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Big Brother - New (55 messages) |
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The government has confirmed
that it's considering a proposal to give the Intelligence
services, Customs and Excise and the police, powers to have
access to all emails, Internet connections and phone calls
made in Britain, and to store the data for seven years. A
reasonable use of data or Big Brother watching you?
 
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Messages 1 to 25 (by time) out
of 55
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Mr.
Gordon Dirker - 01:49pm Wed 06 Dec 00
Although the majority of people in the UK seem to be
fairly complacent about this infringement into their
privacy, (we moved here from the US) I do hope that
people will make a major issue out of the scary proposal
which has now been put forward. These are measures one
[continued]
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New
Labour, New Ideas, No Idea Ian Jarmaine -
04:24am Wed 06 Dec 00
I should't worry to much about
New Labour and their proposal to store all our emails
etc. This government, whilst always full of new
initiatives, doesn't have the honesty or ability to
carry them to a conclusion. How many crack downs on
crime have been pronounced. Yet, after the tragic [continued]
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21st
Century Mike Cain - 02:38am Wed 06 Dec 00
Plans to intercept electronic communications are an
update of current snail mail interceptions. The plan to
maintain intercepted items for seven years begs the
question 'How long are current copies kept'. I have no
qualms about Big Brother watching, I do however
seriously question the competance of the public sector
to design and maintain an effective monitoring system.
To date no public purchase in this area has come in even
on budget and time and there seems to be no
repercussions on the civil servants responsible.
Over-runs are the norm.In the 21st century, the civil
servants should cary the can as it is they who
effectively buy the systems and they are no match for
the commercial world |
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1984
Lee Powell - 07:56pm Tue 05 Dec 00
If
the scale of the information gathering to 'protect us
against criminals' is to cover every living person in
the UK, just how much storage space do you think is
needed? And how much (tax payer's) money will this cost?
A human right to have privacy and the data protection
act should hopefully terminate the proposal. If they did
get a huge database, the possibility of
terrorists/hackers/whoever getting hold of information
to corrupt people's lives is too scary to consider. This
is crazy, next we'll be obliged to put Telescreens in
our houses and have chips installed into our brains so
the authorities can locate anyone/record what they're
thinking or something! |
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Overkill
or what? Val Law - 06:39pm Tue 05 Dec 00
Right - no way is this about crime prevention, there
is just too great a volume of info. This is control
freakery gone mad. And no - I don't have anything to
fear - except yet another intrusion into my individual
rights to privacy of my personal communications.
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Prevention,
cure or disease? David Mottram - 04:58pm
Tue 05 Dec 00
Crime prevention is almost certainly
not the objective of this proposal. The volumes of data
are too great. However, it will make the authorities
task of 'proving' guilt easier.
Recent miscarriages show too clearly what will
happen. Someone accused, or suspected of a crime will
have their records trawled for evidence of guilt,
evidence of innocence being, of course, not relevant to
the case.
The effect on crime will be negligible - most
criminals plead guilty anyway. Sophisticated criminals
will find technical solutions - aliases, proxies,
overseas addresses, encryption etc.
The effect on convictions will be to increase the
number of wrongful ones - which the innocent certainly
do need to fear! |
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Re:
What have you to fear? Iain Rowan -
10:05am Tue 05 Dec 00
Ultimately, why do we fear the
state?
Because across the world, every day, states -
including our own - give good reason as to why they
should be viewed with sceptical distrust, if not fear.
And what are we hiding?
Get a web page. Scan all your bank statements and put
them on there. Scan all your credit card bills, your
medical records, your love letters, letters to friends
and family, every email you have ever sent, a link to
every webpage you have ever visited, every newsgroup you
have ever subscribed to, put them all on the website.
Oh, and a live webcam of your bedroom please.
You'd only object if you have something to hide. So,
what are you hiding, really?
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Before
the Event Tim Caves - 11:06pm Mon 04 Dec
00
To really work the level of monitoring has to be
draconian so that people not yet known as dangerous can
be picked up BEFORE rather than AFTER they commit
crimes. What's the point of only monitoring people you
already know are criminals? But with the past record of
schemes like this, I don't think it's really going to
work. |
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Indeed
- J-P Stacey - 10:00pm Mon 04 Dec 00
It's not at all clear what initiative or effort you
are referring to. As I've mentioned elsewhere, these
measures are all entirely avoidable by both criminals
and private citizens. The difficulty is in avoiding
them, however, and all they will serve to do is in the
worst case violate one's [continued]
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Paranoia
Brian R Hughes - 09:32pm Mon 04 Dec 00
Would that my emails were interesting enough for
anyone to want to read! I see no great issue here and
neither do I mind being watched by a CCTV camera as I
wander down the High Street.
If it gives the authorities access to information
about law-breakers it is overall a Good Thing. But the
sheer volume of information makes me feel safe that even
the most evil dictator would never be interested in my
drivel. Of course surveillance is open to abuse but so
are binoculars and we're not clamouring for them to be
banned are we? The safeguards are in our
independent(ish) legal system and our democratic(ish)
government - the East German experience is not a good
comparison to make, they had neither. .
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Re:
Trust Michael McKay - 08:28pm Mon 04 Dec
00
I should add that the qote is taken from a Home
Office official site regardinhg RIPA but in keeping with
the rules I will not quote it.
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Trust
Michael McKay - 07:58pm Mon 04 Dec 00
In issues such as this we have to have trust in the
authorities who advocate such draconian measures.
