On today's edition of the BBC five o'clock news Eddie Mair gave a pathetic Liberal Democrat Home Office Minister a good kicking over the new Data Retention laws which are to be rushed through Parliament.
At one point he asked the poor sod if the public should find it fishy that all the three main political parties were supporting this nonsense.
Of course it is not fishy, Eddie. It just means that our secret police have gathered enough blackmail information on the parties from past data retention that they can force them to do whatever they want. An situation that was entirely foreseeable once that fool Blair was talked into forcing data retention through the EU Parliament and then through the UK Parliament.
Politicians and journalists must be truly stupid if they do not realise they are going to be the main targets of data retention. We might catch a few criminals and terrorists but political power for our UK versions of J Edgar Hoover is the main pay-off from data retention.
They are the masters now and are so confident of their powers that they don't even bother to think up plausible excuses or reasons for their actions.
As Craig Murray says in his latest post, "It is not that they expect us to believe them – they just don’t care. They have the power, and we don’t.
Showing posts with label data retention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label data retention. Show all posts
Liberals kill Snoopers Charter.
The so called Snoopers Charter was an attempt by the UK police and secret police to set up a system spy on everything that we do online.
Kudos to Clegg and the Liberals for killing the proposal [Link]. I thought they had forgotten why some of us vote for them. Maybe they are getting back their identity.
The scheme was supposed to make us safer but was wildly disproportionate to any risk we face.
Not only would it have been a gross invasion of our privacy but it would have given far too much power to the UK's security apparatus. Knowledge is power and the Snoopers Charter would have given enormous power to the secret squirrels. From our mobile phone they would have known where we had been, who we had been with and who we had contacted. From our browsing they would have known what we read online and what we wrote. They would have spied on journalists and politicians and would soon have been able to issue them instructions. They would have acquired enormous political power.
The career of Edgar Hoover of the FBI is a lesson to all politicians of the risks of allowing the squirrels to know too much. Hoover used his files to blackmail politicians and defy Presidents. We don't want to create an Edgar Hoover in the UK.
If this paranoid just consider what Putin did before his present job. Consider that George Bush used to run the CIA.
BTW - In all the reporting on the Snoopers Charter I have not noticed any naming of the people behind the scheme. It was a shadowy body called the Joint Intelligence Committee. I am not sure why journalists have been so reluctant to identify this very dodgy group. They are the same people who want to set up secret courts so the public does not find out about the secret squirrel's misdeeds.
Kudos to Clegg and the Liberals for killing the proposal [Link]. I thought they had forgotten why some of us vote for them. Maybe they are getting back their identity.
The scheme was supposed to make us safer but was wildly disproportionate to any risk we face.
Not only would it have been a gross invasion of our privacy but it would have given far too much power to the UK's security apparatus. Knowledge is power and the Snoopers Charter would have given enormous power to the secret squirrels. From our mobile phone they would have known where we had been, who we had been with and who we had contacted. From our browsing they would have known what we read online and what we wrote. They would have spied on journalists and politicians and would soon have been able to issue them instructions. They would have acquired enormous political power.
The career of Edgar Hoover of the FBI is a lesson to all politicians of the risks of allowing the squirrels to know too much. Hoover used his files to blackmail politicians and defy Presidents. We don't want to create an Edgar Hoover in the UK.
If this paranoid just consider what Putin did before his present job. Consider that George Bush used to run the CIA.
BTW - In all the reporting on the Snoopers Charter I have not noticed any naming of the people behind the scheme. It was a shadowy body called the Joint Intelligence Committee. I am not sure why journalists have been so reluctant to identify this very dodgy group. They are the same people who want to set up secret courts so the public does not find out about the secret squirrel's misdeeds.
An alternative to Google
For the past year I have been using the DuckDuckGo search engine as an alternative to Google.
Don't be put off by the idiotic name, it is a pretty good search engine. It does not have all the services offered by Google. There is no translation and DDG's image search is not as good.
However, it works well for web searching and its privacy policies are much better. Whenever you use Google it collects information about you and uses it to build up a profile which it can sell to advertisers. DDG claims that it does not do that and does not track its users. It also filters out dross from 'content mills'.
"DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of many sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot.
DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information and uses cookies only when needed. Weinberg states "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information.
Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, like Demand Media's eHow, which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg says is, "...low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index." DuckDuckGo also filters pages with substantial advertising."
Read more about it at
Wikipedia
Washington Post
PCWorld
New York Times
Don't be put off by the idiotic name, it is a pretty good search engine. It does not have all the services offered by Google. There is no translation and DDG's image search is not as good.
However, it works well for web searching and its privacy policies are much better. Whenever you use Google it collects information about you and uses it to build up a profile which it can sell to advertisers. DDG claims that it does not do that and does not track its users. It also filters out dross from 'content mills'.
"DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of many sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot.
DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information and uses cookies only when needed. Weinberg states "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information.
Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, like Demand Media's eHow, which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg says is, "...low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index." DuckDuckGo also filters pages with substantial advertising."
Read more about it at
Wikipedia
Washington Post
PCWorld
New York Times
Using draft emails to exchange secret messages
In a BBC radio 4 programme a chap was talking about his attempts to recover some British people who had been kidnapped in Iraq.
The kidnappers used an ingenious means of communication. They opened a webmail account and sent the password to the negotiator. Whenever the two sides had to communicate one party would write an email message, but instead of sending the message they would save it as a draft.
Later the other party would open the account and read the draft email. If they wanted to reply they would add to the draft.
Because the messages were never sent over the internet they were invisible to traffic interception and data retention.
The method is certainly more secure than exchanging emails, but not completely secure because the email provider [e.g. Hotmail] would have a record of the IP addresses used to log on to the account. That might not matter if the parties used internet cafes.
The kidnappers used an ingenious means of communication. They opened a webmail account and sent the password to the negotiator. Whenever the two sides had to communicate one party would write an email message, but instead of sending the message they would save it as a draft.
Later the other party would open the account and read the draft email. If they wanted to reply they would add to the draft.
Because the messages were never sent over the internet they were invisible to traffic interception and data retention.
The method is certainly more secure than exchanging emails, but not completely secure because the email provider [e.g. Hotmail] would have a record of the IP addresses used to log on to the account. That might not matter if the parties used internet cafes.
Freedom from surveillance
"The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness."
~Justice William O. Douglas~
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness."
~Justice William O. Douglas~
All UK citizens to carry electronic tagging device
The UK Government announced today that all UK citizens would be required to carry an electronic tagging device. The pocket sized device will send out a frequent GPS signal to a network of radio masts. This will allow the Government to have a continuous record of the location of all its citizens. The device will also record all contacts between citizens. Whenever someone speaks to another person the device will record the other party’s identity, and the time and duration of the conversation. Your tag will then transmit this information a database where it will be stored for years.
To keep down Government expenditure citizens will be required to buy their own tagging device and pay a monthly service charge. A Government spokesman said the tagging devices were an essential weapon in the fight against paedophile terrorists.
No, not really. Though, given the recent activities of our Labour Government, the idea does not really seem all that improbable.
However, the real reason why the Government is not going to bring in such a scheme is that it is unnecessary. Most of us are already carrying an electronic tagging device that does just what is described above, and more.
Our mobile phones send out regular signals to the masts of the phone network. By a process of triangulation [more] our location can be accurately plotted. This happens every few minutes. This location data is then stored in a database under a scheme of data retention under a voluntary arrangement between the Government and the telecom companies. This scheme was introduced by Jack Straw when he was Home Secretary in the first Labour Government. This data retention scheme is now going to become compulsory in all EU countries, thanks to a scheme pushed through by Tony Blair. Are the police using this retained data to monitor you? The answer is, yes they are. [more]
The date, time, and duration of all your calls is also recorded; and, of course, the numbers of the people you have been speaking to. That means the Government has a record of all your family, friend and business contacts. If you are a politician or journalist don’t expect to have any confidential informants.
This may be the first time you have read about this being done. That’s not surprising. The UK media has been curiously silent about data retention. [more]
Your personal tagging device can do much more than just track your location and contacts. The police and MI5 have developed software which can be used to turn on the microphone in your mobile. This can be done even when the phone appears to have been turned off. That allows the secret squirrels to listen to all your conversations.
Lauren Weinstein's has a blog post and an informative video on this. It is well worth watching.
FT on Data Retention
Informative Financial Times article on EU Data Retention Directive. The Directive would never have happened without unrelenting pressure on the EU from Tony Blair.
