Jacqui Smith trails überdatabase plans The Home Secretary has today warned that the government will legislate to collect more data on internet communications because it believes it will help fight serious crime and terrorism. Jacqui Smith trailed the forthcoming Commmunications Data Bill in a speech this morning to the Institute for Public Policy Research. MI6 and …
"Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation." But the local authorities will do exactly that, as we've seen several times already with other supposedly counter-terror legislation.
Ms Smith knows well that she is only going to be able to monitor the good citizens or the idiot terrorists. This is a circumventable problem for real terrorists and other criminals. The real use of this is for profiling, see you has been cheating on their tax, who is opposing the government, who is calling the home secretary the fuckwit she is. I call for a program of civil disobedience if this idea comes about, everybody needs to ring 10 random numbers everyday, not connecting just ringing, this should poison the pool of data, and make collecting the data even more difficult.
I would imagine further action will be taken to make all mobile phones registered to an individual, or just how are they going to track those calls.
Paris 'cos at least you might enjoy being fucked by her.
When will the silly bitch give up? What part of "we don't want to live in a police/big-brother state" does she not get? Bravo to the house of Lords for smacking her down on 42-day detention, keep up the good work!
With Smith herself admitting that the current measures are actually good enough to provide a good rate of conviction, why the **** do we need another expensive set of potentially intrusive and probably functionally useless monitoring tools?
Anyway, we're nearing a point where we would need an AI to extract useful information from the volume of data they want to capture, and we haven't got them (yet).
Where's the Groucho Marx icon? The mention of MI6 always reminds me that "Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms"
Mine's the one with a dog-eared copy of 1984, and a Brazil dvd in the pocket
.. have prevented the "Credit crisis" how?
Seems to me the Investment bankers have caused several orders of magnitude more damage to the world than any Terrorist organisation.
About time Jacqui Smith (and all politicians) started looking differently at those smart city gents who wine and dine her (metaphorically speaking).
"Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation."
Translation - "not in the first instance".
What's the betting that within a couple of years, councils will be using this to uncover whistleblowers and other malcontents?
We've seen how RIPA is misused - this data will be too tempting for your local jobsworth to pass up.
Yeah, and there were no plans to use counter terrorism legislation to stop people demonstrating or walking down the street, but that's exactly how the legislation is being used.
We were told that counter terrorism legislation would not be used in such circumstances and when used would only be sparingly, now it's being used to stop more or less anything the cops just don't like. " Hmmm, you look like a terrorist ( typical white english looking male), so I think I'll search your bags"..Thanks Mr. Police officer, of course you can rifle though my belongings and humiliate me in public, if you find the sex toys, or my transvestite wig, please don't pull them out in public..( not that I carry a transvestite wig I hasten to add!), but you get my drift. And if you find the kinky rubber maids outfit, and the patent 5" stillettos it's not for me to wear, I just bought it for my girlfriend.
In a free and democratic society isn't spying on all your citizens supposed to be rather a no no? But then I supposed they used to call it the "German Democratic Republic".
I wonder, if we ever become a moderately free society again, at what point the historians will date our slide into a totalitarian police state.
So social networking and gaming companies will be obliged to store and hand over data when the government asks for it.
But only those based in Britain.
That'll be Faceboo - oh no, ummm MySpace - errr maybe not, World of War - ahhhhh.
Looks like a bad day for Bebo then.
And after last week's example of how anti-terror legislation allows the government to seize foreign companies' assets in the UK, you'd have thought New Labour wouldn't be trying to further show why not to invest in the UK.
bullshit that they said when they wanted to bring in RIPA. They said for RIPA, quote......." such legislation is required to combat terrorism and its use will be restricted to such terrorist related cases...." . Now Jacqui Smith expects everyone to believe that old lie all over again whilst she tries to bring in this new legislation. What MUGS the Labour Government thinks we all are.
"Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation."
Of course not, god forbid the government should ever use powers which were granted solely to deal with terrorism for some other purpose. Perhaps this whole "terrorism" excuse is just a ploy so our government can build a vast mega-database to keep tabs on all 300,000 citizens of Iceland?
