Why stop there? I suggest making laws that will enforce strict curfews, limitations on areas of travel and also wearing mandatory unremovable collars that will enable security forces to immediately neutralise any citizen in case they turn out to be a terrorist.
I could say something about how this is exactly how terrorism wins, but that's not really the case. This is just how we lose.
These ideas of sweeping restrictions could be due to the same incompetent thinking that caused the problem in the first place, or might be a cynical leveraging of the situation to quench an unending thirst for more control and power, but whatever the reason, this is the kind of thinking that threatens the foundations on which free societies are built upon.
I was thinking these sort of policies are more representative of how democracy and security services are constructed: Politicians just want to show they are doing something, so swipe at an easy target. Security services ask for more information gathering tools for the same reason corporations try to maximise their profit: its their job to do so.
It's not going to change until people truly appreciate the trade-off of freedom vs. security, which probably wont happen until the majority really feel the pinch of losing the former.
You are right, but just that as a society we should stay vigilant in detecting and stopping companies that make profits using ways that are detrimental to society, the same should apply to politicians and security forces. There are checks and balances for that in a modern society, but they can't be watertight. One can only hope that society will feel the "pinch" (as you called it) early enough.
I guess where my metaphor breaks down is that as you said Corporations are constrained from doing things detrimental to society (at least in theory), and the way we constrain them is via law. Security services and politicians are harder to fix, given they make the laws. The only true influence on their behaviour is public opinion.
It is appalling what currently is happening in the aftermath of the crazy Paris attacks.
Some of the biggest offenders of the Freedom of Press are now not battling for the protection of the press, but for being seen by the media as one of the mourners in the first row of the Paris events on the weekend (for a better overview of that see https://storify.com/tometty/staunch-defenders-of-free-press-...)
Most of these providing their "condolences" have been constantly mocked by CH, have tried to criminalize the work of CH in the past (e.g. German politicians), and are now shamelessly exploiting media attention and believe again that there will be no better time to even further crush the rights of European citizens, some with measures (e.g. further extending telco data retention, dragnet snooping in the UK & Germany) that latest with the events in Paris should again been demonstrated as not effective to protect from such attacks (both measures were already in place and broadly used in France before the attacks).
We can only hope that Cameron's statement in the article linked is solely a political one, fishing for voters in the far right & UKIP spectrum. Otherwise this might be another nail in the coffin of a growing and successful UK Internet industry.
UK is just getting worse for internet freedom each year. The country has already curtailed free speech with its libel laws [1,2], internet censorship [3], and newspaper targeting [4].
I wonder if people of UK are like frog in boiling water? Do they not realize that their rights are being removed with each passing law? I hope at least tech companies will move out of UK, prompting the UK government to ponder over its actions.
Friedrich Goltz's boiling frog experiment with the slow temperature increase to boiling only worked after he removed the brains of the frogs - all others actually jumped out above 25C+ - when you watch various UK TV shows one can certainly assume that at least some of the actors / watchers must have had their brains removed to be able to endure this. I'm not sure if that applies to the majority of the population (yet) ;-)
[2] You saying no-one makes fun of Liz? Our libel laws are hideous, but making fun of the queen or other royals is something that regularly occurs in UK media. And given the UK royals, to ban taking the piss out of them would be blatant entrapment.
I agree that trying to restrict footage of a wedding to non-comedic purposes is not very liberal, but that is hardly the same as not being allowed to make fun of the queen. The Queen is mocked as part of the state opening of parliament, for instance, so it would be very hard to ban.
>The Prime Minister said today that he would stop the use of methods of communication that cannot be read by the security services even if they have a warrant.
This is ridiculous, in the fact that, even if they ban well known encrypted chat apps. Terrorist and outlaws could just create their own? I have a phone, I am a developer, I can do whatever I want with it at that point, outlawing apps won't stop outlaws from writing illegal apps with encryption.
