Investigatory Powers Bill to be rushed into Parliament on Tuesday The Home Secretary will formally introduce the Investigatory Powers Bill to Parliament on Tuesday, it is rumoured, inviting criticism that the Snoopers' Charter is being rushed through while MPs are distracted by the UK's looming EU membership referendum. The final draft of Theresa May's new Snoopers' Charter is ready to be …
Let your MPs know your objection to this. Now.
You don't even need to know who they are, just your own postcode by using the following site to contact them:
Unfortunately that won't work for me since after entering my postcode:
"Dominic Raab MP has told us not to deliver any messages from the constituents of Esher and Walton. Instead you can try looking them up on the Parliament website. There you will get a phone number, a postal address, and for some MPs a website or way to contact them by email."
Great.... and not for the first time with Mr. Raab
IOW.
"I don't fu**ing care what you think. I don't have to."
Of course the former Speaker of the House (Labour. Glasgow Huge majority) thought the same onhis comments about the MP's expenses scandal.
The SNP MP who got his seat has a very large majority as well.
http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/dominic-raab/4007
It gives a link to his personal site too.
Firstly, I pay taxes in this country. If the different committees, which are funded by the taxpayer, put out devastating reports (and they did!), I demand that they be taken into account. The govt cannot simply ignore them!
Secondly, if the Tories really try to rush this through parliament, it shows their attitude to any kind of oversight (which is the very purpose of reviews/committees). Crucially the lack of oversight is one of the main sore subjects of the bill. This isn't going to end well.
If there wasn't so much at stake, I'd secretly hope that the Tories get a massive slap in the face from (hopefully sensible) MPs as they vote against and reject the bill in parliament. However, I'm afraid that the Tories might play the system successfully. That's frigging scary. Democracy as we know it (or what's left of it) ceases to exist.
Don't forget the tories aren't the only ones involved here: the lib dems connived with them to vote against an earlier sunset clause in DRIPA and labour are well known for their inquisitive nature (think IMP,"mastering the internet" or ID cards).
For that matter labour aren't exactly innocent either when it comes to rushing through legislation. Remember the Digital Economy Act?
That's not to say that this isn't a big problem, but the tories are only part of it considering that they would have problems getting this through on their own.
they wrote the bill
You really believe that? Seriously? Theresa May can't even answer basic questions on this bill, is forced to come back at a later date with written answers - presumably composed by a civil servant somewhere - and you still think that the Tories are the ones pushing for this?
It's civil servants that are in control. Look at Charles Farr: previously head of the Office of Security and Counter Terrorism at the Home Office during the last Labour government and now chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee during the present Tory government, and also happens to be a big supporter of not just the IP bill but also IMP, Mastering the Internet, CCDP and everything else that came before.
Of course it's interesting to note that when public rows occur over whistleblowing it's not him that pays the price...
Don't forget the tories aren't the only ones involved here
I suspect this one is pretty much unrelated to any political party - it's the unelected civil service, especially the Home Office, that has been pushing for ID cards and universal surveillance for decades.
You see the same pattern with every Home Secretary, whatever party they belong to. Start off reasonable (or as reasonable as a Laura Norder loving politician can be) but a year or two later they turn into Judge Dredd, after a constant feeding process - "look at these crime statistics, Home Secretary", "look at these terrorism statistics, Home Secretary", "look at how many plots MI5/6 have thwarted, Home Secretary", "you wouldn't want an atrocity to happen on your watch, Home Secretary". Basically, it's Stockholm Syndrome.
They - and IPB - are Political-With-A-Capital-Pee through and through.
So all the precursors to the IPB, including IMP and Mastering the Internet - both of which happened on Labours watch - are just figments of our imagination? That the spying revealed by Snowden also started on Labour's watch is also not true? (Prism in particular started back in 2007, and GCHQ reportedly in 2008)
By 2010, two years after the project was first trialled, it was able to boast it had the "biggest internet access" of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa
"So all the precursors to the IPB, including IMP and Mastering the Internet - both of which happened on Labours watch - are just figments of our imagination? That the spying revealed by Snowden also started on Labour's watch is also not true? "
at the risk of numerous politically motivated downvotes, I'd just like to add that at least one person of my acquaintance refuses to acknowledge these things happened under Labour, or that Labour's regulatory environment was in place during "the Lehman's era", as that wasn't Labour. That was "Blairite New Labour". It seems he thinks they're different political parties, so maybe some writers on here have that same view?