Surely all we really need to do is...
1. Ensure that current laws are augmented to allow interception over new communications 'channels' such as VOIP.
2. Make sure that technical measures are in place to allow such interception to be performed selectively as warrants are raised.
To say we need a raft of laws to allow the government to put details of all phone calls, emails and internet access in one place to allow interception is complete b*llocks. How does the government mean to meaningfully mine this humungous pile of data that would be generated every day? It simply will not happen. Very, very big haystack with a very small number of interesting activities and we don't even know if they are the needles the security services want.
Far better to identify people of interest and then fan out monitoring from that person to their contacts, and their contacts contacts. Much more managable and productive.
We will not be able to identify new threats from this pile of data. Complete waste of money. Of course it would take a brave, if not suicidal, IT company to take the contract to develop such a system and then point out that there are no benefits to the business. A bit like the NHS IT contract then.
It's amazing what can be called 'terrorist activity' these days....not just your usual religious thingy anymore but the ALF get it now and others among them.....this way, the govt can keep an eye on that den of iniquity and sin, as well as refuge for terrorists, the tinternet!!!
You shall conform or you shall be sent to Iceland! If you're from Iceland then we'll freeze you!
It's a shame Mr Orwell got the date wrong isn't it? Otherwise he'd be both highly prophetic and the subject of many anecdotes today.....but the scary thought is; as bad as things were under Thatcher, even she went not this far! It's scary but this is happening the world over now it seems....Is the EU the only place free from dictators?
"...There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails..."
What I think they *ACTUALLY* mean is that there are no plans YET! But you can bet that it's only a matter of time before the content of your communications is necessary as trawling for who, when and where is not enough.
Makes me sick! How on earth can that woman hold a position in Government? She's a free-speech and privacy liability!
Though I've despised Labour for a long time, no issue has got me as riled up as this. They basically plan to bug every man, woman & child in the country. They will know who your friends are, what you buy online, what you believe in politically or religiously, what your sexual preferences are, etc. The level of insight into our private lives will be astonishing. Forget any idea that they just plan to want to know who you're talking to, they will want the ability to access the content as well. If they install deep packet inspection boxes on the comms. network they will be able to surveil traffic live. The whole thing is being done by stealth, see the IMP is not even being mentioned! The whole point of the system is to root out political subversives, not terrorists.
Oh Gawd! Don't let the government have anymore databases! It cannot even cope with the ones it already has and now it wants an uber database with every single phone call, internet access and mobile text messaging at its fingertips. Oh and the couriers' fingertips when government departments ship the DVDs to each other via postal mail with clear instructions on how to read it via the computer cup holder.
If the last 10 years has proved anything about Nulabour, is that they cannot ever be trusted. From Lie's about the EU constitution, Lies about taxation, Lies about how data would be used, lost data, Lies about how anti-terror legislation would be used (anyone remember the labour heckler at one of their conferences being detained as a terrorist?), and then there is all the overly PC bullcrap we have to live through, and the slide into a Orwellian police state.
No more NuLabour.
So an industry with a history of co-operation with the government and relatively good at self-regulation gets a new raft of laws.
They should take a leaf from the financial services book - refuse to co-operate and behave as irresponsibly as possible and the Govt will never bother you again.
I grew up in Yorkshire. In the 80s, the ALF burned down a pig farm near my house (because they erroneously believed that the animals were being badly treated). They killed most of the pigs, destroyed a farmer's business and there was a stink in the air for weeks. I find it pretty hard to consider this anything except terrorism.
AC Because the Animal rights nutters scare me more than Islamist terrorists.
ALF are terrorist scumbags, retarded terrorist scumbags no less. Hey lets dig up this grandmother. Hey lets set these animals loose that have never lived outside of the lab before in a place they can't survive. Hey lets send letter bombs. Hey lets terrorise people at their place of work and homes.
Who cares that hundreds maybe thousands may die becouse drugs can't be tested quick enough we saved a f---ing guine pig that wouldn't even be alive if it weren't needed for testing.
Wankers.
