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Comment by peterkelly | Hacker News Reader

Has everyone forgotten about Tempora [1], XKEYSCORE [2], PRISM, [3] and the other Snowden revelations [4]? This kind of shit has been going on for at least a decade in various forms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

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I find it a bit amusing that we are now at the point where we can say "has everyone forgotten about" about Snowden revelations. When those came out, my reaction at the time was "has everyone forgotten about ECHELON?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

Hahaha yeh same here. People thinking I was mad talking about it until Snowden came around

Back in ...huh maybe late 2002, we were testing embedded machines for surveillance video streaming through the then new UMTS 3G system. So we had this very compact (there were no Raspberry PIs back then) Linux machine with its PCMCIA 3G card which would use ffmpeg to stream the video taken by a camera, to a nearby broadband connected PC having a fixed IP. Everything worked, but we were literally struggling to achieve low latencies because the application would have been in potentially life threatening scenarios; the customer had been very clear about the numbers: half a second maximum latency, not more. We were almost getting there, with some quality tradeoffs, still something was slowing us down, so we fired a traceroute to see the path traveled by our precious video packets, and the shock when we found that to reach a machine on the same bench they went through not one but two countries to get to London, and back. We filed a detailed request to the carrier, which was our partner, to ask if there was something wrong with routing. We got no reply, other than realizing the following days that they had blocked ICMP and other things so that we couldn't use traceroute anymore.

Doesn’t really make it ok though.

We should absolutely keep it in the public eye lest it be relegated to acceptance.

It was relegated to acceptance about 10 years ago.

It doesn't make it ok at all. But this is a double edged sword. Just keeping this in the public eye but without hard action against it simply normalizes the situation as "problem that's only big enough to complain about". People need to see action being taken, like right to repair initiatives that bore fruit.

Unfortunately unlike right to repair, this is a fight against a government which already has too much leverage on anyone and gaining more, making the fight progressively more difficult. It's clear that the gov't will use any power at it's disposal to fight against any such citizen initiative.

As a person from the UK, no I've not forgotten. The difference here (and this is NOT excusing them) is that you've gone from a series of systems which didn't officially exist, accessible from the select few of intelligence agencies and no doubt secure as hell into private ones which are controlled by people like BT. Yep, BT. The same BT who are laying off 10k staff this year because they need to cut costs. This isn't something they're putting effort into, this is some mandated program which will mean they're going to come up with the cheapest solution to store all your data. That's obviously bad.

What was disappointing about this was that I remember the day this bill got passed. I remember refreshing BBC news repeatedly. Not one article was written about the snoopers charter within the days leading up to it (or the day itself). Now, back to the "bad" again... The list of people who can access these records, without a warrant is just utterly insane. It starts off legit-ish but honestly some of these are pretty hard to justify:

* Metropolitan police force

* City of London police force

* Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996

* Police Service of Scotland

* Police Service of Northern Ireland

* British Transport Police

* Ministry of Defence Police

* Royal Navy Police

* Royal Military Police

* Royal Air Force Police

* Security Service

* Secret Intelligence Service

* GCHQ

* Ministry of Defence

* Department of Health

* Home Office

* Ministry of Justice

* National Crime Agency

* HM Revenue & Customs

* Department for Transport

* Department for Work and Pensions

* NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England that provide ambulance services

* Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service

* Competition and Markets Authority

* Criminal Cases Review Commission

* Department for Communities in Northern Ireland

* Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland

* Department of Justice in Northern Ireland

* Financial Conduct Authority

* Fire and rescue authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004

* Food Standards Agency

* Food Standards Scotland

* Gambling Commission

* Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority

* Health and Safety Executive

* Independent Police Complaints Commissioner

* Information Commissioner

* NHS Business Services Authority

* Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust

* Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board

* Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation

* Office of Communications

* Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland

* Police Investigations and Review Commissioner

* Scottish Ambulance Service Board

* Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission

* Serious Fraud Office

* Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust

Why does anybody other than policing and security agencies need access to this stuff? NHS? Fire and rescue? WHAT? They don't have a role in investigating crime. Okay the fire brigade do post-fire analysis of possible arson etc. but that's not something you need access to somebody's internet history for.

Yep, food standards Scotland could call up TalkTalk and ask for a copy of my browsing history. This is assuming its not been leaked because they got hacked by a 16 year old script kiddy *again*.

The probability of the Chav Network being able to convert bungs into your private data, more or less at will, must be about 100% with that list.

I'll call Dave at the Food Standards Agency, he'll get your internet history. Crimes against food.

The NHS investigate people for abusing their authority as medical professionals. I don't know how they divide the work with the police, but they do have their own people for investigations.

Also for fraudulent malpractice cases. An investigation made the news recently where a lady was suing a hospital.

She claimed some massive disability following an operation, and the hospital's own investigations team followed her and filmed her jogging, drinking, etc.

It would have been using these same powers to do the surveillance work.

Observing someone in public isn't really in the same league as this.

I don't even think the Police should have access.

If it's that serious, have them ask an intelligence agency to investigate and report - as they do anyway today. They don't need direct access.

But yes, crazy that the Food Standards Agency always end up on this list. Must be someone who knows someone.

Because the UK is only borderline a free society.

It's like asking why does the king of Saudi Arabia need to have the power to jail his subjects for no reason? Why does Putin need to have the right to jail or kill political opponents?

