Well done Mr Davis
Hopefully you can find more like you to kill the bill.
Tory backbencher David Davis has described the government's draft communications surveillance law as an "odious shopping list" of new powers demanded by the Home Office. He told MPs and peers at a joint select committee hearing on Wednesday afternoon that UK spooks were "looking for a pin" but instead "creating a field of …
"The idea of a black box organised at a central level has not actually yet been done in a democratic country,"
Since when has britain ever been demoractic? Your kidding.
Civil servants rule (no matter which coulour is leading), and the British are too dim to understand/care.
I'm astounded that a tory minister is standing up for what is right! It's a breath of fresh air in the stagnant Tory party.
Well shows how much you know.
David Davis is well know for libertarian attitudes and being more traditionally Conservative.
He is a big believer in privacy and against the big brother society.
I still think the wrong David won the selectrion process those years ago
The clue is not in the name;
Practically every single liberty UK subjects enjoy, was created by unelected monarchs and lords (e.g. Trial by Jury)
Practically every single liberty that has been taken away, or attempted to be stolen, has been via the House of Commons. (e.g. scrapping of double jeopardy by previous goverment)
I would also remind you that England'ss one and only military dictator was an MP (Cromwell), whoose rule was so appalling that the King was invited back, as a better alternative to the tyrany Cromwell inflicted.
Practically every liberty was extracted forcibly by the barons or middle/merchant classes from the unelected monarchs, because they were autocratic bastards. That the liberties were gained for all was probably an accident or a necessary default for the sake of expediency.
That those classes then tried to put those liberties back in the box, as far as the plebs were concerned, is a predictable outcome of the initial exuberance, as they might see it.
For all it's faults, I think I prefer the possibilities of the current subdued but inclusive class war to the few accidental scraps of benefit that fall out from a theological dictatorship conflicting with croneys, thanks.
@despairing
You need to do more history revision. And maybe be a little more optimistic. Remember that at the time Britain only had a history of family succession of military coup. Britain's elite at the time put up Cromwell's son then invited a Stuart back because there was no tradition of doing anything else. Electing someone? What? Never heard of that one, it'll never work. It took the successes of the libertarian and mercantile classes the next 200 years to gradually wrest control from monarchs and deliver the constitutional monarchy system of government we have today. Plus, democracy is the worst kind of government except for every other form.
"I'm astounded that a tory minister is standing up for what is right!"
This is far more likely than a Labour MP doing so. Though party distinctions have blurred, Conservatism has traditionally been about being given the freedom to stand on your own two feet, while Labour is all about "Big Government" and the welfare state.
Having said that, Cameron's "Conservatives" have shown themselves to be more like New Labour in their control freakery.
Quote: "collection of data by ISPs through Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) probes - colloquially dubbed black boxes - had only been implemented on a national scale in China, Iran and Kazakhstan."
I guess our politicians seek out their own kind...
Being prejudiced is a perfectly normal human trait after all.
"Says the person who has just condemned all Tories (sp) as bastards. Self-awareness isn't your strong suit, is it?"
Prejudice and political views, I can't reconcile your argument.
Having a political view is hardly prejudice.
Sorry, your thinking needs adjustment. Maybe your parents/peers have skewed your views?
Pickles also warned that, under the proposed law, protesters outside Parliament might, for example, be more easily rounded up and identified by police who could access the comms data sent between individuals in that area.
I rather think this is the whole point - not some unintended side effect.
So you are walking across Parliament Square on your way to work and you see the half dozen protestors, one of whom is female and wearing a silly t-shirt with a clever slogan. You take a picture on your mobile to send to the guys at work (nothing to do with the size of her breasts, honest). Next day, you get a vist from the boys in blue.
You were there, you took a picture; now explain why! Innocent until proven guilty? Don't think so sir; not in the democratic people's republic of Airstrip 1!
This is just yet a further extension of the attempts to do away with our civil liberties. If we allow it to happen, we deserve everything that happens to us.
with the added bonus you'll get to pay for it.
The political class couldn't careless you have your choice, pay income tax till you drop dead or sign on and become an alcoholic/obese and die early, just remember to drop your blue or red token in the box marked democracy and we'll do the rest for you.
"The idea of a black box organised at a central level has not actually yet been done in a democratic country," he added."
we can't be No 1 at anything else, from education to broadband speed, at least we got a chance now to be a No 1 snooping democracy. After all, what's that little black box and profiled intelligence, compared with, say, daily bombings and shootings which we face otherwise?
"The notion of British taxpayers paying private companies to hoard communications data on behalf of the UK government was unpalatable, he added."
just lie down and think of Britain. And the children. And the children's children.
There are at least two, maybe three, companies that make a good living selling DPI equipment for exactly this purpose, and their best customers include central government agencies in English-speaking countries most of us would consider democratic. If Mr Hosein is correct, I imagine the gear was just purchased to use up surplus departmental budget money at the end of the financial year, and the telcos use the waste heat from the secret rooms to keep their offices warm.
How long before the black boxes get pwned, and all our data becomes available to precisely the people we don't want to have it? (Don't want to have it even more than we don't want the government to have it, that is).
I voted against Labour last time to kill ID cards. Who do I vote for next time? What's UKIP's policy on spying on the populace?
I have. Twice.
The first reply told me to think of the children and the terrorists and how important it was to be able to see who's communicating with who over IM and VOIP services!
I am still awaiting a reply to the second asking how they will be able to record endpoints in proprietary and secure IM/VOIP services. It now appears they expect Google/Facebook/MS to provide that data for them! HA (hopefully)!
