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Details of UK website visits 'to be stored for year'

238 points by eosis 11y ago

5h 11y ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 ^ fixed link
tomtoise 11y ago
"For more intrusive surveillance - involving the detailed content of the communications - security services need to obtain a warrant." The way this is worded makes me wonder if the 'detailed content' will be harvested with everything else and then retroactively looked at with a warrant.
- nthcolumn 11y ago
  Yes, they are going to carry on doing exactly that. Who knows whether they will bother with the warrants even. It never stopped them before. Paedophiles! Terrorists! Criminals! Oh My!
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    Don't forget bears, the most dangerous of all online predators.
- omh 11y ago
  The proposal (as I understand it, from media reports) is that ISPs will be the ones required to intercept and log the data. So it's unlikely that they will store anything more than required, if only for cost reasons.
  - tonylemesmer 11y ago
    depends what exactly "ISP" is defined as. Could be email, or cloud providers as well as connectivity providers.
deleted 11y ago
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madaxe_again 11y ago
The BBC is being a good state mouthpiece today - the fact that they're quoting May as saying it doesn't hold previously contentious matters (I.e. Breaking encryption) is disingenuous to say the least. The bill will say that "unbreakable" encryption is illegal - which means all encryption, as if it's breakable, well, it's not really encrypted, is it. Never mind that this is totally unenforceable. I could write up a one time pad with pen and paper. Most won't. Crooked cops will sell data. They'll blame "hackers". You only need look at the talktalk debacle to see how incredibly warped this govt's views are - they haven't arrested anyone at talktalk, who are tge ones who had such poor infosec that script kiddies could blow them wide open. Instead they're arresting children. Oh, and I'm seriouslt considering redomiciling my company - we only contribute a few hundred million quid to the UK economy.
- mtgx 11y ago
  The BBC has been a mouthpiece for both the UK and the US government for quite a few years. That's why I've always disliked seeing their articles here, and I'd prefer another source like TheGuardian instead. Their previous one about UK gov "backtracking" on encryption backdoors was just as bad. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34691956 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34691956 Read through it and see how 80% of it is the government's opinion about these things. It barely gives mention to what the civil liberty groups are saying. Read the last four paragraphs of the article, for instance. They only deal with how much of a headache end to end encryption is for authorities - and leaves it at that. What about what the civil liberty groups say about how it protects security and privacy?
  - AlphaSite 11y ago
    The guardian is very left leaning as well, a more neutral paper would be better.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      There are basically no neutral papers in the UK. The Independent sort of tries, and the FT/Economist tend to be accurate with the facts but reflexively probusiness/neoliberal.
mtgx 11y ago
It's much worse than that. They want to ban companies from offering encryption that they can't also decrypt. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11970391/Internet-firms-to-be-banned-from-offering-out-of-reach-communications-under-new-laws.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/1... Also, in regards to data retention - I thought the CJEU made it clear that it's against the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Is UK seriously pretending that never happened? It seems their strategy is "we'll just use this new law for 2 years until it gets invalidated, and then we pass a new one that we can use for another 2 years". And so on and so forth. U.S. companies, please stop establishing headquarters in the U.K. It's on an authoritarian path as much as Russia and Turkey is (certainly under David Cameron/Conservatives, at least).
- fredley 11y ago
  Presumably this means all passwords need to be stored in plaintext (or two-way encrypted, which is essentially the same thing at the end of the day)?
deleted 11y ago
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JamesBaxter 11y ago
What is the best way for me as a UK citizen to try and fight this? Just keep donating to the EFF? Talk to my local MP?
- ionised 11y ago
  Enough voters are so easily led by fear and minsinformation that I'm starting to think that there is nothing at all we can do. I am a member of the Open Rights Group. I make monthly donations and attend their conferences. I petition and write to MPs and MEPs and nothing works. I don't even get replies. Which is why I am now considering moving out of the country. I'm currently weighing up my options. There is very little about Britain, its politics and the majority of the voterbase that I have anything in common with, apart from being born on the same patch of dirt.
  - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
    Where do you consider moving?
    - ionised 11y ago
      A few places I've considered and researched so far are Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. Some of these countries are worse than others when it comes to similar surveillance or civil liberties issues but they all at least appear to be very much preferable to Britain and the path it is on. The language barrier in issue in some of these places more than others, although I am open to learning a new language. I began taking German lessons recently just for fun. The actual process of gaining citizenship or even residency can be difficult too, especially for somewhere like Iceland from what I have learned. It's obviously a massive decision to make and not one that can be made quickly and rashly. I just can't see myself wanting to stay here in the UK much longer. I don't feel any kinship with this place.
      - gerty 11y ago
        From personal experience, language barrier wouldn't be an issue in Belgium for a tech job. Due to existent Flemish/French division, English often becomes the local esperanto, although it may depend on the company policy.
heN5Yu0EhKra 11y ago
>"Such data would consist of a basic domain address, and not a full browsing history of pages within that site or search terms entered." Am I right in understanding they will have access to this data without a warrant? And then any 'further' data would then need a warrant. >"For more intrusive surveillance - involving the detailed content of the communications - security services need to obtain a warrant." So with more and more websites using https, where does this 'detailed content' come from? Is the Government expecting ISPs to collect data that doesn't exist? As far as I was aware, as long as you view a website in HTTPS, there was no way your ISP knew what individual pages you are visiting.
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  The full text hasn't been released yet - just going on statements over the last few days. It's likely that you'll have to give the government your private keys, or be able to decrypt any encrypted communication that passes through your network. Again, it's likely unenforceable, in no small part as there's no such thing as a "communications provider", which is the term they keep on using. Skype, Apple, etc., don't work in a vacuum - data transits via peers (are they communications providers?), your computer (is that a communications provider?), your ISP (they're almost certainly a communications provider), and so-on. The purpose of this bill is likely to break large tech corps, rather than smaller operators, but it could also have the effect of essentially closing the technology market to all but large operators who can afford to be compliant.
  - timthorn 11y ago
