[Sloper]

Do you understand how democracy works?

I too have grave concerns about the mass retention of data and instrusive surveillence and entirely agree that the threat of terrorism is massively over stated (although not hyped like under the last government) with fuckwitted over reactions as a consequence (for example I've seen a 3 year old removed from her parents and patted down at the airport, with the child becoming very distressed as a consequence).

However the response to the Court's ruling is a standard one and it raises no new issues and in fact allows for a considered debate which, but for the emergency legislation could not occur.

So, cool your boots man, there's no conspiracy here.

[slackline]

At no point have I mentioned that its a 'conspiracy'.

A bill is being pushed through without MPs having a suitable amount of time to read and understand it.  This does not appear to me to be very democratic, particularly given the implications of the bill and its contradiction to the previous EU ruling on the nature of its content and in light of the fact that several ISPs are looking to take GCHQ and the Foreign Office to court over surveillance.

The only saving grace is that it will elapse in 2016, but I expect the fuckwits won't be able to have sorted anything by then so will likely push through some other temporary stop-gap measure.

[Sloper]

thus it was ever so, the Official Secrets Act 1911 went through in a day, I can't remember the number of one day bills that have been forced through but it's not an unheard of event and is usually a bill that all sides of the house agree on.

[Oldmanmatt]

At no point have I mentioned that its a 'conspiracy'.

A bill is being pushed through without MPs having a suitable amount of time to read and understand it.  This does not appear to me to be very democratic, particularly given the implications of the bill and its contradiction to the previous EU ruling on the nature of its content and in light of the fact that several ISPs are looking to take GCHQ and the Foreign Office to court over surveillance.

The only saving grace is that it will elapse in 2016, but I expect the fuckwits won't be able to have sorted anything by then so will likely push through some other temporary stop-gap measure.

Assuming the data is collected.

How useful could it actually be?

The sheer volume would be mind boggling.

It would be retained by the ISP and not the Gov, and still (presumably) only accessible to them through the Courts?

If this is the case, the amount of data storage is going to be significantly expensive to maintain and the ISP's will no doubt challenge any ruling on Economic grounds alone.

I've always wondered about the reality of mass surveillance. If the NSA/CIA/FBI et al are really listening in on everyone's phone calls and reading everyone one's mail in the US; good luck to them! Last I heard the population was circa 300M. So there must be a considerable number of analysts being admitted to Mental Health Institutions, muttering about how much pr0n the world watches  and the number of recipes for Apple pie and how many people have won the Nigerian lottery...

[slackline]

Except its done through algorithms not analysts.

No doubt there is a high false positive rate.

[Oldmanmatt]

Except its done through algorithms not analysts.

No doubt there is a high false positive rate.

Yeah! 'Dat shit is da' Bomb!

'Cos de Al Qaeda geezers is much to dumb to be usin' code innit!

Machine gun.

Atomic.

A.N.other key word.

I get the point and realised about the Algorithms.
It just seems to be a PR stunt rather than a practical surveillance option.
Again, how is the Gov going to use this for nefarious means? Should they wish to make targeted surveillance of an individual, for fair means or foul; I'm fairly certain they would be able to now regardless of any legislation. I'm pretty sure they do.

Anyone who has read a John Le Carre  novel could circumvent any algorithm, surely? A simple phrase, inserted into a spam mail, sent to tens of millions of email addresses worldwide?
Simple pen, paper and a stamp?


Even these forums!

If I write "There is a green leaf in the hair of the lion today", I might be unleashing the full might of the Peoples Righteously Right-Handed Green September Movement.

 

[Oldmanmatt]

Actually should have put the Clown emoticon in that, as I'm not having a go at Slakers, just the idea behind the legislation.

But I'm strangely unable to edit my posts.


And a blacked our Range rover just pulled up outside.


Quick! Give me the Blue Pill!

[Sloper]

They'll be going on who calls whom: i.e. the get one number and then do some cross matching / tree analysis, then they can review the data in whcih cases coded messages will stand out like a rabbi at eid.

[slackline]

Should they wish to make targeted surveillance of an individual, for fair means or foul; I'm fairly certain they would be able to now regardless of any legislation. I'm pretty sure they do.

Exactly, so there isn't really any need for mass surveillance in the first place, it doesn't add anything to the cache of information on who to watch as there is so much noise and false positives in using it as a primary source of who to follow that its a pretty futile exercise.

But hey, its ok, its to keep us safe so thats ok. 

[Sloper]

Should they wish to make targeted surveillance of an individual, for fair means or foul; I'm fairly certain they would be able to now regardless of any legislation. I'm pretty sure they do.

