Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 302 posts

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

#161

Post by module0000 »

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…

> I think there needs to be a law that punishes false information

Dangerous game to play there - who decides what is 'false information', is it the same body that doles out the punishment? If so, we're back at square one.

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

#162

Post by JumpCrisscross »

module0000 wrote: post #159

Protect your privacy with a VPN, either run your own or use one of the available providers. It's a shame you need to do this, but that's just the state of things. Run your own with OpenVPN: https://openvpn.net VPN providers(not affiliated, just ones myself or colleagues use): https://www.expressvpn.com https://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn https://nordvpn.com

What is your view of Private Internet Access [1] in terms of their claims of "zero knowledge" privacy?

[1] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com

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

#163

Post by philovivero »

noir_lord wrote: post #8
cjrp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until VPNs become illegal...

That would be a very hard fight for them since enforcing it without fundamentally breaking the way the internet works would be very expensive to a lot of very wealthy companies and sadly in this 'democracy' the people with the money are heard the loudest.

> enforcing it without fundamentally breaking the way the internet works

China does this. They fundamentally break the way the internet works. They don't seem to care.

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

#164

Post by posterboy »

dx034 wrote: post #113

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…

>I know that I can ... avoid logging traffic by using a vpn.

Are you sure? I'd expect you be hard pressed to explain how that would be the case. Hint: how do you facilitate secure key exchange with an untrusted man in the middle? I know public key exchange is a thing, but I don't know much about it, just that I wouldn't trust it. Do you?

Check this link, for example: https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416....

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

#165

Post by Symbiote »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #2

When this was originally proposed I thought it would never get passed because it sounded like something right out of 1984. Amazing. I thought the ridiculous 'Agree to this cookie' nonsense was stupid but this is now just very creepy. National database for keylogging next?

'Agree to the cookie' has the opposite intention: it's warning you that a company (often Google) is tracking your behaviour online.

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

#166

Post by archagon »

datamoshr wrote: post #119
atom_enger wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mesh networks? Everything P2P.

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

#167

Post by mindcrime »

DannyB2 wrote: post #45

It sickens me that Britain passed the most extreme surveillance law ever. America is supposed to be number 1 at everything. C'mon congress, get on the ball! Don't let America be out done by Britain.

In America,the government doesn't need a law to conduct extreme surveillance. They just do it and don't give a shit what the public think.

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

#169

Post by DonaldFisk »

rwmj wrote: post #133
DonaldFisk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Jeremy Corbyn supposed to do? He was elected twice by the overwhelming majority of party members on a socialist platform, but the majority of his MPs aren't socialist and support a "Blairite" (neoliberal) agenda. Since his election, those MPs have tried to force him to resign, staging various incidents (an MP calling Ken Livingstone a Nazi apologist for pointing out the existence of the Haavara Agreement, a h…

The trouble with this is that Corbyn has done nothing whatsoever to oppose the Snooper's Charter or Brexit or the Psychoactive Substances Act or the (now delayed) attempt to neuter the House Of Lords (in fact I suspect he fully supports all of those). What could he do? Step aside.

And be replaced by which Labour MP who opposes these, who has widespread support as potential leader?

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

#170

Post by bbcbasic »

jwtadvice wrote: post #130
ablation wrote: post #120

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?

1) Signal does not and can not protect information about who you are in contact with, when you contact or are contacted by them, and how long your conversation is. 2) Tor has been both infiltrated organizationally, academically broken, and is occupied by police on most of its exit nodes. This without the operational burden it puts on users. Tor is 'just okay' at protecting users, and should never be used alone. 3) Us…

Disagree with 5.

You just need to know a target not be one. And by know that means ever have sent an email. The plumber you contacted last year for example. When he gets investigated you are on the list.

Avoiding working on social or civil rights? Seriously? So just let things get worse but I'm all right jack?

4 is the best but unfortunately following this makes one marginalized in this society. Being contactable is almost expected. Is the citizens band still a thing?

Post reply on HN