"There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the phone or online"
what use is a list of who communicated with who without the content of that communication.?
since the rise of electronic comms, i no doubt have emailed, telephoned or text people with criminal records or currently active in some crime or other... so with this database, without knowing what i said to these people i will be subject to investigation... even tho i have done nothing wrong or even knew what they were up to !!!
so i have no doubt that within a year, the databse will be expanded to include the contents of my communications....
you may say that "well if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about" but thats total bullshit...
Maybe you are gay and you have not come out the closet, none of your friends and family know... but a old school friend you email from time to time on friends re-united is a major drugs baron... the police intercept your comms, to this baron, and then check up on your other mail... they then discover you secretly like to 'pack some fudge' or dress up in your wife's undies, is it too far beyond possibilities to think that some dodgy officer will try to 'recruit you' into helping them or they will expose your deviant behavior?
mines the one with the serious crimes squad id card in the pocket...
Yeah if we could get someone who is not a government lackie to agree with this crap maybe a start.
No right minded thinking free man or woman would ever agree to the stuff this bint keepos trying to throw at us.
The only consensus Jacqui is ever going to get, is one where we throw here into a big hole in the ground with 2 very hungry ferrets.
*\. Mines the one with the deep pockets, one for a ferret call NO2 and the other for a ferret call ID.net
The ALF and their associates in SHAC are engaged in a long running and extremely nasty campaign of violent intimidation, damage to property, and the odd actual assault. If that aint terrorist activity then I don't know what is... Heck, ifthey were only going to use it to keep tabs on this charming bunch of violent nutters Jacquie Smith's £12m toy might actually be a good idea.
Posted anonymously because I don't want to beaten up by thugs with pickaxe handles, have my house or car firebombed, have my name and address posted on websites alongside incitements to violence, or have my friends, family, work colleagues and business associates subjected to similar "non violent" action...
So she raised a straw man and shot it down. And the failure to shoot down what she's actually being accused of, namely creating a database of the data required by EU data retention directive but in violation of Article 4, she skipped around.
i.e. she is planning a database of communications the CDRs from the telecoms companies, the ISP's connection logs and email send logs etc. in a central database controlled by the government violating the access restriction listed under Article 4.
And to get this illegal shit through she seems to have got Lord U Turn suggesting there are major terrorist plots going on that require it?
"BE AFRAID, BE AFRAID, AGREE TO THIS ILLEGAL THING, I WACKY JACKIE KNOW IS ILLEGAL BUT I'M GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME!"
Man do we need an election, and quickly before the Credit Default Swaps market collapses and this bail out ends up *really* costly.
Ok quick thought, you know how we are all helping to map the atom, or the universe or find aliens by using the number crunching abilities of our home computers during their quiet times.
How about supplying all these tens of thousands of home computers a little screen saver that visits randomley any one of the tens of thousands of websites considered "terrorist" by HMG.
Ok, now lets make it change websites on a random timescale, anything between 10 seconds and 5 mins, maybe browsing into the website rather than just onto another site.
Now lets leave these machines running for a couple of months.
Ok HMG will proberbly be able to trace back to the individual IPs, but will they have enough MI5 operatives to investigate everybody?, maybe they will have to pass legislation to make the whole operation illegal (screams of my God think of the damage they are doing to our ant-terror operations). Maybe they will have to arrest everybody involved and find the appropriate cell space.
But then again if we don't do this Great Britain just becomes a large prison anyway, with HMG monitoring everybody 24/7 and attempting to control your every action.
..of that fat screeching old fishwife! She should give up smoking crack because her levels of paranoia are getting out of hand. Does it not strike anyone as ridiculous that the only people in this country who are interested in protecting our civil liberties are a the unelected toffs in the house of lords?
something is seriously wrong with this country.
To all those that posted its illegal....
Read the RIP act of 2000 and the anti-terror laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act
Its 100% legal.
They made their way for this by using false flag operations,
and now we have to live with it. There shall be no way around it - and it will get worse.
