5 ms·

I also suspect that the timing works against this bill. It takes brashness (and not much sense) to propose this bill at this time. Yes, in the middle of a maj

I also suspect that the timing works against this bill. It takes brashness (and not much sense) to propose this bill at this time. Yes, in the middle of a major international scandal, let's imitate the bad guys. That's a great idea....

ollysb 13y ago
Or more worrying, they're buoyed by the relative lack of concern for increased surveillance.
7952 13y ago
Most "normal" people have probably been bored stupid by geeks getting upset over this issue in the last week. It is possible to follow a story passively in the background, and come to a conclusion about it based on faith rather than objective reasoning. However, bad things get; a lot of people will always believe that "the war will be over by, Christmas" because it is easier to just have faith and ignore the nerds. There is a problem in how hackers/geeks/techies portray themselves. You know that this kind of monitoring is bad because if you had the data you could do bad things (but you wouldn't because of ethics). But every app still expects people to hand over the same data and to trust the developer. Expecting people to know which geeks they can trust and which are creepy is a big ask.
- philbarr 13y ago
  Most "normal" people I know are really upset about this. I think it's an easy thing for people to grasp, "what?! America has been reading my emails and giving it to the UK government?! Bastards!"
anon1385 13y ago
It's hard to say what will happen. Milliband will whip his MPs to vote in favour of it, so it can pass without Lib Dem support. That would risk collapsing the coalition though. Fixed terms mean that the Tories would probably limp on as a minority government till 2015, but without much ability to get anything through (and they have little chance of getting reelected in 2015) so they would have to be really committed to this issue to do that. Lib Dems know they are going to get a hammering in 2015 and they need to start differentiating themselves from the Tories to have any hope at all, but it seems too soon for that at the moment. Thus-far they have proven incapable of taking a stand on anything of significance. Sadly polling probably indicates that this isn't something the public care enough about to make it worth them bringing down the government over, so I can easily see them rolling over in exchange for a few more years sucking on the teat of power. Or perhaps the most cowardly thing of all: making it a free-vote so that enough Lib Dem MPs will vote for it while Lib Dem HQ can claim to oppose it without any risk to the coalition. It may be decided by UKIP and backbench Tories. If they are against it I can't see Cameron pushing it. Unfortunately a lot of the Tory backbench rebels are also staunch Atlanticists and heavily involved in the defence/security industry (think Liam Fox). Whatever happens this will be on the books by ~2016 unless there is a significant public backlash.
- nly 13y ago
  You seem to know your shit. What resources do you follow to stay current with UK politics?
  - corin_ 13y ago
    Without wanting to be rude about anon1385 (who I'm sure does know his shit), I'm not sure he said anything particularly insightful. I'd have had pretty much the same ideas that he had (though wouldn't have articulated them so well), and while I do have a general interest in politics, I really don't do a good job staying up-to-date on current affairs, so for the most part my knowledge is reasonable but not at all detailed. Perhaps if you yourself are not in the UK then that's why you ask, as I guess foreigners would need to more specifically try harder to keep up to date with our politics than we do here (even with my loose following of current afairs, the papers I read are written with a UK focus, the topical news quizzes I watch on TV are UK focused, etc.)
    - anon1385 13y ago
      Yeah, I've nothing particularly insightful to say here beyond things that become apparent if you follow UK politics. To those who don't I'm sure it gets fairly confusing; there are a lot of byzantine things about the process of UK politics. I was mostly trying to provide a bit of context for the non-uk readers. Having said that, if people are interested in the day to day then the Guardian do a live politics blog most days which will have coverage of speeches, important votes and links to articles and comment pieces in the other papers. Also if you are a UK citizen and care about politics I think it really is worth your time to actually sit and watch parliament at some point. Preferably try and work out when they will be talking about an issue you care about or have an interest in (I'd advise against Prime Ministers Questions, it's mostly a lot of pre-prepared soundbites and weak jokes with very little answering of questions). It will probably reveal quite a bit about the real positions of backbenchers, the main parties etc beyond what you see in the papers or the soundbites on the TV news. You may find it surprising who you are agreeing with or not. Also there is a lot of theatre and protocol to it which is kind of entertaining at times.
bobsoap 13y ago
There could another level to this. 1. Spread the word that mass surveillance is already standard practice in one country 2. Wait for public outrage to ensue 3. Stack on more and more revelations (dilute) while mixing in some that are less invasive and make more sense (distract), and outline the huge scale. At this point, the public a) is starting to get tired reading about all the new revelations (because that's how the public works), b) starts associating at least some form of legitimacy with those programs that make sense to them, which in turn rubs off on the more invasive programs, and c) slowly starts accepting the whole thing due to its massive scale, because what can a single person do to stop something so big? 4. Now, with the public worn down and somewhat in check, launch the same thing in other countries where such a thing would never have been possible before. Start small, don't get too close to the most outrageous stuff - but start building the cornerstone programs. 5. In case some of the really bad programs do get outlawed as an effect of the scandal in the originating country, that won't hurt the long-term goal at all, because the road has now been paved and they can always re-introduce the old, as well as realign and expand the new "legitimized" programs that were only possible because the old ones came out of the shadows. I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist but I have to admit, the public relations aspect of this is impressive.
- anon1385 13y ago
  I think it is a lot simpler than that. The murder of Lee Rigby gave the authoritarians a chance to start talking about the importance of surveillance. The usual suspects started talking about it within hours of the murder, and that was long before any of the NSA leaks. For example, this article is from the very next day following the murder, not even 24 hours later and the name of the victim wasn't even known publicly at this point: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/23/woolwich-nick-clegg-communications-bill-risk http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/23/woolwich-nick-clegg... I think the current letter is just an attempt to double down on the rhetoric. It's probably prompted by the NSA leaks but not in a "this is our chance to hoodwink them!" kind of way, more "we are loosing the narrative we need to remind them all to be scared".
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    "we are loosing the narrative we need to remind them all to be scared" Irony for the day: There is well-known term for someone who attempts to effect political change by making the general public fear the violent consequences of not acceding.
hipsters_unite 13y ago
It's absolutely shocking timing, they should be ashamed of themselves. What's concerning is if they don't put it into a bill but rather chop it up and just push it through piecemeal on ministerial initiative.

