Big Bruvver
Sucks. Period.
Ah well. VPN to the rescue as ever.
The UK's Investigatory Powers Bill has completed its passage through parliament and now only awaits Her Majesty's stamp of approval before becoming law. Also known as the Snoopers' Charter, the legislation has been criticised as being among the most onerous in the world upon the civilian population, and will require British …
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This post has been deleted by its author
I am no security expert. What we need from one of you frighteningly clever chaps is an idiots guide to setting up this vpn
Most providers have simple HOWTO guides for it, it's not that hard.
However, I would keep on searching if I were you. When you choose a provider to protect your privacy, you should IMHO expect them to take reasonable care to indeed protect your privacy - all of it.
Sadly:
www.citizenvpn.com: runs on Rackspace servers in the US
mx citizenvpn.com: all their email is handled in the US, possibly Yahoo.
No thanks. Next!
Yes it would.
Your connection gets encrypted all the way to the VPN providers server.
E.g. citizenvpn.com which is located outside EU/UK/USA so don't have to log anything (which they mention on their site). I use this and it is fast and always work. Basically you can't trust any VPN that is hq'ed inside the US or UK or EU. The US has f.ex secret courts (FEMA) that can secretly demand VPN providers to log information and ban them from disclosing that they are even doing it(!) Seriously. There was also a scandal some years ago with hma who are hq'ed in the UK and they turned over one of their users to the government, so much for the name then...
When are you going to do a piece on how to circumvent this fucking invasion into ordinary peoples PRIVATE lives..
An idiots guide, if you will.
Sure, we can use VPN (not as secure as some may think depending on whom you choose to provide the service) and TOR but what about the rest of the populace who will just want to be able to surf their porn sites without worrying some snooping nosey gubbermint bastard is watching everything they do!!!
"but what about the rest of the populace who will just want to be able to surf their porn sites without worrying some snooping nosey gubbermint bastard is watching everything they do"
They just need to download their porn now, and keep it on a hard drive stored in a brown paper bag in the cupboard under their stairs.
Or in the hedge, for added security.
Sorry, not going to happen, Royal Assent is always granted on 'the advice of ministers' who are assumed to have the backing of the elected House of Commons, so it would be a massive constitutional crisis if the sovereign were to override the wishes of the Commons.
IIRC, an outright refusal to grant assent hasn't occurred since Queen Anne.
Dear Sir,
also, the Sovereign could pull a Belgian move:
1) Abstain from signing the law by resigning from Queen-ship and move to the East End
2) let the prime minister take over for a day
2a) Sign anything into law to the Sovereign disagrees with
3) The day after all the signing is finished, the Sovereign says: "Actually, now that I lived for a day amongst the likes of Del Trotter, I'd like to still be Queen, please"
4) Everybody cheers, the Commons got what they wanted, the Sovereign is back, nobody is any the wiser, accept the British are now hampered by surveillance against the UN human rights...
Police state calling itself a Sovereign Democracy... What a bleedin' scam...
Regards,
Guus
Could happen and I doubt it would be such a constitutional crisis as feared. If Her Maj stood up and insisted we must not accept the 'Big Brother police state' parliament has decided upon I am sure there would be a hasty change of mind before her subjects arrived with pitchforks, burning torches and a few lengths of rope.
In a Regina versus Those Tossers in Parliament death match I know which side I would bet on.
Unfortunately Her Maj is not going to stand up for her subjects.
Sorry, not going to happen, Royal Assent is always granted on 'the advice of ministers' who are assumed to have the backing of the elected House of Commons, so it would be a massive constitutional crisis if the sovereign were to override the wishes of the Commons.
IIRC, an outright refusal to grant assent hasn't occurred since Queen Anne.
That's why it would have been more fun to have Prins Philip involved. With his sense of humour, he'd say no just to see what would happen. Stirring things up has been his favourite pastime for years :).
well that only a amendment right now and it does not have Gov backing so its likely it wont pass and if you want to help it not pass sign this https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/digital-economy-bill-hub/stop-uk-censorship-of-legal-content,
tho its unlikely the sites will be blocked anytime soon and if they did you are going to see a huge spike in VPN use in the UK (and its already happening over the IPbill)
It probably won't be an amendment (which would need scrutiny) but our old "friend" the "Statutory Instrument" much beloved of the Dark Lord Mandelscum himself.
Basically "We collect all the stuff listed in Appendix 2
Current App 2 "The IP address of the user"
Statutory instrument.
Change Appd 2 to include.
"Name of account holder." "Address of account holder"....."And anything else we decide to collect."
