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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”

#111

Post by hackuser »

anigbrowl wrote: post #96
hackuser wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read up on the history of government abuse of power and explain to them why doing nothing wrong will not protect them, and the necessity of standing up for others.

No no no, this is a very ineffective tactic because most people don't have the time, energy, or ability to read and comprehend history sufficiently well. Just ask them if they'd be comfortable with Donald Trump or Nigel Farage being able to read their browsing history for a year. If they are, there's no point in talking to them. If they're not, then introduce them to Tor.

I don't mean you should tell others to read, I mean read up on it yourself and tell others what you learned.

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

#113

Post by dx034 »

As a UK resident: I know that I can only avoid logging traffic by using a vpn.

But the domain logging part bothers me the most. Does anyone here know how they will do it? Could I just use another dns server? Or will they intercept http header?

If I'm not mistaken, they could still extract the domain names from https traffic but no exact history?

Anyway, a reason more to use https everywhere, reduces sharply what they can see.

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

#114

Post by _coldfire »

Who exactly is going to pay for this? The govt or ISP/consumer?

And if as another comment suggested, what happens if there's a concerted effort of spamming the system? How much data are they actually willing to hold?

People aren't so apathetic on issues when told they have to pay more.

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

#115

Post by datamoshr »

pmlnr wrote: post #59
datamoshr wrote: post #44

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…

This summarizes all what I could not forge into words.

Glad I could help, more than anything this was me getting the sense of helplessness of my chest!

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

#116

Post by dx034 »

smellf wrote: post #108
erjjones wrote: post #105

The first thing that comes to mind here is that data is only good if it is quality data... dirty data isn't good or reliable. Coming up with a way to dirty the data from our IPs (i.e. a program that randomly hits domains via multiple browsers that everyone just runs as a background service)

Just run a tor exit node. Problem solved, sort of.

Until you're being questioned in connection with child porn. I'm glad that tor exists but the crimes that some people commit with it make it impossible for me to run an exit node. There are things I don't even want to be remotely be associated with.

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

#117

Post by grownseed »

lucaspiller wrote: post #94
grownseed wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been using these guys for a few years now, best use of $40/yr. You'll occasionally get blocked on certain sites (which you can often fix by simply changing location), but their infrastructure is definitely impressive. I get to use the full speed of my connection, which ironically is not always the case when I'm not connected through PIA (there's definitely some selective throttling going on, even though my ISP preten…

Does Netflix work through it? I have an DO box that I use as a VPN, and Netflix has blocked it recently.

Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't work through PIA, they apparently aggressively block IP ranges from most major VPN providers, so the issue isn't specific to PIA. This is a bit of a "screw you" to privacy-conscious people, but then again Netflix have their own issues to deal with (whether legitimate or not is a different conversation). Two things I do on occasion: have a box dedicated to watching Netflix, that isn't on a VPN (which might not help if you're trying to bypass national licensing restrictions), the other is to tunnel my connection to one of my servers through the VPN, which works fine, though it's a bit of a pain.

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

#118

Post by ryanlol »

JohnStrange wrote: post #73
WordyMcWordface wrote: post #4

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

By a company called "London Trust Media" run from Los Angeles, CA? Uhm, I don't know...

A company with a history of covering up breaches and making very dubious claims about their ability to resist law enforcement.

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

#119

Post by datamoshr »

atom_enger wrote: post #87
hackuser wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn political organizing skills, which address these issues: How to build awareness, appeal to people, organize them, etc. As many veterans of past civil rights battles have said: Don't get mad, organize!

I think we should also focus on making our current technology impervious to this type of tracking. If the flaw exists in the system that exposes our personal information then we should work to plug the hole. I think organizing is important too but I guarantee someone is going to try this type of power grab again in the future.

We can make our tech impervious to tracking time and time again. Follow best practices, etc. It absolutely does help.

The shortfall comes in with backdooring and just getting access. There's nothing stopping a government that strongarms laws like this into law, from strongarming a company into giving access to data.

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

#120

Post by ablation »

As other people have said, there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself in the near to medium term future:

1) Use Signal 2) Use Tor 3) Use a VPN 4) Reduce your digital footprint - especially if you use social media

What was once paranoid fantasy now just seems like prudence. What a time to be alive, eh?

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