need to protect the public."
Allow me to rephrase that in terms that might, possibly, help you understand why spending £1.8bn. on such a moronic abbreviation of traditional freedoms hard-won in not one, but two major wars is a terrible idea:
"The people who say they are for this bill need to look the many thousands of victims of road traffic accidents in the eye and explain why their lives are worth so much less than those this bill claims to be protecting."
There are literally thousands of men, women and children who are being killed or maimed on the UK's roads every single year. Why are their lives not worth such an investment? Why are such crimes as running children over considered less 'important' than saving the far smaller number of lives affected by sex offenders, paedophiles and terrorists*. To paraphrase a WW2 veteran's comment at the time of the 7/7 bombings in London: "F*ck you! We've been bombed by professionals!" This is the same country that stood up to the Germans during the Blitz of WW2. We're better than this.
There were 1901 deaths and 23122 serious injuries during 2011 on the UK's roads. [Source.] Why are their deaths and injuries tolerated more easily? Are all lives not equally valuable? Why should the severe maiming of a child by a drunk driver matter less than the injury of the same child at the hands of a paedophile, despite the former being far more likely?
£1.8bn. would save an awful lot more lives if invested in improving pedestrian and road safety—perhaps by setting up a dedicated "Road Patrol" arm of the police force? – than any amount pissed up the wall on dubious ICT-related projects that no British government in living memory has ever managed to implement successfully, on time, or even on budget. Or, frankly, with any understanding of its ramifications.
Madam, you are not qualified to even begin to specify an ICT project of this magnitude as you clearly have no clue how computers and the Internet actually work. All you will achieve by ramming through this Bill is pushing paedophile networks onto VPNs, which are impossible for any ISP to track and trace in any way: all the data is encrypted, including the addresses of websites, the contents (and headers) of emails, etc.
A far better Bill would be one that improved the numbers of police on the ground, increased the numbers working in intelligence, and also helped train as many police as possible in advanced IT skills that go beyond merely understanding how to switch on a PC and use Microsoft Word to write their umpteen reports. (Oh yes: streamline the procedures too if you could. Paperwork really shouldn't be taking up 30% of the policeman's time; it's woefully inefficient.)
The many incompetent civil servants you are charged with managing have become a laughingstock with regard to IT security and privacy thanks to their singular inability to stop leaving laptops and important data lying around on trains and in other public areas due to forgetfulness. (Never mind that such data should NEVER have been downloaded to such devices in the first bloody place.)
So, no, we in the IT community wouldn't trust any current MP or Minister to successfully write a Bill like this. You're doing it wrong. Seriously. Stop. Please. And tell your peers and colleagues to please stop embarrassing themselves – and our nation – by vomiting up so many dumb Bills like this. It'd also help if you stopped listening to clearly biased "consultants" who have no interest in giving the taxpayer value for money, but every interest in giving themselves lucrative slices of any IT pies.
Yours,
--
Me.
* (What the hell are "terrorists" even doing on this list? The UK has been fighting terrorists since first member of the IRA chucked a bomb into a pub. What makes Al Qaeda so bloody special that, suddenly, nearly a century of experience is worthless and needs to be 'helped' by yet more pointless and dangerous intrusions into our privacy and freedoms? Your Bill will do absolutely nothing to improve matters.)
1 - there are enough laws as it is to address the issues at hand - we really have no need for more laws, especially since they leave too much room for abuse.
2 - I would welcome a proposal for more transparency and independent oversight of the use of even the existing laws as they carry substantial potential for abuse. I can accept that some time delay may need to be implemented to prevent harm to ongoing investigations, but any uttering of the phrase "national security" or the use of the word "terrorist" as a motivator to skip due process should be buried under reviews to establish the veracity of such claims. If this is not possible I have but one question:
What exactly do you have to hide?
Part of me says they must be gagging for the opportunity to vote for greater state surveillance. But another part says they'll oppose it on the principled grounds of binning their actual policy for the sugar rush of trying to defeat the government (see recent EU vote).
Sounds like a typical "if your not with us you against us" type of speech.Which is very hypocritical to assume your actually 100% correct without at least a debate with those it would affect and I mean a debate not a "we listened to your concerns but we still think we are right" type of judgment.
