Non-motoring > Big Brother. Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Old Navy Replies: 46

 Big Brother. - Old Navy
Is going to get bigger.

news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16200559
 Big Brother. - RattleandSmoke
There isn't enough people in the world to monitor it. In reality if you're a suspect terrorist you might get your emails snooped on. As I have no plans to blow up the Manchester Arndale the plans don't bother me one bit :)
 Big Brother. - Old Navy
I am sure they have software to scan for key words in many languages.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 1 Apr 12 at 22:23
 Big Brother. - R.P.
Maybe we should delete the "gardening" discussion ?
 Big Brother. - Old Navy
>> Maybe we should delete the "gardening" discussion ?
>>

Only if you think GCHQ will complain about us wasting their time. :-)
 Big Brother. - zookeeper
if everyone used the odd " terrorist" word when they texted or emailed it would surely snag the system more or less permenantly
 Big Brother. - Zero
>> I am sure they have software to scan for key words in many languages.

Not all of the mail all the time they dont. Its simply not possible. Not all the electronic communication all at once. It has to be targeted.

All they are asking for is:

Who is talking to who - so headers and address packets, and then persons of interest to have email "stored" for later perusal. And a list of user who peruse certain websites.

Perusal of enciphered email is not possible, but the enciphering of such probably puts you on a target list anyway.

 Big Brother. - Kevin
>Not all of the mail all the time they dont. Its simply not possible.

Oh yes it is and it's already being done for international traffic.

>All they are asking for is:
>Who is talking to who - so headers and address packets..

UK ISPs have to keep a record of email traffic and website visits for a minimum of one year. What this new law will do is give the state the ability to intercept any internet traffic they wish "on-demand", ie. in realtime, with no legal oversight.

>Perusal of enciphered email is not possible,

Publicly available encryption can be cracked within hours.
 Big Brother. - Zero
>> >Not all of the mail all the time they dont. Its simply not possible.
>>
>> Oh yes it is

No it's not - I said all the traffic - that is all traffic international or internal all the content as well as address packets and headers

and it's already being done for international traffic.


No it's not I did some time at one of the main routing centres in docklands and there was no gchq feed there or sufficient hardware to capture it all for later use


They would like you to think ,
>>
>> Publicly available encryption can be cracked within hours.

They haven't managed to crack Al's 256 bit encryption
 Big Brother. - CGNorwich
I think I'm with you Rattle . If someone want to monitor my email exchange with my electricity company that's fine by me. I'll cc the security people if it saves them time. In fact perhaps we should cc the government with every email we send.
 Big Brother. - Old Navy
I think the "On demand" in the report is the key, scan lots, and look at a few, much as Zero suggests.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 1 Apr 12 at 22:33
 Big Brother. - -
I hope you are all so complacent when your present internet activity doesn't please some future govt spying dept in ten or twenty years time, it might be amusing now but ideas and idealogies and regimes change over time, once they have the legal right to monitor and spy, who knows where this can lead, if it doesn't affect us directly it will affect our children.

Once the genie is out you will never put it back in, when we are young or in our cups we might well say or type more than we intended, but the idiocy of youth will ne'er be forgot in the electronic spy age....and don't expect things said in jest to be taken in the spirit of things, ask any immigration officer in the USA.

Don't sleep walk ever faster into a totalitarian society.

I work by a motto that has served me well over my lifetime, it applies to govt as well as the subject of the motto.

''management should be on a need to know basis, and what they need to know is as little as possible''
 Big Brother. - CGNorwich
"if it doesn't affect us directly it will affect our children."

I doubt it. They've already posted their life history on Facebook.
 Big Brother. - bathtub tom
Don't forget that after the Americans left Vietnam, there was an army of people putting back together all the shredded documents.