So how do we reconcile the NCIS spokesman's arguments
with that put forward by his Director General at the
time that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers was
being debated? At that time he said: "Conspiracy
theorists must not be allowed to get away with the
ridiculous notion that law enforcement would or even
could monitor all emails" Clearly they would and clearly
they can.... So how much trust should we place in these
people when their public statements conflict with their
real intentions?
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East
Germany Manuel Duggal - 06:31pm Mon 04
Dec 00
In November 1989, when the Berlin Wall came
down, the East German regime and the Stasi were exposed
for having kept records for over 20 years of all
telephone conversations of all its' 17 million
inhabitants including opening all personal post.
Security cameras were used to observe the population to
make sure that they were obeying party rules. The
governments' proposal to access emails is no different
to the system in the GDR. We must therefore take comfort
in the fact that all such systems are ultimately doomed
to failure. |
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mr
simon stock - 06:15pm Mon 04 Dec 00
This is certainly a case of Big Brother watching
you, and an infringement of Human Rights. I am shocked
and frankly, disgusted. |
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Straw
Poll Brian Hull - 05:34pm Mon 04 Dec 00
After a discussion on this topic in the office,
(Very small sample, 5 people) all agreed this
legilislation proposal is outrageous. Given that the use
of electonic transactions of all kinds will grow, it
follows that many other types of information contained
within the transaction packets will also allow for
scrutinization by our "Benign Government". For example
where video streams are being delivered over the net
they will be able to censor out the content they wish us
not to have. |
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Re:
How would it work? Geoff Landergan -
05:33pm Mon 04 Dec 00
"It is trivial to do that ..."
- far from it. You cannot determine what is or is not an
email message from the packet header.
The difficulties involved in reassembling all
concurrent data streams to search for email are immense.
And you could not relably verify the addresses from a
mid-point.
"That is EXACTLY the legal power they gave themselves
in the RIP... " only in respect to internet service
providers. The problem is that mail is a peer-to-peer
protocol, and the ISPs need have no visibility of the
traffic.
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Re:
How would it work? Laura Harvey69 -
05:20pm Mon 04 Dec 00
The RIP bill, and this new
proposal places the burden of proof upon the individual,
not the state. What kind of society operates under the
principle of 'guilty until proven innocent'?
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Re:
How would it work? Owen Blacker - 05:01pm
Mon 04 Dec 00
I have to agree with DavidC Evans (and
thus disagree with Jonathan Sargent). Whilst I'm not
quite paranoid enough to think that any request for
expanded powers (etc) from law enforcement agencies is a
bad thing -- obviously their powers need to be updated
to take account of technological advancement [continued]
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Re:
How would it work? Ken Brown - 05:00pm
Mon 04 Dec 00
"It would be technically difficult
(unachievable) to attept to identify [...] email
messages just by looking at the data on the Internet."
It is trivial to do that if you have access to the phone
lines & cables the messages are passing through -
unless the senders use strong encryption [continued]
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Re:
MYOB Ken Brown - 04:50pm Mon 04 Dec 00
The proposal is not to monitor mail. It is to record
the details of all electronic communications. This
includes mail, and web pages you see, as well as all
your phone calls. It would also include details of your
use of ATMs, credit checks from shops & things like
that.
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Re:
How would it work? DavidC Evans - 03:39pm
Mon 04 Dec 00
Not only can emails be sent from an
anonymous email address from an anonymous internet cafe;
phone calls can be made between mobile phones bought in
the supermarket with anonymity assured.
Criminals must be wise to this: the only people whose
calls and emails will be traced will be those with
nothing to hide. |
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Orwellian
Shades Brian Sowerby - 03:26pm Mon 04 Dec
00
I realise that I have given information to you
even in setting up this dialogue possibility, but I did
so voluntarily and therein lies the difference between
this and the proposals as outlined by the government. I
know that appropriate measures are available to the
security and police services if [continued]
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Look
to the future Michael Thorne - 03:02pm
Mon 04 Dec 00
If the authorities assume the right to
track our every move and every communication, where will
we finish up? There have already been several,
understandable, references to George Orwell's 1984. Take
a look at where we are now. For laudable reasons we now
have video cameras in our streets, roadside [continued]
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A
question of balance... Jonathan Sargent -
02:37pm Mon 04 Dec 00
It really is a question of
balancing the rights of the individual against the
obligations to society. It is difficult to imagine
anyone with any caring or respect for individual privacy
and basic human rights wanting to monitor e-mail for its
own sake. It is clearly being proposed as a sad but
perhaps inevitable step in the name of security for our
society.
If such monitoring were to prevent a future
Lockerbie, or stop a ring of child paedophiles or
similar extreme anti-social behaviour, then I suspect
that most of us would accept a small infringement on our
civil rights for the sake of the safety of a greater
number of people.
Therefore, perhaps sadly and reluctantly we have to
accept some monitoring of these forms of communication
in order that we do offer a greater degree of protection
to the whole population. It is quite essential though
that such monitoring should be limited and have strict
guidelines. |
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Re:
MYOB Geoff Landergan - 02:28pm Mon 04 Dec
00
The proposal is not that the government should
open every letter and take a copy, but that they would
photocopy the outside of the envelope.
Also, they won't be listening already because this
discussion group uses web (HTTP), not mail (SMTP). The
proposal is only to monitor mail.
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