    The term "communications provider" is defined under UK law, though the practical meaning of the term is less clear: http://aa.net.uk/legal-cp.html http://aa.net.uk/legal-cp.html
- agd 11y ago
  This is behind the belief that so called 'black boxes' will be mandatory. i.e. state required man in the middle attacks on all your https content.
- 11y ago
venomsnake 11y ago
Wild conspiracy theory - London is becoming the playground of world elites. So security is paramount. These bills are not to keep pedophiles at bay but to prevent some forms of "London spring" of the underclasses or other forms of physical harm towards your friendly neighborhood billionaire that could damage real estate prices. The conservatives goal is to make elites know they are safe here so they could switch to lower profile security details. I have no better explanation why UK is pushing so hard on its own populace.
- illumen 11y ago
  Banking without encryption?
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    From the text there is exception about banking - it is said as legitimate use of encryption. The explicit goal is to prevent the plebs from communicating in secret.
- Joeboy 11y ago
  Except London's class warriors seem to be more interested in attacking cereal outlets than billionnaires.
- s_kilk 11y ago
  > I have no better explanation why UK is pushing so hard on its own populace. Maybe the tories are just plain evil? Maybe there doesn't need to be a grand reason and explanation behind it all, maybe they just have a hunger for harming others?
  - Joeboy 11y ago
    But it's not just others. I'm sure Tories are just as vulnerable to blackmail, theft etc as anybody else.
  - EwanToo 11y ago
    The bill appears to have the full support of most Labour MPs too..
elcct 11y ago
By their (lack of) logic, they should also have an officer following every citizen and logging where people go, so that they can know John left his house at 9:17 and checked in at local grocery shop at 9:28. With a warrant they could then obtain information that he has bought a large cucumber - let's arrest him, because he is probably cheating on the government with cucumber. He told the grocer, that how government fucks him is not making him satisfied, so he has to finish the job with a cucumber.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  that's so '30s. better barcode them on the neck and front, cctv cameras are already in enough place to track everyone.
  - gmac 11y ago
    That's so '80s. Facial recognition means we're basically already there.
    - LoSboccacc 11y ago
      That's so 00s. We need something that can't be easily fooled by scarf. I wonder when body odour recognition will arrive joking aside, facial recognition has still some challenges, it can track a face wherever it goes but it's hard to assign a face to an identity unless it's constantly retrained (especially as people age/change)
- deif 11y ago
  With location data and browsing habit metadata they already have that kind of info (with warrants). But their logic is still flawed in assuming criminals won't use a VPN and HTTPS. It seems they want historical data so that they can run algorithms on large datasets and identify potential threats. In theory it's great as it will catch your average low level idealists, so rationally we can conclude that they're trying to focus on identifying, for example, potential IS recruits rather than organised crime.
- suvelx 11y ago
ComputerGuru 11y ago
Flagged because 404. Correct link: Surveillance bill to include internet records storage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872
rajadigopula 11y ago
Check the live page - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-34719194 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-34719194 8:40 'Security risk' of storing communications data "A new law to govern how police and intelligence agencies and the state can access communications and data will be published today. Preston Byrne from Eris Industries, a cryptographic communications company which is withdrawing from the UK because of the proposed law, says the government is going to be tracking metadata which is essentially "a map of what you're thinking". He warns the data could be compromised - citing the recent TalkTalk hack - and says this could lead to blackmail. And he argues that criminals and terrorists" don't use normal communication channels" so only the law-abiding people will be affected by the bill." Preston Byrne has a point.. even common people are using VPNs and TORs. How come the terrorists bare their communications for surveillance?
- Spearchucker 11y ago
  "...he argues that criminals and terrorists" don't use normal communication channels..." That part is true, and is known to government, the public (not at large, but it's no secret) and criminals. The problem is a simple one, and identity checks at borders are a good example. You ask non-nationals, for example, to fill in a landing card to indicate where the traveller is staying during his or her visit. If left blank the traveller is interrogated and risks deportation. If however the traveller lies and provides any plausible address, be it hotel or residential, he or she is allowed through without suspicion. The manpower doesn't exist to verify these details. The technology doesn't exist that verifies these details. The net result is that technical solutions will only catch stupid people. The outliers, the ones you really want, know how to game the system and don't get caught. No matter how much snooping, back-dooring, breaking of encryption or other nefarious thing is done. It's economics + psychology. You spend what you have to ensure you cover 99% of the problem. The remaining 1% requires 1 or more orders of magnitude of resource to catch, which is simply not viable.
  - toyg 11y ago
    > The manpower doesn't exist to verify these details. No, but that's not the point. The point is having yet another data point they can use to incriminate you, regardless of the actual crime they decide you must have committed. Say, you declare you'll stay at this hotel for a week, but actually check out after a day to [go sell drugs || see-sight in another city]; if they decide you must have been selling drugs, even though they can't prove it, they can get you for lying on your entry paper. The more laws and regulations you have, the easier it is to punish anyone regardless of whether they can prove bad things actually happened. It's a degeneration of the "Capone" approach, and it's extremely common in authoritarian regimes. The fact that this sort of pointless law is becoming quite common across the EU is a worrying trend.
gregjwild 11y ago
A perfect storm of incompetence and ill-intentions.
dtf 11y ago
The current UK government has committed to: 1. ban encryption (any encryption worth its salt) 2. ban anything psychoactive 3. detach us from the European Convention of Human Rights. Not one of these things is achievable in practice. This posturing and will amount to nothing but farce in the face of the details.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  1 and 3 were on their manifesto. Given that they have a majority it is only a matter of time before they achieve them. P.S. as I understand it 3 if achieved means that they either have to pass new almost identical legislation compatible with the UN convention on human rights or the UK would be in breach of our UN commitments...
  - verbify 11y ago
    They have a very slim majority, and some conservatives believe in civil liberties.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      I fear not enough do so. We need 12 + all the rest. I just can't see them not getting this through.
  - MistahKoala 11y ago
    We'd be in breach of our EU membership, regardless, so far as I know.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Being in the EU is of debatable value (I think it's overall a good thing but I understand that there is some bad). Being in the UN is basically a requirement for being a country in the modern world.
      - 11y ago
lmorris84 11y ago
