News UK Gov plans snoop database

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/05/23/uk-gov-plans-snoop-database/1

The UK government has revealed plans to build a database containing information on all electronic communications made by its citizens over the last twelve months.

 

Not long ago I saw a short video that said there are over 6 million security cameras in the UK and some already talk back the the pedestrians if they drop litter or something. And now this. Kinda makes me wanna watch V for Vendetta again... "One crazy police state on the way, please wait up."

 

Have a read of Ben Elton's Blind Faith, a database on everyone and everything is one of the core parts of the whole story with the story's protaganist job being to work out different way to corrolate and track the data to predict what people will do and buy.

I laughed at the time but now.........

 

what a waste of storage space and power, isnt the government trying to be green??

 

The sad thing is, dont bills like this have the ability to be simply implemented without vote of it is in the "interest of national security/counter terrorism" ?

 

Time to break out those Cold War code phrases in your emails.

"The Red Herring flies at night!" oh... wait.

 

so who will be the first to start sending out the bulk emails with trigger words in them you know words like "kill" + "assassinate" etc etc just to see how much extra work you can cause someone

 

it will only get leaked at some point

 

the goverment keep using the terrorism excuse to continue to erode any rights we have. Soon you wont be able to go to the tolet without the goverment knowing about it. Its just another way that they can try to control the population that works for them makeing sure that we pay our taxes to cover all their 'expences'.
They all know that they wont really stop the criminals. You only have to look at the fact that the UK has 1% of the worlds population and 40% of the worlds CCTV cameras and yet crime is not going down at all.

Anyway, I think that is enough of a rant for now.

 

Remember remember the fifth of November.

Or.. Something.

I'll be laughing my little toes off when they screw it up and publish the info on a live website.

 

efficacy, that's a good new word to me, i like it.

Gareth, point of criticism, i find there's too many external links for my liking. it's distracting when i want to just read the article. I don't feel all of them are really neccessary. The link to Google Apps? That's starting to look more like subtle advertising Google have paid for!

back on topic, what's the best way to stop this from happening? The recording of EVERYTHING is just unneccessary. I can kinda understand trying to get data on terrorists and genuinely prevalent issues, but 99% of calls are totally innocent. It's too big-brother-esque.

 

Well, if we're very lucky, due to Labour losing the Crewe by-election, they'll turn on their supposed 'leader' and effectively commit suicide. Just wait until they lose a disc containing hundreds of thousands of people's personal de... oh, wait, sorry, that already happened. Or screw over their traditional voter base by scrapping the basic tax rate... oh, sorry, they've done that, too.

 

Yeah once the torries get in this idea will just disappear in smoke


read understand enjoy... life imitates art, and tbh these ideas are far from new and have lived over many governments

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Yes_Minister)

 

No, the Tories are no better, and neither are the Liberal Democrats. What we need is a hung Parliament where no party has a large enough majority to just be able to force nonsense like this through. However, our voting system pretty much guarantees that it's two-party politics swinging from one extreme to the other, so until the voting system is changed to something like Proportional Representation, it's never going to change.

Chances are that it would never change anyway, though.

 

Minority governments and PR aren't all there cracked up to be tbh, nothing ever gets done due to party politics always trying to one up each other. Just look at the farse that the SNP government is causing up here. Your right it does temper the individual parties but it doesn't really provide an environment for change or reform just stagnation and stupid party politics which rarely benefit the populace. Any large projects like this would still get through because the opposition doesn't want to be seen to be weak on national security.

 

OMG guys we just lost the Disc with everybodies personal data on! .............again.

 

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin/Richard Jackson, i believe that was quoted by someone in another thread some time ago, but it holds true, and makes me very angry that the government can get awaywith things like that. Gareth, how about putting any external links at the bottom of the article, so those interested can check them out, and those that only want to read the article dont get distracted? personally it doesnt bother me either way, just a suggestion.

 

Do you really, really think that the government will be able to do something like this? Really?

Name me one government IT system that runs like it should, with 100% accurate data that came on time and on budget. Even easier, name me on government IT system that runs almost like it should, with 95% accurate data that came in slightly late and slightly over budget.

 

Which makes it worse. I think there is political willl for a system like this but their ability means it'll be several billion more expensive than the billions allocated, not fit for purpose and probably as porous as a win98 box.