Your Information in the Govt's Hands

[MrGongGong]

Rather strangely there was nothing in the Guardian on this this morning, when it was headline news in most other broadsheets as far as I could see.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/02/internet-companies-warn-government-email-surveillance

on the front page online

[handsomefortune]

well I suspect that with facilities like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)

the can already check in detail what folks are posting on here !!

Hard to know what they would make of it.

the things we KNOW that the governments(s) do are bad enough. I expect they keep quiet about the really naughty stuff.

although this bill will presumably just mean they don't have to bother covering up so much.

yes, it's 'the covering up' bit that'll be perceived important, and 'time saving' as well as darn nosey.

i don't suppose govts will feel obliged to come clean having been up to tricks, unlike tommaso-de-benedetti.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/30/twitter-hoaxer-tommaso-de-benedetti

(such grumpy comments follow this article, but on the other hand, arguably the best use of twitter yet )?!

i don't suppose de-benedetti might fancy 'being' a beeb controller for the day, on the 21st c 'information highway'?

[Simon]

Thank goodness for the original Maastricht Treaty, which laid the basis for police cooperation, and current EU cross-border crime legislation.

Well, it helped in some measure. And such co-operation is most beneficial, as are some of the other things that have developed in Europe. Such a shame we have to have a wasteful bureaucracy, a pointless parliament and so many other useless hangings-on that gobble up billions each year along with it.

A simple trade and co-operation treaty was all that was necessary. And, I gather, was what it was sold as in the first place...

[Flosshilde]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012...l-surveillance

on the front page online

But I'm just an old-fashioned girl & like to read my Guardian in print on the bus. I would have thought that the story waqs just up their street & they would have splashed it all over the (print) fron page - it's not as if the story just broke today.

[pilamenon]

Instigating fuel crises - ignoring thr plural, this episode of silliness has come about due to hysteria in the media and the stupidity of a lot of people

Couldn't agree more.

[Stunsworth]

Why it won't work...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/02/how-to-hide-emails-government-snooping

[MrGongGong]

What many are afraid of them finding out ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6eFNRKEROw&feature=related

[teamsaint]

Couldn't agree more.

so on reflection, the government's pronouncements on the need to stock up on petrol were a good idea, then?

perhaps the government should get its cabinet members involved in encouraging citizens NOT to behave stupidly, rather than encouraging them to act like idiots.

[Flosshilde]

Originally Posted by Simon
Instigating fuel crises - ignoring thr plural, this episode of silliness has come about due to hysteria in the media and the stupidity of a lot of people

Couldn't agree more.

Well, yes, but it wasn't only due to that. If Maude hadn't advised people to fill up & keep some in the garage, people wouldn't have panicked & emptied the filling stations.

[Chris Newman]

I think Frances Maude should offer to reimburse the sea-side hotels and B & Bs that have lost Easter holiday customers who were worried enough by his words to cancel their holidays.

[pilamenon]

so on reflection, the government's pronouncements on the need to stock up on petrol were a good idea, then?

perhaps the government should get its cabinet members involved in encouraging citizens NOT to behave stupidly, rather than encouraging them to act like idiots.

I agree - the government's intervention was cack-handed and made the situation worse.

However, the media had most certainly been stoking up a sense of crisis before that, and if people had used their common sense, they wouldn't have been filling their tanks over a week before any possible disruption to services. It does makes me wonder how this country would cope in a real emergency.

[handsomefortune]

stoking up a sense of crisis

continually just lately....while real crisis, such as happened to the image of uk politics the very wkend prior, was practically skimmed over, forgotten, in order to make way for maude and dave's new crisis. yet, we might just believe that cruddass's recent tactics are 'a national emergency' in terms of the future, and any public confidence in politics? so i can't help thinking there's a certain amount of 'crisis engineering' going on, so would hesitate to blame the media entirely.

the petrol crisis rapidly became a life changing disaster for one poor individual. personally, i was almost physically sick, watching amatuer51's tv clip of baroness warsi ....blaming labour. at which point i could easily have experienced my very own personal crisis, but 'made do' with utter despair instead.

if maude compensates anyone, surely it should be the victim of 40% burns, her having followed maude's totally thoughtless 'advice'? cancelled holidays are hardly comparable, how ever devastating for businesses already teetering on the edge of sustainability. ultimately, perhaps it's actually this amount of crisis that's unsustainable?

last week: a restricted use for politics itself, was followed by restricted physical movement of the public! from being 'controlled by petrol' many may feel newly controlled mentally, by the threat of 'the e mail police'! we're only on monday - by thursday there'll doubtless be a new crisis.... not enough breath to go round perhaps? or, a reduction in the amount of citizens allowed to own and use their taste buds?

