UK Home Sec makes concessions to please Snoopers' Charter opposition As Britain's Snoopers' Charter approaches its highest hurdle yet in Parliament next week, Theresa May has made some concessions to its contested provisions, particularly those affecting privacy, sensitive professions, and access to medical records. The Home Secretary's concessions will provide some protections to MPs and …
whatever the law says.
Rather than wasting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H spending our time and effort here, maybe a better approach would be to amend the laws of evidence to explicitly exclude unlawfully obtained material.
The fruit of the poison tree and all that.
Knowing this would greatly reduce the temptation to go snooping in the first place.
"Knowing this would greatly reduce the temptation to go snooping in the first place."
No it wouldn't - it would just make the uses they put the information more nefarious. Can't use information illegally obtained through bulk interception? Use the other information gained to cook up a plausible grounds for a warrant and 'discover' the information that way.
Can't prosecute someone because they're "undesirable", but have done nothing illegal? No problem - blackmail, entrap or frame them with the knowledge acquired.
Nobody seems to have defined it yet... they like to tell you it's like an itemised phone bill, but it is so much more than that.
I just did a bit of light Wiresharking on my DSL line and there's an awful lot going on there, even if they "just" harvest DNS lookups and HTTP requests they're going to be snowed under and there's a lot of stuff on there as various devices, OS and apps phone home looking for updates etc...
Or simply dnscrypt ALL of your "internet connection records". Only connect to servers that don't log. This will help reduce the workload and save the taxpayers LOADS of money. Be sure to tell ALL your friends. Set up your own DNS server and do the same.
F*ing a*holes. Its a shame they can't just go away and solve some real issues, like the economy.
what would happen if I maintained my own DNS server(s) ?
Rest assured that in order to get the data they want and given the TerroroPaedophiles will be using similar techniques and more to avoid having their 'ICRs' slurped that all ISPs will be installing hardcore DPI kit in their networks and slurping everything for storage and subsequent analysis.
As Mark Hughes from BT suggested.. They, BT, at the time of his spoken evidence, were still in discussion with The Home Office in respect of what might be available in respect of ICRs but the basic message was..
'What do you want? How much do you want? What are you willing to pay?'
He even went on to suggest that 'cost' could be considered to be a measure of 'proportionality'.
"A further concession will raise the standard for bulk access to medical records to “exceptional and compelling” cases only."
I thought the government were planning to give all our medical records (bulk access) to Google for 'research' purposes?
In what sort of case would the security services want bulk access to medical records? I'd have thought that they'd want access to the records of individuals or small groups in cases of terrorist cell sieges and hostage situations, etc.
can't snoop on the PM even if he is the source of trouble - doesn't seem quite there
Who will know if any communication by an MP is on official business unless they open it and read it first - laughable
getting to journalists under "public interest" may well be just "political interest" as many journo's mix with unsavoury types in the course of their perambulations...I would imagine any reg commentard or facebook/twit poster could be considered a journo too in the current publish everything world.
Call me cynical, but it often seems that bills like this have some blatantly controversial measures in them which get all the attention and protests. The government then oh-so-graciously listens to the protests and waters them down a bit, meanwhile, down in the depths of the bill, a few lines have been added which do the *real* work of taking away our liberties...
MPs should be more accountable, not less. They are meant to be examples to us all, demonstrating through leadership and action how to operate ethically and legally in both their private and professional dealings. Instead they manage to find ways to except themselves from every form of oversight and check on their behaviour which seems to give them free reign in the pork barrels.
"consulting the Prime Minister before interference with communications of Members of Parliament provides an adequate safeguard"
So there's an afternoons work for the PM signing warrants for every non conservative MP ... and possibly a few conservative ones
"in addition the Speaker or Presiding Officer of the relevant legislature should be given sufficient notice of the decision to interfere with such communications to enable them, if they so wish, to be heard before the Judicial Commissioner."
Weasel word of the day "should", there will be very few circumstances that will actually trigger this event and it will still be Judicial Review of a warrant that was issued rather than Judicial Approval of the necessity for a warrant before it's issued. So more "did the minister follow the correct procedure before reaching for the rubber stamp" rather than "after due consideration of the evidence a Judge decided that the suspects right to privacy was outweighed by the risk to society and a surveillance warrant for them is hereby issued".
