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Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

zdnet.com

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Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#41

Post by TheGrumpyBrit »

rubberstamp wrote: post #19

Will the citizens allow it to be passed if they knew about it via some news source? Of course "news" now a days is about kardarshians or justin beiber than about things that requires serious attention. This may have hardly got tiny little square cm area in newspapers or 30 seconds air time. Thus sinks democracy. People who are informed are way less in number than non-informed people, but all get to vote thus diluting…

They not only allowed it to pass, a disturbing number support it. The "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" line has been rolled out in force, and if you express concern in public about this bill, you get suspicious looks. What sites are you visiting that you're so nervous about the government seeing? Some kind of terrorist or pedophile, are you? Then those same people will go home and download torrents of the latest movies, or watch them on their dodgy Kodi box, without a second thought. After all, that's not web browsing, and even if it is, it's not really like they're doing anything wrong, is it?

Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#42

Post by webwanderings »

jfindley wrote: post #7

Oddly I can't find any other sources reporting this. I'd have expected it to show up in at least one other place else (e.g. BBC news for example). I'm not trying to imply that it's not accurate, I'm just confused by the lack of info. And the article doesn't really reference anything other than other zdnet articles, so it's really hard to tell exactly what form of the act got passed - did all the really controversial…

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2016-20...

Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#43

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

s_kilk wrote: post #12

> Despite the uproar, the government's opposition failed to scrutinize any significant amendments and abstained from the final vote. Killock said recently that the opposition Labour party spent its time "simply failing to hold the government to account". What the hell is the point of the Labour party these days? They are absolutely not an effective opposition. Worthless bastards, one and all.

The courage to abstain.

Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#44

Post by datamoshr »

As a UK resident, this irks me beyond belief. It's a sickening invasion of human rights[1]. To echo u/rubberstamps sentiments, it's such that there's been little to no coverage of this in the media.

But it's the same everywhere, introduce an encroaching bill, have uproar from those with the heads screwed on (the minority). Let it grow a little stale in the publics eye and keep reintroducing with slight alterations it until it passes into law.

There's a definite sense of helplessness and hopelessness when approaching the subject with the public. Even within IT there's a sense of 'who cares'. I had a conversation about it just last weekend. I asked for my roommates phone so I could look at all his emails, sms, etc. He gave it to me and said he doesn't care.

How do those who want to maintain privacy reach out to people and let them know it's not OK? Because this is not OK.

Anyway - off to study journalism.

[1] - https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/privacy

Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#46

Post by pmlnr »

gambiting wrote: post #6
WordyMcWordface wrote: post #4

I will just leave this here: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com

I just feel like using a VPN, while legal, might already put you on some list of "suspicious" users. Surely, if you have something to hide, then you are worth investigating closely.

I'm using SOCKS over SSH. SSH is kinda part of my job, so it shouldn't be suspicious, right? Oh. I forgot. I'm a linux user, who runs custom firmware on his router, probably already treated as dangerous.

Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#47

Post by ryanlol »

NetStrikeForce wrote: post #27
ryanlol wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah right, because using PIA==privacy. How about we refer people to actual privacy tools like Tor instead?

Tor has zero to do with privacy and everything to do with anonymity.

More so than PIA? Also make sure to tell the Tor project that, all of their marketing material disagrees with you.

Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#48

Post by pmlnr »

NetStrikeForce wrote: post #26
gambiting wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just feel like using a VPN, while legal, might already put you on some list of "suspicious" users. Surely, if you have something to hide, then you are worth investigating closely.

What you are trying to avoid is mass surveillance. Targeted attacks by intelligence agencies and police forces are probably a lost battle anyway.

Trying to avoid getting caught in a 'lets see who visited this random page in the past YEAR because it recently added some "illegal" content, so all who visited must be punished' situation.

Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”

#50

Post by hoodunit »

fierarul wrote: post #31

How is this any different from the EU Data Retention Directive we've had for a decade already? Somebody should make a "feature matrix" and explain this.

Are you referring to the Data Retention Directive [1], which was invalidated in 2014? Or are there still other EU-wide laws on data retention?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

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