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Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

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11–20 of 241 posts

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#11

i'm not as concerned as i might be. My rather meager understanding, which may be entirely baseless, is, that unlike the NSA which is obsessive about collecting every single scrap of data (and many large chunks), the UK intelligence services are rather more discerning. Again, i would be happy for someone to correct me, that's just the general impression i get.

I mean, the NSA famously uses the UK as a loophole to spy on American citizens. That suggests that they probably aren't particularly discerning to me.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#12

i'm not as concerned as i might be. My rather meager understanding, which may be entirely baseless, is, that unlike the NSA which is obsessive about collecting every single scrap of data (and many large chunks), the UK intelligence services are rather more discerning. Again, i would be happy for someone to correct me, that's just the general impression i get.

Isn't there a fairly solid connection (read: partnership) between US and UK intelligence? Isn't such a chain only as strong as the weakest link? It's hard to imagine any of our European allies to be too far off the NSA's pace.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#13

Why didn't they just do what the US Gov did? Snoop but not tell anyone. Certainly would have saved them some grief. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...

And then lie about it to congress. Repeatedly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYNXVgYhPOc

And then lying about lying about it.

https://youtu.be/2d03yjXRPtI?t=262

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#14

i'm not as concerned as i might be. My rather meager understanding, which may be entirely baseless, is, that unlike the NSA which is obsessive about collecting every single scrap of data (and many large chunks), the UK intelligence services are rather more discerning. Again, i would be happy for someone to correct me, that's just the general impression i get.

I mean, the NSA famously uses the UK as a loophole to spy on American citizens. That suggests that they probably aren't particularly discerning to me.

All it suggests is that the UK is happy to curry favour with the US government and doesn't give a hoot about the perceived rights of American citizens. Harsh, but true.

Their own citizens are an entirely different ballpark, as you might say.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#16

Snooping? Now doesn't that reek of newspeak? If anyone of us did that to someone else it would (at very the least) be stalking. When you track and log everything - for up to a year - that's not snooping. That's surveillance. Using candy-coated language for such things is as (almost as) harmful as the acts themselves.

I don’t want to derail a very interesting thread but IMHO snooping has a darker connotation than surveilling.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#17

Snooping? Now doesn't that reek of newspeak? If anyone of us did that to someone else it would (at very the least) be stalking. When you track and log everything - for up to a year - that's not snooping. That's surveillance. Using candy-coated language for such things is as (almost as) harmful as the acts themselves.

No it's just the word that the british tend to use for spying. Much like lavatory vs restroom. Ex: Snooper's charter

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#18

Why didn't they just do what the US Gov did? Snoop but not tell anyone. Certainly would have saved them some grief. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...

If you want to bust people for petty crimes and not 'terror' it makes more sense with a publicly mandated system I guess.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#19
post #4

Is a datacentre considered an ISP in this respect? Between vpns and just remote desktoping into a VM, it seems trivial to circumvent to real criminals while being a privacy nightmare to the rest of the population. There is a probability 1.000 that this data will be abused.

This is politics, who cares about a few people doing bad stuff...

If the shit hits the fan, you want to know the political stance of all the citizens, and who the troublemakers will be, if something large is happening. ...and for that, it's enough to know which political sites they're visiting, even if you don't know the content itself.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#20
post #4

Is a datacentre considered an ISP in this respect? Between vpns and just remote desktoping into a VM, it seems trivial to circumvent to real criminals while being a privacy nightmare to the rest of the population. There is a probability 1.000 that this data will be abused.

Anything any large organization does is not about absolutes but about increasing or reducing the probability of something in a population. The small few VPNers can be dealt with later.

Also this is done in america for commercial reasons to sell to adtech, like t-mobile recently or comcast for quite a while and probably all the others.

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