Nanny's desire to keep tabs on our phone calls and emails, via building a massive central database, had taken a wee bit of a setback.
For why?
Nanny, despite being all things to all men (in her deluded mind), is not up to building such an enormous database viz; the costs, the size, the security issues etc etc.
So my loyal readers, are we to conclude that the project is dead?
Why of course not!
Nanny has come up with a "brilliant" solution.
She is making the companies that provide email and phone services responsible for keeping records!
All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer's personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting (registering every online click).
As an added bonus, Nanny will grant a staggering 653 public bodies the right to access this information. These bodies include our old "friends" in our "respected, competent and trustworthy" local councils, the police, the Financial Services Authority (the body which oversaw, but didn't react to, the financial meltdown), the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and prison governors (eh?).
The final icing on the cake of Nanny's master plan, is that these organs of the state will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information. All they will require is the authorisation of a senior police officer, or the equivalent of an unelected deputy head of department at a local authority.
Common purpose anyone?
By the way, the private firms will be paid at least £2BN per annum (of our money) to spy on us!
The Information Commissioner's Office thinks that this idea is bollocks (as do I):
"The Information Commissioner believes that the case has yet to be made for the collection and processing of additional communications data for the population as a whole being relevant and not excessive."
The legislation won't come before Parliament until after the General Election, therefore we must ensure that ZaNuLabour are kicked out of office.
The state has become the enemy of the people, Daily Telegraph take note!
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Where've you been? We were getting worried there'd been a knock on the door at 2am!
ReplyDeleteIt is all very well saying that we must kick out the current government to stop this big brother programme but, as I have mooted on here before; will the next government be any different?...It is hard for a government/group of quangos to give up power, information is power and you never know when it might come in handy....I personally feel the next government will keep the database state, all for our own protection of course!!
ReplyDeleteI have read on the stop common purpose website, that that Dave may be a common purpose graduate; Does anyone have any further information?
I am all in favour of kicking Nanny Labour out but, let's do it for the right reason; They're bloody useless!!
Papers please.
Enjoy spying responsibly.
Think back to the TV programmme "Yes Minister". The (not very) civil servants were running the country then, nothing has changed since. AND technology has moved on leaps & bounds, just think how the Stasi would have loved access to all the information dear Gordon and his chums have....
ReplyDeleteTonk - The fact is we need Labour out and the only way to do that at the next general is to vote Conservative. Once Labour are gone we can take things from there. At least Conservatives have a history of less state and less state power. We have more chance of getting our lives back with Dave in power even though he may not be the perfect choice.
ReplyDeleteWe ask will the next government be different, we may even beleive they wont but we still have to find out.
The core Conservative party is anti socailist, anti dependancy, anti big government. When that philosophy becomes the basis for government it will just be the councils that need calling to order.
Unfortunately we will never get the "No Government" option on our ballot papers, but next year we will at least get the "No Labour" option. We just have to take it.
Ken- Where were you yesterday? I had to do some work!
Can anybody tell me if a subscription to an anonymous browsing service would protect me from this outrageous prod nosed behaviour by the State?
ReplyDeleteBucko and Anom
ReplyDeleteI was here yesterday, and indeed wrote an article. However, owing to fat fingers and a slip in the time space vortex, the article was posted in the past (October).
Now corrected, and have posted said piece in yesterday's time zone:)
Ken
Techphobic - Before the internet boom, those who wanted to keep their mail private would subscribe to a mail drop. The Governments response was to set up their own mail drop services, effectively making you send mail you didnt want them to see, directly to them.
ReplyDeleteNowadays you can subscribe to a proxy server to hide your internet browsing but its highly likely a lot of them will now be owned by the state as with the mail drops.
The best thing to do would be combine the two. Use a mail drop as your address to subscribe to an ISP and browse through a proxy server.
Bucko;
ReplyDeleteIn the main, I agree with you however, speaking as a life long Conservative, I no longer recognise the "Conservative" Party, as it now is under, David Cameron-Blair.