This is what I have never understood. Granted, my partner works in law enforcement and she says a good portion of criminals are quite dumb (willing to discuss smuggling plans in a public facebook profile, for example) but its not like creating a encrypted messaging system has a high barrier of entry. You could create such using C# Framework libraries in an afternoon! Hell, contract the work out anonymously on Elance for a $100 or so, and you'll be immune to the security services by the end of the day.
You could do pretty well just by ripping off some C# RSA example code. Find a moderately competent programmer, pay them for 2-5 hours of work...sure, why not. Just stick to the high-level APIs and you should be fine.
But realistically, nobody will be able to shut down the FOSS tools that already exist. Use Tor or VPNs if necessary in countries with internet censorship.
You would be surprised, I think. The RSA/AES stuff in C#'s System.Security.Cryptography library is pretty robust and easy to use. Copy/Pasting from MSDN will get you quite far.
There appears to be absolutely no proof that such laws would help with their stated purpose. In the cases of Ottawa, Sydney, and now Paris, the perpetrators of their respective nonsense were already well known to authorities, yet this apparently presented no obstacle to them whatsoever.
Are you sure there have been no attempts that were disrupted because the communication was intercepted? those that haven't been disclosed to the public?
Also, just because the suspects in the cases you mentioned were well known to the authority doesn't mean their communication was monitored 24/7. We simply don't know.
> Are you sure there have been no attempts that were disrupted because the communication was intercepted? those that haven't been disclosed to the public?
You think politicians would stay quiet about them if there were?
I think they are, foolishly, staying quiet on some recent victories. They've said as much. It could actually be to their benefit to release more about some of the cases where they don't reveal more about "methods" than the public already knows. But they probably won't, because it goes against their culture of secrecy, they'd rather pretend Snowden never happened.
Their victories are few and far between when you weed out false flag and entrapment cases, and also look at all the attacks that actually happened at the same time. With all the press Snowden got, we in the US got no confirmation of any prevented terrorist attacks even though the media and security agencies kept alluding to the dozens they prevented in defense of their spying
This is kind of funny, in a sad way. I mean in the USA the NSA is still saying that the never, never spy on private information, maybe sometimes, in rare cases, on non americans.
While in england they are all like, "No more spying in secret, time to actually take your rights away".
The english are hardcore, the NSA has more freedom in england than in the US. Sad, but funny.
[1] is probably the best analysis of the field. Last week on BBC Question Time, the folks on the panel and in the audience all seemed very hostile to limits on freedom of speech - though they noted that those rights are much more robust in the US. Perhaps this is Cameron's attempt to make sure that UKIP doesn't steal away some Conservative votes. UKIP seems most hostile to immigrants, from what I can tell. (I don't live in the UK, so perhaps someone can correct/expand).
I'm so god damn sick of this. An attack happens, and politicians line up with pre-written, draconian and/or rushed and reactive legislation to further infringe upon our rights. It's been particularly noticeable since 2001.
I'm so glad HN exists because I sometimes I feel I'm the only one who notices it.
That's good to know, but how are the alternatives? The LibDems are in bed with him, and since Tony Blair, Labour has come across to me as a second Tory party.
Full disclosure, I am not a conservative voter. YMMV
But a few things will spring to mind,
1) we tend to vote conservative when the books need balancing, and labour when we feel wealth is not being distributed properly
2) the conservatives always try to "cost save" on the NHS by privatising parts of it. This virtually always leads to decreased performance. We like the NHS (a lot).
3) like in most places in the world, we're in a living standards squeeze. They say they're turning the economy around, but in reality while the books might say that, the poor and middle class haven't noticed the difference. Tax has also not been noticeably reduced which is usually a conservative winner.
4) they formed a coalition government with the lib dems (they did not have a majority). Due to lib dems u-turning on some key points (tuition fees for example), and most lib dem voters are not pro conservative, they are likely to lose a lot of seats. So many so that another coalition seems unlikely.
