Cyber cop: Snoopers' Charter tag is offensive. Maybe we need a 'yes to snooping' tickbox? A Scotland Yard cyber cop argued today that adding a tick box to online services could help the police respond faster to online crime and deal with the challenge of end-to-end encryption. DCI Andrew Gould, deputy head of the Met's cyber crime and fraud team (FALCON), reiterated the well-worn line about a loss of capabilities …
What do breaches of firms websites and databases have to do with the average person in the street wanting to use encryption as much as possible? Bearing in mind I am not a specialist in this stuff, am I missing something here?
I would've thought that the incidents he's talking about would've been indicative of a need to tighten the law to require firms to have better security in place or face the possibility of extremely stiff fines and potentially jail sentences for those responsible. Instead of which he seems to be arguing that the victims of such breaches should STOP their current efforts to try to make their personal data transfers as secure as possible. Which would, of course, help the criminals.
Does not compute.
-Instead of which he seems to be arguing that the victims of such breaches should STOP their current efforts to try to make their personal data transfers as secure as possible. Which would, of course, help the criminals.
Does not compute.-
But if the Cyber*-criminals have to find honest work due to hardened security making honest work easier than criminal work, What's the use of Cyber*-Cops?
"...current debate on surveillance among UK netizens, businesses and policy wonks was "patronising".
And "think of the children" and "because terrorism" isn't patronising? Presumably 'not patronising' would be if we all listened attentively then meekly said "yes please". Which coincidently is how I read the head of MI5 this morning when he called for a "mature debate".
It must be frustrating not having a reasonable or believable argument to put forward.
"Gould argued that the volume of these attacks would be a reality check for the encryption debate and lead to a demand for better protection online."
I agree. The end goal should be making sure that all data stored is properly encrypted and secured and all devices are secured and hardened so they are able to resist malicious attacks. And by malicious attacks, I include both criminals and unwanted government intrusion. Want the information? Get evidence and a warrant. Don't fucking think it is acceptable to go fishing whenever you feel like it.
Snoopers charter is absolutely right. In this instance, government snooping without good cause or evidence.
He can go mount a pigs head on his man hood.
Also what's this, some kind of Social Justice plea?
"Later in the discussion, Gould said that he found the term Snoopers' Charter to be "offensive" and claimed that the current debate on surveillance among UK netizens, businesses and policy wonks was "patronising"."
You're hurting our feelings, you should stop it before we through you in the pig pen for bullying.
Well let's remember who started this.
A couple of years ago encryption and online privacy were not a huge concern to many people. They only became so when Snowden and others revealed the truly astounding levels of abuse that security and law enforcement organisations were secretly perpetrating.
If they are losing capability, it is only because they were so happy to piss on the rest of us.
Presumably he's thinking of an opt-in/out box so that the customer can switch off hard encryption and tracking so that when something is blagged from your account (or before - prevention beats detection) Knacker can instantly browse all your details and transactions to determine where the bad guys siphoned off your savings to.
These gangs move fast so messing about with warrants and oversight plays into their hands! Also, such attacks are rarely one off so once an instance is detected a wide trawl of all similar or associated data makes sense to prevent others falling victim.
It is all perfectly logical if you "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" ....brrr ...sorry .... if you sincerely believe that executive branches of government always have benign intent and if you have no grasp of market forces (which dictate that crooks will always be at least as smart as cops until being a cop pays better than being a crook).
The 'tick box' presumably to notify that you are perfectly happy to be spied on by the government.
(why they think this would help, terrorists etc. are not likely to happily check (or more likely leave unchecked) this box.)
It could go next to the 'I wish to receive information on other services' (spam) and the 'I wish to receive information from Company X and its partners' (massive amounts of spam).
None of this would really prevent inept companies from leaking customer data all over the internet, whether by hack, crack or twat.
@Graham Marsden
"Don't forget that ticking the box will, of course mean "I have something to hide" and are therefore deserving of extra surveillance..."
Don't forget that NOT ticking the box will, of course mean "I have something to hide" and are therefore deserving of extra surveillance...
Fixed that for you.
Now is it me, or does the 'prevalence of encryption' have f'all correlation (and causality) to large companies who could/should know better using bits of straw and cardboard to 'secure' their systems...?
Of course this announcement in no way whatsoever has been timed with the Head of MI5 telling us about the pending threats - please note I am NOT saying that these threats are not real...