Where we, the party, made the mistake, was to elect a Tone Clone; We did this because, at the time, Tone was still popular and we were not....I actually backed David Davis although, I would have prefered my own MP, John Redwood, to have stood and then led the party.
I have seen Dave become more and more PC with "A" lists of special groups of people.....If I was in one of those special groups, I would feel insulted amd patronised at having Dave efeectively tell me that I would not be able to get selected on merit, so I need help....Much the same way you let a three year old kid win a running race.
I have also seen the party's agenda effectively purchased by a rich green nutter.
My problem is this; If I vote for the Conservative Party just as I usually do, I fear this will send the message that I support Dave and his destruction, ooops, sorry, modernisation of the party and I don't....I also know that if I back UKIP because they are nearer to what I feel is traditional Conservatism, it could divide my party's vote and thus give us another five years of Labour by default.....You see, I really am stuck between a rock and a hard place.
No real choice effectively means no real democracy.
Enjoy democracy responsibly.
The trounle is, there are layers of local and regional as well as national and supra-national government which are unelected, as well as all the other bodies. For example the interregional and regional bodies (EU?) like arcmanche and transmanche.
ReplyDeleteThe Nannies must have had a truly innocent life - nothing bad done to them or in front of them.
They don't realise that some people are nosey, that some people have disputes, that some people fiddle elections (local or otherwise), that some people hack, that some people steal and sell info, and that some people smear, frame, blackmail, extort and do other nasty stuff, especially when they have opportunity and evil intent.
Does Nanny not realise that in attempting to catch every crime she (or he) is unlocking everyone's front door and creating a situation where ther is a lot more crime, especially from those in authority or with access, legal or not, to the info (domestically or abroad)?
How is Nanny and her helpers going to protect themselves? What if Nanny or her helpers get sick, retire or gets fired? I don't like Nanny's methods but fear that Nanny and her helpers are going to get a taste of the downside of their regimes.
Even special status badges can get stolen, forged or altered by some people who will do anything for power.
Poor Nanny and her helpers - I wonder if they think they are God and we are their subjects.
Thankfully the real God has the only CCTV system in the world which cannot be hacked or altered. The history of the world per God cannot be censored or hacked by anyone. And he doesn't micromanage,
attack our freewill or dignity or violate our privacy. He kindly gave us a brain, the ability to think silently and even gave us the brains to make and wear clothes when we wished to not bear our all to the world.
Would nanny and her helpers including government, doctors, firemen, HMRC, police, social workers, Royal mail managers, health and safety and friends care to have a 6-month trial of their system - everything they write, say, do - all on public CCTV 24x7,all info about them, history since childhood, all records published publicly published so they can prove to the public they are as innocent and trustworthy as they appear. A bitlike Big Brother - except I think the ratings would be wonderful - the advertising revenue might solve the national debt problem.
Oh, why not export it to fund our children's and grandchildren's pensions? Of course, one of the rules of the game is that neither nanny nor her helpers can leave the country, disappear or change names. Since nanny and her helpers have nothing to fear becuase they have nothing to hide, then no harm will come to them or their friends or family, will it (or anyone they know or come into contact with, whose data is liked to theirs)?
Oh Nanny (and helpers), what was your secret - that you have gone through life with such innocence and trust?
How do we know that this is really Ken posting and commenting?
ReplyDeleteBefore too long, we may see posts along the lines of "actually, Blair wasn't so bad, and Brown is doing a forthright job under challenging circumstances," then we'll move on to "local councils give the people a form of direct representation through which they may voice their needs and wishes," culiminating in, "why of course Tesco has not only the right, but the responsibility, to demand ID from anyone seeking to purchase wine gum (I'm still trying to envison what that is)," and ultimately, "you're farking well right, Nanny DOES know best, and you'd do well to remember it. Or else."
Ken, may just be my problem, but your previous article is not showing right now (it was). Nor is there an article for the 15th.