ollysb 13y ago

Or more worrying, they're buoyed by the relative lack of concern for increased surveillance.

7952 13y ago

Most "normal" people have probably been bored stupid by geeks getting upset over this issue in the last week. It is possible to follow a story passively in the background, and come to a conclusion about it based on faith rather than objective reasoning. However, bad things get; a lot of people will always believe that "the war will be over by, Christmas" because it is easier to just have faith and ignore the nerds. There is a problem in how hackers/geeks/techies portray themselves. You know that this kind of monitoring is bad because if you had the data you could do bad things (but you wouldn't because of ethics). But every app still expects people to hand over the same data and to trust the developer. Expecting people to know which geeks they can trust and which are creepy is a big ask.

philbarr 13y ago
Most "normal" people I know are really upset about this. I think it's an easy thing for people to grasp, "what?! America has been reading my emails and giving it to the UK government?! Bastards!"

anon1385 13y ago

It's hard to say what will happen. Milliband will whip his MPs to vote in favour of it, so it can pass without Lib Dem support. That would risk collapsing the coalition though. Fixed terms mean that the Tories would probably limp on as a minority government till 2015, but without much ability to get anything through (and they have little chance of getting reelected in 2015) so they would have to be really committed to this issue to do that. Lib Dems know they are going to get a hammering in 2015 and they need to start differentiating themselves from the Tories to have any hope at all, but it seems too soon for that at the moment. Thus-far they have proven incapable of taking a stand on anything of significance. Sadly polling probably indicates that this isn't something the public care enough about to make it worth them bringing down the government over, so I can easily see them rolling over in exchange for a few more years sucking on the teat of power. Or perhaps the most cowardly thing of all: making it a free-vote so that enough Lib Dem MPs will vote for it while Lib Dem HQ can claim to oppose it without any risk to the coalition. It may be decided by UKIP and backbench Tories. If they are against it I can't see Cameron pushing it. Unfortunately a lot of the Tory backbench rebels are also staunch Atlanticists and heavily involved in the defence/security industry (think Liam Fox). Whatever happens this will be on the books by ~2016 unless there is a significant public backlash.