My first reaction to this was that VPN usage will explode, but I'm not sure how a VPN server hosted in another country would work with their desire to effectively ban encryption. I feel like the UK is slowly goose stepping its way to a Chinese style firewall. Given the right's obsession with what I'm ordering on Amazon, and the left being essentially unelectable right now, I'm not really sure where to put my vote at the next election.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  The Lib Dems were the ones who blocked the Snoopers Charter last time around.
  - chippy 11y ago
    And with their recent blocking of the removal of child tax credits, they are going to be promoting their liberal privacy policies for the next election. We must still remember, the UK people voted in this current government.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      11.3M people, 37% of the electorate, voted in the current government.
      - vixen99 11y ago
        That is their affair. You can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
      - vixen99 11y ago
        That is their affair. You can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
      - Silhouette 11y ago
        It was actually 37% of those who voted. Only two thirds of the electorate did, so in fact fewer than 1 in 4 of the electorate actually voted for the party that now has an absolute majority in the House of Commons. That actually wasn't the biggest quantitative statistical unfairness of the night -- that award surely goes to the dramatic under-representation of UKIP and the Lib Dems in MPs compared to the popular vote they attracted -- but given the implications of an outright majority in Parliament, the disproportionate Tory representation is probably the most practically significant of the statistical anomalies that night.
ejrowley 11y ago
There is a lot of Tory bashing going on here but this policy runs deeper, Labour tried to put through similar legislation. The coalition dropped it but is back. Each Home Secretary seems to become more hard line and blinkered, like they are being poisoned by the fear emanating from the security services.
- timthorn 11y ago
  Indeed, one of the strongest critics (David Davis) is a Conservative and resigned his position as Shadow Home Secretary and MP under the Labour government to protest and highlight the issues.
AshleysBrain 11y ago
To me (a UK citizen) this is like the government tracking the title and author of every book I read, "but don't worry, not the contents or page numbers you looked at". The idea this is any meaningful barrier to finding out what you're really up to is ridiculous. Phone metadata is one thing - and still highly revealing - but much of the web is public! It's enough to make me think twice about where I browse, wondering "if I ever got challenged over it, how will it look that I browsed to this site?". That seems pretty harmful to the web - possibly even in an economically measurable way?
- akerro 11y ago
  What you described is self-censoring, there are even scientific papers about it. Give this a read: https://www.rt.com/news/183040-study-social-media-politics/ https://www.rt.com/news/183040-study-social-media-politics/ http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/17/facebook-is-tracking-what-you-dont-do http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/17/facebook-is-t...
- tblt 11y ago
  This is known as the Chilling Effect[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
- p01926 11y ago
  Think about what happens when you hit theverge.com: 40-odd requests sent sites you've never heard of. So-called internet connection records are a huge mess of noise even without considering obfuscation. It is trivial for anyone to embed hidden iframes or send silent ajax requests to child abuse and terrorist forums without giving the visiter the slightest clue what's happening. In the case of iframes, there would probably be cached 'evidence' left on the target's pc. Try explaining that as your defence in court when you get set up by some script kiddie.
  - ino 11y ago
    If they want to frame you they don't need hidden iframes and stuff. They can just manufacture it. Because it's all secret/confidential, someone who has a friend or pays someone inside can incriminate someone and make his life a hell. We were warned of PIDE in school for a good reason (PIDE was the Portuguese Stasi). People will abuse it.
d4nt 11y ago
I read the article, but I'm no clearer on what the criteria for issuing a warrant is. A few years ago it seemed like the answer was "because TERRORISTS", now they're also talking about organised crime and child abusers. This government have already branded the leader of the opposition a 'treat to national security'. Which leads me to concluded that they are either lying, incompetent, or reading all his internet history too. Furthermore, I've heard no compelling arguments as to why the idea of an independent judiciary (who should be the only people who can issue these warrants) is broken, or how it should not apply when it comes to the online world. But the drip drip drip of obfuscated and fear motivated erosions to the balance of powers continues, and it's making me deeply worried about what kind of country my grandchildren will live in.
pjc50 11y ago
Has now been published in draft: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473770/Draft_Investigatory_Powers_Bill.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... No explicit ban on encryption, but the existing RIPA obligation to decrypt when you have the capability and are made to. Potential madness in the "Equipment interference" section, although the bill claims this is already authorised under different legislation. The Bill uses "communications data" to mean what we would call "metadata", ie everything except the contents. "Equipment interference allows the security and intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the armed forces to interfere with electronic equipment such as computers and smartphones in order to obtain data, such as communications from a device. Equipment interference encompasses a wide range of activity from remote access to computers to downloading covertly the contents of a mobile phone during a search."
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The irony - if that's the word - is that a site visit history is largely useless as metadata. Only the most stupid people are going to visit "verydangerousterrorismsite.com" without going through a VPN. And visits to Facebook or Google are just noise without the details. It's hard not to suspect that the real reason for the legislation is to legitimise dissident profiling, voter sentiment analysis, and thoughtcrime tracking. I'm expecting an attempt to ban personal use of VPNs (without a commercial license) by around 2020.
  - verbify 11y ago
    > Only the most stupid people are going to visit "verydangerousterrorismsite.com" without going through a VPN While I agree with you that the intent of these laws is greater government control, why do you assume terrorists won't be stupid people? People have googled how to kill people before - see http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/googling-how-to-murder/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/googling-how-to-murder/ You can strike at the low-hanging fruit first - and just because someone is an idiot doesn't mean they're incapable of doing damage.
  - toyg 11y ago
mhandley 11y ago
If we can't get privacy using crypto, we could always use chaffing to make their database useless. We just need a list of sensitive websites that want to hide their true users, and an ad-serving network that randomly serves up links to those sensitive websites on other web pages (but doesn't display them). In this way, everyone's browsing history will look suspicious, so the data won't be of any use.
Firefishy 11y ago
Having the govt require ISPs to collect this data about us will result in ISPs "aggregating" the data and selling it to advertising / marketing firms, insurers or anyone willing to cough up a few £ for your private data.