[ahinton]

The predictable reactions from the predictable left. Who clearly haven't bothered to study the proposals, but whose knees have jerked, as usual, against any form of authority or regulation.

Well, as one who is not of the left, let's have a look at this.

Contents of such traffic will NOT be allowed to be read without a warrant. What will be available are statistics about what sites people are visiting and to which addresses their emails are going.

That is indeed what is proposed, but anyone who seriously believes that such "monitoring" will always and only ever be confined to such merely statistical matters displays an unwarrantable and uncomfortable complacency and an unhealthily unrealistic belief in nanny knowing - and doing - best. The actual value of such statistics as might be collected under and in accordance with such legislation is also doubtful, since mere statistics can convey far less that is of use that actual data can.

This will allow the intelligence community a window through which they may be able to trace links to people who wish us harm. (Yes, liberals, there are some nasty people out there!)

A window that they'll then break and leave others to pick up the cost of its repair; no, it will allow that community nothing more than further snooper's rights. Apart from any other considerations, the sheer volume of internet and email traffic, social networking site data and the rest is already such that it would presuppose the need for that community to be at least as large as - if not larger than - that of fonctionnaires in France and, as that traffic volume increases on a second-by-second basis, it would eventually become necessary for every citizen to press-ganged by law to become an active member of that community if it was ever to hope to carry out the work with which it is to be charged.

For example, if an address abroad is at some point identified by an asset as being inimical to the UK, it will be possible to trace those in the country who have communicated with that address.

And then to do what about it? And why only UK, just because such legislation is being proposed there? Different nations inevitably have - and will copntinue to have - different interests and agendas that themselves change from time to time; your interpretation of the above possibility would appear to imply the proposed legislation's possible provocation of all manner of increased enmity and suspicion merely by reason of its very existence and the knowledge of its existence.

Similar opportunities will occur with regards to more general internet crime - and will be particularly useful in the fight against people-trafficking and those perverts who prey on little boys and girls.

If you don't trust the various national and international policing organisations to do their best with this kind of thing under present legislation (as your evidently uncritical endorsement of the proposed legislation might appear to imply), why would you expect or be expected to trust them to do it under said proposed legislation?

Now, I don't know about anyone else

"Know" or "listen to"?...

but for me almost anything that prevents such abuse would be a very worthy strategy to support. Not to do so would be to give de facto encouragement to those with things to hide.

Fine - but what's so wrong with using the police and judiciary under present legislation to try to do this and what's likely to be so much more effective under the proposed legislation in this regard?

Liberty has to be limited in order to be worthwhile: complete freedom is not a freedom at all.

Whilst the latter statement is arguably true, the former is full of gaping holes. Who is to define liberty in the first place? How is universal agreement as to such a definition to be attained and maintained? Who is to determine what may be "worthwhile" for whom, how and when and who shall elect them to do so?

There is no logical argument against this idea, although there will be the usual whining from anti-government pressure groups and various hangers on who hate anything to do with the police or those who try to keep the country safe. And no doubt those on here will do their bit of mudslinging too - though of course without one shred of rationality behind their comment. <doh>

Well, not only am I not "of the left", I have presented at least some logical arguments against this idea (although there must be plenty more such), I have not whined, I am not part of any pressure group, I am not a hanger-on, I do not hate anything (or rather, by your implication, everything) to do with the police, I have done nothing to prevent or interfere with national security or encouraged or condoned anyone else doing so, I have slung no mud in what I have written here and I have sought to write rationally; I am therefore sorry to be such a disappointment to you on so many levels simultaneously, Simon....

[mercia]

according to this article, as of now (and since 2009 ?) my local council (for example) can apply to my internet service provider to see records of who and when I've been calling/emailing and what I've been looking at online.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17590363

Mr Clegg tells me that "All we are doing is updating the rules which currently apply to mobile telephone calls to allow the police and security services to go after terrorists and serious criminals, and updating that to apply to technology like Skype which is increasingly being used by people who want to make those calls and send those emails."

he also tells me that he is "totally opposed to the idea of governments reading people's emails at will, or creating a new central government database".
"The point is we are not doing any of that and I wouldn't allow us to do any of that"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17580906

so, perhaps, a certain amount of misunderstanding of exactly what is being proposed

[MrGongGong]

Mr Clegg assures me that "All we are doing is updating the rules which currently apply to mobile telephone calls to allow the police and security services to go after terrorists and serious criminals, and updating that to apply to technology like Skype which is increasingly being used by people who want to make those calls and send those emails."

Oh , I didn't know that
so that's OK then we can trust him to be honest can't we