Snoopers Charter passed into Law

This was passed into law yesterday, thoughts?

I'm pretty outraged that free speech can be pushed aside in favour of such a draconian law.

 

What happens when there's such a weak opposition party.

 

I think most people won't see past the idea of "I'm doing nothing wrong" and so won't really care.

 

I don't think enough people will oppose it either as most tech users don't know their rights. Unfortunately, I and everyone in this group knows our rights and I'm pretty miffed.

 

Quote -

2 Nov 2016: The Investigatory Powers Bill has passed the third reading in the House of Lords and will be passed into law by the end of the year, following final consideration of amendments and Royal Assent.

Concerns around the balance between privacy and security have apparently been sufficiently quelled in Parliament's second chamber by an amendment which states: "This Act sets out the extent to which certain investigatory powers may be used to interfere with privacy."

Lord Janvrin - who proposed the amendment - said of its approval: “That there is merit in placing a simple statement right at the forefront of the legislation to provide additional clarity that there should be no doubt that privacy protection remains a fundamental priority.”

Web and phone companies (CSPs) will store records of websites visited by every customer for 12 months for access by police, security services and other public bodies uponissue of a warrant. However, they won't be able to track sites accessed over various VPNs.

Security services will be legally empowered to bug computers and phones upon approval of a warrant. Companies will be legally obliged to assist these operations and bypass encryption where possible.

Security services can acquire and analyse bulk collections of communications data. For example, this could mean a bulk data set such as NHS health records.

Oversight for these operations will come with a new “double-lock”, where any intercept warrants will need ministerial authorisation before being judged by a panel of judges, who will be given power of veto. This panel will be overseen by a single senior judge, the newly created Investigatory Powers Commissioner.

 

^^This a million times over^^

And most politicians don't have any knowledge about technology so can't see how open to abuse something like this is, and how in the wrong hands it could be used to oppress society and any opposition.

What 23RO_UK quoted from Lord Janvrin just goes to show how little the people passing the bill understand about it, he claims that there should be no doubt that privacy protection remains a fundamental priority, but he fails to mention how the police can search everyones internet connection records with nothing more than a nod from his/her senior officer.

I honestly can't think of a single good thing about it as all any serious criminal has to do is use a VPN, all this bill does is legalize the surveillance of ordinary innocent people.

 

Remember when Claire Perry campaigned for online safety and led an independent parliamentary inquiry and soon after her knowledge was exposed when she got in a spat with Guido Fawkes. That said it all when someone like Perry could be able to dictate matters concerning the web.

 

I do, what was even funnier was when the very same pron filter blocked her own site because she kept using naughty words.

 

Still, we're taking back control, right? Right?

 

Yep, instead they all voted or it. And my local [Labour] MP fobbed me off with a weak excuse about 'security' when i challenged him about it.

And as I say just about every time this comes up...

Everyone has something to hide. Everyone. Even if you haven't, they can quite easily Richelieu you if they wanted to.

 

While I think the arguments about weak opposition are somewhat fair, it sounds like you're blaming the opposition for the actions of the government, which doesn't really make sense.

This has been quite masterfully snuck through while no-one was paying attention, because Trump, but politically it's a tough sell to oppose it too hard. Whatever your views on our current opposition, the vast majority of the voting public already views them with sceptisim when it comes to security, and since most of them are also very much of the previously mentioned "well if you've got nothing to hide..." mindset then unless you could somehow find the time and space to make a well structured and nuanced argument for privacy vs. security, slippery slope, etc. to the general public all that's going to happen is the daily mail declaring that "Labour want to let terrorists and pedophiles face time each other from school playgrounds!!!!!!"

Personally I think, as with almost all "terror" related laws, that it's a poorly thought out and sloppily worded bit of legislation that could easily be abused by the wrong government. Hopefully we don't get one of those any time soon.

 

Having had time to think about this more she had her website hacked because of involvement with the smut filter, imagine how big the target is now every ISP have to retain a shared database accessible by all police forces on all our internet connectivity.

How on earth are they going to prevent hackers from dumping politicians, among others, browsing history on to wikileaks, it should make for some interesting reading to see what websites ministers have been visting.

Of course they do, otherwise we'd all be walking around naked and taking a dump in open air toilets, we'd not have locks on doors and we'd not have curtains.

Tell that to Trumpton.

 

I'm not blaming them for the actions of the Govt who technically have done what they where elected to do.

I'm blaming them for doing pretty much nothing to represent those who didn't vote for the govt and force the debate into the public eye. For a party that prattles on about being the party of human rights its doing very little.

 

What is the Snoopers charter?

 

The Investigatory Powers Bill [Now Act]

 

And if the terrorists are too hard to find they will certainly not use those same laws for other purposes, oh wait:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/n...fee-dodgers-in-northern-ireland-30911647.html

 

Well given HMRC is one of the [many] Govt Depts allowed to look at the data I can certainly see it being used for other purposes too.

 

And thats just the stuff we find out about, thought policing can't be far behind.

 

It's this.



And this.

Stuff like that is just the tip of the iceberg, in the grand scheme of things using RIPA (soon to be IPA) to investigate TV licence dodgers has a very localised effect, what I'm more concerned with is the effect such regulations have on freedom of speech and holding those in power to account.

It's been reported by the National Union of Journalists that police routinely bypass the need for judicial scrutiny to discover journalistic sources with Ripa, just like when they used it to discover the Sun journalists’ phone records relating to the Plebgate incident.

Honestly this bill is less about catching the bad guys and more about keeping the public in their place, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 14% say they speak more in person instead of communicating online or on the phone; and 13% have avoided using certain terms in online communications two years after the Snowden revelations, its only ever been about creating a virtual panopticon.

The next time someone like a investigative journalists or whistle-blower thinks about spilling the beans on the dodgy dealings of those in power, like the expenses scandal back in 2009, they're going to think twice before acting, RIPA and the Investigatory Powers Act are not and never will catch serious criminals as they'll just use a VPN or other such circumventions, it's about keeping us plebs in check.

/Rant

 

What I want to know is where is all this data going to be stored because it must be a hell of a lot.