back to article Leaked: The UK's secret blueprint with telcos for mass spying on internet, phones – and backdoors

The UK government has secretly drawn up more details of its new bulk surveillance powers – awarding itself the ability to monitor Brits' live communications, and insert encryption backdoors by the backdoor. In its draft technical capability notices paper [PDF], all communications companies – including phone networks and ISPs …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This will pass, and, as per usual, the British will just eat this shit up.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      it wont pass and the British will not eat this shit up

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Like how the Snoopers' Charter didn't pass? Or the Digital Economy Bill?

        ...oh, right...

  2. philthane

    Relying on apps and ISPs to make encryption easier may become a thing of the past but anyone who feels the need can set up encrypted email, I'm not an IT pro, just a freelance journo with an interest in tech and I can do it. Unless the govt bans private mail servers and forces everyone onto one their approved mail systems the whole thing is pointless.

  3. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

    What a level headed bunch you are

    I have to say I am heartened by the fact that most of the commenters here have read the paper and are, largely, underwhelmed by the threat this will pose to our privacy. Very little waving of arms (in both senses of the word) and lots of "but this only applies to encryption applied by telecom providers, nothing to see here".

    Buy your sensible, rational selves a beer, you deserve it.

    1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

      Re: What a level headed bunch you are

      Not you, downvoter. No beer for you!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I must be missing something...

    As a Yank, I wonder... why is it fine and dandy to have x-million spy cameras all over the country, but horrible to have the gov peek at your correspondence? Do y'all spend all your time in your house on your phone/tablet/computer? You don't venture outside, so the cameras don't bother you?

    Has social networking become so powerful that people worry only about big brother knowing what they write, but don't care if he knows where they go and what they do? Seems odd.

    I was really surprised to hear someone quote Orwell.

    I was starting to think that no Brit had ever read him.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: I must be missing something... Allow me to FTFY, AC

      Has social networking become so powerful that people worry only about big brother knowing what they write, … ….Anonymous Coward

      The reality, both practical and virtual, AC, is that social media networking is so powerful that Big Brothers are terrified and terrorising and losing command and control with their pimping and pumping of austere narratives steeped in madness and mayhem which intelligence, in both public and private and secret services cannot support and/or justify. It provides a beautifully slippery slope down which all who are deserving of rightful scorn fall into the abyss of mass retribution/sweet just accountability and painful responsibility. And IT has a SMARTR Mind of its own and AIdDevelopments and The Almighty HyperRadioProActive Algorithm ensures and assures and insures the Future against the Failures of the Past perverting the Present.

      Words Create Command and Control and Crash Test Worlds. Who and/or what corporation are you following with the spinning of tall promissory tales which you believe to be an honest changed reality in which to live/survive/exist/prosper.

      Deny it if you will, but the truth of the matter and the manner in which everything and everyone be remotely led is a Sublime Supreme Stealth against which resistance is futile and revealing. I Kid U Not.

    2. eyestwice

      Re: I must be missing something...

      I'd love to know where in the good ol' US of A you live.

      A large part of the issue with privacy in the UK is the sheer population density. That's something you don't have in the US outside of the major cities.

      As it happens, Orwell is my favo(u)rite autho(u)r. By a long shot. Not just for 1984, I've read everything he's ever knowingly written.

      You seem to think we feel that it's acceptable to be spied upon as long as we're not caught anywhere on camera. But then you go on to suggest that online surveillance is acceptable and/or that we don't understand it.

      You just described residents of the USA.

      Your message is mixed and there's no point to your barbed comment, unless I'm missing something integral to your argument?

  5. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Stupid is as stupid does, and the UKGBNI leads with its Public Servant Base ... J'accuse

    PS: The Home Office ran a short public consultation earlier this year on a code of conduct for government snoops.