The Ft has been the only UK newspaper to give the subject adequate coverage. Otherwise, the UK press has been strangely silent.
The Ft has been the only UK newspaper to give the subject adequate coverage. Otherwise, the UK press has been strangely silent.
Data retention and spiderwebs
Wired has a nice article on the Enron email archive. Apparently this was placed in the public domain and is available for people to download. This is the first time of large archive of real emails has been available and researchers have been using it to test various analysis techniques. One researcher has produced the following –
Software takes the emails and generates a map of relationships. It can tell investigators who has been emailing X, and who X emails. The relationships are expressed in the form of a series of diagrams.
This is a form of traffic analysis and has been used by police and intelligence services for years. The diagrams that are produced are called spider webs. This is a very good name because they are highly effective at trapping people.
Once investigators have one suspect they can analyse their phone calls or emails to identify all their contacts. Find one member of a group of political activists and soon you have them all. Of course, it does not work on professional terrorists or spies. They are well aware of the risks, and know how to stop a web being spun.
Spider webbing is why the EU has passed a data retention directive that will result in all EU internet and telephone traffic being retained and available for analysis. It is also why the FBI is trying to get data retention established in the USA. It’s a great technique for identifying those troublemakers who might disagree with the authorities.
Data retention does not save the content of messages, but it does not have to. Traffic analysis is a very effective technique and does not need to know what was said or written to work.
Spderwebbing also has applications in business as this Wired article explains.
"memos, presentations and other scraps of corporate intelligence are increasingly finding their way into vast "electronic discovery" centers like the one Kroll Ontrack operates here near Minneapolis.
Day and night, rows of whirring, blinking computers sock away enormous batches of digital records sent by companies involved in lawsuits. Other files are discovered deep in hard drives -- wedged between everything from personal e-mails to pornography -- by Kroll Ontrack forensic teams whose code names keep their missions secret."
Software takes the emails and generates a map of relationships. It can tell investigators who has been emailing X, and who X emails. The relationships are expressed in the form of a series of diagrams.
This is a form of traffic analysis and has been used by police and intelligence services for years. The diagrams that are produced are called spider webs. This is a very good name because they are highly effective at trapping people.
Once investigators have one suspect they can analyse their phone calls or emails to identify all their contacts. Find one member of a group of political activists and soon you have them all. Of course, it does not work on professional terrorists or spies. They are well aware of the risks, and know how to stop a web being spun.
Spider webbing is why the EU has passed a data retention directive that will result in all EU internet and telephone traffic being retained and available for analysis. It is also why the FBI is trying to get data retention established in the USA. It’s a great technique for identifying those troublemakers who might disagree with the authorities.
Data retention does not save the content of messages, but it does not have to. Traffic analysis is a very effective technique and does not need to know what was said or written to work.
Spderwebbing also has applications in business as this Wired article explains.
"memos, presentations and other scraps of corporate intelligence are increasingly finding their way into vast "electronic discovery" centers like the one Kroll Ontrack operates here near Minneapolis.
Day and night, rows of whirring, blinking computers sock away enormous batches of digital records sent by companies involved in lawsuits. Other files are discovered deep in hard drives -- wedged between everything from personal e-mails to pornography -- by Kroll Ontrack forensic teams whose code names keep their missions secret."
Data Retention - the strange silence of the British media
The EU Parliament has just passed the Directive on Data Retention by 378 to 197 votes. It will then be obligatory for each country in the EU to pass national laws implementing the Directive. The result will be that the telephone calls, emails, internet usage, and even location and movements of all 450 million citizens of the EU will be subject to state surveillance. Everything will be recorded and kept for up to two years. This scheme was forced through the EU by Tony Blair.
How do the citizens of the UK feel about this? Well, they probably don’t even know it has happened because the story has received hardly any coverage in the British national media.
I did a search for "data retention" on the BBC web site. There have been a total of three items on data retention in the past three months. Why wasn’t there more coverage? Maybe the BBC was too busy with cat up a tree stories. Maybe they had a call from the Downing Street Press Office.
I then did a search on LexisNexis for mentions of data retention in any national newspaper during the last three months. I found a total of fifteen items as follows -
Financial Times - 6 items
Independent - 2 items
Times - 2 items
Guardian - 3 items
Telegraph - 1 item
Observer - 1 item
No other UK national newspaper even mentioned the story.