Although the Labour party won a review of the bill's bulk hacking and snooping powers, it then demanded even more concessions. At the time the shadow Home Secretary, Andy Burnham, stated that: “The Bill in its current form does not adequately address the concerns raised about privacy. I continue to believe that an overarching privacy clause must be included at the start.”
No Andy Burnham did bugger all for bulk hacking and snooping for the majority of the innocent people of the country, what he did was gain a concession for legitimate party business to appease his mates/voting bloc, the rest of us are still fair game and completely unprotected.
"Theresa May has made some concessions to its contested provisions, particularly those affecting privacy, sensitive professions, and access to medical records."
No she hasn't, she lacks the technical qualifications & ability, the Home Secretary isn't driving this bill or do any readers honestly think a degree in Geography qualifies someone to create a highly technical, highly intrusive, snoopers wet dream of a bill. This bill is the product of the fevered imagination of one Charles Farr, who is and always will be a spy, a spy who doesn't trust anyone and will do literally anything he feels necessary to protect this country, and that includes destroying everything that makes this country worth living in.
This bill will be a pyrrhic victory for the security services, they will finally be able to protect us from ourselves by preventing us from being ourselves.
I see Labour are only objecting to the way the data is accessed, not that it is bulk collected and logged to a database in the first place!!
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> I see Labour are only objecting to the way the data is accessed, not that it is bulk collected and logged to a database in the first place!!
That's because they're upset that their attempt to get this into law didn't succeed ! Seems odd seeing Harpy criticising Treasonous for exactly what Harpy tried (but failed) to get through - but I guess that's politics for you !
Council: I see you put your bin out on Tuesday, and it's not collected until Thursday?
Taxpayer: I'm sorry. I got my days mixed up and put it out early.
Council: Well I can see from your internet history you accessed the bin collection calendar two years ago, so it's not like you didn't know. Jail for you, hardened criminal!
"Protection for MP communications from unjustified interference is vital," Harman notably added first....
Let it be said and duly noted, in order to secure and driver a just, interference free space and/or quite heavenly utopian places, protection from MP communications is vital.
The historical record has conclusively proven they are never correct in their prognostications, and yet mega and meta mainstreaming media, for whatever strange corrupt and perverse reason, still insists on broadbandcasting their pompous and self-serving utterances and clattering chatterings to sublime brainwash and dim the masses into accepting a fawning mediocrity in states of unchallenged stupor.
J'accuse, and posit that nowadays, much to the terrorising concern of such dodgy politically inept establishments, can all things be better without their presumptions and assumptions to lead the future and provide IT future leads via practically remote command and control feeds/serially anonymous and eerily autonomous virtual machine seeds. They are neither worthy nor otherworldlywise enough, nor do they possess the right proprietary intellectual property licenses to project and protect/supply and maintain that AIM with Advanced IntelAIgent Missions. Others most certainly do, and can easily well do with others when working in concert with they who most certainly can do.
cc Elon Musk, re Stimulation of AIM Simulations .... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-ai-artificial-intelligence-computer-simulation-gaming-virtual-reality-a7060941.html
PS ....... You're terribly slow off the mark, El Reg, in leading with prime future suppliers. Are real virtual Great Game Changers so unbelievable/daunting/dangerous ‽ . Would the program supply in Russian or Chinese or Japanese or Spanish help?
Privacy concessions for journalists. Privacy concessions for MPs. Mooted privacy concessions for lawyers
What about privacy for, y'know, normal people?
The thing to remember about privacy for journalists, MP's & lawyers is that it only applies when they are talking to other journalists, MP's & lawyers.
When we ordinary citizens who are monitored to the hilt go to talk to them, we are still monitored, which means they are too, if you're monitoring traffic on someones connection then you monitor it all regardless of who they are connecting to.
So while your MP, journalist or lawyer may not have their end of the phone line surveilled your end will be and both ends of the conversation will be available.
There are always two ends to a conversation & if they can't listen to one end they'll listen to the other end.
So unless you meet your MP, journalist or lawyer in person, in their office, you have no expectation that the conversation is private, any other communication between you and them is fair game, including the fact you visited their office.
Indeed I would go further and say if you are being surveilled, and everyone will be, then even communicating face to face is fair game.
So these 'concessions' are meaningless
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