Are you accepting of the loss of privacy in order to counter terrorism?
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This has certainly got me annoyed and I don't care who knows it!!
Broadband providers and phone networks are to reveal to authorities your every phone call, text message, email and private social network message.
New anti-terror laws could force phone networks and broadband providers to store our digital communications in databases open to security services to check up on us -- and if that doesn't worry you, just wait until the hackers get their hands on it.
The Communications Capabilities Development Plan sets out the new scheme, as suggested by MI5, MI6, and GCHQ. The government won't store the data itself, instead requiring Internet service providers and phone networks such as BT, Sky, and O2 to store the information for a year.
Anti-terror police and spies could then see the information to see who you've been talking to. Actual phone calls and texts won't be recorded but details of who called or texted who -- and when and where -- will be saved.
Your emails and private messages sent through Facebook and Twitter will be saved, as well as your internet browsing history or exchanges between online video gamers.
Do you mind if the government and ISPs track your digital chat, if it helps keep the country safe?
Responses (11)
Yes Parchester it's a massive intrusion and it is indeed a high price to pay for security.
I wonder if George Orwell knew at the time he wrote 1984 how right his predictions were for our future.
What you say is quite right, Parch. However, if this stops terrrorist activity, I don't give a gnat's chuff if my converstaion on facebook with my sister is recorded.
I don't have a big issue with it except that, as you say, someone will hack into this info at some point and there will be security issues. The security services have to do something to stop terrorists and others who want to bring down society and if this is one way of doing it, then so be it.
Have to say I agree with both Feline and Sidesalad here!
If this is so, then I assume that the authorities who need to know here will only be checking up on those that intelligence brings to their attention? If it's going to help stop, say, the detonation of a series of dirty bombs across the UK ( and make no mistake we are most certainly a target ) and ultimately kill thousands, then I have no problem with it.
It's all Big Brother, 1984, etc - and it's all b****cks.
Paranoia about terrorism is exactly what the would-be terrorists want to foster - if you can scare people with the possibility of being attacked, then you are disrupting their lives (which is the central purpose of terrorist attacks) without actually having to go ahead with any attack.
Government is only using this hypothetical threat as a pretext to spy on everybody and this must be fought at every level as the gross invasion of privacy that it is. I'm all for using every possible method to nab criminals, but that means that the authorities must first identify specific people as investigation targets and prove that these people pose a likely threat BEFORE they get the approval to go ahead with these spying activities.
And how are they going to do that without invading people's privacy to some extent?
What I mean is that the government is proposing wholesale storage and access of EVERYBODY's electronic communications (enabling them to trawl for any possible signs of offences without prior suspicion), whereas I would contend that access to such data should be strictly on the basis of demonstrable prior suspicion and that storage of everybody's communication records for a year is going too far because regardless of good intentions it opens up the possibility of trawling for the slightest offence - effectively persecuting people for free speech.
Find your suspects, demonstrate a strong suspicion and then afterwards start monitoring their communications and only their communications. I would have no problem with that.
What I would have a serious problem with is the effective curtailment of free speech by the threat of Big Brother deciding that - simply because somebody slagged off the government in a Facebook posting or a private e-mail, that person should be monitored in case they subsequently turned into a threat to national security. That is Big Brother.
I think my comment still stands...sorry, we'll have to agree to disagree on this. :-)
You are absolutely right about paranoia being the fuel of terrorism, the truth, but I totally disagree about the Government using this to spy on people.
There is no evidence at all to suggest that people who slag off the Government are targeted. WTF, some of us do it in this Forum every day.....! But if there is a need to investigate suspicious characters, bring it on!
I'm not sure how old you are, but I lived in London in the 70's when there were regular IRA bomb scares. My (then) husband was working in Birmingham at the time and was within 100 yards of the pub bombing. We just got on with our lives. Other than Winston Churchill, I thing the best ever quote was from Maggie Thatcher when she said we shoud deny the terrorists the oxygen of publicity.
Deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity - I quite agree (right on, Maggie...) - but that brings me back to my original contention that the government stokes up paranoia about terrorism (ooh, we were under threat from Al Qaeda... which is tantamount to saying that we were under threat from a cloud, because Al Qaeda is just an umbrella name to which any disaffected muslim could subscribe in order to give prominence to any activities they carry out... no, we were under threat from random unconnected individuals who just happen to all be muslim...).
Then, having stoked up paranoia, the government turns the ratchet and brings in security restrictions (witness all the hoo-hah with what you can and cannot take onto an airliner - what a load of nonsense - liquid explosives have been around since the 19th century and generally haven't been a problem to air travel) and now monitoring (which you can bet will be abused to spy on people under any pretext).
I agree with you truthster!
It's disgusting. We're already monitored by CCTV and Satellite surveillance, and now they want to have spy on all our electronic communications.
It's this sort of thing that makes people *want* to bring down governments...
If you've got nothing to hide, what are you so afraid of?!
Very well said, Sis!
If one terrorist is taken out of the system, the Government can see everything I do online.
So Fruits...
You'd be happy to receive all your post opened and pre-read (and maybe edited)?
All your gifts received unwrapped and used?
Every intimate moment with your loved ones recorded and available to anyone in public service who wants to watch?
That's what you're signing up to.
Exactly, Feline...all this crap about 'Big Brother' and 'living in a police state' etc...perhaps those who think that should go and live in the countries where the people really have to suffer these things, then maybe they would realise how relatively free and lucky they actually are...sorry, mini rant over!!
That's just total paranoia, G-Man...and it won't happen because, like the vast majority of people in this country, I'm not a terrorist!
It amuses me that those who accuse the rest of us of being paranoid about terrorism seem to be clearly suffering from extreme paranoia themselves!
I share your mini-rant, Sis!
What on earth do we have to fear if we've done nothing wrong?
No no and no. We are effectively living in a police state.
I mind VERY much, and I don't for one minute think that it will have the desired result of keeping the country safe anyway. We don't just live in a Nanny State, we're beginning to allow ourselves to live in a police state too, just as creativesaver stated.
At present I'm still trying to reconcile how this will be permitted in accordance with the Data Protection Act.
The Data Protection act was introduced to protect the very thing this legislation appears to ride roughshod over.
I also suspect that the notion of Human Rights legislation will also be challenged on this matter.
If a known anti-British muslim cleric who is wanted in Jordan on charges of terrorism and is unable to be deported for fear of compromising his human rights, I cannot see how this legislation can be implemented without some people countering this on the basis of an invasion of their human rights and their and our right to free speech.
It does tend to smack of totalitarism but might also help increase the declining profits of Royal Mail, as people will move away from IT based communication and more towards the written word and the post (do you remember getting letters?) to commincate their radical doctrines.
Good thinking - time to buy shares in Royal Mail, eh? Except that the government won't privatise it - maybe they know that it would be best to wait until the new snail-mail bonanza kicks in as people revert to it to protect their communications....
Mind you, I used to have a penpal in East Germany (in the '80s) and I know that letters between us were routinely opened in transit to check for disallowed items, the passage of secrets, etc. Sometimes the resealing wasn't very good (especially given the fabulous quality of East German envelope glue) and they had to resort to sticky tape. Don't imagine that it wouldn't start again in the new political climate - every letter to/from the Middle East would be a possible 'sample' for investigation.
I can't really see the snail mail revival coming, the truth. We have friends in Zimbabwe and their letters are regularly intercepted. If not for email we wouldn't be in contact with them, but they're not stupid enough to criticise Mugabe online.
I can understand that - was making the same point myself - you can't get away from interference.
It's this insane big brother thinking that leads me to smile whenever a hacking group takes down a government server somewhere in the world!
They're striking back for our digital freedom, dammit.
i dont want my private life invaded either
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