5) nanny state-ism. An election point in the past here accused labour of this kind of behaviour, but now with their default on porn ban, the snoopers charter and others, it's starting to wash off.
oh and 6) UKIP. Historically the hard right wanted to exit the EU (and stop migration), but the conservatives keep dallying around on the subject(s). They're losing voters and MPs to UKIP who are seen by hard liners as more likely to deliver.
Unfortunately you have a rather poor read on the current electorate over here right now. While the Tories are not the most popular party around you have to look at the competition. Labour is a joke and Ed Miliband couldn't get elected to local council at this point; infighting between SNP and Labour in Scotland will mean that while the left will still have heavy support in the north it will not necessarily be to Labour that most MPs owe allegiance. The Lib Dems are done for the next decade. A cycle being ineffective lap dogs to the Tories has pretty much crushed their future. UKIP is picking up a lot of what is more nationalistic than traditional "hard right" and if it comes down to it UKIP would gladly replace the Lib Dems in the coalition; the Tories would prefer this not to happen but having UKIP out there is not quite as bad for them as it seems to most voters, the votes they lose are not going to be supporting a Labour government when all is said and done.
The end result is that you are likely to see the Tories back in power by the end of summer, in a somewhat different coalition and with mildly adjusted policies. Either way, more of the same.
Hmm, I always wonder about these kinds of polls for non-proportional representation systems.
Obviously if party supporters were evenly spread throughout the country, the outcome of the election would be a whitewash. It's not the case, though -- "Scotland tends to vote Labour" and so on. Gross vote supremacy obviously helps to win seats, but the relationship isn't obvious -- certainly small parties will tend to be under-represented, for example.
Exactly. If Labour can't get ahead of the Tories they are doomed and once people actually start seeing Ed's policies it is mostly downhill IMHO. Right now Labour has the advantage of being "not the Conservative party", but that won't get them far. Add up the Tories and UKIP -- if those two together total 50% then nothing else matters and Farage can acquire his pound of flesh if necessary...
The Conservatives did not win a majority in 2010. Thus, if they are to win a majority this year, they need to be doing better. However...
They tried to trade their boundary change bill in exchange for House of Lords reform, but failed because of a rebellion in their own ranks. Thus the constituency borders are favourable to Labour.
During their term, UKIP became the 3rd most popular party, which is splitting their vote.
Labour's popularity has also increased since 2010 (when it was at record lows).
The Conservatives' only saving grace is that if Labour does not achieve a majority, David Cameron gets the first chance to try to form a government.
However the mechanics of FPTP are such that UKIP are unlikely to achieve a share of seats proportional to their vote, and the Lib Dems are unlikely to be completely annihilated.
So the most likely outcome is that neither Conservative + Lib Dem nor Conservative + UKIP will add up to a majority. A three-way is right out.
They can of course try for a minority government, but if Labour are almost at a majority and the Cons are much further away, the Queen (should) say "Errrr... no".
> Technically a Prime Minister doesn’t win an election at all: people vote for a party.
In most parliamentary systems, the Head of State is compelled to invite the party with the largest representation in parliament to form a government, and that party then proposes a government which is then subject to a confirmation election in the parliament, which it must win in order to be the government. So, generally, Prime Ministers win an election among members of parliament, who are themselves elected by the public (whether or individually or by party name depends on the particular parliamentary electoral system -- the UK system, as I understand, uses first-past-the-post with candidate names and parties on the ballot, much like most US elections -- while some systems use party-list-proportional where seats are allocated proportionally to the number of votes cast for parties, and there are various hybrid and other systems in use, as well.)
This is not entirely unlike US Presidents, who are also elected indirectly by presidential electors who are in turn elected by the public, however, it does differ in that the electors in the UK are also legislators rather than being elected solely as electors. Its kind of like if, in the US, members of Congress elected the President.
(Which, in fact, can happen in the US system, but only if the Congressional count of the vote by the electors doesn't give a majority for any candidate.)