    The simplest and most efficient and effective of the most complex of codes of conduct for government snoops is …… Don’t get caught and exposed to the lights of truths …. which is increasingly more difficult, and most probably quite impossible in a smarter emerging age and engaged spaces where a falsifying spin and fake news cycle is systemic and endemic.

    And it is more than just odd and maddening even to realise that existing services supposedly supplying advanced intelligence to systems and media servants would not have the foresight to change their corrupted ways and perversely spun narrative adventurism to avoid all that is unavoidably coming their way to destroy them with their own dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

    Whatever are they a’toking?

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Stupid is as stupid does, and the UKGBNI leads with its Public Servant Base ... J'accuse

      Proof positive of the increasing difficulty and most probable impossibility aforementioned above in the previous post ...... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-06/france-warns-media-not-publish-hacked-macron-emails-threatens-criminal-charges ...... and the pathetic draconian reaction, which be not a proaction, to it.?!

      Stupid is as stupid does in deed, indeed.

  6. John Bobbit

    It's ok everyone - there's no way this draconian legislation will ever be passed. The EU would simply not allow it.. Oh. Fsck.

  7. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Quick question

    If I write an encryption program using open available public/private key algorithms, will I have to put in a backdoor to the software to let the government snoop on the messages?

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Quick question ..... simple forthright answer

      No, not if you do not want to, Boris the Cockroach. And if you be told otherwise are you misinformed and being objectified and subjected to a party's nasty form of remote terrorism.

  8. Robinson

    6,500 isn't enough. There are up to 10,000 Jihadi sympathisers in the UK.

  9. Tom 64

    overseen by a "judge appointed by the prime minister."

    Does anyone else think this is a horrible idea?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Even Google are telling us - May is deadly for democracy. Register to vote by 22nd May.

    On Google's UK home page we're told:

    "Want your say in June? Register to vote by 22 May"

    What Google are really saying is (IMO) , the Government is coming after ALL you data (and it's going to make Google's life hell). Trouble is, whoever gets Power, seems to say/be singing from exactly the same hymn sheet.

    Past/Present:

    Jacqui Smith (Labour), Theresa May (Conservative), Amber Rudd (Conservative).

    It's almost like GCHQ, manipulate who becomes Home Secretary, from very early signs to get the "right type of person" who's "onside", "thick as pig shit", says "anything we tell them to". There are common characteristics among all three, complete lack of empathy, being one.

    Put it this way, I inherited a very manipulative personality and it's exactly the tactics I'd use.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Even Google are telling us - May is deadly for democracy. Register to vote by 22nd May.

      "Jacqui Smith (Labour), Theresa May (Conservative), Amber Rudd (Conservative).

      It's almost like GCHQ, manipulate who becomes Home Secretary, from very early signs to get the "right type of person" who's "onside", "thick as pig shit", says "anything we tell them to". There are common characteristics among all three, complete lack of empathy, being one."

      Does the name Charles Farr mean anything to you? It should.

      There are doubtless others, but he's become more visible than he'd probably like.

      At the risk of repeating myself:

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2649035/The-discreet-affair-two-Home-Secretarys-closest-advisers-REAL-reason-bitter-split-Cabinet-colleague-Michael-Gove-Islamic-plot-schools.html

      https://www.gov.uk/government/people/charles-farr

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Farr

      Who needs elections anyway, so long as we've got strong and stable kleptocrats, spooks, and lunatics running the shop.

  11. boatsman

    welcome to the United Soviet of England + Wales. Stalin would've loved it.

    One more reason for Ulster to reunite and Scotland to become independent.

  12. Computatech

    No surprises here this surveillance is happening all the time.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You'll get nowhere without outrage

    Nobody seems to be outraged by much any more. The first reaction to news like this should be outrage...and that outrage then transforms into passion and that passion is the fuel that motivates, and you need a strong motivation to kick against the pricks.

    Suprised at the number of Auntie Marys here...

  14. Jake Maverick

    these are the people that decent people need protecting from :-(

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