Where's my tin-foil hat?
 Big Brother. - RattleandSmoke
The media are just spinning this to get a story, in the reality is not going to affect us one bit, but if you are working for the IRA or ETA etc you might not want to communicate via email.
 Big Brother. - Fullchat
Who was it that mentioned weedkiller and sugar? Oh that will be me now :-O
 Big Brother. - swiss tony
>> The media are just spinning this to get a story, in the reality is not
>> going to affect us one bit, but if you are working for the IRA or
>> ETA etc you might not want to communicate via email.
>>

Carry on living in your dream world Rattle.
May I suggest you read, or watch George Orwells '1984' - it may be fiction, but much of wot he wrote, HAS come true, and I'm sure more will......
 Big Brother. - Manatee
>>May I suggest you read, or watch George Orwells '1984' - it may be fiction, but much of wot he wrote, HAS come true, and I'm sure more will.....

And while you're at it, Animal Farm. Imagine that pig with GCHQ at his disposal :-o

Tangentially, I only learned a couple of weeks ago that he was renamed César in the French edition of the book!
 Big Brother. - WillDeBeest
... once they have the legal right to monitor and spy, who knows where this can lead...

I'm with GB (and ST) on this one. It's easy to underestimate the value of privacy until yours is taken away. In fact, Facebook is a case in point: people have given away, foolishly but voluntarily and in good faith, personal information that they can't now get back. It's cost some of them jobs, relationships and who knows what else. Most of the information doesn't concern anything illegal, but who here has never done anything they'd rather keep private?

It's not a question of resources, human or technical - or it won't be for long. When I was studying genetics in 1989, it was possible to sequence small bacterial genomes but I was told it would be decades before there'd be enough computing power to sequence even one human chromosome.
As it turned out, the whole thing (23 chromosomes) was done by the mid-2000s, and it's become so routine that anyone's genome can now be sequenced for about $3,000 - most of which pays for lab time rather than computing resources.

So if governments want to read everyone's email, but don't have the technology to do it today, don't imagine that will stop them for long. And please don't let's hear 'the innocent have nothing to fear'; that's been a motto of would-be authoritarians for decades.
 Big Brother. - Old Navy
>> It's not a question of resources, human or technical - or it won't be for long. >>

I agree, during that period I experienced going from a single channel processing system the size of an air conditioned room in laboratory conditions, to a triple digit channel processor that could be put in a filing cabinet in a submarine. I would probably be amazed at what they could do now even although the principals will not have changed. In my day it was about the volume of water you could analyse.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 2 Apr 12 at 08:16
 Big Brother. - Dog
I'd like to blow up George W Bush and shoot Tony Blair, I sympathise with Palestinian suicide bombers.

Lets see what GCHQ make of that.
 Big Brother. - Manatee
I imagine they were on to you already, canis rebellis.

GB sums it up. Another brick in the wall. And I don't think his post is in any way paranoid or exaggerated. The genie is pretty much out of the bottle already.
 Big Brother. - CGNorwich
Of course potential murderers should have the right to plan their murderous deeds by email without anybody have the ability to monitor who they are talking to or find out what they are planning. It's their human right to privacy isn't it?
 Big Brother. - Manatee
Speed cameras don't catch proper miscreants who don't register their cars, pay VED, or join the system. It's a bit the same with mobile phones and email. A proper terrorist isn't going to use traceable email and a contract phone with a direct debit to his bank account. He'll use a stolen phone, hijack somebody's gmail account and go to Starbucks.

Technology is far more effective at corralling and controlling the generally law abiding.
 Big Brother. - CGNorwich
"hijack somebody's gmail account and go to Starbucks."

Exactly. And if the security forces believe that's is what a suspect is doing they want the ability to monitor where those emails from Starbucks are going to. It's not about monitoring the whole population it's about the ability to monitor potential murderers.
 Big Brother. - Londoner
CGN. you have a naive faith in an establishment that lied to us in order to pursue illegal wars.
 Big Brother. - John H
""an establishment that lied to us in order to pursue illegal wars."

Assuming you are right about lies and illegal wars, who/what do you mean by establishment?

 Big Brother. - CGNorwich
And you have a naive faith that it is possible to stop terrorism and murder without giving the security forces the tools to carry out their job.
 Big Brother. - Londoner
>> And you have a naive faith that it is possible to stop terrorism and murder
>> without giving the security forces the tools to carry out their job.
>>
So at what point do YOU draw the line then, CGN?
Because you MUST have a line somewhere - or are you saying that the security forces can do WHATEVER they say that they "need".