National ID, DNA database you can be on for not even committing a crime and now an ECHELON style database. And, the sale of all this information to the Americans by the aledged loss or theft of said data. Why do you think they are un-encrypted always ?! - come on I encrypt my laptop and thats only company information
You really didnt think this wasnt going to happen??! If anyone wants to know what comes next... globalization, immense poverty, no healthcare, mass population reduction (more false flag ops)
We need to get labour out because they are clearly insane and have no idea on how to handle or store any of this data.
We need a government run by the people (for the people?)
[Article] 'Jacqui Smith trailed the forthcoming Commmunications Data Bill in a speech this morning to the Institute for Public Policy Research'
Spinning already. That sounds like Jackie Smith was giving an announcement to an independant audience doesn't it? No mention that the IPPR is in fact a think tank who work for and are funded directly by the Labour Party.
Smith is clearly needing a sympathetic and sycopphantic audience in order to get a hearing - even at this early stage.
Agreed... although it would be better to distribute it as malware, then even those who do get investigated can say they didn't visit any sites.
This whole idea is so flawed it is a perfect Government IT brief.
1) Going to further erode not only privacy but the perception of privacy - check
2) Going to cost billions (that we dont have since the shopping spree on bank shares) - check
3) Going to awarded to a fairly incompetant IT company who have proved their incompetance on previous IT projects. - pork barrel buffet open soon...
4) Going to over run time and budget - check
Yep Governent IT projects, if they happened to other countries it would be funny!
Think of the children? and then mail a lorry-load of paedo to Jacqui La Douche and turn her it.
Time to get her and her brother (Cheney) out of office on both sides of the pond.
ALF = Animals (taste) Like Food
must be like
PETA = People Eating Tasty Animals
@AC - Maybe they will have to arrest everybody involved and find the appropriate cell space
Nah, they'll just put a bullet or two in your head and save the trouble of jail and a trial and all that
pesky detail. Solved now, innit?
The tone of this entire commentary is completely anti-govuk and under the terms of any laws we care to think up, is illegal. We already have enough laws and regulations to arrest you all and to track you down via ISPs , so expect a six-o-clock knock one morning soon. Do you really think you are all entitled to say what you like about the gov'. Just wait 'til you have to start sloppin' out in the mornings!
Evenin' all! from PC 69
Ms. Smith's emails and phone records will NOT be retained, at least not as long as she's in power. Nor will those of governing party MPs and other Important People.
Ergo, there'll be some proviso built in to turn data retention on and off for any one e-entity. Wait for the hackers to find it and then start turning off retention for themselves and anyone willing to pay them.
Someone tell me, is Ms. Smith of an ethnic background that's known for stubbornness and a refusal to modify a position once taken, regardless of the facts?
Why doesn 't someone buy her a pair of crotchless red-lace panties and a one-way ticket to Anchorage to take up a new career in one of Alaska's finest brothels? "Hold still, sir, I don't care what YOU want, I know what you NEED, and it'll only hurt at first. No whimpering during or after."
The thought of Jacqui Smith in a state of sexual arousal may induce nausea but consider the old adage "pheasants taste best when half-rotten."
"Nor are we going to give local authorities the power to trawl through such a database in the interest of investigating lower level criminality under the spurious cover of counter terrorist legislation."
Haha. Trawl. It makes me sad that people actually believe this crap.
Anonymous Coward @ 13:42: "What part of "we don't want to live in a police/big-brother state" does she not get?"
Actually, a lot of people do indeed want to live in a police state.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
We are those people. And by "we", I mean the collective masses. Seems to be pretty sure in England (CCTV, anyone?) and we've already entered Orwell Central here in the States (Patriot Act? [who could be against something called the Patriot Act? And right after 9/11! My God, if you hate America so much, move to Iraq!].
I personally enjoy the theory that they are dumping fluoride into our water supply to ensure that we become more compliant as a people. (see http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=14949)(much better than quoting wikipedia). If correlation = causation, then we have plenty of proof that this is exactly what happened to us. </not relevant>
I also enjoy the theory that our government is turning us all into debt slaves... doped up on television, high on credit, having too many children to fund foreign wars and buying too many things to keep the corporate machine going. </not relevant>
Steve: "Run away you little pansy, the databases are coming, the databases are coming!!!"