What is the matter with these numptys? Is the story too technical for them? Don’t they think imposing a draconian surveillance regime on 450 million people is important? Don’t they bother to check on what Brussels is doing?
Clearly they have not worked out that journalists and politicians will be the prime targets when the secret squirrels start doing traffic analysis on the retained data.
No wonder Britain is sleepwalking into a police state when these clowns are our press guardians.
How do the citizens of the UK feel about this? Well, they probably don’t even know it has happened because the story has received hardly any coverage in the British national media.
I did a search for "data retention" on the BBC web site. There have been a total of three items on data retention in the past three months. Why wasn’t there more coverage? Maybe the BBC was too busy with cat up a tree stories. Maybe they had a call from the Downing Street Press Office.
I then did a search on LexisNexis for mentions of data retention in any national newspaper during the last three months. I found a total of fifteen items as follows -
Financial Times - 6 items
Independent - 2 items
Times - 2 items
Guardian - 3 items
Telegraph - 1 item
Observer - 1 item
No other UK national newspaper even mentioned the story.
What is the matter with these numptys? Is the story too technical for them? Don’t they think imposing a draconian surveillance regime on 450 million people is important? Don’t they bother to check on what Brussels is doing?
Clearly they have not worked out that journalists and politicians will be the prime targets when the secret squirrels start doing traffic analysis on the retained data.
No wonder Britain is sleepwalking into a police state when these clowns are our press guardians.
Data Retention – How did the Scottish MEPs vote?
The EU Parliament passed the Directive on Data Retention by 378 to 197 votes. After it has been passed by the Council of Ministers it will be obligatory for each country in the EU to pass national laws implementing the Directive. If you want to know more about data retention you can read the Wikipedia article on the subject. If you want to know why data retention is a bad idea you can read this.
The Directive was only passed because the Party of the European Socialists (PES) [which includes the UK Labour party], and the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats (EPP-ED) groups [which includes the UK Conservative party]. You can read more about the EU parliamentary groups here. It is not clear why both these groups voted for this iniquitous scheme. No doubt some dirty little deal was done behind the scenes to persuade these groups to sell out our civil liberties.
The Spy Blog has done a nice analysis of how MEPs voted. You can read it here and see how your MEP acted. None of the Labour MEPs voted against, but ten Conservative MEPs rebelled. Only the Liberal Democrats were united in voting against the directive.
Four of the seven Scottish MEPs voted against the directive. They were
John Purvis – Conservative
Ian Houghton – SNP
Alyn Smith – SNP
Elspeth Attwooll – Liberal Democrat
David Martin of the Labour Party did not vote.
The two who sold out the civil rights of the people of Scotland and of Europe by voting for the Directive were
Catherine Stihler – Labour
Struan Stevenson – Conservative.
I wrote to all seven Scottish MEPs [note that if you live in Scotland all seven MEPs represent you [reference]] before the vote, and four replied. I have written to all seven again. Just a very short note, either thanking them for voting against the directive, or saying I was sorry they had either not voted, or had voted for the Directive.
Why don’t you do the same? You can use the Write to Them site and the entire process is very easy. You could also write to them directly via this site. I think it does no harm no remind our Members of Parliament that the internet has changed the rules of the game and their activities are under surveillance. I am sure Ms Stihler and Mr. Stevenson will particularly appreciate being watched.
The Directive was only passed because the Party of the European Socialists (PES) [which includes the UK Labour party], and the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats (EPP-ED) groups [which includes the UK Conservative party]. You can read more about the EU parliamentary groups here. It is not clear why both these groups voted for this iniquitous scheme. No doubt some dirty little deal was done behind the scenes to persuade these groups to sell out our civil liberties.
The Spy Blog has done a nice analysis of how MEPs voted. You can read it here and see how your MEP acted. None of the Labour MEPs voted against, but ten Conservative MEPs rebelled. Only the Liberal Democrats were united in voting against the directive.
Four of the seven Scottish MEPs voted against the directive. They were
John Purvis – Conservative
Ian Houghton – SNP
Alyn Smith – SNP
Elspeth Attwooll – Liberal Democrat
David Martin of the Labour Party did not vote.