"You see the same pattern with every Home Secretary, whatever party they belong to. Start off reasonable (or as reasonable as a Laura Norder loving politician can be) but a year or two later they turn into Judge Dredd, after a constant feeding process - "look at these crime statistics, Home Secretary", "look at these terrorism statistics, Home Secretary", "look at how many plots MI5/6 have thwarted, Home Secretary", "you wouldn't want an atrocity to happen on your watch, Home Secretary". Basically, it's Stockholm Syndrome. the Farr Effect."
There, FTFY.
Icon relevant, because I know they're watching.
"I suspect this one is pretty much unrelated to any political party - it's the unelected civil service, especially the Home Office, that has been pushing for ID cards and universal surveillance for decades."
You are correct.
And remember this has b**ger all to do with "security"
It's about collecting all possible information all the time forever. It's about "Give me 6 lines from an honest man, and I'll find something to hang him," as another unelected bureaucrat put it.
Why? Because to the mind of a data fetishist more data is always better and all data is best of all.
Democracy passes into despotism. - Plato
Happening right before our eyes.
I followed the Psychoactive substances bill, expert advice again completely ignored.
Our freedoms our being rapidly diminished and most are unaware, without getting too David Ickian, although I do believe this is what we are seeing!
Posted AC for obvious reasons!
Employ experts, experts report, they don't say what you want, ignore said experts and do what you were going to do anyway. Same old (s)tory.
Only the lucky ones get ignored. The unlucky ones get sacked. That's probably why most of the criticism has come from outside of the Government.
http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/maddox-prize-2013.html
Employ experts, experts report, they don't say what you want, ignore said experts and do what you were going to do anyway. Same old (s)tory.
Only the lucky ones get ignored. The unlucky ones get sacked. That's probably why most of the criticism has come from outside of the Government.
The really unlucky ones end up, apparently, taking an overdose and cutting their wrists.......
seems the bury it 'neath the EU debate ploy is working.
Only working on the hard of thinking.
Purely on Snoopers Charter, I won't ever vote for the Tories again (I'm making the probably correct assumption that they won't ever come to their senses).
Interestingly Corbyn's doing the same with Labour supporters and Trident, so if between them, the senior braying idiots of Westminster can piss off enough of their core supporters, then the 2020 general election could be a real laugh. The only thing we need to work against is the simpletons in the population who might delude themselves that voting for the least worst alternative is an acceptable response.
Snoopers charter isn't a Tory policy.
It's a Home Office policy.
Most of the content of this Bill has been put forward in every recent Parliament with only minor changes - Labour, ConDem Coalition and Conservative.
One wonders why that particular set of civil servants are so keen on these mass surveillance powers.
What is it that they have to hide?
I hate being right at times
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/02/11/joint_committee_investigatory_powers_bill_shoot_the_messenger/#c_2776777
Write to your MP, that's all you can do, but as the Conservatives have a majority & I guarantee they'll use the whip, we can expect this ill thought out crap on the statute books by Wednesday
Also just fired both barrells at my MP.
Took the oppotunity to raise a number of other issues including why he feels the need to reply to an email on a expensive stationary.
I expect to hear his full unconditional support for this draconian bill with a few days.
Mr. Dowd - you don't represent your constituents in the slightest and a growing number of us are fed up of it!
When I asked my MP about something a while ago, the initial clarification was done by email, the formal response by 2nd class post.
The last time I asked my MP about something, my question was completely ignored until I'd sent two follow-up emails (about a montjh apart).
I then got a response - on very expensive paper - providing a vague non-answer to an entirely different question.