nly 13y ago
You seem to know your shit. What resources do you follow to stay current with UK politics?
- corin_ 13y ago
  Without wanting to be rude about anon1385 (who I'm sure does know his shit), I'm not sure he said anything particularly insightful. I'd have had pretty much the same ideas that he had (though wouldn't have articulated them so well), and while I do have a general interest in politics, I really don't do a good job staying up-to-date on current affairs, so for the most part my knowledge is reasonable but not at all detailed. Perhaps if you yourself are not in the UK then that's why you ask, as I guess foreigners would need to more specifically try harder to keep up to date with our politics than we do here (even with my loose following of current afairs, the papers I read are written with a UK focus, the topical news quizzes I watch on TV are UK focused, etc.)
  - anon1385 13y ago
    Yeah, I've nothing particularly insightful to say here beyond things that become apparent if you follow UK politics. To those who don't I'm sure it gets fairly confusing; there are a lot of byzantine things about the process of UK politics. I was mostly trying to provide a bit of context for the non-uk readers. Having said that, if people are interested in the day to day then the Guardian do a live politics blog most days which will have coverage of speeches, important votes and links to articles and comment pieces in the other papers. Also if you are a UK citizen and care about politics I think it really is worth your time to actually sit and watch parliament at some point. Preferably try and work out when they will be talking about an issue you care about or have an interest in (I'd advise against Prime Ministers Questions, it's mostly a lot of pre-prepared soundbites and weak jokes with very little answering of questions). It will probably reveal quite a bit about the real positions of backbenchers, the main parties etc beyond what you see in the papers or the soundbites on the TV news. You may find it surprising who you are agreeing with or not. Also there is a lot of theatre and protocol to it which is kind of entertaining at times.

bobsoap 13y ago

There could another level to this. 1. Spread the word that mass surveillance is already standard practice in one country 2. Wait for public outrage to ensue 3. Stack on more and more revelations (dilute) while mixing in some that are less invasive and make more sense (distract), and outline the huge scale. At this point, the public a) is starting to get tired reading about all the new revelations (because that's how the public works), b) starts associating at least some form of legitimacy with those programs that make sense to them, which in turn rubs off on the more invasive programs, and c) slowly starts accepting the whole thing due to its massive scale, because what can a single person do to stop something so big? 4. Now, with the public worn down and somewhat in check, launch the same thing in other countries where such a thing would never have been possible before. Start small, don't get too close to the most outrageous stuff - but start building the cornerstone programs. 5. In case some of the really bad programs do get outlawed as an effect of the scandal in the originating country, that won't hurt the long-term goal at all, because the road has now been paved and they can always re-introduce the old, as well as realign and expand the new "legitimized" programs that were only possible because the old ones came out of the shadows. I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist but I have to admit, the public relations aspect of this is impressive.

anon1385 13y ago
I think it is a lot simpler than that. The murder of Lee Rigby gave the authoritarians a chance to start talking about the importance of surveillance. The usual suspects started talking about it within hours of the murder, and that was long before any of the NSA leaks. For example, this article is from the very next day following the murder, not even 24 hours later and the name of the victim wasn't even known publicly at this point: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/23/woolwich-nick-clegg-communications-bill-risk http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/23/woolwich-nick-clegg... I think the current letter is just an attempt to double down on the rhetoric. It's probably prompted by the NSA leaks but not in a "this is our chance to hoodwink them!" kind of way, more "we are loosing the narrative we need to remind them all to be scared".
- Silhouette 13y ago
  "we are loosing the narrative we need to remind them all to be scared" Irony for the day: There is well-known term for someone who attempts to effect political change by making the general public fear the violent consequences of not acceding.

hipsters_unite 13y ago

It's absolutely shocking timing, they should be ashamed of themselves. What's concerning is if they don't put it into a bill but rather chop it up and just push it through piecemeal on ministerial initiative.