Wot Price Privacy Now?

[darkeyes]

Jus a lil wheeze by HM Govt. Aint they jus luffly? Wots next? Openin me post?


Giant UK database considered
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Last Modified: 20 May 2008
Source: ITN


Ministers are on a collision course with civil liberties groups after it emerged they were to consider plans for a national database.

The electronic information would hold details of every phone call and email sent in the UK.

The plans are at a very early stage but are being considered for inclusion in the draft Communications Bill to be published later this year, the Home Office confirmed.

Ministers are yet to see the plans, which have been drawn up by Home Office officials, but they are likely to provoke outrage from data protection and civil liberty campaigners and raise objections to the rise of a "Big Brother" state.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne led the criticism saying: "This is an Orwellian step too far.

"Ministers have taken leave of their senses if they think that this proposal is compatible with a free country and a free people."

He added: "Given the appalling track record of data loss, this state is simply not to be trusted with such private information."

A Home Office spokesman said retaining communications information was essential for protecting national security.

He also emphasised powers to hold information were subject to strict safeguards.

He said: "Communications data - the who, how, when and where of a communication but not the what (content) of the communication - is a crucial tool for protecting national security, preventing and detecting crime and protecting the public.

"The Communications Data Bill will help ensure that crucial capabilities in the use of communications data for counter-terrorism and investigation of crime continue to be available.

"These powers will continue to be subject to strict safeguards to ensure the right balance between privacy and protecting the public.

"We need to make changes to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) to ensure that public authorities can continue to obtain and have access to communications data essential for counter-terrorism and investigation of crime purposes.

"We will also use this legislation to transpose into UK law the EU Directive 2006/24/EC on the retention of communications data - which requires the retention of internet protocol traffic data by communications service providers."

The Government has been embarrassed by a string of data protection failures in recent months including the loss of a CD carrying the personal details of every child benefit claimant.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

[Bluebiyou]

The Government has been embarrassed by a string of data protection failures...

...therefore everyone's personal freedoms need to be encroached upon.
Now THERE's some infallible logic.
Government power is like a rising floodwater... little here, little there, little more here, little more there.

But don't worry, "These powers will continue to be subject to strict safeguards..."

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, USA firms are creating an electronic 'big brother' for hire, to help the Chinese government oversee the Chinese people...

Someday soon we shall all be subject to a silicone God. We shall no be able to buy, sell, or communicate without His approval.... wait.... that sounds familiar...
And the new opiate of the masses, instead of religion, will be the TV/computer monitor in front of our faces...

This wouldn't seem so depressing if it weren't so damn close to the truth...

[sennex]

This government just tries to get more and more control over us, we are quietly sitting here watching them erode our civil liberties without doing a thing. Maybe we should try being a little French, block streets and roads, burn things, march and riot a little, they must be told enough is enough!
I believe that they're in the process of drawing up a census questionaire which will include question about our personal lives including our sexual behaviour and habits. If asked I don't know whether I'll just tell them to get f****d (then they can put that in their own survey), or just lie. On balance I think I'll lie outrageously and hope many more will do the same.
While in Scotland recently I saw, in a car, a poster stating, "Gordon Brown has done nothing for Scotland", I agree, he's also done nothing for England, Wales or Northern Ireland. Well nothing positive anyway, he's messed plenty up both as chancellor and Prime Minister.

[wolfcamp]

I know my name is in one of these databases. How do I know? A couple years ago I got a letter from an obscure company that my name was in a database that had been hacked, and that my financial information may have been exposed to hackers. I had never done business with this company (I have forgotten the name and details) and I wondered why they would have my name. I did a little research and found that they were the outsourcing company that managed the government's terrorist watch list database.

The break-in by the hackers made Newsweek magazine. I remembered reading that a large number of names and financial information were compromised, but it didn't seem relevant to me, and I just forgot about it. The news stories stirred up a big controversy about the government randomly putting people's names and information into a database. The database was eventually deemed unconstitutional and shut down, but the data is still out there, and still available to...um...whoever. A quick google shows that there are other databases now just like it, and almost as controversial. They must have figured some ways to sidestep the constitutional privacy laws.

The problem for me was that the notification came 18 months too late. My bank had notified me 18 months earlier that my credit card had suspicious activity. The paperwork had shown that someone had opened a Stormpay account (like Paypal) in my name but with a Lithuanian email address. They made several transactions from my account directly to the Lithuanian account before my bank caught it and notified me.

The timeline for everything worked out perfectly -my purchases, the time of the hack, the news story, the credit card fraud, and then much later the notification letter.

The incident cleared up a mystery for me. I had only used that credit card to purchase plane tickets to fly to the west coast to see my girl friend. She lived there at the time. I couldn't figure out how hackers could have gotten my information. Once I learned of the database incident and did a little research. it made perfect sense. It appears that flying on a plane made me a person of interest.

When I tell people this story they just shrug. Evidently they don't believe me or they don't care. I guess it's what people expect from the government these days. Maybe I sound like a crank, but this incident is one reason I have so little use for this administration. They keep making noise about terrorism to scare us, but I have a greater chance of being run down by a drunk cowboy on a horse than to be killed by a terrorist.

Get used to it Darkeyes. Like it or not, it's the world we live in.

[eddy10]

Hitler would have loved the electronic age.

Too much central government is a BAD thing. Cherish your freedom and be prepared to fight for it.

[jamieknyc]

There is one important differencve between "here" and "there:" in the United States, the law places restraints on what the government can do with that information, which do not exist in Britain.

At the time of the London Tube bombings, a British friend told me, straight out and in exactly these words: "Our police have powers that you don't have here."