100k+ petition: MPs must consider debating Snoopers' Charter again A petition to Parliament requesting the repeal of the Investigatory Powers Act has received the 100,000 signatures required to make Parliament “consider” debating the issue. Although the Investigatory Powers Act doesn't actually exist at the moment — it remains a Bill of Parliament which will not become an Act until it …
The pigs you hear are happily snorring in the pigsty. Any ideas of them being persuaded to trot out onto the runway, warm up the engines and take off are subject to getting a weather forecast of thundersnow in hell. Which is not in most recent metoffice communique.
So forget it. Josephina Vissarionovich always gets what she wants. The Human Rights Act and the other obstacles on her way to become the High Chancellor are next.
they been trying for 10 years and we may not leave the EU anytime soon
There's no connection between the 1998 Human Rights Act and EU membership.
The UK was one of the founding parties to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) of 1951, which predates even the EEC. The Human Rights Act is a purely domestic piece of legislation which requires UK courts to make judgements in a way that is compatible with the ECHR. It can be repealed or replaced by any UK government that chooses, with no impact whatsoever on EU membership.
No explicit connection, however in 2007 the EU said:
"Any Member State deciding to withdraw from the Convention and therefore no longer bound to comply with it or to respect its enforcement procedures could, in certain circumstances, raise concern as regards the effective protection of fundamental rights by its authorities. Such a situation, which the Commission hopes will remain purely hypothetical, would need to be examined under Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on European Union."
Respect for human rights is a precondition of membership, respecting the EHCR is the most convenient way to demonstrate it. So the UK would be on unstable ground re EU membership if it rejected the EHCR, especially in the light of the snoopers charter and general right wing disrespect for human rights currently taking hold.
But you're leaving anyway lead by extreme right wingers so human rights aren't likely to play a big part in the future of England or their holiday homes in Wales.
Any Member State deciding to withdraw from the Convention and
Please read what was posted.
The UK is a signatory to the ECHR since 1951, and this has nothing to do with the Human Rights Act of 1998.
That Act requires UK courts to make judgements that are compatible with the ECHR. Repealing it would leave the UK in exactly the same position as it was before 1998, still a party to the ECHR, and still bound by it.
Repealing the Act, and withdrawing from the ECHR, are two separate things, the first does not imply the second.
The Human Rights Act is a purely domestic piece of legislation which requires UK courts to make judgements in a way that is compatible with the ECHR. It can be repealed or replaced by any UK government that chooses, with no impact whatsoever on EU membership.
The UK is bound by human rights rulings made by the ECJ until it leaves the EU. It would still be bound by rulings made by the ECourtHR even if it left the EU.
If the Human Rights Act were repealed it would mean there's a pretty big hurdle as courts could make judgements in a way that is not compatible with the EConventionHR and someone would need to take it all the way up to the ECourtHR. Whackypedia says the average cost would be 30 grand and the average time 5 years. So beware of any government or minister which says or have said they want to repeal that act.
Oh bugger, that's the PM.
AIUI this would have an impact on the Good Friday Agreement.
Possibly. The agreement required that the government "agreed to incorporate into Northern Ireland law of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), with direct access to the courts, and remedies for breach of the convention, including powers for the courts to overrule [Northern Ireland] assembly legislation on grounds of inconsistency." so any repeal of the HR Act, and replacement with some other legislation like a new Bill of Rights would need to take that into account.
Unfortunately some people try to equate "'repeal of the HR Act"with "withdrawal from the ECHR", they are distinct issues.
Prior to the HR Act, British courts were required to make judgememts based on British law, as determined by Westminster. If someone felt that any judgement contravened their rights under the ECHR (which the UK is signatory to) they could take the government to the European Court of Justice and complain that the law was incompatible with the ECHR. The resulting discussions would happen at governmental levels, and if the complaint was upheld the UK would be expected to change the law.
What the HR Act did was to short-circuit this, and require UK courts to directly rule according to the ECHR, effectively placing the ECHR above UK national law. This is why some peope are concerned about it, it places UK courts + European law above UK law as determiend by Parliament. Simply repealing the Act will return to the situation pre-1998, it won't change the UK's responsibilities under the ECHR, it just means that plaintiffs would have to prove that that a UK judgement violated the ECHR, instead of the situation today where the UK has to prove that it did not.
it places UK courts + European law above UK law as determiend by Parliament.
No, the HR Act means the UK courts must abide by the EConventionHR that the UK ratified in 1953. Most western countries have an equivalent to the HR Act which means that cases don't need to be escalated to the ECourtHR.
he HR Act means the UK courts must abide by the EConventionHR that the UK ratified in 1953
No, it does not. that is FUD.
The UK must abide by the ECHR (ratified in 1951) in any case. The difference the HR Act makes is that if there is any uncertainty or ambiguity between UK law and the ECHR, the courts are required to rule according to the ECHR, over UK law. Any disagreement must go to the ECJ to prove that UK law is not incompatible with the ECHR, and should be respected.
Without the HR Act the courts must rule according to UK law, and any disagreement must go to the ECJ to prove that UK law is incompatible with the ECHR and must be changed.
It's not unlike the "presumption of innocence" concept. The HA Act requires the courts to presume that UK law is invalid, and the government must prove it is not.
"The Human Rights Act ... can be repealed or replaced by any UK government that chooses, with no impact whatsoever on EU membership."
True, the UK could (and did) do without the HR Act. However, one key point of the act was that it made it easier to bring cases before British courts, thus reducing the need to go to the European Court of HR.
Incidentally, the more a government claims that there's no need for them to be covered by a treaty or court at a higher, international, level, the more I tend to think they need just that. But perhaps I'm just getting cynical in my old age.