The UK doesn't give you right to remain silent (your silence will be used against you), you are compelled to bear witness against yourself (you must surrender passwords), and there are super-injunctions where you are gagged and not even allowed to discuss the legal issue with your lawyer.

This is the country that sent government thugs to force journalists to physically destroy their own laptops and hard drives.

With religious clergy overtly and explicitly being part of government power (in house of lords).

Hell, it's super recent that government power in house of lords stopped being inherited.

Imagine if the US senate was staffed solely by inherited power. Not just in the style of Bust Sr/GWB, but actually inherited. It's not the same, since the US senate is more powerful than the house of lords, but "it's complicated".

So your confusion here may come from the fact that you look at the UK as "like the US, but they talk weird", where it's a couple of step closer to "Like Saudi Arabia, but part of political power is elected".

Obviously Saudi Arabia is much further away along this spectrum, but I hope you see my point anyway. You seem to be saying "how can a free society do this?", where the answer is "because it's not that free, your assumption is flawed".

... and this is what you get: A lifetime appointee to the house of lords has proposed a curfew for men after 6pm.

https://news.sky.com/story/sarah-everard-baroness-who-sugges...

This idiot (who is clearly making a completely idiotic contraproductive and divisive point, since I'm charitable enough to not take her at face value) is there for life. She can't even be voted out. She's there for life.

But what can you expect from the Green Party? Are they actually competent at what they do in any country?

The Greens in Australia are by and large the most rational party in the country, from the future of energy to drug policy to social policy.

well, yes, the UK has many problems including some of the above, but most Western countries are deeply flawed in terms of real freedoms - e.g. US governments routinely murder people (both official "judicial" executions and extra-judicial killings by police), the "patriot" act abridges all sorts of freedoms in the name of terrorism, routine civil forfeiture of random property by police, denial of basic healthcare for many people, abridgement of basic bodily autonomy for women with many states ready to end it entirely if the Supreme Court ever changes it's mind, secret unappealable no-fly lists, everything to do with guantanamo bay or CIA "black sites".

I'm not saying other countries are perfect, including the US.

But there's a difference. The US is not living up to its ideals of equality and democracy, or even equal treatement under the law (e.g. lying to congress about not "collecting" data about US citizens). The UK is not even aspiriting to living up to those standards.

For example take torture. The best way to paint this is to "do horrible things for the protection of freedom and democracy". It's Realpolitik.

I'm still absolutely against torture, but it's a difference in kind to the UK putting religious clergy into positions of government power.

It's possible to defend torture as an instrumental goal to the ultimate goal of freedom & democracy. But the UK is not aiming for the same ultimate goal.

Similarly it's a difference in kind when Trump or Bolsanaro practice nepotism, compared to when some asshat gets a peerage in the UK.

We can list flaws all day, but the difference between the US and the UK here is that the US really does have an ideal of equality, freedom, and democracy, and the UK does not. The UK has not outgrown the Monarchy. And I'm not just talking about the royal family, but the whole aristocracy.

Another way to explain this: If you tell the story of Plebgate to an American, they won't fully get it. It's an insult, yes, but merely saying it's an insult is missing the point. It's bad because the class society is still there. People owning their homes often still literally pay a land tax to someone with a lord title. A land Lord.

It's a step on the spectrum to Saudi Arabia, where within its borders every grain of sand, and every person, is the personal property of the king.

If you take the US and add a permanent unelected head of state, add 20 dedicated priest posts to the senate, remove the first, second, fourth, and fifth amendment, and on top of that have a society that generally feels like this is a good idea, then you have a completely different country.

And it's not a country that even aspires to be as free or democratic as the US. And since the UK doesn't try, it also isn't.

Under Trump we saw that the US institutions were (mostly) holding. What's being "held" in the UK is not even a goal on the level of the US.

You point out many things. And probably those kinds of things the US has done more than Saudi Arabia has done. But nobody would therefore conclude that Saudi Arabia is more freedom&democracy than the US, would they?

Let's not forget who brought us the wonderful law: Theresa May, as home secretary. Architect of the Windrush scandal, for which she took 0 responsibility.

She probably envisioned the Home office doing mass denial of visas based on a lookup of applicant names with IP addresses deemed to be related to terrorist activity.

TM is a plutokleptocratic fascist Tory who sticks it to "the little people" at every opportunity.

And yet she's still not as bad as the current PM.

Only because the current PM is all of that and inept in every dimension except his own political survival.

The BBC is state media, so unfortunately not surprising.

Not saying this is a cure all. But we should support British independent media.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/declassified-uk/

https://www.thecanary.co/

I was amazed that I also couldn't find any prominent mention about this when it passed, but that only cemented my view that our media are not free. They will not publish something that could outrage public against an agenda that has got a green light and has to go through no matter what. Even so called outlets that praise themselves as being "anti-tories" have not published anything. There is plenty of stories like that and it is extremely worrying. I think there is corruption going on at a scale not seen before and there is media embargo. One striking story I remember when it was discovered that husband of drugs minister (that minister had anti-cannabis stance) was running medical cannabis crops making the UK biggest exporter of cannabis in the world. When this was discovered only RT wrote about that and weeks later they where threatened their license will be pulled (on a "unrelated" matter, to not bring attention). Only few months later, when everyone was talking about it online, BBC dared to publish the story and drugs minister promised to withdraw herself from anything cannabis related and she kept the office. Can you imagine that in a civilised country?!

Mass, warrantless surveillance in the US has be going on for 30+ years, I can assure you.

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