Extreme Surveillance Becomes UK law

[Psamathe]

We are so conditioned by the govt and media that even clicking on the TOR link seems subversive ...... i did ....

I do use a VPN and sometimes wonder why because I have nothing to hide. But then I think that if somebody was standing by my letterbox reading and recording all my postal correspondence then I'd do something about stopping it.

UK government is getting very oppressive in their monitoring and the "keeping you safe from terrorism" is a load of rubbish. If they were concerned about keeping us safe they'd be doing something about the air pollution (early deaths for 40,000 a year ?)

A quote I kept (but stupidly didn't record the source so cannot credit it)

Statistically you're more likely to be killed by almost anything but terrorism. Last year 33,000 people died in terrors attacks worldwide - that's about as many who died in car crashes in the US alone. 7 million died from pollution every year, and 372,000 die from drowning. Air and water are greater risks to you life than ISIS. Where is the crazy overreaction to reduce pollution. And drowning deaths?

And

Since 9/11, 53 people have been killed by terrorists in the UK. Every one of those deaths is tragic. So is every one of the 26,805 deaths to have occurred on Britain's roads between 2002 and 2012 inclusive.

Apparently the government introduced child safety internet filters are routinely blocking medical web sites (the sort of sites that many would quite reasonably visit usefully).

Ian

[Psamathe]

Ms May was quite clever/devious in realising what would gag David Davis (seems even a politician can be brought with offers of power and position).

Ian

[kwackers]

there is nothing to stop you joining the project as a developer, having access to all the code, and seeing for yourself that there are no 'back doors' allowing entry by the spooks.

Yeah, because 'bugs' that allow 'back doors' have never existed with open source software!
It's a myth of open source that the code is constantly 'peer-reviewed', it isn't. Adding new code that breaks it would be difficult, but not exploiting problems that already exist in tor or any of the supporting code.

What makes systems weak? The answer is that they're all the same.
If you can understand the tor code then write your own, but better; write it so it doesn't work quite the same as anything else. Use a raspberry pi as a 'router' to route all your internet traffic to a private server running more of your code in a country that doesn't care and then you'll be about as secure as it's possible to be.

[ncutler]

Yeah, because 'bugs' that allow 'back doors' have never existed with open source software!
It's a myth of open source that the code is constantly 'peer-reviewed', it isn't. Adding new code that breaks it would be difficult, but not exploiting problems that already exist in tor or any of the supporting code.

I think the point is that with proprietary systems the existence of a back door would be company policy and developers would stick to the corporate line if they wanted to keep their positions. The same applies to 'bugs' - it's often company culture to keep quiet about them. With open source the ethics are inverted: there is kudos for finding holes in the system, and more kudos for fixing them, and you can't channel developers into particular areas of work: they'll poke about all over the place because they enjoy it.

[kwackers]

there is kudos for finding holes in the system, and more kudos for fixing them, and you can't channel developers into particular areas of work: they'll poke about all over the place because they enjoy it.

Except of course that there are examples of serious bugs that persisted for years before they were spotted. Some were even used by the security services.
In my experience the sort of folk who poke around in open source software aren't interested in looking for bugs - because once the low hanging fruit has gone bugs can be notoriously difficult to find and the real kudos is in adding features.
I'd even go as far as to say that most folk who mess with open source don't really have much of a clue and the ones that do are spread fairly thinly.

(It's not as if open source software doesn't have bug lists - often with bugs that are 'getting on a bit'. You don't see anyone getting killed in the rush to fix most of them)

[Psamathe]

One aspect to note is that using a VPN will provide a degree of protection from your web browsing (and some other internet communications) depending on your VPN, where you visit, etc.

But it does not do so much for your e-mail privacy. However good your own precautions between your computer and your e-mail server, that e-mail will have been sent by somebody who may not be taking similar precautions, may have been routed between mail servers without similar protections, might be your e-mail server is in the UK/US so GCHQ/NSA probably get transcripts of everything anyway, etc.

I suspect that if you want better e-mail privacy you'd need to start encrypting your e-mails (sent and received - and that is never going to happen to provide much privacy). But even that wont work as e.g. somebody pestered by SPAM selling them viagra and all sorts of pharmaceutical products might be profiled by GCHQ as having interests contrary to their role as e.g. a catholic minister.

I do use a VPN for privacy but recognise that it has limitations (and as I don't have anything to hide it's not a massive issue for me, just I don't like the idea of people watching/monitoring/logging everything I do so I block the bits that are easy and practical to block).