I've got a different MP now - who reckons I'd get a different response?
Vic.
and never communicate with anyone there again - no email, no sms, no voip, no telephone calls, no printer produced text, no handwritten letters.
No smartphone, featurephone or unremovable-battery-phone either.
No perusing any of the websites you normally read (behavioural fingerprinting, don'cha know).
Of course you'll noticably drop off the radar and become a person of especial interest as a result.
But it's nothing that a complete identity change (up to, and including, full reconstructive surgery*). elocution lessons and suchlike won't ameliorate.
Then relocate to a war-zone followed by more reconstructive surgery then a move to another war-zone followed by even more reconstructive surgery then a move to yet another war-zone and yet more reconstructive surgery.
Now you can come back (via Greece) with a completely new identity, having 'lost' your papers in all the confusion of the last war-zone**, and issued new ones in Germany.
Shouldn't take more than a couple of years at the most.
* not a sex-change - too obvious
** don't mention the previous two
And then the powers that wannabe wonder why third party terrorism is on the rise and will shortly be smarter targeting them personally as the enemy to be removed from the politically inept and corrupt and incorrect scene.
Stupid is as stupid does.
And is the above and this ...... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-28/empire-will-strike-back ..... wrong, and not something to be radically and fundamentally remedied?
And do you imagine intelligence and military forces will align themselves and support the indefensible and inequitable, the perverse and the corrupt? Would that not be incredibly stupid and naive of them and render them as legitimate future targets/persons of interest?
Around here, we refer to that as a "Second Amendment Remedy".
And for those on the right side of the Pond, or simply to young or brain-dead to remember, that was coined by a real, serious politician running for a real, serious office (U.S. Senate).
Such blunt force trauma remedies are of course always a possibility, Someone Else, whenever systems insist on creating fools as personal tools of anonymising foe in need of radicalised attention.
And the smarter that systems need to become to retain and maintain lead with Remote Command and Media Control, the greater the likelihood of the solution being considered perfectly normal and convenient when power is abused and misused/perverted and corrupted.
The following being true is surely a real concern ……
This, I argue, is somewhat analogous to an argument that we should be entitled to own firearms, despite the fact that SOME people will use them wrongly/immorally/illegally. The ownership is a right even though it may ultimately allow or enable an abuse that you consider wrong and punishable. I consider the truth of such an argument to be obvious and correct, and I know you would too.I realize that this lacks the crisp certitude of safety which would be reassuring to the average, "pre-libertarian" individual. But you are not the "average individual" and I trust that as long-time libertarians you will recognize rights must exist even given the hypothetical possibility that somebody may eventually abuse them.
I do not know whether I "invented" or "discovered" this system; perhaps it's a little of both. I do genuinely believe that this system, or one like it, is as close to being technologically inevitable as was the invention of firearms once the material we now know as "gunpowder" was invented. I think it's on the way, regardless of what we do to stop it. Perhaps more than anyone else on the face of this planet, this notion has filled me, sequentially and then simultaneously, with awe, astonishment, joy, terror, and finally, relief.
Awe, that a system could be produced by a handful of people that would rid the world of the scourge of war, nuclear weapons, governments, and taxes. Astonishment, at my realization that once started, it would cover the entire globe inexorably, erasing dictatorships both fascistic and communistic, monarchies, and even so-called "democracies," which as a general rule today are really just the facade of government by the special interests. Joy, that it would eliminate all war, and force the dismantling not only of all nuclear weapons, but also all militaries, making them not merely redundant but also considered universally dangerous, leaving their "owners" no choice but to dismantle them, and in fact no reason to KEEP them!
Terror, too, because this system may just change almost EVERYTHING how we think about our current society, and even more for myself personally, the knowledge that there may some day be a large body of wealthy people who are thrown off their current positions of control of the world's governments, and the very-real possibility that they may look for a "villain" to blame for their downfall. They will find one, in me, and at that time they will have the money and (thanks to me, at least partially) the means to see their revenge. But I would not have published this essay if I had been unwilling to accept the risk.
