He accepted it would be “far too intrusive” for officers to
be able to access content of internet searches and social
media messaging without additional safeguards, such as the
requirement for a judicial warrant.
When you need to scale the walls of a seemingly impenetrable castle, it is easier to slowly and quietly dig under the foundations until they fall of they own accord.
Once they have this, then don't be surprised that in a few years time they will need some kind of "temporary emergency powers" that actually end up lasting 45 years, allowing them to access the data without a warrant.
Which funnily enough they are doing already. They just get the NSA to do it for them on UK citizens and GCHQ return the favour.
It's like asking for a apple after you've stolen one already.
As a side note the Anti-Tertorism legislation was supposed to be temporary emergency powers. They got extended and extended and expanded and expanded. Didn't matter which government came and went. They all bent the knee.
> it is easier to slowly and quietly dig under the foundations until they fall of they own accord.
The phrase "access browsing history" could go from meaning ISP logs to browser logs without ever needing to change the argument.
What they really want are tools that can hack the OS and browser without needing individual permission from the companies that control those ecosystems.
“Five years ago, [a suspect] could have physically walked into a bank and carried out a transaction. We could have put a surveillance team on that but now, most of it is done online. We just want to know about the visit.”
Willie sutton robbed banks cause "That's where the money is". When bad guys use the internet to do bad things, you have to go 'where the money is' or suffer the consequences if you don't.
That "physical transaction" analogy would be correct if it was putting a surveillance team on every single person in the UK 24/7/365 recording everything they do, just in case any man, woman, or child turned into a bank robber at any time.
I went on a google search to figure out what you could have meant. There are many things I do not know, and a single word without context is seldomly enough to assume. (Starzi appears to be a last name and not much more.)
Also, if I'm googling it, most of the time there are others wondering.
Fair enough :-). I just assumed everyone knew who the Stasi were! I can't recommend the film The Lives of Others enough. Really is a scary insight into the end game of a surveillance state...
So it's ok for the police to get a warrant and track a person's internet usage in real time but it's not ok for them to get a warrant to view a person's browser history?
This is seriously the illogical nonsense this place has devolved to at any mention of surveillance of any kind on Hacker News, even when it involves warrants.
The difference is monumental. One relies on creating a huge, disproportionate, non-transparent transfer of power over the population to various (unelected) actors. Power which they wield over the many.
One relies on creating a huge stockpile of data, which we have no reason to believe will be secure, will not be abused now or in the future, or accessed via the proper protocols for the proper reasons.
One relies on making service providers extensions of law enforcement and government over the populace.
One measure affects the degree to which people will be able to freely express themselves without worrying about how it might affect their future, or the future of the people they love.
One measure relies on digital footprints made in the past which can't be verified for actual human intent and authenticity, yet can lead to situations where, say, a hacker starts incriminating another person intentionally or unintentionally by creating digital footprints leading to them.
Both measures rely heavily on digital footprints that can't be questioned or verified or even proved to be accurate or even reliably called into questioned by a person under investigation. In some cases it won't even be clear that the digital footprints were used. At least with real time targeted surveillance the use of the data is more likely to be used to identify real threats and used to correlate digital prints with actual crimes, rather than what would occur with the blanket storage of information on the populace.
One measure weakens our ability as a society to function as a healthy democracy.
One measure is vastly more susceptible to abuse, misdirection, confabulation and mistaken identity.
One measure assumes we can trust government and law enforcement and service providers to do the right thing, all the time. Even when there is little evidence for that, just assess how many bankers and politicians are in jail for crimes committed. Unhealthy concentrations of power don't serve the good of the population.
One measure makes it even easier for bad actors to acquire data and thus power over not just ordinary citizens but our elected officials and people with positions of great responsibility. This can be used to compromise many aspects of government and business and probably already does.
At least with realtime targeted surveillance, the measure can be executed upon reasonable conditions. There are no reasonable conditions under which we can justify the blanket surveillance and data storage detailing the mental life of millions of people.