ReplyDeleteHopefully it's just temporary.
Speaking as an IT professional I can think of a dozen ways you can prevent the government from reading your emails and monitoring your browsing. Something really simple like Tor (http://www.torproject.org/) will let you browse, use webmail and instant messaging totally anonymously with only a few clicks.
ReplyDeleteThe thing the government haven't answered is what they will do to people who do decide to obscure their activities. Either they get really oppressive and make these tools illegal or they have to admit their multi-billion pound filtering system has already been outmanoeuvred. Either way, it would be nice to know where we stand...
"No real choice effectively means no real democracy."
ReplyDeleteI sympathise with your dilemma, Tonk, but an important part of the cure would be proportional representation by single transferable vote.
Unfortunately the Conservative Party has never supported this.
One inaccuracy in this story: nowhere in either the EU directive or in the enacted legislation is there any mention of logging websites visited. None of the ISPs are making any noise at all about having to store weblogs, either, which they would if the legislation said this was needed. Web logs for even a small ISP are huge; you're talking tens of gigabytes of log data per day, which is normally only kept for a maximum of a day or two before being ditched on a round robin basis.
ReplyDeleteThe Government aren't asking for web logs to be kept, and we can tell because the ISPs aren't moaning a bucketful about having to install huge Storage Area Networks to cope with the enormous amount of data collected.
All the ISPs are being asked to log is effectively headers from mail that transits their mail servers, and in the case of telcos the mobile numbers and cell tower locations of their subscribers, and then only when they make a call. All you have to do to circumvent these measures is cease using mobile phones that have your name on them, and use a mail server outside the country (preferably outside the EU) contacted by SSL.
Frankly, I don't expect this scheme to survive the General Election. It is expensive and childishly easy to dodge, so will net no criminals at all whilst being expensive and unpopular to run.
This is an appalling intrusion on people's privacy and more akin to a police state than a democracy.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
'Where've you been? We were getting worried there'd been a knock on the door at 2am!'
Not in this country: they would kick the door in and trash your home --- unless, of course, you were a real criminal, in which case you would be able to sleep[ easy.
Tonk said; '...My problem is this; If I vote for the Conservative Party just as I usually do, I fear this will send the message that I support Dave and his destruction, ooops, sorry, modernisation of the party and I don't....I also know that if I back UKIP because they are nearer to what I feel is traditional Conservatism, it could divide my party's vote and thus give us another five years of Labour by default.....You see, I really am stuck between a rock and a hard place.'
Yes, I am in the same position. Although I consider myself a Conservative, I voted for UKIP in the European electionback in the summer. What I believe in bears little more resemblance to the present Conservative party
than nuLabour does to the
'traditional' Labour party. I just cannot forgive David Cameron's decision to welch on his promise to give the British people a vote on the Lisbon treaty: as I see it, all three main parties have betrayed us on this issue.
Black Sea said...
'How do we know that this is really Ken posting and commenting?
Before too long, we may see posts along the lines of "actually, Blair wasn't so bad, and Brown is doing a forthright job under challenging circumstances," then we'll move on to "local councils give the people a form of direct representation through which they may voice their needs and wishes," culiminating in, "why of course Tesco has not only the right, but the responsibility, to demand ID from anyone seeking to purchase wine gum (I'm still trying to envison what that is)," and ultimately, "you're farking well right, Nanny DOES know best, and you'd do well to remember'
I think we know Ken well enough to know that if this kind of drivel ever appeared under his name, it would be a forgery perpetrated by someone else!
anticant said...
'"No real choice effectively means no real democracy."
I sympathise with your dilemma, Tonk, but an important part of the cure would be proportional representation by single transferable vote.
Unfortunately the Conservative Party has never supported this.'
Neither the Conservative nor nuLabour want this, as it would mean they would not only have to share power with smaller parties, but would have to consider their views. The only way this might be introduced is in the event of a "hung parliament".