"Sounds like a typical "if your not with us you against us" type of speech.Which is very hypocritical to assume your actually 100% correct without at least a debate with those it would affect and I mean a debate not a "we listened to your concerns but we still think we are right" type of judgment.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Most of these are politicians and the scum that feed them or feed off them. So, I'm guessing that Mrs May and her cronies will be exempted from being spied on by Big Brother? Otherwise we would all learn even more about just how much certain people make from their various interests.
When will the state stop trying to be my Mum? I left home 31 years ago f.f.s and even when I was living with my parents then my Mum didn't spy on me anywhere near as much as the state does now.
Big Brother will never work as way before the state ever manages to implement it, even by dribs & drabs, we will reconstitute the state first. Note to all politicians, we pay your wages, we elect you, you are a PUBLIC SERVANT.
This is to help protect the same system of 'democracy' and 'law and order' that gave us the MP's expenses scandal (ie. general house purchasing at taxpayers expense), endemic mobile phone hacking, police bribery and corruption, Media Mogul lies and manipulation of politics and innocent peoples lives for profit, massive levels of offshore tax avoidance and evasion over generations, unhindered manipulation of global interest rates and general banking corruption at a scale that has left governments across the globe broke and banks dysfunctional, un-voted for dismantling of the welfare state, NHS and comprehensive education system, and an enormous amount of unwanted and unneeded troops and weapons stationed abroad for a country of our size, with seemingly endless military interventions in other countries business.
Right. This is the system we need to protect. We understand. Really we do. I know it's hard to let go, but you know you have to. You'll feel so much better in the end.
... politicians appointed to such posts all have some secret little book they read.
I've split off the last line for emphasis...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Toews
On January 19, 2010, (Canadian) Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Toews would replace Peter Van Loan as the new Public Safety Minister. In February 2012, as Minister, Toews introduced the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act (also known as Bill C-30). If passed, the bill would grant police agencies expanded powers, mandate that internet service providers (ISPs) provide subscriber information without a warrant and compel providers to reveal information transmitted over their networks with a warrant.
When criticised about privacy concerns, Toews responded that people "can either stand with us or with the child pornographers."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/10/communications_data_bill_estimated_costs/
And what about that "regular review of the business case" that's supposed to be happening.
7/7 and its aftermath killed 57 people, 53 victims, 3 terrorists and 1 Argentinian electrician.
That's £175m a life.
There are calculations about the value of a human life. IIRC none is above $2.5m
I wrote to my MP, urging him to resist this bloody awful scheme and got back a lot of wishy-washy, non-substance about achieving a balance. It was, however, kind of me to let him have my views (so he said). What ever happened to the rather quaint idea that an MP is acting on behalf of his/her constituents and their wishes?
Bit of desperate moral blackmail there. Definitely a touch of straw (Jack?) clutching as well. Real out-and-out villains would probably be a bit more savvy and use encryption to hide their tracks effectively. This is all about more government surveillance and control, if ever I heard it. I expect they'll now make it an offence to use encryption. Someone's already been banged up for refusing to reveal an encryption key or password.
The problem will be that is not well trained spooks looking at the info they collect to try an identify terrorist but some plod whos had a 2 day training course on how to use some software that scraps all the data from one of these black boxes for a specified date period as a csv file that he downloads onto his laptops or usb drive which then gets left on the train on his way home.
Still we have to stop these pedos planting bombs in our kids while selling them cocaine
I think maybe you haven't been paying attention. 'Home Secretary' seems to be a short-lived role these days and no matter who fills it, no matter what party they're from, they still come up with the same bullshit.
If there was an election tomorrow and a total change of government, you could be sure that as soon as possible the new Home Sec would be pushing this stuff.
Yes, they all come out spouting the same control-freakery after a while. Their personality seems to change - strange that.
It's the hard-liners in the Civil Service that write the same policy again and again. The're also trying to sneak in the old ID card (again!).
Perhaps we need to put in a FOI request for a MRI scan of the current Home Secretary (suitably anonymised of course).
Phil.
"We would also see innocent people going free as a result of this, but apparently that isn't even a consideration."
Presumably you mean that the investigation would show no incriminating evidence for an innocent person?
You are forgetting the first rule of police investigations - "if there is no evidence against the suspect - then they are certainly guilty but also very clever". That would also be the flavour of the unsubstantiated suspicions subsequently entered as permanent "soft intelligence" on the police databases.
Hence the usual all-encompassing face-saving press statement: "insufficient evidence to bring a charge" - unless the person has powerful connections to elicit an apology.
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