The two who sold out the civil rights of the people of Scotland and of Europe by voting for the Directive were
Catherine Stihler – Labour
Struan Stevenson – Conservative.
I wrote to all seven Scottish MEPs [note that if you live in Scotland all seven MEPs represent you [reference]] before the vote, and four replied. I have written to all seven again. Just a very short note, either thanking them for voting against the directive, or saying I was sorry they had either not voted, or had voted for the Directive.
Why don’t you do the same? You can use the Write to Them site and the entire process is very easy. You could also write to them directly via this site. I think it does no harm no remind our Members of Parliament that the internet has changed the rules of the game and their activities are under surveillance. I am sure Ms Stihler and Mr. Stevenson will particularly appreciate being watched.
Spied on for the rest of your life
On the 12th December 2005 the European Parliament will consider a proposal to introduce compulsory data retention throughout the EU. If they vote for that proposal your government will be able to keep a record of all your telephone calls mobile and fixed line], your location whenever you are carrying a mobile, your web browsing and SMS messages. Nowhere else in the world, even China, has anything like it.
Once data retention is in place it will be extremely difficult to remove it. The whole of Europe will have taken a major step closer to building a continent wide surveillance society. You can then look forward to being spied upon for the rest of your life. As we live more of our lives online the surveillance will give even more power to governments.
What can you do about it?
In fact, you can do a lot. Go to the Write to Them website and send an email to your Members of the European Parliament. The site is very easy to use and it works. I have already used Write to Them to contact all the seven MEPs and it produced an excellent response. Some MEPs are already opposed to the data retention proposal. We need to put pressure on the rest.
Do it, or you will be sorry when it is too late.
Mobile phone tracking - US v UK
Using triangulation it is now possible to establish the location of a mobile phone to within a few metres. This is possible as long as the phone is turned on, the owner does not have to be making a call.
In the USA judges have rejected two separate Department of Justice requests to track someone’s mobile phone without probable cause.
In the UK the location of everybody’s mobile phone is continuously recorded by the telephone companies, and the data retained for one year. This is done at the request of the UK Government. If you carry a mobile phone the government knows everywhere you have been for the past twelve months.
The UK Home Office is now trying to persuade the EU to adopt a similar policy for all countries in the European Union.
What happens when you write to your MEP?
About two months ago I wrote to the seven Scottish Members of the European Parliament about the UK Government’s proposal for a EU Directive on data retention. This is an iniquitous proposal, and I wanted to find out what my MEPs thought about it.
I used the www.writetothem.com website to send each of them an email. This site is very easy to use. All you have to do is enter your post code and the site identifies your MEPs, MP, MSP and local councilor. You can then send them an email directly from the writetothem web site.
I have had replies from three of the seven MEP.
Catherine Stihler [Labour] indicated she would be following the party line and supporting data retention. It was quite a long reply in which she clearly set out her position. Bizarrely, she wrote to me rather than sending me an email. From that I would guess that she is not computer literate and so does not understand the implications of what she is supporting.
Alyn Smith [SNP] indicated that he was sceptical about the data retention proposal. Again, it was quite a long reply.
John Purvis [Conservative] was the most sceptical about the proposal. A shorter reply than Alyn Smith’s, but clear enough.
The following have not replied to my email.
Espeth Attwooll [Liberal]
Struan Stevenson [Conservative]
Ian Houghton [SNP]
David Martin [Labour]
I am surprised that all Members of Parliament are not up in arms about data retention. After all, they are going to be the main targets of the traffic analysis that data retention will allow. I am sure the secret squirrels will soon be going through their traffic data to find out who they are in contact with, and if they have any interesting pressure points.
Data Retention – what is it all about?
Perhaps you have read something about data retention, but it all sounds too technical to bother about. Well, think of it like this. Image that a little man in a bowler hat suddenly starts following you everywhere you go. He has a notebook, and in it he writes down the name of everybody you talk to. He also writes down the length of each conversation, and where you were at the time. He keeps doing this for at least a year, and maybe three years. He soon has a complete list of all your friends, business contacts, everybody you have spoken to. Are you having an affair, are you engaged in confidential business negotiations, or maybe just addicted to calling sex chat lines? The little man has it all written down. Don’t worry though. He is just doing it to protect you. Your secrets are safe with him.