Exactly, so there isn't really any need for mass surveillance in the first place, it doesn't add anything to the cache of information on who to watch as there is so much noise and false positives in using it as a primary source of who to follow that its a pretty futile exercise.

But hey, its ok, its to keep us safe so thats ok. 

It's not 'mass surveillence' it's the storage of data that when required can be analysed.

For example, do you remember the Glasgow Airport bombings?

one of the ways which they were able to identify the offenders (who weren't caught/dead at the scene) so quickly was the use of ANPR data, they looked to match the vehicles that were within n. proximity of the target vehicle as the target passed ANPR, in that with >xn. ANPR hits for the target so the chance of another vehicle appearing in >yn of the ANPR hits for the target reduces pretty much to 0 when x gets beyond a certain threshold.

Did this involve an invasion of privacy of any of the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who's car registration was in the same of 1 ANPR hit? No of bloody course it didn't.

Take for example mobile telephone data.  They get a suspect Paedo/terrorist/potential Tory identified and obtain their mobile number.  They can then see who potential P/T/T is calling and potentially identify other P/T/T's if one of the people they're calling is another known/suspect P/T/T then they can begin to identify a network and if encessary then look to recover the content of the calls.  The calls the potential P/T/T is making to [insert innocent purpose here] won't even pass through the first sift.

It is for these reasons that the number of requests for data is so low and the requests for content event lower.

The idea that this data is being accessed on a continual basis and randomly screened is just hysterical bollocks.

[slackline]

Take for example mobile telephone data.  They get a suspect Paedo/terrorist/potential Tory identified and obtain their mobile number.  They can then see who potential P/T/T is calling and potentially identify other P/T/T's if one of the people they're calling is another known/suspect P/T/T then they can begin to identify a network and if encessary then look to recover the content of the calls.  The calls the potential P/T/T is making to [insert innocent purpose here] won't even pass through the first sift.

The person being called doesn't come under suspicion unless they are already a suspect then?    I'm highly suspicious that this is actually the case, but it would be impossible for me (or others) to prove otherwise, but given repeated "revelations" about nefarious practices within the law enforcement agencies I wouldn't be surprised.

I really see no need for the government to have access (should they need it) to millions and millions of banal contacts about what pub to meet in/who's getting the shopping on the way home/[insert the irrelevant nature of 99.999999999% of the communications that are being logged].

There are already other existing and more reliable/robust sources of evidence for tracking/monitoring/watching/reasons for suspecting individuals who are planning or participating the things you mention.  Once you have evidence of wrong doing from alternative sources you then target monitoring of an individuals activities, without the need to mass monitor the population.

There is a balance to be struck and the scale of such activities is not, in my opinion, sufficient to warrant the mass monitoring of rest of the population because despite what the papers/media would have you believe the world isn't full of terrorists who want to kill us, paedophiles who want to defile every child in the world and rapists who want to fuck anything that moves.  Rather it is mostly full of normal people like, you, I and everyone else posting on this and other forums who want to go on living their lives without someone looking over their shoulders.

[Sloper]

Resoruces are so stretched that they're not even routinely giving people new 'phones every 3 months.  I called a mate by mistake (i.e. I tapped on the wrong contact in my 'hone) and was f*cking amazed he still had the same number (o.k. he's mid office but even so).

Resources will be focused and targetted, and there's no access to content unless a RIPA authority is given, I would imagine that these will not change from the historic trend of <3000 per year i.e. about 2% of cases where there's a data request as such <.00000000 etc1% of data wil never even be considered and in an almost homeopathic dilution of cases will there actually be knowledge of what the call's about.

this isn't about mass monitoring, it's about giving the police / security services the means of (generally) retrospctively obtaining evidence: of course in a very limited number of cases this will also be used as a real time intelligence tool but we can basically rule that out as a matter of public concern.

As for targetted human surveillence, do you have any idea of how resource intensive this is and how impractical it is to deploy other than in the most serious of cases?

[petejh]

I agree with Snooper's sorry Sloper's points about this being a source of data for retrospective sifting post-'event', and it being a case of selectively targeting the needle in the data haystack - a needle which can't be found if you don't have the haystack of data to search in the first place.

However - I also agree with Slacker's points about there being a questionable need to find the needle in the first place. I don't feel threatened by any extremist group. I grew up when the IRA were bombing Warrington and other UK cities, and I served for a total of 6 years out of 10 in N.Ireland. Life in the UK today feels far more peaceful then during the 80s and 90s when bombings on the mainland were (close to) annual events.