- Firefishy 11y ago
  And before you say that will never happen read giffgaff (cellphone company) privacy policy: https://www.giffgaff.com/boiler-plate/privacy https://www.giffgaff.com/boiler-plate/privacy Section "3. The information we collect" then "5.iv. To third parties from whom you have chosen to receive marketing information."... Which means they can give your browsing history, numbers you call etc to any company who you have agreed to receive marketing information from. Eg: Tesco Club Card, that-random-website-you-forgot-to-untick-the-box-on.com etc.
glomph 11y ago
>The draft bill also places a legal duty on British companies to help law enforcement agencies hack devices to acquire information if it is reasonably practical to do so. WTF!
andrew_wc_brown 11y ago
What a great story ===> page not found. <===
J-dawg 11y ago
What practical steps can we take if this becomes law? If police and local councils are given access to browsing records, abuse is inevitable. There are already well-documented examples of councils using terrorism legislation to spy on people 1)suspected of using the wrong type of rubbish bin [1] 2)sending their children to school outside of their catchment area. [2] This type of abuse and overreach will happen frequently. Not to mention crooked police/council officials selling data, and others pursuing personal vendettas & checking up on current and former romantic partners. The UK will become a horrible, paranoid place. What can I do to protect myself? Use a VPN for all internet access? Use Tor (which seems too slow for most practical purposes)? What else can we do? [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-councils-use-anti-terror-laws-to-spy-on-bin-crimes.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-counc... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922427/Councils-warned-over-unlawful-spying-using-anti-terror-legislation.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922427... EDIT: added links to sources
- infinity0 11y ago
  These days, Tor is not slow for practical purposes (except maybe for low-latency things like online gaming). Use it, it pisses GCHQ off quite a lot. :)
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Best to use it for normal browsing (reading the papers etc) and go back to buying dvds (with cash) for one's ahem interesting videos.
  - vixen99 11y ago
    I don't think you actually know that it 'pisses GCHQ off quite a lot'. Public news about this can be misleading on purpose. Perhaps the cunning plan is to frighten those with something to hide into using Tor for which (who knows?) they have developed tracking techniques via a variety of approaches. If true, they'd be crazy to make that public. Herd your mice along the Tor route by discouraging use of the non encrypted internet. All irrelevant really since anyone can arrange to communicate via an innocuous looking one-time pad whatever the weather irrespective of any possible moves that a government can make short of shutting everything down!
edgall 11y ago
So basically the UK wants to become Google but instead of tracking users to improve products, they will be tracking everyone to catch criminals. Imagine a full list of sites you visit being stored by your ISP and now available to your government when necessary. Wow. Does this mean users will be flagged automatically if they visit sites that offer pirated software/movies and the like?
- swombat 11y ago
  It is worrying when a private company has access to this sort of information. It is urgently alarming when a government has access to that same information. Governments have a long, proven history of abusing that information in ways that result in undermining of democracy, immoral imprisonment of political opponents, mass murder and genocide, and other niceties. Governments should be afraid of the people, not the other way around.
chrisfarms 11y ago
I don't see anywhere in the bill what EXACTLY an Internet Connection Record is, and since there is no such thing as a standard Internet Connection Record in any of our existing network infrastructure, I assume this has been left vague so that it can be extended to whatever they want. Nor does it define the exact kind of Internet Service Provider that the law is suppose to be enforced against. (Is this only suppose to apply to those supplying bandwidth or do all websites/services count?). > Law enforcement agencies would not be able to make a request for the purpose of determining – for example – whether someone had visited a mental health website, a medical website or even a news website. This seems to imply that there must be a whitelist of domains for which ICR collection is required. But there is no mention of such a list nor how it would be curated.
logingone 11y ago
To guard against terror. Terror coming from a certain group of people, we are pushed to choose between living without potential terrorists, and without the stasi, or with the potential terrorists, and with the stasi. Stasi and multiculturalism - both or neither.
hittaruki 11y ago
What is wrong with UK these days? There is a lot of these kind of news coming out of UK in the last few months.
- anon1385 11y ago
  The right wing party (Conservatives aka Tories) just won a general election in May and now have a majority for the first time since 1997. They have been in power since 2010 but were moderated to some extent (at least on these kinds of issues) by needing to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. So they are now moving forwards with a bunch of things like this that they wanted to do previously but were unable. See also: repealing human rights legislation. It's worth pointing out that they only got 37% of the votes, but ended up with just over 50% of the seats in parliament because of the first past the post system. So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them.
  - OJFord 11y ago
    > So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them. It's also "worth pointing out" that a majority government is exceedingly rarely formed from >50% raw votes. You also cannot infer that the majority of people disagree with them. By making the subject "the majority of people" you could imply that the British public agrees with no one party. Which would be correct. But the Conservative Party forms HM Government at present because more "agree with them" than with any other party. It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks.
    - anon1385 11y ago
      >You also cannot infer that the majority of people disagree with them. The majority of people voted for non-Tory politicians. >It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks. I'm not at all sympathetic to your argument. Especially when the Tories said that a Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 2010 would have been illegitimate since it didn't have over 50% of the popular vote. What's so bad about coalition government anyway? In 2015 the Tories got 36.8% of the vote and ended up with 330 seats (50.8%). Labour got 30.5% of the vote and got 232 seats (35.7%). The SNP got 4.7% of votes for 8.6% of seats. UKIP got 12.7% of votes for 1 seat. The Lib Dems got 7.9% of votes and 1.2% of seats. The Greens 3.8% of votes for 1 seat. So you have a situation where 24.4% of the voters are represented by only 10 seats, which is only 1.5% of the seats! That kind of democratic deficit isn't sustainable.
tonylemesmer 11y ago
The way it is reported it makes it almost sound like this is the current state of affairs. Thus a feeling of "no need to fight it, its already implemented". Am I right in thinking this is a proposal that is yet to be passed into law?
tonylemesmer 11y ago
Presumably "internet connection records" also includes any requests sent by IoT devices. So all that data will be searchable too.
darkhorn 11y ago
Why you are voting to those idiots? This is very bad for the British economy. Now miney will flow to the Swiss VPNs.
darkhorn 11y ago
Oh, you always have something to learn from the communist China or opressiveve Syria.

238 points by eosis 11y ago

5h 11y ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 ^ fixed link

"For more intrusive surveillance - involving the detailed content of the communications - security services need to obtain a warrant." The way this is worded makes me wonder if the 'detailed content' will be harvested with everything else and then retroactively looked at with a warrant.

nthcolumn 11y ago
Yes, they are going to carry on doing exactly that. Who knows whether they will bother with the warrants even. It never stopped them before. Paedophiles! Terrorists! Criminals! Oh My!
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Don't forget bears, the most dangerous of all online predators.
omh 11y ago
The proposal (as I understand it, from media reports) is that ISPs will be the ones required to intercept and log the data. So it's unlikely that they will store anything more than required, if only for cost reasons.
- tonylemesmer 11y ago
  depends what exactly "ISP" is defined as. Could be email, or cloud providers as well as connectivity providers.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

madaxe_again 11y ago

The BBC is being a good state mouthpiece today - the fact that they're quoting May as saying it doesn't hold previously contentious matters (I.e. Breaking encryption) is disingenuous to say the least. The bill will say that "unbreakable" encryption is illegal - which means all encryption, as if it's breakable, well, it's not really encrypted, is it. Never mind that this is totally unenforceable. I could write up a one time pad with pen and paper. Most won't. Crooked cops will sell data. They'll blame "hackers". You only need look at the talktalk debacle to see how incredibly warped this govt's views are - they haven't arrested anyone at talktalk, who are tge ones who had such poor infosec that script kiddies could blow them wide open. Instead they're arresting children. Oh, and I'm seriouslt considering redomiciling my company - we only contribute a few hundred million quid to the UK economy.

mtgx 11y ago
The BBC has been a mouthpiece for both the UK and the US government for quite a few years. That's why I've always disliked seeing their articles here, and I'd prefer another source like TheGuardian instead. Their previous one about UK gov "backtracking" on encryption backdoors was just as bad. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34691956 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34691956 Read through it and see how 80% of it is the government's opinion about these things. It barely gives mention to what the civil liberty groups are saying. Read the last four paragraphs of the article, for instance. They only deal with how much of a headache end to end encryption is for authorities - and leaves it at that. What about what the civil liberty groups say about how it protects security and privacy?
- AlphaSite 11y ago
  The guardian is very left leaning as well, a more neutral paper would be better.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    There are basically no neutral papers in the UK. The Independent sort of tries, and the FT/Economist tend to be accurate with the facts but reflexively probusiness/neoliberal.

mtgx 11y ago

It's much worse than that. They want to ban companies from offering encryption that they can't also decrypt. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11970391/Internet-firms-to-be-banned-from-offering-out-of-reach-communications-under-new-laws.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/1... Also, in regards to data retention - I thought the CJEU made it clear that it's against the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Is UK seriously pretending that never happened? It seems their strategy is "we'll just use this new law for 2 years until it gets invalidated, and then we pass a new one that we can use for another 2 years". And so on and so forth. U.S. companies, please stop establishing headquarters in the U.K. It's on an authoritarian path as much as Russia and Turkey is (certainly under David Cameron/Conservatives, at least).

fredley 11y ago
Presumably this means all passwords need to be stored in plaintext (or two-way encrypted, which is essentially the same thing at the end of the day)?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JamesBaxter 11y ago

What is the best way for me as a UK citizen to try and fight this? Just keep donating to the EFF? Talk to my local MP?

ionised 11y ago
Enough voters are so easily led by fear and minsinformation that I'm starting to think that there is nothing at all we can do. I am a member of the Open Rights Group. I make monthly donations and attend their conferences. I petition and write to MPs and MEPs and nothing works. I don't even get replies. Which is why I am now considering moving out of the country. I'm currently weighing up my options. There is very little about Britain, its politics and the majority of the voterbase that I have anything in common with, apart from being born on the same patch of dirt.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  Where do you consider moving?
  - ionised 11y ago
    A few places I've considered and researched so far are Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. Some of these countries are worse than others when it comes to similar surveillance or civil liberties issues but they all at least appear to be very much preferable to Britain and the path it is on. The language barrier in issue in some of these places more than others, although I am open to learning a new language. I began taking German lessons recently just for fun. The actual process of gaining citizenship or even residency can be difficult too, especially for somewhere like Iceland from what I have learned. It's obviously a massive decision to make and not one that can be made quickly and rashly. I just can't see myself wanting to stay here in the UK much longer. I don't feel any kinship with this place.
    - gerty 11y ago
      From personal experience, language barrier wouldn't be an issue in Belgium for a tech job. Due to existent Flemish/French division, English often becomes the local esperanto, although it may depend on the company policy.

heN5Yu0EhKra 11y ago

>"Such data would consist of a basic domain address, and not a full browsing history of pages within that site or search terms entered." Am I right in understanding they will have access to this data without a warrant? And then any 'further' data would then need a warrant. >"For more intrusive surveillance - involving the detailed content of the communications - security services need to obtain a warrant." So with more and more websites using https, where does this 'detailed content' come from? Is the Government expecting ISPs to collect data that doesn't exist? As far as I was aware, as long as you view a website in HTTPS, there was no way your ISP knew what individual pages you are visiting.

madaxe_again 11y ago
The full text hasn't been released yet - just going on statements over the last few days. It's likely that you'll have to give the government your private keys, or be able to decrypt any encrypted communication that passes through your network. Again, it's likely unenforceable, in no small part as there's no such thing as a "communications provider", which is the term they keep on using. Skype, Apple, etc., don't work in a vacuum - data transits via peers (are they communications providers?), your computer (is that a communications provider?), your ISP (they're almost certainly a communications provider), and so-on. The purpose of this bill is likely to break large tech corps, rather than smaller operators, but it could also have the effect of essentially closing the technology market to all but large operators who can afford to be compliant.
- timthorn 11y ago
  The term "communications provider" is defined under UK law, though the practical meaning of the term is less clear: http://aa.net.uk/legal-cp.html http://aa.net.uk/legal-cp.html
agd 11y ago
This is behind the belief that so called 'black boxes' will be mandatory. i.e. state required man in the middle attacks on all your https content.
11y ago

venomsnake 11y ago

Wild conspiracy theory - London is becoming the playground of world elites. So security is paramount. These bills are not to keep pedophiles at bay but to prevent some forms of "London spring" of the underclasses or other forms of physical harm towards your friendly neighborhood billionaire that could damage real estate prices. The conservatives goal is to make elites know they are safe here so they could switch to lower profile security details. I have no better explanation why UK is pushing so hard on its own populace.

illumen 11y ago
Banking without encryption?
- venomsnake 11y ago
  From the text there is exception about banking - it is said as legitimate use of encryption. The explicit goal is to prevent the plebs from communicating in secret.
Joeboy 11y ago
Except London's class warriors seem to be more interested in attacking cereal outlets than billionnaires.
s_kilk 11y ago
> I have no better explanation why UK is pushing so hard on its own populace. Maybe the tories are just plain evil? Maybe there doesn't need to be a grand reason and explanation behind it all, maybe they just have a hunger for harming others?
- Joeboy 11y ago
  But it's not just others. I'm sure Tories are just as vulnerable to blackmail, theft etc as anybody else.
- EwanToo 11y ago
  The bill appears to have the full support of most Labour MPs too..

elcct 11y ago

By their (lack of) logic, they should also have an officer following every citizen and logging where people go, so that they can know John left his house at 9:17 and checked in at local grocery shop at 9:28. With a warrant they could then obtain information that he has bought a large cucumber - let's arrest him, because he is probably cheating on the government with cucumber. He told the grocer, that how government fucks him is not making him satisfied, so he has to finish the job with a cucumber.

LoSboccacc 11y ago
that's so '30s. better barcode them on the neck and front, cctv cameras are already in enough place to track everyone.
- gmac 11y ago
  That's so '80s. Facial recognition means we're basically already there.
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    That's so 00s. We need something that can't be easily fooled by scarf. I wonder when body odour recognition will arrive joking aside, facial recognition has still some challenges, it can track a face wherever it goes but it's hard to assign a face to an identity unless it's constantly retrained (especially as people age/change)
deif 11y ago
With location data and browsing habit metadata they already have that kind of info (with warrants). But their logic is still flawed in assuming criminals won't use a VPN and HTTPS. It seems they want historical data so that they can run algorithms on large datasets and identify potential threats. In theory it's great as it will catch your average low level idealists, so rationally we can conclude that they're trying to focus on identifying, for example, potential IS recruits rather than organised crime.
suvelx 11y ago

ComputerGuru 11y ago

Flagged because 404. Correct link: Surveillance bill to include internet records storage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872

rajadigopula 11y ago

Check the live page - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-34719194 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-34719194 8:40 'Security risk' of storing communications data "A new law to govern how police and intelligence agencies and the state can access communications and data will be published today. Preston Byrne from Eris Industries, a cryptographic communications company which is withdrawing from the UK because of the proposed law, says the government is going to be tracking metadata which is essentially "a map of what you're thinking". He warns the data could be compromised - citing the recent TalkTalk hack - and says this could lead to blackmail. And he argues that criminals and terrorists" don't use normal communication channels" so only the law-abiding people will be affected by the bill." Preston Byrne has a point.. even common people are using VPNs and TORs. How come the terrorists bare their communications for surveillance?

Spearchucker 11y ago
"...he argues that criminals and terrorists" don't use normal communication channels..." That part is true, and is known to government, the public (not at large, but it's no secret) and criminals. The problem is a simple one, and identity checks at borders are a good example. You ask non-nationals, for example, to fill in a landing card to indicate where the traveller is staying during his or her visit. If left blank the traveller is interrogated and risks deportation. If however the traveller lies and provides any plausible address, be it hotel or residential, he or she is allowed through without suspicion. The manpower doesn't exist to verify these details. The technology doesn't exist that verifies these details. The net result is that technical solutions will only catch stupid people. The outliers, the ones you really want, know how to game the system and don't get caught. No matter how much snooping, back-dooring, breaking of encryption or other nefarious thing is done. It's economics + psychology. You spend what you have to ensure you cover 99% of the problem. The remaining 1% requires 1 or more orders of magnitude of resource to catch, which is simply not viable.
- toyg 11y ago
  > The manpower doesn't exist to verify these details. No, but that's not the point. The point is having yet another data point they can use to incriminate you, regardless of the actual crime they decide you must have committed. Say, you declare you'll stay at this hotel for a week, but actually check out after a day to [go sell drugs || see-sight in another city]; if they decide you must have been selling drugs, even though they can't prove it, they can get you for lying on your entry paper. The more laws and regulations you have, the easier it is to punish anyone regardless of whether they can prove bad things actually happened. It's a degeneration of the "Capone" approach, and it's extremely common in authoritarian regimes. The fact that this sort of pointless law is becoming quite common across the EU is a worrying trend.

gregjwild 11y ago

A perfect storm of incompetence and ill-intentions.

dtf 11y ago

The current UK government has committed to: 1. ban encryption (any encryption worth its salt) 2. ban anything psychoactive 3. detach us from the European Convention of Human Rights. Not one of these things is achievable in practice. This posturing and will amount to nothing but farce in the face of the details.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
1 and 3 were on their manifesto. Given that they have a majority it is only a matter of time before they achieve them. P.S. as I understand it 3 if achieved means that they either have to pass new almost identical legislation compatible with the UN convention on human rights or the UK would be in breach of our UN commitments...
- verbify 11y ago
  They have a very slim majority, and some conservatives believe in civil liberties.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    I fear not enough do so. We need 12 + all the rest. I just can't see them not getting this through.
- MistahKoala 11y ago
  We'd be in breach of our EU membership, regardless, so far as I know.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Being in the EU is of debatable value (I think it's overall a good thing but I understand that there is some bad). Being in the UN is basically a requirement for being a country in the modern world.
    - 11y ago

lmorris84 11y ago

My first reaction to this was that VPN usage will explode, but I'm not sure how a VPN server hosted in another country would work with their desire to effectively ban encryption. I feel like the UK is slowly goose stepping its way to a Chinese style firewall. Given the right's obsession with what I'm ordering on Amazon, and the left being essentially unelectable right now, I'm not really sure where to put my vote at the next election.

fauigerzigerk 11y ago
The Lib Dems were the ones who blocked the Snoopers Charter last time around.
- chippy 11y ago
  And with their recent blocking of the removal of child tax credits, they are going to be promoting their liberal privacy policies for the next election. We must still remember, the UK people voted in this current government.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    11.3M people, 37% of the electorate, voted in the current government.
    - vixen99 11y ago
      That is their affair. You can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
    - vixen99 11y ago
      That is their affair. You can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      It was actually 37% of those who voted. Only two thirds of the electorate did, so in fact fewer than 1 in 4 of the electorate actually voted for the party that now has an absolute majority in the House of Commons. That actually wasn't the biggest quantitative statistical unfairness of the night -- that award surely goes to the dramatic under-representation of UKIP and the Lib Dems in MPs compared to the popular vote they attracted -- but given the implications of an outright majority in Parliament, the disproportionate Tory representation is probably the most practically significant of the statistical anomalies that night.

ejrowley 11y ago

There is a lot of Tory bashing going on here but this policy runs deeper, Labour tried to put through similar legislation. The coalition dropped it but is back. Each Home Secretary seems to become more hard line and blinkered, like they are being poisoned by the fear emanating from the security services.

timthorn 11y ago
Indeed, one of the strongest critics (David Davis) is a Conservative and resigned his position as Shadow Home Secretary and MP under the Labour government to protest and highlight the issues.

AshleysBrain 11y ago

To me (a UK citizen) this is like the government tracking the title and author of every book I read, "but don't worry, not the contents or page numbers you looked at". The idea this is any meaningful barrier to finding out what you're really up to is ridiculous. Phone metadata is one thing - and still highly revealing - but much of the web is public! It's enough to make me think twice about where I browse, wondering "if I ever got challenged over it, how will it look that I browsed to this site?". That seems pretty harmful to the web - possibly even in an economically measurable way?

akerro 11y ago
What you described is self-censoring, there are even scientific papers about it. Give this a read: https://www.rt.com/news/183040-study-social-media-politics/ https://www.rt.com/news/183040-study-social-media-politics/ http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/17/facebook-is-tracking-what-you-dont-do http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/17/facebook-is-t...
tblt 11y ago
This is known as the Chilling Effect[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
p01926 11y ago
Think about what happens when you hit theverge.com: 40-odd requests sent sites you've never heard of. So-called internet connection records are a huge mess of noise even without considering obfuscation. It is trivial for anyone to embed hidden iframes or send silent ajax requests to child abuse and terrorist forums without giving the visiter the slightest clue what's happening. In the case of iframes, there would probably be cached 'evidence' left on the target's pc. Try explaining that as your defence in court when you get set up by some script kiddie.
- ino 11y ago
  If they want to frame you they don't need hidden iframes and stuff. They can just manufacture it. Because it's all secret/confidential, someone who has a friend or pays someone inside can incriminate someone and make his life a hell. We were warned of PIDE in school for a good reason (PIDE was the Portuguese Stasi). People will abuse it.

d4nt 11y ago

I read the article, but I'm no clearer on what the criteria for issuing a warrant is. A few years ago it seemed like the answer was "because TERRORISTS", now they're also talking about organised crime and child abusers. This government have already branded the leader of the opposition a 'treat to national security'. Which leads me to concluded that they are either lying, incompetent, or reading all his internet history too. Furthermore, I've heard no compelling arguments as to why the idea of an independent judiciary (who should be the only people who can issue these warrants) is broken, or how it should not apply when it comes to the online world. But the drip drip drip of obfuscated and fear motivated erosions to the balance of powers continues, and it's making me deeply worried about what kind of country my grandchildren will live in.

pjc50 11y ago

Has now been published in draft: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473770/Draft_Investigatory_Powers_Bill.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... No explicit ban on encryption, but the existing RIPA obligation to decrypt when you have the capability and are made to. Potential madness in the "Equipment interference" section, although the bill claims this is already authorised under different legislation. The Bill uses "communications data" to mean what we would call "metadata", ie everything except the contents. "Equipment interference allows the security and intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the armed forces to interfere with electronic equipment such as computers and smartphones in order to obtain data, such as communications from a device. Equipment interference encompasses a wide range of activity from remote access to computers to downloading covertly the contents of a mobile phone during a search."

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
The irony - if that's the word - is that a site visit history is largely useless as metadata. Only the most stupid people are going to visit "verydangerousterrorismsite.com" without going through a VPN. And visits to Facebook or Google are just noise without the details. It's hard not to suspect that the real reason for the legislation is to legitimise dissident profiling, voter sentiment analysis, and thoughtcrime tracking. I'm expecting an attempt to ban personal use of VPNs (without a commercial license) by around 2020.
- verbify 11y ago
  > Only the most stupid people are going to visit "verydangerousterrorismsite.com" without going through a VPN While I agree with you that the intent of these laws is greater government control, why do you assume terrorists won't be stupid people? People have googled how to kill people before - see http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/googling-how-to-murder/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/googling-how-to-murder/ You can strike at the low-hanging fruit first - and just because someone is an idiot doesn't mean they're incapable of doing damage.
- toyg 11y ago

mhandley 11y ago

If we can't get privacy using crypto, we could always use chaffing to make their database useless. We just need a list of sensitive websites that want to hide their true users, and an ad-serving network that randomly serves up links to those sensitive websites on other web pages (but doesn't display them). In this way, everyone's browsing history will look suspicious, so the data won't be of any use.

Firefishy 11y ago

Having the govt require ISPs to collect this data about us will result in ISPs "aggregating" the data and selling it to advertising / marketing firms, insurers or anyone willing to cough up a few £ for your private data.