I'm not too familiar with the UK system, but it seems like in the US the people have more direct control over the identity of the president, since both parties have competitive primaries every election cycle, except for the parties of first-term incumbents, whereas the last Conservative Party leadership election was in 2005(?). Also, primary voters don't need to be paid-up members of their party.
The US differs from most European countries in that the president is also the head of the government. And because he's elected directly (well, sort of), the US government has its own mandate independent from the parliament, which means the parliament can't really send the government home (though it can clearly stop it from functioning, as the US has demonstrated).
In most parliamentary systems, the parliament is the direct representative of the people, and they elect and appoint the government, and can disband it whenever the government loses support of the parliament. The UK is slightly odd here, because I believe the members of the government are also still members of parliament. I have no idea whether the LibDems have the power to withdraw their support and send Cameron home (or at least back to his seat, while the LibDems form a new government with Labour). In many other countries, they would definitely have that power.
Of course the US and the UK are both oddballs in that they have a pure district system, whereas most democracies have some level of proportional representation. (Often purely proportional, but some have a hybrid system where people still have a representative directly from their district.)
I can't tell whether this is hubris, technical naïveté or just an attempt to garner votes. Possibly all three. But let's assume they are proposing a ban on communications methods that cannot be lawfully intercepted (that's certainly how Cameron words it).
Firstly, we know it's technically infeasible, secondly it would have a serious chilling effect on UK Internet companies and the digital economy, and thirdly it would actually take very popular apps and tools from young voters hands. So does he really think people will be panicked enough by the threat of terrorism to vote for it?
It is a wonderful distraction considering the massive budget cuts in the police force. The Met are facing 1.4bn budget cuts. The Border Agency had to cut its budget by 23%. The military are under constant pressure to cut staff and spend less money. Maybe he gives away civil liberties because it doesn't cost him anything.
You know that this is one of the oldest constitutional laws.
Based on the french constitution, the 4th amendment in the US,
and the Art. 10 Abs. 1 Grundgesetz in Germany, and everywhere else.
And even if the UK has no written constitution, they signed the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights (the “Convention”) into UK law. Article 8(1) of the Convention provides that “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_in_English_law for more.
Obama does not care a shit about his constitution anymore, and consequently his poodle in the UK neither. So they should just waive the Human Rights Act, and consequently leave the European Union. We pay enough for their cows anyway, and they are way above their tolerable abuses of civil freedom anyway.
WhatsApp being banned under these plans would be doubly hilarious, since its encryption is a joke. There's a single hard-coded AES key for everyone. I'm sure SnapChat isn't much better.
The static AES key is for local log storage. This is about encrypted communications. They are working together with Open WhisperSystems to bring the e2e-encrypted TextSecure protocol to Whatsapp: https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/
Let's start being very cautious about that. Because
1) Whatsapp has never said publicly they are doing that
2) Now they might backtrack and say they never intended to add E2E encryption
3) Without a privacy policy change as well, the encryption change may be meaningless, since they'd give themselves permission to modify it whenever they wish.
And how would you know they didn't rip out the new system to replace it with the old one in one update? According to Moxie, the Android version already has the TextSecure built into it, yet I see absolutely no difference from the old Whatsapp.
Have you actually listend to the network traffic? It used to be plaintext, so its easy to check, if there is some encryption going on. If there is encryption, then its likly its the one interduced by the TextSecure people.
Why should it be diffrent? What did you expect to change? Thats the good thing about good crypto, the user does not even know its there.
I mean sure, I would like to be able to validate the other persons fingerprint and discover as soon as we are communicating diffrently, but relasticlly, what whatsapp did is the biggest jump in crypto usage since https.
I could say something about how this is exactly how terrorism wins, but that's not really the case. This is just how we lose.
These ideas of sweeping restrictions could be due to the same incompetent thinking that caused the problem in the first place, or might be a cynical leveraging of the situation to quench an unending thirst for more control and power, but whatever the reason, this is the kind of thinking that threatens the foundations on which free societies are built upon.