Finally, relief. Maybe I'm a bit premature to say it, but I'm satisfied we will be free. I'm convinced there is no alternative. It may feel like a roller-coaster ride on the way there, but as of today I think our destination is certain. Please understand, we will be free.
Your libertarian friend,
Jim Bell ……. Assassination Politics
Nowadays though are novel arsenals loded with myriad other types of fantastic weapons to extraordinarily render fools their just desserts, and that is equally as terrifying methinks ...... although significant others would consider that most reassuring.
This was inevitable, someone wants this power and doesn't care how they get it.
I used to think we live in a democracy but these days I'm not so sure, it seems that no matter which way you vote they will do whatever they have planned. I would go so far as to say that governments are just a front for whatever (insert tin foil hat) organisation is actually in power with token gestures made to the public every now and again to keep the illusion going. Take Cameron's speech on the EU, that was the first time I've heard them mention TTIP and in it he said "We are signing up to TTIP" so and I know slightly off topic but here we have a prime example of the government signing up to a secret corporate agreement without any interaction from anyone and we call this democracy?
Actually the whole "Leave the EU" thing strikes me that way, the only 2 laws I've heard Government minsters specifically mention when they talk about "repatriating" lawmaking back from Brussels are Health and Safety (Chris Grayling), and The Working Time Directive (Cameron).
So no legal recourse when you're injured by virtue of an employers negligence, and they will also be able to make you work more than 40 hours per week (ignoring the fact the UK negotiated an opt out clause, but it does rely on "voluntary" written assent from the employee).
If they manage to repatriate those 2 from Brussels I think most ordinary people will regret it!!
"the only 2 laws I've heard Government minsters specifically mention when they talk about "repatriating" lawmaking back from Brussels are Health and Safety (Chris Grayling), and The Working Time Directive (Cameron)."
Oh, you've noticed, shame nobody else seems to see past the foriegners taking our jobs shite. jacob rees-mog, mr Timewarp himself, said he didn't agree with the EU employments rights legislation on some TV interview I watched and I heard another tory MP say the same on TV.
I'm assuming we will be out, as no press I have heard asks pertinent questions like "What red tape" when some MP vommits out "too much red tape" as an excuse to leave. The same for which EU migrants they want to send home, nurses currently an 8% staffing shortage or the 1 in 5 GPs that are foriegn workers? Apparently nannies and housemaids are exempt which covers the MPs and the rest of the populace are too busy playing with their shiney consumer goods, slaving over some celebrity or wanking over videos on the tubes.
Personally I'll have my VPN in some foriegn land setup by then and plenty of ipv4 address space for it too. Maybe I should setup an office like Brill, Enemy of the state.
Maybe the MPs extreemist idiology will breed a new set of domestic anti-extreemist terrorists.
...that only the good, the young, the beautiful, get cancer?
Even if these bastards got it, they would deprive us of one of our few moments of joy, by saying it was something else.
There's no justice in this world.
And justice is not seen to be done.
The people are not happy.
And even if they are revolting, they are not revolting yet, and probably never will, but my god, if they ever do...
Heads on sticks will be the least of it.
https://falkvinge.net/2012/07/12/in-the-uk-you-will-go-to-jail-not-just-for-encryption-but-for-astronomical-noise-too/#comment-203527
I still have my "Insurance" file here, never managed to work out quite what it was but judging by the prompt removal of the one referenced link after I informed the agency concerned it is probably MJ12/CTS/etc relating to a certain piece of hardware on a certain planet in our Solar System :-)
Really should get around to mailing a copy because its interesting stuff suggesting a cover-up.
... make bugs shallow; maybe this works for draft legislation, too.
Instead of unfocussed beefing to our MP's why don't we divide up the draft bill between us, and give just our bit a good read, then pool our problems, to be distributed to said MPs. After all, there's a wealth of expertise here, a wide range of opinions, and a fortnight to go before the second reading.
However, as I post this, the draft bill does not appear on legislation.gov.uk. Does anyone know where to get a copy?
Edit: Found it
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