back to article Brit spies and chums slurped 750k+ bits of info on you last year

More than 760,000 “items of communication” were obtained by British snoops – and others – in 2015, according to the Interception of Communications Commissioner’s Office’s (IOCCO) annual report. The report, which was published today and covers the annual year 2015, revealed for the first time an accurate scale of communications …

  1. Cirdan
    Big Brother

    See icon

    1. NoneSuch Silver badge
      Coat

      1,199 Errors

      Did any of those "errors" result in a visit from the SAS?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    "We shall continue to work with Parliament..."

    I didn't know they worked with Parliament. I thought Parliament did what it was told.

  3. Chris Miller

    750,000 messages?

    That would be approx 1 teenage-year's worth.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      Re: 750,000 messages?

      No. It would all the emails sent and received by 750,000 teenagers, as well as those of any other people people living in the same household.

      "An item of data is a request for data on a single identifier or other descriptor." e.g. an IP address.

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Smooth Newt Re: 750,000 messages?

        ".....an IP address." OK, so let's crunch some numbers. I'll try and keep the numbers as simple as possible so the majority of unblinkered readers (and Alexander J Martin) can follow:

        UK population = @55m (nice round number, actually just over 56m).

        Let's take an average household as 2.5 people (actually about 2.1 in the UK), therefore 55m = 22m households.

        Assuming (generously, and ignoring floating IPs from mobile devices not on home WiFi) 80% have some form of Internet and an IP address assigned by an ISP, therefore worst case scope

        = 80% x 22m

        = 17.6m IP addresses. Make it 17.5m for an easier number.

        So, making another generous assumption of all those being one single communication from each individual IP address (very unlikely), the actual worst case scale of "privacy intrusion"

        = 750000 x 100 / 17.5m

        = @4.3% of possible UK Internet users.

        So, debunking the hysterical headline "Brit spooks and chums slurped 750k+ bits of info on you last year", there was actually very, very little chance any reader of El Reg had their communications "slurped". Maybe El Reg should assign a little maths homework to their more hyperbolic headline writers?

        1. Richard 12 Silver badge

          I'll use your maths then

          So they snooped on a communication from or to 4.3% of UK households.

          Additionally, every single communication has two ends, and thus they snoopped on both ends - 8.6%

          That's 1 in 12 households. How many households on your street?

          1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
            FAIL

            Re: Richard 12 Re: I'll use your maths then

            "....Additionally, every single communication has two ends, and thus they snoopped (sic) on both ends - 8.6%.....' Gosh, you must be a great hairdresser with that amazing ability to split hairs!

            ".....That's 1 in 12 households...." No, that's the very unlikely and worst-possible-case scenario of one communication from one member of one-in-twelve households. Your hyperventilating is just proving my point about gullible readers being suckered by the misleading headline because they want to baaaaaaahlieve.

      2. Chris Fox

        Re: 750,000 messages?

        ... and most people communicate with more than one other person. If a person of interest makes contact with a couple of dozen people using a targeted mechanism (i.e. "one item of data"), then "750k bits of information" could easily see the majority of the UK population under some form of "targeted" surveillance. And if US practice is anything to go by, the scope of some of these "pieces" of information no doubt include the communications of associates with others, perhaps several hops away.

        It seems clear that the terminology and mode of counting is a smoke screen: the headline figure makes it seem that all the data collected is just 750k bits (96k bytes). Perhaps, for example, the proceeds of crime legislation could adopt a similar method of accounting, so the powers-that-be need only request one thing: everything that you, your family and all their relatives and friends own.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Once again we highlight that a significant number of these errors relate to Internet Protocol addresses being incorrectly resolves to subscribers, which can have serious consequences."

    DHCP - remind me, what does the D stand for?! It's 'Dynamic' you clueless asshats i.e. it changes over time. It is technically possible for DHCP to give the same IP to the same device, if the ISPs sets ties IP allocation to your specific MAC address of your router (which they don't)

    So over time, the IP will change - so IP is not a reliable method of correlating it with the identification of network connected devices and their owners.

    As an aside, if you personally want to have valid Internet DNS always resolve back to your home network, despite an ever changing router IP address, I'd suggest http://www.noip.com/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Once again we highlight that a significant number of these errors relate to Internet Protocol addresses being incorrectly resolves to subscribers, which can have serious consequences."

      And people here keep banging on about IPV6 where you would get a permanently assigned /56 ( or /48 or /64 although the /64 id unlikely) to follow your every non natted move.

  5. Dr. G. Freeman

    They found that much information about me ?

    Didn't think I was that interesting.

    1. You aint sin me, roit
      Black Helicopters

      You probably aren't.

      You don't have to worry about the information they have on you, you have to worry about the more "interesting" data they erroneously associate with your IP address...

  6. FuzzyWuzzys
    Facepalm

    If they're interested in the sex toys me and the Missus bought, emails about Auntie Doris' hip replacement and other emails with discussing what time I'll meet my mates down the pub at the weekend, it must have been a very, very slow day in GCHQ!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Err, why is a UK system whose users and data are confined to the UK furtling around with US format dates in the user interface ?

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      That will be a requirement from the bosses so they don't get confused.

    2. salamamba too

      obvious

      Because they're probably based on some crap US-based BI system that randomly switches date format, same as Excel, Business Objects (IBM) and a host of others.

    3. tom dial Silver badge

      Maybe because some of the national security collection requests (roughly 1/3 of the total) arise out of US referrals?

  8. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "... the most frequent error was caused by transposing the days and months when accommodating the American format of presenting the time."

    This would we the cue for an inspired rant along the lines of "why the hell don't you use consistently freakin' ISO 8601, for God's sake", but it's late and I'm tired.

  9. tom dial Silver badge

    Have an upvote, and thanks for pointing me to the standard that justifies my habit for quite a few years.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Governments have been intercepting communication since communications were invented. The Post Office used to house a mail intercept facility at Armour House in London and very efficient it was too, GCHQ have been doing the same with electronic comms for years - at the time of 9/11 if you ran a trace route, there was some very odd servers listed; Interception is not going to stop no matter what governments say. Spooks are here to stay.

  11. deadfamous
    Megaphone

    my.messages.token

    some.message + my.messages.token = true

    the only real alternative to "if you've done nothing wrong they won't be interested in you"

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