At least with realtime targeted surveillance, an individuals breach of privacy is complete, with its effects fairly understood. The damages of which are at least confined to a narrow range of people.
With the mass storage/mass surveillance practices the natural inclination will be to expand over time. One years storage will turn into 5 years, and 5 years will turn into decades. It will be incredibly cheap. More people will gain access, more use cases will be used for it. We have decades of evidence that this is how powers are expanded beyond the scope of their original intent. The damage that does will far exceed its benefits, for which we don't even have evidence today.
One measure is inherently coming from complacent motivations. Much more can be done to create more secure infrastructure. Much can be done politically to limit the proliferation of extremist violence and so on. Much more can be done, and isn't done, to persecute criminals with means we already have, but we don't. Yet certain parties are chomping at the bit to spend millions on these particularly gross measures under the myth that it's needed to do a better job.
> It is ok to assassinate a terrorist with a sniper
Legally ok, or morally ok in your view? Because organisations like Greenpeace have been branded terrorists in the past, and I'm quite sure the definition of "terrorist" is malleable beyond belief, especially when the government needs to explain itself for killing an individual.
Of course there may be situations where life-and-death intervention may be required (as in, sniping the person holding a bomb trigger), but I'm seriously opposed to your unqualified statement that it's ok to shoot a terrorist.
A wizened old judge sits in court, looming down on the accused (the term defendant implies they have a hope in hell of defending themselves), presiding over a trial he doesn't understand. A young man did something dangerous with a computer.
There is no jury, because this is a secret trial - what is being discussed here is a matter of national security. The young man is suspected of some kind of technological terrorism, the judge understands. The young man looks unhealthy, sallow - the judge doesn't consider that he has spent a month in a holding facility being politely but forcefully questioned about his political beliefs, his thoughts on terror, his religion, his economic orientation.
The trial proceeds. Great stacks of print-out of browser history are wheeled out on trolleys. The volumes are enormous. The young man must be pathological. The security cleared expert witnesses explain that this young man clearly uses the internet heavily, he is possibly an addict, many of these "URLs" are very technical, possibly dangerous. It appears he has been hacking thousands of websites. He is clearly a threat, a dangerous product of a world gone mad that the judge only knows to fear. His wife is making casserole and he wants to get home.
Sentencing is passed. The young man is not allowed to talk about these proceedings lest a harsher sentence yet be meted out. He is sentenced to prison and is thus conveyed. His life in this society is effectively over, and his future holds only scrutiny and prejudice, to which he is not permitted to respond, and cannot even have the solace of mute rage, as the drugs he is made to take by the state for his dangerous addictive and compulsive tendencies prohibit such.
In his cell he sits and reflects on his crime - being a web developer who retweeted a link to a leaked GCHQ document.
With enough data and the right apparatus, you can achieve political harmony within your populace in the matter of a generation.
How long until News internationals pet bent coppers are selling the browsing habits of celebs - sounds like the MET police is getting overmighty again - time to let Therasa of her leash.
For those not familiar with history post ww1 the Met Police wanted to take over MI5's job.
Got to toss that last one in so people toss their reasoning out and go with pure emotions. Sometimes I wonder if such material was made as offensive as it is currently viewed as a tool to spearhead attacks of this nature. It wouldn't be the oddest social engineering a group like the CIA has done (look at the abstract art discussion on HN from earlier this week).
I am not sure if dnscrypt helps much, but it at least makes them work a bit harder. Here is a guide for getting off your ISP's DNS and encrypting the traffic:
Once they have this, then don't be surprised that in a few years time they will need some kind of "temporary emergency powers" that actually end up lasting 45 years, allowing them to access the data without a warrant.
Which funnily enough they are doing already. They just get the NSA to do it for them on UK citizens and GCHQ return the favour.
It's like asking for a apple after you've stolen one already.
As a side note the Anti-Tertorism legislation was supposed to be temporary emergency powers. They got extended and extended and expanded and expanded. Didn't matter which government came and went. They all bent the knee.