Home Office team continue work on net snooping masterplan

A group of Home Office officials are continuing to work on plans for a giant central database of email, web browsing, phone and mobile location data, even though the laws the government had planned to legitimise it won't be put to parliament until 2010 at the earliest, and possibly not at all. A Home Office spokeswoman …

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these people stupid or something?

Go and watch 'Body of Lies'. IF you monitor electronic communications, then the really dangerous people this database is 'supposed' to protect us against will just communicate using old-fashioned forms of communication which our Government will forget about and not bother monitoring at all.

This database will not make anybody in this country any safer, it will just allow the government to lose more of your personal details, and to check to make sure you aren't committing any thought crimes, such as joining the BNP, or disagreeing with the way NuLab run the country.

Anonymous and black helicoptor due to ambiguous laws that strip usall of our civil liberties.

[Tony]

Fiddling while Rome burns

The country, and the world are in a financial dodgy state - we need to be reducing the national debt not adding yet more noughts to the end of the current number. This project, the ID card scheme, the children's database and all other crackpot schemes of this kind should be stopped dead in their tracks right now.

They truly are fiddling the books while there is a serious problem that needs sorting out.

No wonder people generally have so little confidence in, or respect for politicians.

Where's Guy Fawkes when you need him?

[alain williams]

@Fiddling while Rome burns

Well said. It is a lot of money spent that will not result in much extra employment - and a lot of the kit will presumably be ultimately bought from overseas. The government has lost touch with reality.

[M]

Ah a case of...

....bad phorm from Government!

[Anonymous Coward]

Government License to the Terrorists

Look, if they don't do this, if they abide by the Data Retention Directive and stick within the privacy law, it would be like giving a government license to the terrorists!

If Parliament turns around and says 'No you can't have this, it's not legal and not necessary', HM.Gov would be force to turn around and write the 'Terrorist Legalization and Licensing Law' to legalize terrorism. Jacqui Smith would be forced to sign into law an act legalizing terrorism! And it will be your fault!

She'd be forced to give Osama Bin Laden a visa to visit Britain too under the Human Rights act too, if it's not illegal how can she refuse?

He could sign onto the dole, claim to be looking for a good bomb plot at the Job Centre , but none are advertised, and he could milk the tax payer for money for years to come!

You don't want that, I don't want that, so it's important that we let the Home Office get it's way and do all the illegal stuff it wants to, regardless of the directive, or Parliamentary law, or the lack of money available.

Look, Jacqui has already faced tough questioning over this by the finest reporters at the Waltham Junior School's Magazine! The Womens Institute has already been roped in to monitor grape-vine communications, now we need to move forward and monitor all communications, especially communications critical of the government!

The plan is to first monitor the communications of children, to protect them from anti-social stuff, then roll it out to pilots, who because of their important role must be monitored for suspicious thinking, and finally to willing citizens up and down the country!

Why only yesterday, a member of the public came up to Jacqui and demanded to have their communications monitored for signs of terrorism! She said "I don't hate Britain, so please can I have my communications monitored"! It's true and Jacqui doesn't make stuff up!

We will extend the monitoring to include "suspicion of sympathies with other political parties, like the BNP", "suspicion of growing lethal pot" etc.

[This was a NuLabour, All Snuggling communications]

[Brian]

Vernon Croaker?

Croak?

I wish he would - as Tony points out above, all these Orwellian schemes need to be scrapped in favour of spending on infrastructure - the renationalisation of BT without compensation would be a good start, followed by the water boards and the various energy companies.

It might put a hole in the stock market, but any sensible pension fund will pull out in time and provide the lending (in the form of Government bonds) that we need.

It's a socialist plan, but in terms of public and private finances for the UK, it's the best way forward.

Come on, Old Labour - it's time to raise the flag again!

[Anonymous Coward]

IMP

Apart from other concerns (and I've got many); can they at least come up with a unique name?

IMP == Interface Message Processor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Message_Processor)

Anonymous for the obvious reasons (plus I just referenced wikipedia...)

[Andy]

23AF72 30E7234 7C!

2 4329B 7E37, 476 30 47CD6. 2B76207 23A6 -- 203967 90F 234E76 203497 A 267209.

[The Other Steve]

@Brian

"It's a socialist plan"

In theory, it's a socialist government. YMMV.

[Anonymous Coward]

pinky and the brain

OK, so Jacqui is obviously Pinky, but who could the Brain behind the curtain be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh...

I'm surprised they haven't done so already...

AC because THEY know anyway...