Ian

[meic]

I dont understand about VPNs etc.
I have however looked at TOR and installed it. TOR will only work in defeating mass surveillance if lots of people use it, rather like herd immunity making the haystack so much larger.
There are two problems, firstly my internet speed and connectivity is too crap, secondly it is providing cover for some very dodgy bad guys as well as protecting the privacy of the individual.

[[XAP]Bob]

Also in that bill is the very worrying section 56 (from memory). The government is allowed to lie in court and force you to as well...

[Psamathe]

Also in that bill is the very worrying section 56 (from memory). The government is allowed to lie in court and force you to as well...

I'd not appreciated that. Even US law does not do that (hence what most consider to enable the "Warrant Canary", which I believe has not yet actually been tested in court).

Ian

[kwackers]

Also in that bill is the very worrying section 56 (from memory). The government is allowed to lie in court and force you to as well...

I'm not sure I see what the issue is?
Basically you can't force someone to tell you something about someone else if you wouldn't normally have access to that data.

I'm sure you're making a point I'm not seeing - but the issue is I'm not seeing it and so a bit of light would help...

[landsurfer]

Also in that bill is the very worrying section 56 (from memory). The government is allowed to lie in court and force you to as well...

I'm not sure I see what the issue is?
Basically you can't force someone to tell you something about someone else if you wouldn't normally have access to that data.

I'm sure you're making a point I'm not seeing - but the issue is I'm not seeing it and so a bit of light would help...

Sorry to be a but glib but ... +1 ...

[Psamathe]

Also in that bill is the very worrying section 56 (from memory). The government is allowed to lie in court and force you to as well...

I'm not sure I see what the issue is?
Basically you can't force someone to tell you something about someone else if you wouldn't normally have access to that data.

I'm sure you're making a point I'm not seeing - but the issue is I'm not seeing it and so a bit of light would help... ;)

(I've not read Section 56 so my comment is based on Bob's comment). To me the courts system is designed to establish truth and only works if witnesses tell the truth and if they don't they are committing perjury themselves and committing an offence). It would seem totally wrong in a legal case where somebody is being charged if the government can appear and just tell lies - what change does the accused have of justice. And if the government can force others to also lie, to me justice can't work.

In practice I assume the "forcing you to lie" is more about preventing anybody revealing they are subject to a warrant (e.g. by forcing them to post e.g. "We have received no government warranty for information" when in fact they have). Trouble is that legislation envisaged for specific cases can turn out to be far more general in nature and then be used in situations where it was never actually intended to b applied.

Ian

[[XAP]Bob]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/06 ... sh_courts/

They can make up a story about collection of evidence, and you have to agree with them in court - in front of a jury, you can't cast doubt on their story (which is designed to have you found guilty)

Section 56(1)(b) creates a legally guaranteed ability – nay, duty – to lie about even the potential for State hacking to take place, and to tell juries a wholly fictitious story about the true origins of hacked material used against defendants in order to secure criminal convictions. This is incredibly dangerous. Even if you know that the story being told in court is false, you and your legal representatives are now banned from being able to question those falsehoods and cast doubt upon the prosecution story.

Potentially, you could be legally bound to go along with lies told in court about your communications – lies told by people whose sole task is to weave a story that will get you sent to prison or fined thousands of pounds.

The existence of section 56(4) makes a mockery of the "general privacy protections" in Part 1 of the IPA, which includes various criminal offences. Part 1 was introduced as a sop to privacy advocates horrified at the full extent of the act's legalisation of intrusive, disruptive and dangerous hacking powers for the State, including powers to force the co-operation of telcos and similar organisations. There is no point in having punishments for lawbreakers if it is illegal to talk about their law-breaking behaviour.

[Cunobelin]

I love this short sequence from "Person of Interest"

[bovlomov]

Let's see how David Davis responds to this (in The Guardian).

Before Davis was Brexit minister, he brought a case to the EU, about data retention by the UK government. Now he is Brexit minister, and the court has found in his favour.

“General and indiscriminate retention” of emails and electronic communications by governments is illegal, the EU’s highest court has ruled in a judgment that could trigger challenges against the UK’s new Investigatory Powers Act, the so-called snooper’s charter.

The finding by came in response to a legal challenge initially brought by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, when he was a backbench MP, and Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, over the legality of GCHQ’s bulk interception of call records and online messages.