This is such an almighty waste of money! Glorious leaders, please listen to Tim Berners-Lee who is utterly against this..
At least the police will be able to see if politicians are talking about them, would that be a police state in some way?
I guess there'll be some kind of slip somewhere and some newspaper will somehow discover that some politicianorother has been talking to some mediatycoonorother (while some admin somewhere trips off to Barclays with enough money to embarrass Bob Diamond
oh no, that'll never happen
Data storage by ISPs is for the benefit of relatively low level snoopers such as local councils and plod. It takes some of the cost of surveillance off the government. It also leaves the heavy duty spooks clear from the overhead of intrusions in which such gauleiters indulge. And it diverts public attention from the deeper monitoring of the internet which goes largely unnoticed and unquestioned.
There have apparently been fibre splitters in exchanges for some while now. See, for example, the diagram in the article by Chris Williams in 2008 and the comment by mikus.
www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_documents/
... or maybe it's the thin end of another wedge.
David Davis consistently votes against bills and articles violating the right to privacy. One of the very, very few people willing to stand up for personal dignity [in this respect].
We're not all guilty, and hiding these bills behind the OMGPAEDOS defence is starting to wear thin. They are nothing to do with that, and everything to do with controlling a medium they're afraid of.
I'm starting to think that you'll need to find somewhere small, less developed, more chaotic. The Cape Verde islands, maybe? Costa Rica? Iceland? The Swiss have a good attitude but a lousy location. The bigger and more centralized the state, the worse the techno-surveillance will be, and the worse things will be when the trap closes.
Let's say we discovered (Hogwarts Style) magic; there would be no limit whatsoever to the amount of surveillance you could do. Where would our politicians draw the line?
This is the question that should be asked of every Home Sec, prime or cabinet minister: If it were possible to intrude entirely into the lives of every citizen, how much do you think is appropriate?
The question that politicians must ask themselves, is whether they are really happy to have the legislation and the infrastructure passed down to the worst possible successor government they can imagine.
A lesson from history. At the time of German Unification (under Bismark - 1890s) everyone happily traipsed off to fill in a simple form to claim their citizenship of the new German state. Bismark also created the most efficient beurocracy that the world had ever known.Those records were well-preserved, well-copied, well-indexed. Roll forwards 45 years. The parents may already have passed on, but the single word "Jewish" under "religion" sealed the fate of their children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.
Do you *still* want the entire map of everyone you, your parents and your children ever communicated with to available to *all* future governments?
So we need all these powers on the web to watch us and monitor for our own safety?
Because we need to fear the terrorist and the like.
If they are such a credible threat, what cock ordered group 4 security to protect us during the olympics then?
I mean either the snooping laws reasons are massively over exxagerated for some nefarioous reason, or there's going to be a massacre at the velodrome.
This proposal is straight out of the darkest pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is the kind of thing many of our ancestors died to prevent. The function of this black box is very similar to the kind of work performed manually by the character Winston Smith. Appalling. Shame on the Tories, who condemned the proposal while in opposition, only to be come its biggest fans once in power.
Whoever is in government just can't resist spying on every aspect of citizens' lives. The UK should be ashamed.
The cunning clue that the proposed powers are wanted for something other than the stated purpose, is that every week the "reason" changes, starts as "needed to combat terrorism", and then mutates is way through the 4 horsemen of the computer appocolypse.
It just like watching a child who wants something, "I need it to do my school" work, when actual what they want it for is to play games, and every time you ask, the stated reason mutates.
The only thing is that the children are usually more creative and inteligent in their creation of excuses than the ministerial dummies front this.
Mrs Jones wants to organise a surprise anniversary party for Mr. Jones.
She calls a friend - Ms. Smith, who recommends an "ethnic" restaurant she knows of.
Mrs Jones calls Mr. X. Unfortunately, Mr X is fully booked for the day, but he suggests a friends retaurant, and offers to get them to call Mrs. Jones.
Mr. X shares the same surname as someone wanted for "terrorism". All of a sudden the snoopers leap into action. It is confirmed that Mr X. is dodgy, when it is revealed Ms. Smith was once arrested at a demonstration.
Mr. X calls Mr. Y.
Mr. Y calls Mrs Jones, and is delighted to book a table and asks how many guests.
Mrs Jones now calls round all her friends. At this point MI5 are besides themselves with excitement. Clearly there is a REALLY big atrocity being carried out.
After calling all her friends (whose names are added to the watchlist, so THEIR calls/emails/texts are watched) Mrs Jones calls Mr. Y and says it will be 20 guests. One of whom is a Mr. Brown, who MI5 now discover has been very critical of government policy on his Facebook page, and has "friended" people in other countries who are critical of *their* govenments. MI5 now believe they have stumbled on a major terrorist cell.
Mr. Y is glad to have some business, and calls his nephews, both of whom are friendly with Mr. X's sons. He asks the nephews if they can work on the day of the party.
MI5 now tap the phones, of everyone, and start to hear chatter about "the party". They're starting to draw up a plan to swoop.
Years ago I used to run a website on cheap shared hosting also using the email etc that came with it. Out of curiosity, I had a look to see what else shared the same IP. Bad choice if you happen to have a paranoid streak as about half of the sites turned out to cover the entire Islamist spectrum of just about every 'cause' going at a time when state paranoia was way worse than my own.
You could hope 'the watchers' would draw the right conclusions from the way these things work, but personally I'm just not that trusting given their track record, mission creep and itchy trigger fingers.