/cynicism
How about the Government spends money on things that save most lives.
Some 160,000 die of cancer each year in the UK.
Around 1700 people are killed in road traffic accidents each year.
Some 500+ are murdered each year.
Some 250+ die in fires each year.
0.4 people die in terrorist attacks per year (2 since 2010)
"Same reason protests don't get reported anymore since the anti-banker riots."
Indeed, I have to watch a *Russian* news channel to find out what's happening in my own country. So often I see things on RT that don't even get a mention on the Beeb or Sky. It's an interesting way to keep an eye on the current spin direction*.
*Although I have no idea what it's charge would be
"adding a tick box to online services could help the police respond faster to online crime"
The only ways that they could deal with it faster is to have more trained bodies available; not going to happen any time soon.
"Gould said that he found the term Snoopers' Charter to be "offensive" and claimed that the current debate on surveillance among UK netizens, businesses and policy wonks was "patronising".
I find his comments to be both patronising and offensive. The police do not make the law; however, he and many of his colleagues seem to think that they do. They should be disabused of that notion.
"On developments in technology and the legislative framework, Gould argued: "We always get left behind."
This is actually a problem; if he focussed on that, he might get a bit more sympathy, not only from those of us within the industry, but from his own officers.
With respect to some quoted remarks:
a right to privacy drowns out the right to life
Without a right to privacy, life would generally devolve into just 'existence'. No privacy means no individuality. So what's the point?
"he found the term Snoopers' Charter to be "offensive""
The legislation refered to is far more offensive than the term 'Snoopers' Charter. The term is disrespectful, it is true, but what is there to be respectful of in legislation that undermines our freedom to just be?
"Gould argued that the volume of these attacks would be a reality check for the encryption debate"
Indeed. the reality is that the massive breaches are due to piss-poor implementation of systems. That has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not communications between people are encrypted.
--
I have a lot of respect for the police and what they have to do, but I have none for people who use scare tactics to push beyond the bounds of what is right and wholesome in a civilised society.
"Snooper's Charter" is well towards the warm and fluffy end of the spectrum of possible names. I would have gone with "Charter for entitled power-crazed scumpouches to illegally plunder anybody's private data that they can find and get away with it" myself; but it doesn't roll off the tongue as well. I'm sure I could try for the offensive end of the spectrum, too.
And let's face it; the police's loss of capabilities is ALSO the miscreant's loss of capability; and the large breaches are not due to encryption; it was because there wasn't enough of it.
EDIT: Oh yeah - the large upswing in hacks is exactly what he is supposed to be preventing, isn't it? So he's failing at his job and trying to blame everybody else for it; the majority of whom are victims of his first-strike blanket surveillance. The ironic thing is, that if they hadn't been such wankers, they would be getting help now. As things are, they can go piss up a rope.
the police's loss of capabilities is ALSO the miscreant's loss of capability
Is it really a loss though, when you consider how much of our lives are conducted online compared to the past? Perhaps any 'loss' is little more than a re-adjustment towards the sorts of levels they used to have that were somewhere closer to sanity?
The "capability" he is moaning about is the loss of his ability to illegally nick our shit without a warrant...I have searched my heart and am unable to discern the merest hint of a smidgeon of a trace of a soupçon of sympathy for the fucker.
And while I'm ranting frothily on the subject, I'd like to point out that if the authorities had not committed the triple-whammy of being fucking useless at catching cyber-criminals and simultaneously throwing down the global gauntlet by nicking every domestic and foreign byte within reach and THEN getting caught at it; we might not all now be in the situation we're in. Us nominal friendlies (until recently) get fucked over both by our side then by everybody else in retaliation.
Then he comes on bleating for sympathy and -this bit pegged the needle on my irony meter- found the term "snooper" to be offensive. The twat couldn't see reality with the Hubble telescope to help him.
He would obviously be surprised to know that it is intended to be offensive in an effort to shame him (and others) into backing off from this guilty until proven innocent culture that they introduced over the last decade.
He also has failed to notice that 1984 was intended to be a warning not an implementation guide.
that slow my computer down so much (even though it has 48GB of RAM; wishful thinking on my part) as GCHQ, NSA, MI5, FSB, anti-virus, anti-malware and ISP programs poke around the 'puter (all at the same time, in typical fashion), that I can't get it to boot... One way of stopping us, I suppose.
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