Is that a result of terror groups being stopped before they act? Perhaps partly yes. But I'm skeptical that there's any more threat today than there ever used to be. I also feel we're far more scared today than we used to be. It's horrible but true that if you experience bad events it produces a culture of resilience to those events. (edit) I think the opposite is also true. Tricky question of balancing freedom verus exposure to shit things like being bombed! (edit)

We've had ANPR for ever - the system was called 'vengeful' in N.Ireland back in the 80s and 90s and was on every checkpoint, ferry port, airport and border crossing. I remember idly surfing the system some time during a tour in the 90s and discovering some suspected people in my home town. It was a system open for use by even the lowliest but-fuck intelligence officer/nco with a password.
It's only natural it should be now used all over the UK.
Same for covert communication surveillance. N.Ireland was the test-bed - where keywords and auto-recordings were first used. Now it has naturally spread to the rest of the UK.

It boils down to 'do you or do you not trust the authorities with this power?'. If you do then this should be welcomed as another tool to be used for good.
Until fairly recently it'd be almost a given that the authorities e.g. the UK Government could be trusted by the majority of its citizens to have their best interests at the heart of what they do.

But today, given what's gone before during the last 15 years including - but not limited to - the starting of wars on extremely spurious grounds and lying to the public about those grounds, and the constant exposure of corrupt practice by people in positions of authority,  I don't feel it's as much of a given anymore that the establishment can always be trusted to have our best interests at heart.

I'm not skeptical of the intentions of most people in Government, but I am skeptical that there exists a small % who could use certain powers, such as these recent surveillance tools, for nefarious means. And history shows it doesn't take much for things to get out of control - Stazi in Eastern Europe, Argentina and various other countries. Back then they didn't have the powerful surveillance tools that exist today.
It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that events in the UK could lead to an authoritarian government suppressing dissent, and using data surveillance as one its tools of suppression.

[Oldmanmatt]

As for targetted human surveillence, do you have any idea of how resource intensive this is and how impractical it is to deploy other than in the most serious of cases?

Yes, as does Pete, ' cos he's been across the water. Even the military would struggle to source enough personnel, suitably trained to mount an op on multiple suspects for any duration; there is no Police force which could.
People recognise others by their eyes, posture, gait and numerous other difficult to describe attributes. The same "face" appearing, even twice a week, would raise the hackles of all but the dumbest. It is therefore extremely labour intensive and impractical.

However - I also agree with Slacker's points about there being a questionable need to find the needle in the first place. I don't feel threatened by any extremist group. I grew up when the IRA were bombing Warrington and other UK cities, and I served for a total of 6 years out of 10 in N.Ireland. Life in the UK today feels far more peaceful then during the 80s and 90s when bombings on the mainland were (close to) annual events.

Is that a result of terror groups being stopped before they act? Perhaps partly yes. But I'm skeptical that there's any more threat today than there ever used to be. I also feel we're far more scared today than we used to be. It's horrible but true that if you experience bad events it produces a culture of resilience to those events. (edit) I think the opposite is also true. Tricky question of balancing freedom verus exposure to shit things like being bombed! (edit)





I'm not skeptical of the intentions of most people in Government, but I am skeptical that there exists a small % who could use certain powers, such as these recent surveillance tools, for nefarious means. And history shows it doesn't take much for things to get out of control - Stazi in Eastern Europe, Argentina and various other countries. Back then they didn't have the powerful surveillance tools that exist today.
It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that events in the UK could lead to an authoritarian government suppressing dissent, and using data surveillance as one its tools of suppression.

We are dinosaurs Pete. Such a trove of possible data did not exist and recording of calls on mag tape? The nation would have drowned under the stuff.

As far as I can see, retention of content is unlikely, merely the general data, for calls. Email is different in that it is a single file, of both.

But my original point about the value if the content stands and Sloper is correct about it's value being principle for pattern recognition.

I don't like it.

I don't like airport security either.

But, how else?

[slackline]

This is all pretty irrelevant anyway. 

As the Guardian expose of the Edward Snowden's leaks reveal the NSA/GCHQ will do whatever the fuck they want anyway, regardless of whether its legal or not. 

[Sloper]

The point about oversight is key and we probably have some of the most robust oversight mechanisms going.

The key issue is not whether the govt conducts instrusive surveillence or other forms of data gathering but the use to which they are put.

There's a sad but inevitable history of states misuing power but in almost every instance this is where there is a lack of democratic systems and the rule of law, both of which are too well established in the UK for widespread malign use of the data stored.

If there is anything to be genuinely worried about it was the local authorities using RIPA to monitor dog walkers, where people lived viz a viz school admissions and the like, but thankfully this pwoer was withdrawn in the early days of this govenment.