The little man works for the government, but you are not sure which part. The police, MI5, Inland Revenue, Customs & Excise; he is not saying, and you cannot find out. Nor can you find out what he is doing with this information. What kind of impression is he forming of you? Is he writing all the stuff down correctly? You don’t know and you cannot find out.
He also writes down the title of every book, every newspaper and every magazine that you read. Again, don’t worry; he is just doing it to protect you. As long as you are not a troublemaker you have nothing to fear.
Welcome to the world of data retention. What it is all about is keeping a record of all your telephone calls, instant messages, web browsing and emails. That’s the data that is being retained. At the moment it is being kept for one year. The UK Government has persuaded the EU to pass EU wide data retention legislation.
Why are they doing this? To keep us safe is the official answer. Because the police and MI5 want the information is a better answer. The police always ask for more powers. It’s a win-win situation for them. If they get the powers they might come in useful. If they don’t they have an excuse for failure. Will data retention help the police? Yes, it will. So would us all having a barcode tattooed on out foreheads and being electronically tagged.
Will it hurt us if they have this information? After all, you have nothing to hide. Well, it would not hurt you if somebody came around to your house tonight and looked through your bathroom window, or, read your mail, or riffled through your possessions.
My worry is that it gives the state too much information about us, and information is power. I wonder how many MPs really understand what is going on. Are you a dissident MP? Maybe you made an unwise telephone call to Miss Whiplash a couple of years ago. A quick call from the little man to a friendly journalist at the Sun and you will soon be back in line. Are you a journalist with a nice stable of confidential sources? If you plan on keeping them confidential you had better start communicating by smoke signals.
Are you engaged in a lucrative business deal? Let’s hope the little man is trustworthy, and doesn’t get to thinking about a little private enterprise. Do you and your friends want to organise a campaign against some government policy? Thanks to the wonders of traffic analysis the little man will soon know all your names and will be writing them down on his list of troublemakers to be dealt with later.
Police states do not suddenly appear, like somebody leaping out of a cupbooard to scare us. It is a gradual process. All we have to do to lose all our liberties is do nothing.
Click on the data retention label to the right for more posts on the topic.
The little man works for the government, but you are not sure which part. The police, MI5, Inland Revenue, Customs & Excise; he is not saying, and you cannot find out. Nor can you find out what he is doing with this information. What kind of impression is he forming of you? Is he writing all the stuff down correctly? You don’t know and you cannot find out.
He also writes down the title of every book, every newspaper and every magazine that you read. Again, don’t worry; he is just doing it to protect you. As long as you are not a troublemaker you have nothing to fear.
Welcome to the world of data retention. What it is all about is keeping a record of all your telephone calls, instant messages, web browsing and emails. That’s the data that is being retained. At the moment it is being kept for one year. The UK Government has persuaded the EU to pass EU wide data retention legislation.
Why are they doing this? To keep us safe is the official answer. Because the police and MI5 want the information is a better answer. The police always ask for more powers. It’s a win-win situation for them. If they get the powers they might come in useful. If they don’t they have an excuse for failure. Will data retention help the police? Yes, it will. So would us all having a barcode tattooed on out foreheads and being electronically tagged.
Will it hurt us if they have this information? After all, you have nothing to hide. Well, it would not hurt you if somebody came around to your house tonight and looked through your bathroom window, or, read your mail, or riffled through your possessions.
My worry is that it gives the state too much information about us, and information is power. I wonder how many MPs really understand what is going on. Are you a dissident MP? Maybe you made an unwise telephone call to Miss Whiplash a couple of years ago. A quick call from the little man to a friendly journalist at the Sun and you will soon be back in line. Are you a journalist with a nice stable of confidential sources? If you plan on keeping them confidential you had better start communicating by smoke signals.
Are you engaged in a lucrative business deal? Let’s hope the little man is trustworthy, and doesn’t get to thinking about a little private enterprise. Do you and your friends want to organise a campaign against some government policy? Thanks to the wonders of traffic analysis the little man will soon know all your names and will be writing them down on his list of troublemakers to be dealt with later.
Police states do not suddenly appear, like somebody leaping out of a cupbooard to scare us. It is a gradual process. All we have to do to lose all our liberties is do nothing.
Click on the data retention label to the right for more posts on the topic.
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