Snoopers' charter rests in shallow grave - likely to rise again The coalition government may need to bring in legislation in the final year of Parliament before a General Election is called that would allow spooks and police to see - at a "given point in time" - if a suspect could be linked to a certain IP address. In Wednesday's Queen's Speech, her Majesty made no mention of the Tory-led …
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I must admit I'm not an expert in this area, but how exactly does an ISP determine which of my encrypted communication with Google is my e-mail, and which is me filling in a webform, for example to comment on this? And this doesn't sound difficult to circumvent by transmitting encrypted communications to a server outside the UK, which then sends the e-mail for you.
Of course if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. But criminals do have something to hide, so they will simply use, for example, a shared GMail account saving drafts only (idea courtesy of the film Traitor). And they will have nothing to fear.
""Of course if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
I can't believe you just said that."
Where did those El Reg sarcasm colours go? Ah, found it:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02/01/the_color_of_irony/
It should have been burgundy.
Commenters above have mentioned that NAT, routers and other kit make identification by IP address difficult, if not impossible, and not "beyond reasonable doubt" in a court. These commenters are technically correct (the best kind of correct).
But what happens next?
Maybe the government will push for IPv6 rollout? Then everyone can have their own IP address, which would be required to make your mobile, smartphone, desktop, laptop or tablet connect to the internet. Then the police and intelligence services will know who sent the messages (unless the alleged sender can prove their device was stolen or otherwise compromised).
Is that a helicopter I hear?
I don't really see what IPv6 has to do with this. You can just as easily NAT an IPv6 address as any other. They would have to ban NATing, which is impossible to do from a practical point of view. I don't care what type of IP address you're using, there are plenty of ways of obscuring that. Even if your device is allocated a unique IPv6 address and you're not NATing, you could just change that to another address. Who's going to know. Even if they only allow some addresses on an internet connection (bugger for any sort of shared or public access point), all you have to do is set someone else's IP address. By their logic, everything you then do is the other persons responsibility!! Madness. MAC addresses are no use as they can be changed. Effectively, you would have to assign the IP address to the NIC and physically prevent changing it. Even then, you could borrow someone elses ethernet card and stick it in your desktop.
Bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. Anyone supporting this in parliament should be sacked on the grounds they're too dumb to be even MPs. On this basis, you should probably put them to sleep as that means they're too dumb for any job.....
we will be looking at "...the who, when, where and how of a communication, but not its content"
And yet, I thought the information you need to identify a crime would be the content. As far as I was aware is not illegal to communicate with somebody else, but WHAT you communicate may be illegal.
"This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public."
So they will only gather data on people who have been convicted then? As I'm pretty sure we are innocent unless proven guilty. Or does this mean only people (or sites/organisations) who are 'suspected' of committing a crime - in which case show your evidence and get a court order to monitor the person, site, organisations, under suspicion. What this bill clearly suggests to me is that in the eyes of the government we are all suspects and need to be monitored as part of a single 'court order' :
Name of suspect - tbc
Suspected crime - tbc
Evidence - tbc
re
a. Name of suspect - tbc
b. Suspected crime - tbc
c. Evidence - tbc
For http/https
a. ip address -> telno -> bill payer/responsible person/person to be accused/person will dob in actual person
b. on the said date
c. accessed bad site, of which we have a copy for evidence purposes at the time they accessed it,
so there is your content, its all down to correlation.
For email in its various guises
a. ip address -> telno -> bill payer/responsible person/person to be accused/person will dob in actual person
b. on the said date
c. contacted nasty person for some purpose, so they are suspect by implication.
so maybe there is your content, its all down to correlation and the ability to read emails.
For other means, skype etc, well as most of these systems are not open source one has to assume they are not secure, to do otherwise is terminal stupidity.
This reminds me of plodsworths stopping people taking architectural photos in London and elsewhere on bogus "national security" pretences. I carry a netbook, and introduce them to Google Streetview, and ask them when they're going to plug this huge threat to our "national security". I also voice record them in case they take violent exception to logic.. The inevitable conclusion is that the results-based law enforcement bunnies will be able to claim that they're doing a great job preventing bad things, while still being useless gumflappers who haven't got a clue.
A major issue with the various Communications Data proposals is the use of examples such as "serious crime", "child pornography", "terrorism", "mug a granny", etc. to justify use of the proposed powers for purposes including "the prevention and detection of crime" - NOT _serious_ crime, just crime, which could include almost anything.
The regular conflation by ministers of national security and serious crime with minor law'n'order matters - surely someone in the Home Office understands that there is a vast difference - is a major factor in creating public mistrust in these proposals.
The safeguards proposed for ensuring that use of any such powers is proportionate to the stated purpose have, to date, been seriously inadequate.
Snoopers' charter rests in shallow grave - likely to rise again
And in other news, bears stubbornly persist in woodland defecation.
Of course it's coming back. For one thing its resurrection has bugger all to do with the person sitting in the Home Office hotseat and everything to do with the droids operating the levers.
But if I were I'd say the only way this thing will rest in a permanent grave will be when the bunch of assorted PPE spookocrats and data fetishists rest in theirs.
In fact (if I were vindictive) I'd be thinking about razor wire, chain saws and napalm. With plenty of heavy plastic tarpaulin. That seems to the only language these people understand.
Fortunately I'm not.
This? It's my disposable shower proof mac. You never when it's going to start spattering down.
Ta Ta.
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