Ah, gotta love politics. Especially the kind that strictly follows the “Dummy’s Guide to the Big Brother State”, and “20 steps to disarm the unarmed.”
A perfect example from this is from BBC News, “Plan to monitor all internet use” – which is just as scary as it is unbelievable. Apparently the UK home secretary wants to track all e-mails, phone calls, and internet use, including visits to social network sites. Among the more interesting quotes from that page is this;
But she also said that “doing nothing” in the face of a communications revolution was not an option.
For the sensible few out there, the alarm bells should already be ringing. Note how they refer to it as the “communications revolution”. This is great really, I just wish they had been around for the “condo revolution” to make sure that all apartments came bundled with bugging equipment and cameras. For the love of god.
“Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers, pedophiles, save lives and tackle crime,” Ms Smith said.
We really have become gullible. Or well, at least quite a few of us. The ones that (despite the fact that there has been no serious hijackings after NOR before 9/11) still think that the government is acting for our own good, to keep us safe from terrorists, and therefore should be entitled to strip search anyone trying to board a plane. Add to that that the UK CCTV system can already track you from the point you leave your house (and if they get what they like, even automatically look you up on Facebook based on facial recognition software), all the way through town, and to the airport. Now they also know where you’re going, why you’re going, and they can map your entire route.
And from data you derive statistics. And from statistics you derive anomalies. “Hm, Mr. Doe seems to be buying a whole lot of baking soda. I wonder what that is for”. That is (ridiculously enough) enough to allow the government to get a wiretap on you, because per definition you’re a suspected terrorist. So would I be, in writing this.
But that’s not the scary part. What freaks me out is that the fence is moving closer, and that people just accept it. The UK government has done several things lately that are more than efficient when it comes to giving the government more power, and the people less. The terrorist laws are effectively used by branding everyone who doesn’t agree with their policy as “terrorists”, and like that all their rights has been revoked.
And now they are trying to take over the Internet.
Question: Do you really think that murderers and pedophiles communicate in plain text over the internet?
The obvious answer is NO. You can in 5 minutes time have your e-mail encrypted without no intervention needed (using Enigmail for Thunderbird together with GPG), and the same goes for webpages (over https, secure web connections), and instant messaging (the Jabber standard has the encryption as a core element of the specification, and other layers have been added on top of it, such as PGP encryption and Off-the-record messaging).
So keeping you safe is not hard. Breaking the encryption that is active on your communication tho is harder.
So, assuming you got the ability to think on your own, and answered “Hell no”! to the above question, I’ve got a followup question for you;
Question: Who do you think will get stuck in the governments surveillance net?
Before I answer this question, here’s a clue
If encrypted traffic can not be easily decrypted with todays technology in such a way that it can be done on a large scale basis, what traffic will be understandable to the “sniffers”?
Bingo. We’re talking about grandmother’s pie recipes, your kid doing research about soccer hooligans on the internet, the latest gossip on Facebook, the newspapers you read online, what articles you read in the newspapers online, the forums you visit.
So basically the outcome here is that everybody will be monitored except for the criminals. And people are OK with that. That is scary.
And for those of you that are thinking “but, can’t they do SOMETHING to get to the criminals?” the short answer would be no. The UK has already got a law that orders you to share your encryption keys with the government if they ask for them, or you will get thrown in jail for two years. Which is also scary. First of all, by it being used on normal people. You encrypt something because it’s important to you, and because you don’t want other people to see it. Such as the nude vacation photos of your ex. And here is a law that demands that you reveal these pictures to the government if they ask you to.
Also, we have the guys that ripped of loads of credit cards (we’re talking several million dollars) and upon the police busting them they zapped most of their equipment with a quick-switch to set off strong electro magnets. The rest of it? Tightly encrypted. The sentence if they gave up the encryption key? More than 2 years. Did they give it up? Hell no.
Or, you could go as far as France, in completely banning encryption.
The only thing that is efficient here is proper police work. Do not believe for a second that the number of rapists or murderers that get busted due to your grandmother getting wiretapped will increase. Because it won’t.
What all of this has in common is that it makes the people the victims. The people with nothing to hide are gonna be the ones without privacy. And that’s just plain wrong.
