http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 Internet surveillance aside. Can anyone else see a technical issue with this 12 months of history for everyone in the UK is going to be a huge amount of data. I can't see that its feasable to keep that much info stored in what must have to be massive server farms. We also don't seem to be coping that badly with all these "terroist attacks", Most recently it has been individual attacks which I can't see any amount of surveillance stopping. Discuss.
And the use of a decent VPN renders the whole thing useless, just another cost to be absorbed somewhere.
As the bill hasn't been published yet it's a little early to know for sure, but storing the Internet history of everyone in the UK would be a trivial affair, ISPs already record DNS requests so the storage needed for keeping those records for a year would depend on how much extra information the Snoopers Charter Mk II requires them to retain. Or for no cost change your DNS servers to ones outside the UK, depends how they go about it.
The fact it can be so easily be avoided means it completely useless. More headline grabbing news bites.
It is just the top level domain visited that is required to be recorded or handed over, not the specific page. I guess a lot of this is already logged. Snowden said the GCHQ Prism program was already indiscriminately logging all of this and more illegally anyway, so it appears that after he blew the whistle rather than bin the project and prosecute your own operatives who must have been given tacit permission to do this the only way to proceed is to make a law to legitimise it. So the government's line is we are going to snoop and if you don't like it then we are going to make it law so you have to like it, its a crock of ****. Since the information is the entire set of all internet users and a computer would flag all the blatant idiots automatically, if I was an analyst at GCHQ I would start by getting the system to filter out the comparatively tiny subset of VPN users and single them out for added scrutiny (the FBI busted a top level release boss even though he always used a VPN because of the one day he forgot to!). Otherwise they wouldn't know what you accessed through the VPN since it would be illegal for them to gain access to foreign VPN company servers and steal their info, so because GCHQ has such great respect for the law they will never do that...
It does seem strange that (afaik) the bill makes no mention of VPN or ToR, isn't any ne'er-do-well just going to use one of those and go under the radar, wouldn't what they propose, like you said, only catch the blatant idiots. Aren't the really nasty ones going to go undetected in the crowd of legitimate VPN & ToR users, isn't that going to make their job harder, it seems all this bill is going to do is push the worst of the wrong doers further underground.
They don't need to do anything about VPNs or Tor (or its various clones), they simply have to get the data before it leaves the pc (or after it reaches it), all they need is to get their spyware on the targets (a.k.a anyone who uses a VPN or Tor) pc.
Isn't that speaking about the equipment interference section though, apologies for not saying i was referring to the keeping of Internet connection records part, my mistake. If the ne'er-do-wells use VPN and/or ToR and loose themselves in the crowd how are the SS going to be able to pick them out from legitimate users as a target for equipment interference, surly not everyone using VPN and/or ToR is going to be targeted for equipment interference? In case I'm having brain fade, yes they simply have to get the data before it leaves the pc (or after it reaches it), but how would they know who to target that at if the really serious criminals always used VPN and/or ToR. EDIT: This should be funny or interesting, some guy has made an Freedom of Information request for Mrs May's metadata (Who she sent & received emails and Skype calls from, and what websites she visited), if as she claims Internet connection records are like an itemised phone bill and no personal information can be gained from metadata it shouldn't be a problem, right?
I'd bet on old fashioned racial profiling, of course they will be more likely to catch the hipster plumber who unclogged the toilet in the mosque in the act of ironically pirating windows 95 rather than the next Bin Laden, but hey, got to start somewhere* *at least according to the UK Government.
UN privacy chief: UK surveillance bill is 'worse than scary' http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-11/10/surveillance-investigatory-powers-scary-joseph-cannataci Why tech companies are really worried about the snooper's charter http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/10/why-tech-companies-worried-snoopers-charter-whatsapp-imessage Broadband bills will have to increase to pay for snooper's charter, MPs are warned http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/11/broadband-bills-increase-snoopers-charter-investigatory-powers-bill-mps-warned The Snooper’s Charter would devastate computer security research in the UK http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/the-snoopers-charter-would-devastate-computer-security-research-in-the-uk/
I wouldn't normally bump a thread if i was the last person to comment but i feel a recently held consultation in the House of Commons Science and Technology committee is worthy enough to warrant peoples attention, not only because it discuss the potential impact of the revised snoopers charter but also because the guest speakers (Matthew Hare, CEO Gigaclear, John Shaw, VP Sophos, and James Blessing, Chair Internet Services Providers) discuss what i hope the technological BT community will appreciate. The minutes of the meeting have been publish on the Gov web site here, it would be interesting to know what peoples opinion are of the topics that MPs raised and the answers they were given.
I just had a quick look at my firefox profile, it was about 180MB which holds all of my history for about 9 or 10 months extrapolating that across 44million british users, I would guess you would be looking at around 8 petabytes or so of raw data. Handling that much data is probably somewhat challenging, but far from infeasible, given that it would be spread out across a number of technology providers. But it would certainly bump the price of the internet.
Paris terror attacks: Calls for snooper's charter to be rushed through to prevent UK atrocities http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paris-terror-attacks-calls-snoopers-6835963 Never let an atrocity go to waste a Lord Carlile, if only France had something similar to the snoopers charter...Oh wait they do.
I think they surely have VPNs in their mind and would have taken proper steps before making the decisions.
Despite reassurances from Theresa May that the Investigatory Powers Bil wouldn't be rushed through parliament and that it would receive proper scrutiny she's given the joint committee only 3 weeks to go over the 300 page bill. Theresa May accused of rushing surveillance bill through back door http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/theresa-may-accused-of-rushing-surveillance-bill-through-back-door It also seems the Investigatory Powers Bil is going to do nothing to keep people safe. UK ISP boss points out massive technical flaws in Investigatory Powers Bill http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/11/uk-isp-boss-points-out-massive-technical-flaws-in-investigatory-powers-bill/
Except, they probably don't. It's well documented and evidenced that MP's have no f*cking clue when it comes to technology. They have advisors who are nothing but brown-nosing sycophants, and probably don't even have a CISCO CCNA cert to their name, let alone the ability to know how to monitor a VPN and the traffic that goes through one. The government will pass this legislation and then outsource the work to the lowest bidder, who will then take it upon themselves to drag the process out as long as possible and end up costing the taxpayer a lot more than was initially ever proposed.
Maybe that's the only way we're going to be free from a virtual panopticon, it seems most people couldn't give two hoots about this bill, maybe if costs run into the hundreds of millions and start hitting people in their pockets they'll start to care a little more.