[petejh]

This is all pretty irrelevant anyway. 

As the Guardian expose of the Edward Snowden's leaks reveal the NSA/GCHQ will do whatever the fuck they want anyway, regardless of whether its legal or not. 

Yes they will. And as long as good people are running the show I'm OK with that. I'm OK that clever people with the right intentions don't feel they have to pander to every moaning, clueless, citizen smith's needy wants and instead feel they can concentrate on doing what's right for the greater good.

On the other hand, I'm as worried as you are that there seems these days to be an awfully large number of corrupt people and corrupting interests around, and I'm not convinced government institutions are free of them.

[petejh]

If there is anything to be genuinely worried about it was the local authorities using RIPA to monitor dog walkers, where people lived viz a viz school admissions and the like, but thankfully this pwoer was withdrawn in the early days of this govenment.

But the very existence of a desire to do that, by ordinary people in your local council, highlights how easy it is for everyday nothing bureaucrats to become something quite sinister.

[Oldmanmatt]

Robespierre, Stalin, Hitler, Castro and A.N.Other, tired, clichéd, over cited, but real; examples of people/states quite capable of running totalitarian societies without any of the current technology.
Hoover and McCarthy, from the good 'ol land of the free, managed it despite supposed democratic oversight.

My point being, this is not a direct threat to my personal privacy IMO. In fact, where such data is publicly known to be stored, surely accessing it illegally becomes harder?

[slackline]

@jackofkent(/David Allen Green) who is a lawyer has pointed out that there are revisions in the rushed bill (read back through tweets), and there is a widening of legal definitions (FT blogpost, not paywalled but requires registration).   Makes several points I've objected to and highlights many more, but primarily, why is this being rushed through now when the European Court ruling was in April 2014?

The key issue is not whether the govt conducts instrusive surveillence or other forms of data gathering but the use to which they are put.

And yet it has been misused/abused as you've highlighted.  That may have been reigned in now, but it doesn't mean it won't be abused again (and you could almost argue that its inevitable).

That wouldn't be possible if it wasn't done in the first place, and I don't think the spectre of terror (or whatever other current flavour is used to scare the population, drug dealing, paedo's, human trafficking) is ever as bad prevalent as suggested (NB this is not a suggestion that these crimes are not serious, they are).  Rather it is the scope for misuse/abuse which is greater.

[Sloper]

If there is anything to be genuinely worried about it was the local authorities using RIPA to monitor dog walkers, where people lived viz a viz school admissions and the like, but thankfully this pwoer was withdrawn in the early days of this govenment.

But the very existence of a desire to do that, by ordinary people in your local council, highlights how easy it is for everyday nothing bureaucrats to become something quite sinister.

Only if the (likes of the last) government empowers them so to do.

One of the problems with local government is that much of it is almost immune from a change of political direction and hence the instituions are more likely to behave in a manner which they would not if they were likely to be kicked out at the next election.

[slackline]

More on why the proposed "emergency" Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill is problematic...

Clause four of the bill appears to extend Ripa – the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (basically Britain's Patriot Act) – so that the UK government can impose severe penalties on companies overseas that refuse to comply with interception warrants. It also lays out situations in which they may be required to maintain permanent interception capacity.

Clause five then provides a new definition of "telecommunications service", which includes companies offering internet-based services. That seems to drag services like Gmail and Hotmail into the law, and very probably social media sites like Facebook too.
...
They also appear to provide a legal basis for programmes like Tempora, the project revealed by Edward Snowden to allow GCHQ to tap into transatlantic fibre-optic cables and stored data.
...
 Who has not been consulted? Well, MPs for a start. They are being coerced into supporting this vague and dangerous bit of law without being able to scrutinise it.

"Given the need to ensure that law enforcement agencies are able to retain their capabilities, extending the timetable for parliamentary scrutiny is not possible in this instance," it reads.

"Due to time constraints the home affairs select committee has not had an opportunity to scrutinise the legislation."

Attempting to legalise what is currently illegal and completely disregarding the democratic process   

[tomtom]

I've oft wondered if any UKB folk have passed into agencies Interest due to repeated mentions of the Tor

[slackline]

  Meant to link to the article I was quoting.... http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2014/07/14/a-snoopers-charter-by-the-backdoor-one-day-until-drip-is-for /via @jackofkent

[Sloper]

Why the Human Rights Act gets a bad press.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-28291662

Note this is a comment on the reportage rather than the application of the law which I substantially agree with and do not dispute that the Judgment is correct.