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Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

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Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#151

Post by outsomnia »

techrat wrote: post #147
Nailgun wrote: post #144

Is there anything I can do about this as a citizen to protect my privacy?

Use a VPN for everything.

... if you own and trust the VPN server and exit arrangements then this is true.

But it would have to be outside the UK to avoid the same fate, since you are in the UK, this makes it harder to trust the service provider and their security services not to find your "foreign" traffic very interesting and not subject to their laws protecting their own citizens' data.

A lot of "we don't keep logs" vpn providers were found to very much keep logs of all your traffic. Some of the people in the VPN business are the last ones you would want to see all your traffic.

Tor might work, or at least change the threat model, but it cannot be used as a high bandwidth proxy.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#152

Post by breakingcups »

csunbird wrote: post #132
jl6 wrote: post #127

This seems simultaneously too intrusive, and yet not intrusive enough to actually benefit law enforcement. They are logging source and destination IPs. But to what end? What can that possibly prove? Surely the vast majority of crime occurs at the application level.

They are slowly boiling the frog (the citizens). This surely will be extended to more data in the future.

"Fun" fact, that only works on lobotomized frogs.

Regular healthy frogs just jump out of the pan when it gets uncomfortable.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#153

Post by floatboth »

anaganisk wrote: post #87
brokenmachine wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ It listed a bunch of stuff that I never downloaded though...

You could be using a dynamic IP, this site links downloads to IP

Or cgNAT, when many many clients of an ISP share a public v4 address simultaneously.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#154

Post by outsomnia »

morrbo wrote: post #133
mathw wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does anybody other than policing and security agencies need access to this stuff? NHS? Fire and rescue? WHAT? They don't have a role in investigating crime. Okay the fire brigade do post-fire analysis of possible arson etc. but that's not something you need access to somebody's internet history for.

Yep, food standards Scotland could call up TalkTalk and ask for a copy of my browsing history. This is assuming its not been leaked because they got hacked by a 16 year old script kiddy *again*.

The probability of the Chav Network being able to convert bungs into your private data, more or less at will, must be about 100% with that list.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#155

Post by megous »

jl6 wrote: post #127

This seems simultaneously too intrusive, and yet not intrusive enough to actually benefit law enforcement. They are logging source and destination IPs. But to what end? What can that possibly prove? Surely the vast majority of crime occurs at the application level.

You can ask one end (typically the service end) for timestamp and local and remote port and IP address.

Then you ask ISP to lookup subscriber info (via account id) based on that.

You can do that already in some EU countries, just by lodging a complaint with police as a service provider (say you have an e-shop) for example. ISPs have to store these logs for some months.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#156

Post by cambalache »

eecc wrote: post #113

What I don’t get is this: our governments - “ours” being the group of parliamentary democracies - routinely diss authoritarian ones such as China - and rightfully so - for their violations against human rights, among which that to habeas corpus, privacy, and reasonable suspicion. To the point that we agonized over and sabotaged contact tracing apps, which could have helped a lot in fighting COVID, over claims to priv…

Because you are taking the government criticism of other countries at face value. This is not a case of a well intended but barely self-aware organization or even some ideological zealots not giving pause to its enemies. This is just propaganda, pure and simple, they dont give a damn about the Uighurs, freedom of the press or democracy in general, they have an economical and geopolitical adversary who is getting stronger year after year so they will attack it. That boogeyman role has been played by Spain by France by Nazi Germany by the USSR by Japan,by Lybia,by Iraq,by Iran and now by China,For the powerful a foreign enemy is perfect:

- It gives justification to obscene spending on the military

- It justifies imperialist actions which violates international law

- It blinds the local populacy with "patriotism"

- It allows to create draconian local policies which would not be accepted in "peaceful times"

- It protects the government because any local or foreign criticism can be discarded by using _whataboutism_ about the enemy du jour.

Oldest trick in the book.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#157

Post by azalemeth »

techrat wrote: post #147
Nailgun wrote: post #144

Is there anything I can do about this as a citizen to protect my privacy?

Use a VPN for everything.

This is what I have done since the original snooper's charter came out. It is not perfect -- I am sure that GCHQ etc have got pretty good at correlation attacks -- but by encrypting _everything_ BT, Virgin Media etc. will just get a list containing exactly one IP and a month-long connection time.

Secondly, I really recommend Andrews & Arnolds [1] as an ISP if you can only get ADSL. I don't use them at home because I need the bandwidth afforded by cable -- for which there is one supplier in my town, Virgin (bah!) -- but AAISP supply my mother's home and are genuinely amazing. She had some issues due to BT and they let me raise an issue via IRC; the few times I have had to get in touch with them it's been an absolute pleasure; they disclose their support as "xkcd/806 compliant". Their owner also is a strong campaigner for digital privacy.

[1]

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#158

Post by azalemeth »

openfuture wrote: post #149
techrat wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a VPN for everything.

VPN solves absolutely nothing. You are just moving your root of trust around. Nym is a very promising mixnet that is built with a global passive adversary in mind. That may work.

Isn't this almost exactly the use-case for a VPN: one well-defined snooping adversary? If one _assumes_ that the VPN provider doesn't lie (or at the very least is independently audited) and has a server beyond your jurisdiction then isn't moving the root of trust away from your un-trustworthy ISP the right thing to do?

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#159

Post by pjc50 »

eecc wrote: post #113

What I don’t get is this: our governments - “ours” being the group of parliamentary democracies - routinely diss authoritarian ones such as China - and rightfully so - for their violations against human rights, among which that to habeas corpus, privacy, and reasonable suspicion. To the point that we agonized over and sabotaged contact tracing apps, which could have helped a lot in fighting COVID, over claims to priv…

The UK has never been especially supportive of human rights; it has a tradition of a sort of live-and-let-live native libertarianism, which is why we don't have ID cards (+), but it also has the tradition of imperialist repression techniques which means that the public are broadly supportive of the military shooting people in the street if they think they might be terrorists.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-...

(+) however, you need an ID card if you're an immigrant, or want to open a bank account, rent or buy a house, or have a job.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#160

Post by Nailgun »

azalemeth wrote: post #157
techrat wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a VPN for everything.

This is what I have done since the original snooper's charter came out. It is not perfect -- I am sure that GCHQ etc have got pretty good at correlation attacks -- but by encrypting _everything_ BT, Virgin Media etc. will just get a list containing exactly one IP and a month-long connection time. Secondly, I really recommend Andrews & Arnolds [1] as an ISP if you can only get ADSL. I don't use them at home because I…

Do you have any recommendations for VPN providers?
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