You'll be telling me next that you actually believe all this guff about a "War on Terror". (Of course we all know it's a few nutters rather than some James Bond SPECTRE-type organization like the neoconservative loons imagine.)
 Big Brother. - WillDeBeest
Of course potential murderers should have the right to plan their murderous deeds by email ... It's their human right to privacy isn't it?

Well, yes it is! Until they cross the line into criminal conspiracy - in which case a court already has the powers to grant interception permits - they are merely doing what any of us is entitled to do.

Freedom is the right to do things other people may not like, up to the point where you cause harm, at which the law is already empowered to stop you.

Listen very carefully to anything that references terrorism as a justification. Take the terrorists' finest hour, 9/11: ten years of planning, meticulous execution and two high-profile targets, but a method that ceased to be effective even on the day it was employed. UA93 showed us that nobody will ever be able to use a hijacked airliner as a weapon again.

And yet this relative pinprick to the fabric of western civilization was used to justify a frenzy of illiberal measures at home, and two vastly expensive wars abroad that can serve only to fuel the resentment that breeds Islamic terrorism in the first place. Ten years on, the only lasting effects of 9/11 are the ones we imposed on ourselves.
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 9 Apr 12 at 00:44
 Big Brother. - Dutchie
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H0X-7sDwZE


There are so many holes in the official 911 story that it makes me wonder what to believe.This started this so called war on terror.

A clip from Jim Marrs a investigator with his opinion,there are many like him who feel the same.
 Big Brother. - John H
The proposal is to allow GCHQ to target specified people, in real time; it is not going to allow them to go on a trawling exercise of the whole of the UK population.

The data from electronic traffic is retained by ISPs, under existing laws, for one year. Even then, if the security services want to examine that historic data for just a few people - say if a plot has been uncovered and they need to find more evidence - it takes enormous time and patience to do so.

Just look at the News international operation:
www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/29/leveson-inquiry-hacking-investigations-cost
"The cost of the Metropolitan police investigations into phone hacking and other alleged illegal activity by journalists is set to rise to £40m and tie up 200 police officers – about seven times the number investigating paedophiles in London, the Leveson inquiry has heard."

 Big Brother. - -
My fear is that once this information is obtainable by anyone who needs to know, its but a short step to politically financially and power motivated groups getting their seedy paws on it for various reasons, mainly involved with keeping them in power, or more importantly cutting the knees from those who disagree with them by fair means or foul thereby neutralising credible opposition by destroying their careers or relationships by discovering their private lives might be a bit juicy or tabloidesque...it doesn't take a fertile imagination to see where this could lead.

We've recently seen what happened in Bradford with the George Galloway election (congrats George i don't agree with you on much but i respect your conviction and i admire the fact you are such a thorn in the establishments side), it doesn't take much imagination for those with vested interests in keeping the status quo from wishing to learn what Galloways activists and sympathisers are plotting next...thats only an example, i'm sure we can all see how such information could be misused if freely available.

What next, flogging info off for a fee as DVLA do with registrations to those who have a right or 'need to know'.

I'm quite sure that terrorist or serious criminal activity is already monitored very highly, this i'm sure no one with any sense has a moments problem with, what concerns me too is who is monitoring and who, independent and just, will be monitoring the monitors...a right bucket of worms that will probably be sold off to the highest bidder (their best mates) when the govt of the day needs some more cash.
 Big Brother. - madf
Of course, Britain has a wonderful system:
Government monitors your mail etc
When they try you, the law prevents those emails being used as evidence..
 Big Brother. - Manatee
>> The proposal is to allow GCHQ to target specified people, in real time; it is
>> not going to allow them to go on a trawling exercise of the whole of
>> the UK population.

They would hardly 'propose' to go on a trawling exercise of the whole population would they? But it is naive in the extreme to suppose that isn't what the the authorities want.