[Luther Blissett]

Charlie Brown's snooping

Having unexpectedly repatriated its very own Lord of Darkness, I think the nu labour project is looking at 3 future actions which are under its control. (1) to hold an election, (2) to call in the IMF, (3) to invoke the 2005 Civil Contingencies Act. These are not options or alternatives - more like necessities. What nu labour is mulling is the order in which to do these things. That can only be why despite the crisis (wot crisis?) its monetary and fiscal priorities are totally surreal, while its actions seem more likely to succeed as gerrymandering than in extricating everyone from the mess they have allowed happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

May I be the first to suggest Access

as the database, it comes as a real top of breed database system, from a highly reputable software company. With Access in place and a few quick forms, they will be able to data mine to their little heart's content.

[RW]

Public consultation? A minor annoyance to the powers that be.

"The results of the public consultation will be used to inform any decisions on the programme's preferred solution and safeguards and to determine whether future legislation is needed."

IOW, the louder the outcry against this police state system, the sneakier they'll have to be. I notice that they don't impute a subject to "preferred". Is it the population's preferred, or Wakkyjakky's?

Wakkyjakky and her gang of idiots have long since demonstrated their utter and complete contempt for democracy. "We know what's good for you, citizen, so shut up and take your medicine."

Burble: I've seen the name of "the Brain behind the curtain." It's some very senior cop who's had the ear of successive Home Secretaries for years. Typical plod.

Burble: Calling Wakkyjakky a crackpot. Exactly right! From where I sit in a distant land, it looks like "government by tabloid" where the latest circulation-boosting hysteria is always taken up as evidence that something (expensive) must be done.

Christ, but I feel sorry for Britain with that bunch of sleazy jerkoffs in charge.

[Anonymous Coward]

More big brother!

So when are they going to bring in laws enabling officials to read traditional mail without court approval?

[Richard Kay]

Very easily bypassed

Have the politicians who will be signing the big cheques never heard of servers hosted in other jurisdictions and VPNs ? Sure GCHQ might be able to do some traffic analysis on VPNs but even that could be defeated with a bit of chaff. Those they will be able to get useful data on will either be innocent and inappropriate targets of state surveillance or crooks and terrorists too technically incompetent or inadequately supported to do the above securely.

[Pierre]

Access? No way!

Too damn hard to handle. I say, all the data go in Excel spreadsheets (good thing you can put several of these in a single document). Then set a password (for obvious security reasons) and voila! Easy to mine, reorder, make graphs and such, you can even easily create terr'ist-finding macros using a robust and reliable programming language. As it's password-protected, and only authorized people will have the password (it will be "Dicky", after Jacqui's hubby name - it's not in the dictionary, that's what they call "strong encryption", right?) you can send the file by e-mail to the relevant administrations (like, local councils). Thanks to the "change tracking" and "share" features, these administrations can even add or edit entries and macros as they see fit, all you need is to do a merge from time to time. Secure and reliable. What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the Plus Side....

It's giving people employment at a time of rising joblessness.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ More big brother!

Take it fro me citizen, they already do read traditional mail...

[Anonymous Coward]

Giant database - yes please.

As the purveyor of giant database software I will cheerfully support such a system, should keep me in commissions and employment until retirement. Especially as there is no hope of HM Gov. managing to get it working properly or to get anything useful out of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Current capability

They keep throwing out this line "to maintain our current level of capability", it's nonsense. It's about increasing the level of capability.

When there is a single database with all these different types of data in, there is only one way the project is going..and that's patently obvious and that is most definitely an extension of the existing capability.

The British Government, politicians, officials haven't got a clue about technology, never have and I would be so bold as to suggest, never will. Terrorists are already using stenography to hide their messages, and this super duper spying database will simply encourage the terrorists to use techniques like that further, actually making it harder for their communications to be intercepted, thus having the exact opposite effect the government desires.

[TMS9900]

Ah! See!

"...even though the laws the government had planned to legitimise it won't be put to parliament until 2010 at the earliest, and possibly not at all."

AH! But the *absence* of a law *legitimising* the system, doesn't mean it is actually currently illegal.

Welcome to NuLab doublethink.

[TMS9900]

If you were a terrorist...

...would you encrypt your emails using 128 bit tight cypher encryption, in turn embedded in a JPEG sent as a family photo album attachment, or would you just send a fucking letter in the post?

Is it me?

[Anonymous Coward]

TOR?

Would something like TOR make this useless?

[yossarianuk]

A solution

http://paranoidlinux.org/

- this is funny its an os based on a science fiction book