[Chapter-delegates] Giant database plan 'Orwellian'

[Christian de Larrinaga]

It is a nice theory to believe that privacy directives will be able to  
manage privacy in practice but I think the BBC story should be taken a  
bit more seriously.

see http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

The British Information Commissioner has expressed many times his  
disquiet over the way things are developing towards a surveillance  
society.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/about_us/news_and_views/current_topics.aspx

The precedent of the conduct by the UK government with previous UK  
legislation such as RIPA where promises of limited applicability made  
by ministers were broken within a couple of years and the even more  
recent massive data losses of personal data that the Government makes  
for a justifiable scepticism.

There are some links here http://www.fipr.org/policy.html

What I think needs to be understood is that the proposal is  
intelligence led by GCHQ not the police (ACPO). The Home Office is  
itself divided. The police just want to be able to tap phones and  
stuff when then want.

The reaction on this list that users deploy encryption is telling.  
However the data they want to record is traffic data not the content  
itself. So encrypting your emails won't stop the authorities from  
drawing the inevitable conclusion from who your talk to, who they talk  
to and what websites you visit and so forth.


There have to be consequences from the combination of separate  
pervasive surveillance and recording measures for fishing expeditions  
rather than focusing resources to develop ways to assist targeting  
serious criminal investigations.

My concern is governments today see electronic communications not as a  
better way for society to find the bad eggs but as justification for  
government to know everything we do so they find the bad eggs.

The consequence of this is massive information centralisation at the  
risk of deteriorating the public's desire and ability to act in its  
own defence.

This is odd when the Internet architectures are at there best  
supporting decentralisation. It also makes for a much worse life due  
to the inconvenience and unpredictability of being placed under  
continuous investigation without cause by people we cannot in any  
significant way influence because we cannot know what they are  
actually doing.

An oped by Bruce Schneier 2007 How To Not Catch Terrorists is worth  
the read  http://www.schneier.com/essay-163.html


Christian



On 18 Oct 2008, at 12:01, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:

> I think some background is needed here. The Beeb article draws a
> unnecessary dark picture by forgetting to mention that all this data
> retention is also regulated by other directives regarding privacy of
> personal data, which are considered the most stringent ones in the  
> world.
>
> As Veni mentions, the UK is only transposing an EU directive. The
> directive itself harmonizes an,d updates what member states have been
> doing for years. Even before the Internet became a major communication
> tool, telephone call listings were used in support of police
> investigations.
>
> We are fortunate enough in Europe to have democratic governments under
> permanent scrunity from their parliaments. So I think we are pretty  
> safe
> that an Orwerllian plan could not be deployed unbeknownst of  
> anyone.  I
> would point out that countries who do -or previously did- large scale
> monitoring of their population usually do not even bother passing laws
> to allow that.
>
> Patrick
>
> Veni Markovski wrote, On 17/10/08 18:48:
>> These requirements are part of EU Directive 24 / 2006, so I don't see
>> anything to worry about. Yes, they could store the data could have  
>> been
>> 6 months (the minimum), or 24 (max). PGP will not help, if you are
>> committing a crime :)
>>
>> veni
>>
>> At 03:45 AM 10/18/2008  +1200, Franck Martin wrote:
>>> Time to use PGP and IPSec
>>>
>>> This link came up in the IGC mailing list... Posted here for  
>>> discussion.
>>>
>>> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7671046.stm>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7671046.stm
>>>
>>>
>>> Excerpts from this UK news:
>>>
>>> Details of the times, dates, duration and locations of mobile phone
>>> calls, numbers called, website visited and addresses e-mailed are
>>> already stored by telecoms companies for 12 months under a voluntary
>>> agreement.
>>>
>>> The data can be accessed by the police and security services on
>>> request - but the government plans to take control of the process in
>>> order to comply with an EU directive and make it easier for
>>> investigators to do their job.
>>>
>>> Information will be kept for two years by law and may be held
>>> centrally on a searchable database.
>>
>>
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>
> -- 
> Patrick Vande Walle
> Check my blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu
>
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