All right, dub dub, they're already here. We're surely doomed now.
Nano nano: "Why not be tough on the _causes_ of terrorism, not just on terrorism itself - or has someone said something similar before ..."
And what would you consider the CAUSE of terrorism?
Dave: ""...There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your emails..."
What I think they *ACTUALLY* mean is that there are no plans YET!"
Haha. Actually, they mean they need no PLANS because the future is HERE! The database to end all databases already exists! This legislation would just make it official ;)
Alan Fisher: "Is the EU the only place free from dictators?"
What makes you think that it is free from dictators?
Anonymous Coward @ 14:32: "Though I've despised Labour for a long time, no issue has got me as riled up as this."
Then you simply haven't been paying attention.
As we say in the US: I'm not a terrorist and I have nothing to hide! Please turn my life into the Truman ** Show. Would you like me to bend over now?
"what use is a list of who communicated with who without the content of that communication?"
EXACTLY!!!!
It is SO obvious that this is just the first stage, because the Government know damned well that they'd never get away with it if they announced that they were going to monitor content from the get go.
This is about getting all the mechanisms in place unchallenged. Once the ability to monitor is in place then they can just extend the scope and start analysing the content.
"The only consensus Jacqui is ever going to get, is one where we throw here into a big hole in the ground with 2 very hungry ferrets."
Ummm, only ferrets.... I was thinking along the lines of radioactive pit with mutant animals/creatures.
Maybe we should make some number 10 downing street protitions to reopen the coal mines and use them to hold "terrorist" simothising policitans (Jackie, Gordon, Tony, Mandelson, etc) and then we can think of what to do with them.. personally I like the idea of a battle royal style challenge with suspected Al Queda suspects, imagine Gordon Brown Vs Bin Laden in a fight to the death and the winner gets a traditional hanging??.
"Bill Gates devil because even he knows this makes sense" TM
What everyone has to remember about this "database" bollocks is the following:
For every "serial number" there is a keygen
For every "Locked CD" there is a CD-Crack
For every "DRM encoded file" there is a torrent (etc)
If that stupid political whore decides to create her massive spy-database, there will be a group of people, like ourselves, that will devise a way, no less a protocol, to defeat it.
The idea of spamming the system is one I favour. I'm sure some kind of peer to peer system where everyone who signs up "spams" everyone else, with a specific algorithm or technology which lets us filter out the crap at the mailserver or mail client, will appear. If not, let's bring in PGP (et al) signed mail where they can't read the content.
I don't know that much on the security side of things but at the end of the day, for every scheme that has tried to thwart the freedom of communication on the internet, there has been a quicker and more advanced counteraction to it.
If you think about it, they're actually shooting themselves in the feet. If they want us all to use anonymous proxies and totally encrypted IP communications where they can't fathom a single byte of useful information, they're going the right way about it. We may not have anything to hide, as the majority of us don't, but we respect our privacy even if they don't so we will do everything in our power to make sure that we can, for example, send a quick email to a family member without it being logged as a potential piece of crimial evidence.
Jacqui: do your f**king worst. I for one am welcoming the idea of shattering your pathetic little database.
Paris: because she clearly doesn't mind people invading her privacy...
(and yes, I use commas, too much,,,,)
Restore all hereditary lords to their seats.
Revamp Parliament Act so House of Lords is a true second house that MUST agree to any legislation for it to pass.
Poison pill the Parliament Act by requiring large super majorities in both houses to alter these provisions.
Start asking your MPs about this and potential candidates for next election. Regrettably, as Parliament is now constituted, the Lords are the bulwark of freedom, not the Commons.
Spread the meme.
So when they commit acts like that you arrest them.
The point of this legislation is that you are now linked to the ALF in a secret database.
Because after reading your post somebody will have googled ALF to find out what it is, somebody else who visited their site recently willhave a criminal record.
so there is now a direct link between you, this site , the ALF and a criminal
Remember 6degrees of separation!
