Tuesday, February 21st 2012
UK Govt.'s Idea of "Communications Capabilities Development": Monitoring IP Traffic
The UK government has a bizarre idea of "communications capabilities development": mass-monitoring of IP traffic, and snooping into what British netizens are up to. Despite being defeated during the UK Labour Party rule, there seems to be a revival of the idea of greater monitoring of internet traffic under the Conservative government, under a legislation titled "Communications Capabilities Development Programme".
This legislation proposes that ISPs and other communications providers be required to maintain logs of individual users' communications, all of them, starting from web history, to IM, to in-game text/voice chat, e-mails, Skype calls, even Twitter messages. This monitoring should run for at least an year, so the establishment collects enough data to draw patterns around.
"The coalition opposed Labour's plans in opposition. Now, despite civil liberties commitments from the Conservatives and Lib Dems, Home Office officials are planning to push through the same on-line surveillance capabilities." stated the Open Rights Group, "They are not telling Parliament, and hope they can slip commitments to build these new surveillance plans before the politicians really know what they are proposing. The plans are a huge waste of time and money, as well as being a huge intrusion on our civil liberties. Online government surveillance is the last thing we need right now."
So what exactly does the average Briton get out this "development programme"? Security? Not quite. Faster internet in remote parts of the country? Nah! Faster internet in the cities? Not that either. Instead, with a gargantuan data-pile such as all of Britain's internet activity in an year, it's the advertisers and politicians sitting on a gold mine.
Source:
Hexus.net
This legislation proposes that ISPs and other communications providers be required to maintain logs of individual users' communications, all of them, starting from web history, to IM, to in-game text/voice chat, e-mails, Skype calls, even Twitter messages. This monitoring should run for at least an year, so the establishment collects enough data to draw patterns around.
"The coalition opposed Labour's plans in opposition. Now, despite civil liberties commitments from the Conservatives and Lib Dems, Home Office officials are planning to push through the same on-line surveillance capabilities." stated the Open Rights Group, "They are not telling Parliament, and hope they can slip commitments to build these new surveillance plans before the politicians really know what they are proposing. The plans are a huge waste of time and money, as well as being a huge intrusion on our civil liberties. Online government surveillance is the last thing we need right now."
So what exactly does the average Briton get out this "development programme"? Security? Not quite. Faster internet in remote parts of the country? Nah! Faster internet in the cities? Not that either. Instead, with a gargantuan data-pile such as all of Britain's internet activity in an year, it's the advertisers and politicians sitting on a gold mine.
20 Comments on UK Govt.'s Idea of "Communications Capabilities Development": Monitoring IP Traffic
Bonus:
Will have hard-disk shortage again :)
Edit: Double damn. Double digi damn.
Will never happen, it's unrealistic to pull off not to mention they will not get this through parliament without the people getting hold of it and kicking up a stink.
Another "gvt" technology project that will cost billions, allow hundreds of corrupt millions to be embezzelled, and will lead to nothing except an out of date concept still in design and pilot phase in 8 years time, being cancelled and wasting taxpayers money. It will also employ people for a few years to get those statistics down, and allow people to play procurement games and take skims and lock in silly over-the-top prices. It will be supervised by people with little technical competence. And it will be monitored by the children of the people using those video cams on streets that dont catch thieves but watch for people who illegally park for 3 minutes.
If the UK can't digitise medical records, can't build submarines, can't build radar systems, can't get internet to rural sites... it will FAIL in this endeavour.
But it will distract people from other issues. All good political gamesmanship.
1) Tunnel all your connections through a virtual adapter
2) Purchace a connection to Yourfreedom or Hidemyass
3) re-route all you traffic to the yourfreedom or hidemyass server with encryption
You are not being spied upon anymore.
Next plz.
And it is actually exactly what the person in the post above says.
and they only have to list connections between points with dates and times etc for the amount of data logging to be tolerable yet still be usefull to companies and Agencys:mad:
ACTA in Europe
That C-something bill in Canada
Now this in the UK.
All within a few months. I'm not much for the tinfoil hat people and those theories but it can't be coincidental that several world leaders "suddenly" decide to stomp down the internet.
Then again, some people just want to watch the world burn.
they are agendas that have been pushed long before the london riots & long before napster - those are just catalysts.
even when you can point at a problem and say -> they did it. they rioted, they copied copyrighted data, they did it, ok. someone was bound to, that doesn't in any way excuse what's done in response. to simply hand it off and say "thank those guys" relieves responsibility from the 'wonderful people' that are actually behind the agenda.
it doesn't take illuminati or any "secret" group. it just takes a few people in a position of power with like goals. it's amazing what a positive feedback loop can allow someone to do... righteously.
www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/231602248
Further I wouldn't trust any Government with that kind of data (even one I were in charge of myself) as it's way too open to abuse :shadedshu
Off topic; the first post I've made on this forum with the quote by Benjamin Franklin in my signature, while matching the theme of this thread, is a cool coincidence :twitch: :cool: