8 ms·

'Snoopers' charter' changes put forward

126 points by colinscape 9y ago

ben_w 9y ago
Finally, some good news. Nowhere near enough, and they were told about these problems before making it law, and once they leave the EU they won’t even have this level of oversight, but it’s better than nothing. I know from trying and failing to convince two MPs that they absolutely do not understand the danger they introduce by forcing the ISPs to have the ability to snoop on users instead of banning ISPs from doing so.
- akerro 9y ago
  Let's see how they will make IPA compatible with GDPR.
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    British law may temporarily comply, then once out of the EU, they could roll back the changes and collect everything for law enforcement use.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    On recent performance, they’ll scream about how unfair it is until they’re blue and then give in completely.
  - meredydd 9y ago
    Unfortunately, the GDPR (while mostly brilliant) contains pretty extensive "national security" carve-outs, as I understand it.
    - akerro 9y ago
      What's that?
- Xophmeister 9y ago
  Did the MPs you contact at least get back to you, even with a form letter toeing the party line? I wrote to my MP and tried to contact him through Twitter and, at the time, made my letter public. I never got a response.
  - robin_reala 9y ago
    My MP would get back to me, but as she was a party whip the toeing of the party line wasn’t just expected but mandatory. A mostly pointless exercise.
    - thisacctforreal 9y ago
      I don't think it's pointless. When your job is "representing" a group of people, you'll take notice when a pile of those people disagree with what you are doing. We can't break the camel's back if we don't add straw.
  - lewispollard 9y ago
    I wrote directly to mine via email (after being told by party campaigners on the street that it was the best way to get his attention and being given his email address by them) and never got a response either.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    Met my local MP in person, stereotypical level of nodding and seeming to listen followed by voting the party line. However, she did point me at another MP who was chairing a committee on the bill, which was good of her. The chair, however, didn’t respond at all.
  - Cakez0r 9y ago
    I got a cookie cutter response back.
    - mocko 9y ago
      I went to see mine and got the same as @ben_w. Sympathetic nodding but voting along the party line; some interest in economic issues (how it might affect consulting work for overseas clients) but none whatsoever in privacy. Wrote a long followup email explaining the issues, which went ignored. Altogether a demoralising experience.
- mtgx 9y ago
  They greatly expanded the definition of what's a "serious crime" - any crime for which you could get 6-months in prison. Also, I don't understand why they act so surprised that it wasn't in accordance with the EU ruling. The EU ruling happened like 6 months before they passed Snooper's Charter. They didn't even bother to consider the ruling before passing the law? I also don't think this solves that issue with the judge having to give warrants for surveillance requests. When they passed it they allowed a single permanent judge to "review" the order passed by the Home Secretary after the fact, and I don't think that judge can even ask for more details about the requests. Not to mention pretty much all surveillance requests are "thematic" aka mass surveillance, and they're both both against EU's Fundamental Charter of Rights and ECHR's right to privacy rulings. The "due process" in Snooper's Charter is an absolute joke. The new changes won't stop the GCHQ from doing mass surveillance at all. This is mainly about the police not being able to do the same level of mass surveillance, too, which was beyond ridiculous and extremely anti-democratic to begin with. People like Theresa May should be put in prison for even proposing anti-democracy laws like that, not be the PM of the country. May is an enemy to democracy in the UK. The U.S. isn't far off right now, thanks to Obama signing an order allowing 17 law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access upstream cable-tapping data before any minimization procedures are done - all in his last 4 days in office. The new FISA renewal is also about to make such shameless domestic mass surveillance law, too.
- mooktakim 9y ago
  The only way MP's would understand is if we make all their Internet activity public. Lets see if they have anything to hide.
  - toyg 9y ago
    If? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/01/the-guardian-view-on-the-damian-green-case-a-political-revenge-tragedy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/01/the-gu...
StudentStuff 9y ago
This appears to not affect programs like Tempora operated by the GCHQ (the British NSA), which intercepts all internet traffic in Britain. Instead, local & federal police are the ones who will have their own mass spying programs slightly impinged, with a new agency called the Office for Communications Data Authorizations taking requests and vetting them. Now, this could go one of two ways. Hopefully, OCDA will thoroughly vet each request, rejecting most of what is currently rubber stamped and do limited interception of specific citizens connections for short durations. Alternatively, this could become another rubber stamp FISA kangaroo court, where the OCDA doesn't have the manpower, tooling nor the inclination to do much more than sign nearly every interception request form. I'm hoping for the former, but betting on the latter. Despite that, Brits are still having their data stolen by the GCHQ.
- stupidcar 9y ago
  The historical problem in the UK has been that surveillance powers that were rushed through parliament to tackle "terrorism" have ended up being made available to every single branch of government. And 99.9% of the time they're used for petty, local government issues, like collecting council taxes or speeding fines, often by people without any law enforcement training at all. Even if the OCDA ends up rubber stamping requests from the police, it'd be a huge improvement on the complete free-for-all there has been in the past. If they at least reject requests from a guy in the council refuse collection department who wants to spy on his ex-wife, then that'll be an improvement.
  - Chriky 9y ago
    The vast majority of RIPA applications are made by Police, not local councils.
    - CraigJPerry 9y ago
      Where is that information available? AFAICT local authority requests are via JPs in local courts and no centralised numbers exist?
pjc50 9y ago
Meanwhile there is a miserable little controversy running over Damien Green having porn on his Westminster PC, supported by Nadine Dorries saying "you can't prove it was him we all share passwords with our interns." Nobody in government understands information security.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  What's wrong with porn?
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    The issue IIRC is [extended] use of work computer, during work time, for porn. That would get you sacked from most corporate jobs; it seems being an MP shouldn't be an automatic pass from such scrutiny.
    - acqq 9y ago
      How about playing games while being paid to legislate? http://zeus-origin.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp http://zeus-origin.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp
  - 88 9y ago
    I think the issue is with accessing pornography on a parliamentary computer, potentially during working hours. Nevertheless, it is shameful that an ex-police officer is allowed to make such allegations.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Yes to both of these points. The police tactical leaking is out of order, and I'd be a lot more cross about it if I wasn't hoping for the government to collapse.
      - vidarh 9y ago
        The hilarious part is that the people trying to defend Green are simultaneously saying he shouldn't be leaking confidential information and saying it never happened. One would think it'd be better to say said police officer shouldn't be making things up if their story is that it never happened.
jamiethompson 9y ago
One of the many reasons we should remain within the EU. Time and time again EU law has stopped our government in its tracks or forced it to change direction on overreaching or just plain stupid policy like this.
- UncleSlacky 9y ago
  Why do you think Theresa May is so keen to leave?
  - mhw 9y ago
    Because if she said now what she was saying two years ago, she'd be out of a job.
  - Chriky 9y ago
    She isn't "so keen" to leave, she campaigned for Remain.
- clort 9y ago
  Time and again though, people manage to paint things like this as foreign bureaucrats interfering in our sovereignty. So many people I know, it seems that if you tell them not to step in front of a bus they will shout "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO" and do it anyway. I despair.
  - OscarCunningham 9y ago
    I mean, yes. Both are true. The EU is both interfering undemocratically in the UK, _and_ making better decisions than our politicians. I noticed this during the referendum. A lot of the pro-remain arguments weren't to do with the abstract advantages of being in or out of the EU, but rather just that they preferred the current EU politicians to the UK ones.
    - SimonPStevens 9y ago
      I'm not sure it is entirely undemocratic. The EU is a institution of various parts. Not all parts can interfere in the same way. I'm not totally versed in the details, but I think in this story would be related to Britain making laws that break the European convention on human rights (echr) that Britain agreed to abide by in a fully democratic way following our system of parliament. The European court of justice (ecj) is then the high court responsible for ensuring that countries stick to the agreements they have agreed to stick to. Which we didn't. So they are enforcing that we do. Now I don't think that's undemocratic. We (as a country) democratically signed a convention, and then future governments failed to uphold that. The ecj stepping in is exactly right. Like I say, not an expert, but just how I understand it.
fraa-orolo 9y ago
To recap: the problems are that data is accessed without independent permission, and data is collected for reasons other than serious crime. So the solution is to create a government body to rubberstamp access requests, and reclassify more crimes as serious?
b6 9y ago
I have no way of directly knowing anything about situations like these. But I suspect that no matter what they say, they're collecting the data. I don't want to hear about court rulings, I want to hear that their hardware has been removed from the telco rooms, and that facilities like Bluffdale have been dismantled. I feel that there is quite a bit of theater going on where the various surveillance monsters acknowledge getting caught and act as if they got spanked and reigned in, when in fact they're just getting bigger and more capable every day.
ianopolous 9y ago
In related news, GCHQ are still trying to wriggle out of oversight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15842969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15842969
- bjelkeman-again 9y ago
  I am constantly surprised how I appear to live in the same society as the people suggesting these clearly undemocratic efforts to sidestep the democratic oversight. But, they think it is ok and I think it really isn’t, at all. I am surprised our world views differ that much.
stctgion 9y ago
I just totally dispair when it comes to this. I feel powerless to stop my country becoming the distopia imagined in V for Vendetta. Both main parties are supporting legislation beyond the wildest dreams of 20th century despots..
Sephr 9y ago
None of this matters as long as Technical Capability Notices are still part of snoopers' charter. TCNs are basically National Security Letters with even less accountability and limitations. It's extremely ripe for abuse. If you create a secure communication platform startup in the UK, you will receive a TCN and you will be forced to subvert your platform for government data collection. You can't tell anyone about the TCN and you have no recourse other than going to prison for failure to comply. At least in the US when you receive an NSL you can talk to a lawyer to potentially contest an unreasonable or unlawful order.

126 points by colinscape 9y ago

Finally, some good news. Nowhere near enough, and they were told about these problems before making it law, and once they leave the EU they won’t even have this level of oversight, but it’s better than nothing. I know from trying and failing to convince two MPs that they absolutely do not understand the danger they introduce by forcing the ISPs to have the ability to snoop on users instead of banning ISPs from doing so.

akerro 9y ago
Let's see how they will make IPA compatible with GDPR.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  British law may temporarily comply, then once out of the EU, they could roll back the changes and collect everything for law enforcement use.
- ben_w 9y ago
  On recent performance, they’ll scream about how unfair it is until they’re blue and then give in completely.
- meredydd 9y ago
  Unfortunately, the GDPR (while mostly brilliant) contains pretty extensive "national security" carve-outs, as I understand it.
  - akerro 9y ago
    What's that?
Xophmeister 9y ago
Did the MPs you contact at least get back to you, even with a form letter toeing the party line? I wrote to my MP and tried to contact him through Twitter and, at the time, made my letter public. I never got a response.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  My MP would get back to me, but as she was a party whip the toeing of the party line wasn’t just expected but mandatory. A mostly pointless exercise.
  - thisacctforreal 9y ago
    I don't think it's pointless. When your job is "representing" a group of people, you'll take notice when a pile of those people disagree with what you are doing. We can't break the camel's back if we don't add straw.
- lewispollard 9y ago
  I wrote directly to mine via email (after being told by party campaigners on the street that it was the best way to get his attention and being given his email address by them) and never got a response either.
- ben_w 9y ago
  Met my local MP in person, stereotypical level of nodding and seeming to listen followed by voting the party line. However, she did point me at another MP who was chairing a committee on the bill, which was good of her. The chair, however, didn’t respond at all.
- Cakez0r 9y ago
  I got a cookie cutter response back.
  - mocko 9y ago
    I went to see mine and got the same as @ben_w. Sympathetic nodding but voting along the party line; some interest in economic issues (how it might affect consulting work for overseas clients) but none whatsoever in privacy. Wrote a long followup email explaining the issues, which went ignored. Altogether a demoralising experience.
mtgx 9y ago
They greatly expanded the definition of what's a "serious crime" - any crime for which you could get 6-months in prison. Also, I don't understand why they act so surprised that it wasn't in accordance with the EU ruling. The EU ruling happened like 6 months before they passed Snooper's Charter. They didn't even bother to consider the ruling before passing the law? I also don't think this solves that issue with the judge having to give warrants for surveillance requests. When they passed it they allowed a single permanent judge to "review" the order passed by the Home Secretary after the fact, and I don't think that judge can even ask for more details about the requests. Not to mention pretty much all surveillance requests are "thematic" aka mass surveillance, and they're both both against EU's Fundamental Charter of Rights and ECHR's right to privacy rulings. The "due process" in Snooper's Charter is an absolute joke. The new changes won't stop the GCHQ from doing mass surveillance at all. This is mainly about the police not being able to do the same level of mass surveillance, too, which was beyond ridiculous and extremely anti-democratic to begin with. People like Theresa May should be put in prison for even proposing anti-democracy laws like that, not be the PM of the country. May is an enemy to democracy in the UK. The U.S. isn't far off right now, thanks to Obama signing an order allowing 17 law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access upstream cable-tapping data before any minimization procedures are done - all in his last 4 days in office. The new FISA renewal is also about to make such shameless domestic mass surveillance law, too.
mooktakim 9y ago
The only way MP's would understand is if we make all their Internet activity public. Lets see if they have anything to hide.
- toyg 9y ago
  If? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/01/the-guardian-view-on-the-damian-green-case-a-political-revenge-tragedy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/01/the-gu...

StudentStuff 9y ago

This appears to not affect programs like Tempora operated by the GCHQ (the British NSA), which intercepts all internet traffic in Britain. Instead, local & federal police are the ones who will have their own mass spying programs slightly impinged, with a new agency called the Office for Communications Data Authorizations taking requests and vetting them. Now, this could go one of two ways. Hopefully, OCDA will thoroughly vet each request, rejecting most of what is currently rubber stamped and do limited interception of specific citizens connections for short durations. Alternatively, this could become another rubber stamp FISA kangaroo court, where the OCDA doesn't have the manpower, tooling nor the inclination to do much more than sign nearly every interception request form. I'm hoping for the former, but betting on the latter. Despite that, Brits are still having their data stolen by the GCHQ.

stupidcar 9y ago
The historical problem in the UK has been that surveillance powers that were rushed through parliament to tackle "terrorism" have ended up being made available to every single branch of government. And 99.9% of the time they're used for petty, local government issues, like collecting council taxes or speeding fines, often by people without any law enforcement training at all. Even if the OCDA ends up rubber stamping requests from the police, it'd be a huge improvement on the complete free-for-all there has been in the past. If they at least reject requests from a guy in the council refuse collection department who wants to spy on his ex-wife, then that'll be an improvement.
- Chriky 9y ago
  The vast majority of RIPA applications are made by Police, not local councils.
  - CraigJPerry 9y ago
    Where is that information available? AFAICT local authority requests are via JPs in local courts and no centralised numbers exist?

pjc50 9y ago

Meanwhile there is a miserable little controversy running over Damien Green having porn on his Westminster PC, supported by Nadine Dorries saying "you can't prove it was him we all share passwords with our interns." Nobody in government understands information security.

StavrosK 9y ago
What's wrong with porn?
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  The issue IIRC is [extended] use of work computer, during work time, for porn. That would get you sacked from most corporate jobs; it seems being an MP shouldn't be an automatic pass from such scrutiny.
  - acqq 9y ago
    How about playing games while being paid to legislate? http://zeus-origin.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp http://zeus-origin.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp
- 88 9y ago
  I think the issue is with accessing pornography on a parliamentary computer, potentially during working hours. Nevertheless, it is shameful that an ex-police officer is allowed to make such allegations.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Yes to both of these points. The police tactical leaking is out of order, and I'd be a lot more cross about it if I wasn't hoping for the government to collapse.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      The hilarious part is that the people trying to defend Green are simultaneously saying he shouldn't be leaking confidential information and saying it never happened. One would think it'd be better to say said police officer shouldn't be making things up if their story is that it never happened.

jamiethompson 9y ago

One of the many reasons we should remain within the EU. Time and time again EU law has stopped our government in its tracks or forced it to change direction on overreaching or just plain stupid policy like this.

UncleSlacky 9y ago
Why do you think Theresa May is so keen to leave?
- mhw 9y ago
  Because if she said now what she was saying two years ago, she'd be out of a job.
- Chriky 9y ago
  She isn't "so keen" to leave, she campaigned for Remain.
clort 9y ago
Time and again though, people manage to paint things like this as foreign bureaucrats interfering in our sovereignty. So many people I know, it seems that if you tell them not to step in front of a bus they will shout "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO" and do it anyway. I despair.
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  I mean, yes. Both are true. The EU is both interfering undemocratically in the UK, _and_ making better decisions than our politicians. I noticed this during the referendum. A lot of the pro-remain arguments weren't to do with the abstract advantages of being in or out of the EU, but rather just that they preferred the current EU politicians to the UK ones.
  - SimonPStevens 9y ago
    I'm not sure it is entirely undemocratic. The EU is a institution of various parts. Not all parts can interfere in the same way. I'm not totally versed in the details, but I think in this story would be related to Britain making laws that break the European convention on human rights (echr) that Britain agreed to abide by in a fully democratic way following our system of parliament. The European court of justice (ecj) is then the high court responsible for ensuring that countries stick to the agreements they have agreed to stick to. Which we didn't. So they are enforcing that we do. Now I don't think that's undemocratic. We (as a country) democratically signed a convention, and then future governments failed to uphold that. The ecj stepping in is exactly right. Like I say, not an expert, but just how I understand it.

fraa-orolo 9y ago

To recap: the problems are that data is accessed without independent permission, and data is collected for reasons other than serious crime. So the solution is to create a government body to rubberstamp access requests, and reclassify more crimes as serious?

b6 9y ago

I have no way of directly knowing anything about situations like these. But I suspect that no matter what they say, they're collecting the data. I don't want to hear about court rulings, I want to hear that their hardware has been removed from the telco rooms, and that facilities like Bluffdale have been dismantled. I feel that there is quite a bit of theater going on where the various surveillance monsters acknowledge getting caught and act as if they got spanked and reigned in, when in fact they're just getting bigger and more capable every day.

ianopolous 9y ago

In related news, GCHQ are still trying to wriggle out of oversight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15842969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15842969

bjelkeman-again 9y ago
I am constantly surprised how I appear to live in the same society as the people suggesting these clearly undemocratic efforts to sidestep the democratic oversight. But, they think it is ok and I think it really isn’t, at all. I am surprised our world views differ that much.

stctgion 9y ago

I just totally dispair when it comes to this. I feel powerless to stop my country becoming the distopia imagined in V for Vendetta. Both main parties are supporting legislation beyond the wildest dreams of 20th century despots..

Sephr 9y ago

None of this matters as long as Technical Capability Notices are still part of snoopers' charter. TCNs are basically National Security Letters with even less accountability and limitations. It's extremely ripe for abuse. If you create a secure communication platform startup in the UK, you will receive a TCN and you will be forced to subvert your platform for government data collection. You can't tell anyone about the TCN and you have no recourse other than going to prison for failure to comply. At least in the US when you receive an NSL you can talk to a lawyer to potentially contest an unreasonable or unlawful order.