We have a similar law here in the Colonies, except it's known by the wildly misnamed PATRIOT* Act. No doubt former vice president Dick Cheney still masturbates himself into a frenzy each time he thinks about it. Although I don't recall that Queen Elizabeth -- a lovely woman -- was dragged into the matter.
Okay, British cousins: What happens if your queen tells Parliament** to go fuck itself on this or any other law?
* A tortured (possibly waterboarded) acronym meaning, "Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." Yeah, sure.
** Also a cigarette brand made by Philip Morris.
I might be mistaken, but I suppose Her Majesty is not given a deadline on signing the bill. Which means she could delay until change of government or until someone tabled a proposal to change this law. Assuming I am right on this, it would be still frowned upon and might even trigger constitutional crisis.
The fixed term parliament act does contain a get out clause. An early election can be held in the event of a vote of no confidence in the government. Presumably that would be easy enough to do in this sort of extreme situation.
In answer to the broader question of what happens if the queen refuses to sign legislation. We stop pretending to be a monarchy I guess.
"We stop pretending to be a monarchy I guess."
It's always difficult to explain to Yanks how our laws can say one thing, very explicitly, in writing, and yet in reality the system is actually something else.
On paper laws only happen after the monarch signs off on them, and is merely advised by parliament.
In reality parliament have held the power since 1649, and any monarch that thinks differently is quietly reminded what happened to Charles I. Still, having a queen doesn't half bring in those tourist dollars :)
If the queen refuses to sign the act, what follows is a constitutional crisis the like of which we've not seen since at least 1909.
Which probably ends with completely removing the queen's role in signing legislation, among other changes that may or may not, but smart money says 'not', be for the better.
I'll be quite happy to see my Internet Service Provider keep a record, provided of course the instruction from the Secretary of State is in writing, and is from the Secretary of State, not from anyone else acting their behalf - and if the records are used for any purpose whatsoever other than "antiterrorism", the Sec State themselves can be hauled up in court and face personal sanctions. It'll be hilarious.
I suppose I should be thankful my parents are no long alive to see what has become of the country they fought and suffered for - still grieving many years later for all the family and friends they lost.
Today's puppeteers have become far, far, worse than what the elders tried to save us from.
So the snooper's charter is going to become law. Hopefully they will now define "ISP" and "Internet connection records".
I provide Internet services (web hosting, email hosting, DNS, etc.) but I don't provide Internet connectivity (ADSL, cable, etc.). Will I, and many others like me, have to store these ICR thingies?
It seems to be a bit like the EU Cookie Law: impossible to enforce and logically pointless. I suppose the politicians think there are votes in the idea, and/or they like the feeling of power over the population obtained by snooping on ordinary people.
The terr'ists and black market dealers won't have anything new to fear, of course. In fact the law is likely to make them more careful, and more difficult to find.
> Will I, and many others like me, have to store these ICR thingies?
And will there be any specific requirements on how we store them? For example, if I write the ICRs out to an aged SSD and never run integrity checks (as to do so could be construed as unauthorised access), is it likely to be too big a drama when those records aren't available (because the SSD didn't start making whining noises to warn me it was going to fail)
Would at least be novel, advising on how to increase the risk of data-loss...
Ok so you have my internet history what exactly are you going to do with it?
This question has not been answered and should have been a fundamental question when proposing this law rather than blanket surveillance that could be used for everything. Well to be honest it should never have got this far in the first place.
Here's a thought that I'm think no one else has pondered. (though I am probably wrong)
Who is responsible for the search engines? Let's say I search for information about IS and there are results that are pro-IS and anti-IS, who is responsible for the links I click as I could inadvertently click one that is pro-IS, end up on a watch list and have my house raided at 6am by giddy police looking for bombs, beards and overtime.
The internet is about to become a place where you have to watch your every move.
Yesterday the big story was that some android phones ring home to China with detailed user information. Yet posters above whinge at the very limited measures sought by the British government to protect the nation from its enemies.
Yes,enemies; this is a wicked world and some people out there really do want to humiliate and exterminate our nation, for profit or for fanatical reasons.
Or to put in another way: the minds of men are not blank slates imbued with natural goodness.
Some people have no sense of proportion.
We can choose not to have a mobile phone for things other than making calls or even, at a stretch, a game of Angry Birds. We can't easily choose to move away from these regulations.
Perhaps twenty years ago I would have moved back to Europe and stayed there but I am not able to do any longer as I am a full time carer for my disabled wife and no country that I would wish to live would want us to live there.
So, whilst I can choose not to use a smartphone I can't choose this law.
AC for obvious reasons.
Governments love terrorists. As long as they're not actively targeting the government they make the government's job of taking money from the population to give to their prospective employers much easier.
Oh, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who doesn't give a shit what the Chinese government knows about me because they're not in a position to send me off to be tortured in some hellhole.