As for the supposed impracticality of it - it's only a matter of time, and automatic filtering; and if you don't trigger the filter, they just pull your history when you come to the their attention for putting two wheels in a bus lane, and find whatever evidence they need to put a subversive away and get their bonus points that month.

Only half in jest.
 Big Brother. - John H
>> Only half in jest. >>

And the other half will be in jail if your fears are proved to be true. Can't afford it, see the cost per prisoner:
www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/hmps/prison-costs-summary-10-11.pdf

 Big Brother. - CGNorwich
"But it is naive in the extreme to suppose that isn't what the the authorities want."

Pure fantasy based on nothing but acute paranoia and watching too many thrillers.
 Big Brother. - Manatee
>> Pure fantasy based on nothing but acute paranoia and watching too many thrillers.
>>

My being paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

FWIW, I regard Spooks as a comedy. I expect real spooks are far less competent and much more sinister.

History tells us that the unimaginable can happen in a very short space of time. There's no reason to suppose it will never happen again, I'd just rather it wasn't here.

I hope that doesn't count as being the first to mention you-know-who.
 Big Brother. - Armel Coussine
>> nothing but acute paranoia

Indeedy. In youth I remember people panicking about being raided for their few shreds of innocent cannabis (it could happen actually) and rumours flying about that the fuzz had everyone's address. Later people started to fear that their progressive and virtuous political views would cause them to be victimised or persecuted in some way by the crushing and grinding machinery of the state.

Well I should jolly well hope so. The security forces aren't totally idiotic and it is after all their duty to keep an eye on things. But these raids and persecutions didn't often happen in reality. Why would they? Most of the paranoia was just self-flattery by people far too insignificant to cause a blip on the radar.

Any fule kno, and always did, that the telephone (like the internet now) is a PUBLIC PLACE. Anything uttered there can be picked up by anyone interested. But there's no need to worry that the authorities are going to come after you for your disobliging email about the Prince of Wales to the chairman of your bowling club. Life's too short for them to bother with all that faff.

 Big Brother. - Manatee
Good grief. It's not the machinery that's the problem, nor even the current set of muppets who think they are in charge; it's what a future malignant regime can do with it.

Now you might say it's futile to run that argument, because come the revival of National Socialism the regime will give itself whatever powers it needs. True, but but what if it works the other way round too? We have many examples of our servants curtailing our choices just because they can.

It is our duty to tell them to bog off whenever there is any chipping away at hard-won freedoms.

Wake up!

AC, are you just being mischievous again or have I too much time on my hands, being on holiday this week?
Last edited by: Manatee on Mon 2 Apr 12 at 15:33
 Big Brother. - Londoner
That which you call "fantasy" (because it suspects the authorities of not being entirely benevolent) has a higher proportion of truth in it than your stance, CGN, which is to blindly accept whatever those same authorities tell you.

We are told that we have to accept SOME loss of civil liberties because an evil bogeyman ( Al-Quaeda) wants to take away ALL of them. How convenient. How soon before the Tories do a complete U-turn from their stance in opposition, and tell us that we need ID cards.
 Big Brother. - madf
Of course if Governments were really concerned they would fire the senior judges and replace them with people who actually place our security first and the rights of terrorists second.

As they do not - judges rate human rights first - we're safe...even if you are guilty of planning to assassinate someone , an appeal that your human rights are infringed means you can get away with it.

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9177284/Judges-should-put-our-security-above-all-else.html
 Big Brother. - R.P.
Very good analysis and interviews on the Today programme this morning on R4 - included a very good and enlightened view by David Davis MP (C) - worth a listen.
 Big Brother. - Manatee
I'm guessing he wasn't enlightened enough to be in favour? Missed that, must have been having a shower.
 Big Brother. - R.P.
He was against.
 Big Brother. - Old Navy
On a slightly different note, we seem to have acquired literally dozens of fixed ANPR cameras in my area over the last few years.

Why the need for the facility to track movements? Automated policing?
 Big Brother. - John H
They help trace movements of vehicles after a major crime, whether terrorist related or not.


This should make you even more paranoid:
www.bigbrotheriswatching.co.uk/Anpr_Camera_Locations.html

;-)
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