And if there isn't anything to pin on you in your captured logs, something can be put there, and you will have no legs on which to stand as the "evidence" is clear to see. Evidence that could never be tampered with as it wouldn't exist if judicial approval was required prior to creating it
Anyone can tamper with it if it exists - and then point the finger at you.
THAT is the case against "nothing to hide" argument.
If this stupid act does go through ill be sure to download and upload to the maximum extent possible on any internet connection I use.
We will have to engage in a disk space war.
We will have to make it unfeasible to store everything and impractical to grep through it.
May I suggest we also reduce packet sizes as well. If they do indeed collect only meta data then shrinking packets increases their storage burden.
Failing that we now have a requirement for technologies that establish connections to hundreds of endpoints simultaneously to hide the one connection that actually matters.
The internet as we know it is about to get a lot noisier.
Seriously its the average Joe on the street im concerned about here.
The actual criminals are already masking their comms.
This act will achieve nothing.
Yes quite, could this be the law that gets everyday people to start worrying about their privacy ?
Probably not. Those that care will spending money with non-UK based VPN providers. In fact, this act will be counterproductive to the UK Government's purported aims since if I wanted to properly conceal my traffic from interception in the first place I would be using a VPN and be standing out like a sore thumb. Now they will have haystacks of sore thumbs.
Next up I guess, then, will be the War On VPNs.
It'll take some time for the concept of a VPN to trickle into the minds of the gubbermint. They can barely accept the Internet exists - although understanding of how it works is clearly beyond their classical minds.
Once they realise that anyone can simply bypass all of their draconian attempts of control, they will declare VPN's the 'tool of the terrorist', and make a long speech in Parliament to inform anyone using one will be subject to investigation as a possible 'national security risk'.
And then they will ban them. And thus the UK will once again be saved from itself.
It'll take some time for the concept of a VPN to trickle into the minds of the gubbermint.
Nope - it has trickled already. It was in the original act.
And then they will ban them.
A ban on VPNs for non-business use was in one the first drafts and early inter-department consultations.
So, what were you saying once again?
"[...] and make a long speech in Parliament to inform anyone using one will be subject to investigation as a possible 'national security risk'."
IIRC the then Home Secretary David Blunkett proposed random home inspections of anyone's PC. He said "No one with nothing to hide has anything to fear from being investigated by the police".
If you use a VPN, you'll get a visit, or a trojan keylogger on your device.
If you use a VPN, you'll get a visit, or a trojan keylogger on your device.
That will be at least half the population if Theresa May's idea of blocking porn sites which don't implement stringent age verification controls comes to pass too. The choice faced by a great many people will be:
a. Porn-free Internet
b. Giving out their credit card details to the handful of unblocked porn sites, who will either charge it themselves, or let the details be stolen by someone else who will.
c. VPN
> Next up I guess, then, will be the War On VPNs.
And if they ban VPN providers, I will get a cheap VPS somewhere that respects privacy, set it up as a personal open VPN server, and they will still be seeing nothing from me. If this act does ever come into law all they will see from me is connections to VPN's, youtube, netflix, and prime. And the only votes I will cast are for candidates who will repeal this act. I have written my MP and said as much as well.
> May I suggest we also reduce packet sizes as well. If they do indeed collect only meta data then shrinking packets increases their storage burden.
I suspect this will do nothing except slow your connection down - they'll be storing NetFlow records, no doubt, which basically say "This IP had a TCP connection to that IP and this amount of data went in one way and another amount in the other direction." Perhaps they'll "enhance" this data with a quick sniff up the stack to grep out a URL, and perhaps try and add some form of hardware signature and payload protocol from request headers and DPI. The use of a VPN will obviously mask a lot of the info, though.
> ill be sure to download and upload to the maximum extent possible on any internet connection I use
If you're really keen on adding load to their work, instead of doing this and wasting your disk space, write a short script to load up random google searches, and then follow links to random results from the searches, with various random header value selections and MAC addresses, and then load it onto a Pi and leave it trundling along. For added fun (& risk) seed the initial google searches with various naughty phrases - how long before someone knocks on your door with a Ram-It?
If you were malicious, connect it to your neighbours open wifi :)
I suspect this will do nothing except slow your connection down - they'll be storing NetFlow records, no doubt, which basically say "This IP had a TCP connection to that IP and this amount of data went in one way and another amount in the other direction."
Switching to UDP based protocol makes this so much more fun :-)
No formal "connection" to summarise. Log files can be orders of magnitude larger and the trick of playing with the packet sizes would probably work too.
I refer the Hon. gentleman to my earlier reply (2013, blimey I didn't think my memory was that good!):
Rain - n., wet stuff that falls out of the sky. Hence vt. to rain (usu. down) upon something
Reign - vt., to rule over e.g. a kingdom or empire. Hence "a reign of terror", etc.
Rein - n., a piece of horse-harness, attached to the bit. Hence "rein in", i.e. to limit movement or freedom of action.
"Reign - vt., to rule over e.g. a kingdom or empire. Hence "a reign of terror", etc.
Rein - n., a piece of horse-harness, attached to the bit. Hence "rein in", i.e. to limit movement or freedom of action."
It could be argued that they reign over your data, ie they rule your data rather than give your data it's freedom (free rein) :-)
copy pasted from sicipedia ... sic "thus"; in full: sic erat scriptum, "thus was it written"
Reign in this case is written with the sic suffix because it's the wrong word to use ... a bit like when someone writes 'bare with me' ... it sounds the same but it's just wrong!
http://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/
Done. Here is an extract from my letter...
A bill which effectively provides a police "tail" on all members of the public at all times while they surf the internet, just in case it may be useful in the future, is not acceptable in a democracy, only in a police state.
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