Firefishy 11y ago
And before you say that will never happen read giffgaff (cellphone company) privacy policy: https://www.giffgaff.com/boiler-plate/privacy https://www.giffgaff.com/boiler-plate/privacy Section "3. The information we collect" then "5.iv. To third parties from whom you have chosen to receive marketing information."... Which means they can give your browsing history, numbers you call etc to any company who you have agreed to receive marketing information from. Eg: Tesco Club Card, that-random-website-you-forgot-to-untick-the-box-on.com etc.

glomph 11y ago

>The draft bill also places a legal duty on British companies to help law enforcement agencies hack devices to acquire information if it is reasonably practical to do so. WTF!

andrew_wc_brown 11y ago

What a great story ===> page not found. <===

J-dawg 11y ago

What practical steps can we take if this becomes law? If police and local councils are given access to browsing records, abuse is inevitable. There are already well-documented examples of councils using terrorism legislation to spy on people 1)suspected of using the wrong type of rubbish bin [1] 2)sending their children to school outside of their catchment area. [2] This type of abuse and overreach will happen frequently. Not to mention crooked police/council officials selling data, and others pursuing personal vendettas & checking up on current and former romantic partners. The UK will become a horrible, paranoid place. What can I do to protect myself? Use a VPN for all internet access? Use Tor (which seems too slow for most practical purposes)? What else can we do? [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-councils-use-anti-terror-laws-to-spy-on-bin-crimes.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-counc... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922427/Councils-warned-over-unlawful-spying-using-anti-terror-legislation.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922427... EDIT: added links to sources

infinity0 11y ago
These days, Tor is not slow for practical purposes (except maybe for low-latency things like online gaming). Use it, it pisses GCHQ off quite a lot. :)
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Best to use it for normal browsing (reading the papers etc) and go back to buying dvds (with cash) for one's ahem interesting videos.
- vixen99 11y ago
  I don't think you actually know that it 'pisses GCHQ off quite a lot'. Public news about this can be misleading on purpose. Perhaps the cunning plan is to frighten those with something to hide into using Tor for which (who knows?) they have developed tracking techniques via a variety of approaches. If true, they'd be crazy to make that public. Herd your mice along the Tor route by discouraging use of the non encrypted internet. All irrelevant really since anyone can arrange to communicate via an innocuous looking one-time pad whatever the weather irrespective of any possible moves that a government can make short of shutting everything down!

edgall 11y ago

So basically the UK wants to become Google but instead of tracking users to improve products, they will be tracking everyone to catch criminals. Imagine a full list of sites you visit being stored by your ISP and now available to your government when necessary. Wow. Does this mean users will be flagged automatically if they visit sites that offer pirated software/movies and the like?

swombat 11y ago
It is worrying when a private company has access to this sort of information. It is urgently alarming when a government has access to that same information. Governments have a long, proven history of abusing that information in ways that result in undermining of democracy, immoral imprisonment of political opponents, mass murder and genocide, and other niceties. Governments should be afraid of the people, not the other way around.

chrisfarms 11y ago

I don't see anywhere in the bill what EXACTLY an Internet Connection Record is, and since there is no such thing as a standard Internet Connection Record in any of our existing network infrastructure, I assume this has been left vague so that it can be extended to whatever they want. Nor does it define the exact kind of Internet Service Provider that the law is suppose to be enforced against. (Is this only suppose to apply to those supplying bandwidth or do all websites/services count?). > Law enforcement agencies would not be able to make a request for the purpose of determining – for example – whether someone had visited a mental health website, a medical website or even a news website. This seems to imply that there must be a whitelist of domains for which ICR collection is required. But there is no mention of such a list nor how it would be curated.

logingone 11y ago

To guard against terror. Terror coming from a certain group of people, we are pushed to choose between living without potential terrorists, and without the stasi, or with the potential terrorists, and with the stasi. Stasi and multiculturalism - both or neither.

hittaruki 11y ago

What is wrong with UK these days? There is a lot of these kind of news coming out of UK in the last few months.

anon1385 11y ago
The right wing party (Conservatives aka Tories) just won a general election in May and now have a majority for the first time since 1997. They have been in power since 2010 but were moderated to some extent (at least on these kinds of issues) by needing to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. So they are now moving forwards with a bunch of things like this that they wanted to do previously but were unable. See also: repealing human rights legislation. It's worth pointing out that they only got 37% of the votes, but ended up with just over 50% of the seats in parliament because of the first past the post system. So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them.
- OJFord 11y ago
  > So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them. It's also "worth pointing out" that a majority government is exceedingly rarely formed from >50% raw votes. You also cannot infer that the majority of people disagree with them. By making the subject "the majority of people" you could imply that the British public agrees with no one party. Which would be correct. But the Conservative Party forms HM Government at present because more "agree with them" than with any other party. It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks.
  - anon1385 11y ago
    >You also cannot infer that the majority of people disagree with them. The majority of people voted for non-Tory politicians. >It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks. I'm not at all sympathetic to your argument. Especially when the Tories said that a Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 2010 would have been illegitimate since it didn't have over 50% of the popular vote. What's so bad about coalition government anyway? In 2015 the Tories got 36.8% of the vote and ended up with 330 seats (50.8%). Labour got 30.5% of the vote and got 232 seats (35.7%). The SNP got 4.7% of votes for 8.6% of seats. UKIP got 12.7% of votes for 1 seat. The Lib Dems got 7.9% of votes and 1.2% of seats. The Greens 3.8% of votes for 1 seat. So you have a situation where 24.4% of the voters are represented by only 10 seats, which is only 1.5% of the seats! That kind of democratic deficit isn't sustainable.

tonylemesmer 11y ago

The way it is reported it makes it almost sound like this is the current state of affairs. Thus a feeling of "no need to fight it, its already implemented". Am I right in thinking this is a proposal that is yet to be passed into law?

tonylemesmer 11y ago

Presumably "internet connection records" also includes any requests sent by IoT devices. So all that data will be searchable too.

darkhorn 11y ago

Why you are voting to those idiots? This is very bad for the British economy. Now miney will flow to the Swiss VPNs.

darkhorn 11y ago

Oh, you always have something to learn from the communist China or opressiveve Syria.