Ok maybe they're a bad example then, no other organisation immediately popped to mind really....how about hunt sabbing? Or peaceful demonstration?
I could think of a few good organisations to add to the list but they're all right wing so that'll never happen!! Lol
My point was though, none of this happened when the IRA were bombing the beejesus out of London not so long ago, so why now?
"Why not be tough on the _causes_ of terrorism, not just on terrorism itself - or has someone said something similar before ..."
Simple really, it's because StasiLab don't do self-incrimination, and they certainly don't dine out on humble pie. These are the very people who, despite protests from many British Muslims, allowed the extremist Imams to establish themselves in the UK where they set about radicalising young men in the local communities. Not for nothing was our capital city mockingly known throughout Asia as Londonistan.
Our government was asleep on watch while this was going on, too busy establishing 'Faith' schools and removing the shackles from the greedy bastards who have brought our economy to its knees.
No uber database required, Jaqui, just waken up and do your fucking job.
Kev, MI6 *is* Foreign Intelligence; MI5 is Domestic. But unlike the Clowns In Action and the Feverish Bunch (of) Investigators, the British Secret intelligence Services (now jointly known officially as 'SiS', by the way - strictly speaking, MI5 & MI6 no longer exist per se) actually do manage to talk civilly to each other most of the time, and 6 don't keep forgetting they are only supposed to play "away games" and leave the "home games" to MI5...
Chris G, there are already laws in place that make practically every entry on this page - including this one (especially this one!) - enough to get each and every one of us sent straight to gaol, no passing go and no collecting 200 quid. Depending upon how dense the investigator wants to act and how arsey the "rules lawyer" is feeling, even knowing where your local police precinct house is (assuming it's still manned, natch) can be considered "information of use to terrorists" since they can work out response times, observe readinesss levels etc.
Let's face it, we're all criminals in the eyes of NuLabour anyway so we should just accept this and be happy like the rest of the sheople...
Echelon Bait: Afghanistan Brown Covert Disguise Explosives Fertilizer Government House Inside Jacqui Karim Lushua Marionette November Operation Parliament Queda Robertson Strategic Tango Uniforms Victory Watchman Xray Yusuf Zulu
"For every "serial number" there is a keygen
For every "Locked CD" there is a CD-Crack
For every "DRM encoded file" there is a torrent"
.
.
And for every encroachment on civil liberties there is some retard saying "who cares, someone will create with a work-around"
The point is not that it is possible to illegally subvert various draconian measures being introduced, the point is that it is deemed acceptable that such abusive powers can be introduced in the first place.
If no opposes these measures, then it gives the impression that every is absolutely fine with them.
Wait for the hackers to find it and then start turning off retention for themselves and anyone willing to pay them.....sorry i thought you said rendition.... carry on.
Is there anyone else besides me who keeps seeing terriorist instead of terrorist? Must mean we're all going to the dogs.
Why does everybody hate ferrets? I mean, what animal could you hate enough to throw into a hole in the ground with that seething mass of....oh wait, Cthuhlu spotted...
British Secret intelligence Services (now jointly known officially as 'SiS', by the way. So the people who work there are SISsies?
"The point is not that it is possible to illegally subvert various draconian measures being introduced, the point is that it is deemed acceptable that such abusive powers can be introduced in the first place."
I think the point Russell was making is that such laws/measures are not only inconvenient (at best), draconian and abusive, but also ineffective.
Exactly AC.
The thing that gets me the most is that all this money will be spent on this huge project, and eventually it will become redundant and the money that could have been better spent on useful things like, dare I say it, more police on the streets instead of sitting behind keyboards, will be wasted.
One thing I find amusing is that the angle being presented by jacqui (deliberately lowercase) is that they need to keep up with changing technology to being able to intercept terrorist communications, and I've heard the use of Skype being brandished around as an example of the need for the database.
Problem is (and I'm relying on things i've read here, so I might be wrong) Skype's communications protocol is encrypted, so that puts a damn great FAIL on that reasoning alone.
If they have no understanding of the technology and the problems in implementing it, they have no right whatsoever to waste our taxpayers money on it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
