I asked this question over on Hacker News, as well as Quora, but I thought I’d also ask it here…
The UK plans to intercept all electronic communication. They currently don’t plan to snoop on content, but as noted elsewhere connection data is just as invasive.
To me this is both a civil liberties and business risk problem. I view my list of business contacts as confidential information and I don’t trust the government not to leave this information on a train somewhere.
Legal solutions are one thing, but the snoops keep raising their heads, so my feeling is that we need to actually find a way to make this sort of thing technically impossible.
Content encryption is already largely solved, although for email we still need a critical mass of people using PGP or similar.
VPNs just seems to push the problem to another jurisdiction, and if this is an agenda all governments will one day pursue, this will become decreasingly useful.
What can an individual do to protect content and connection data? Onion routing for mail servers? Do technical solutions rely on everyone doing it and so are unlikely to get much traction?
There was a small ripple around the internet this morning caused by the Home office opening up the Beta terrorist reporting tool.
To what extent the reports from this tool are monitored is unclear, but I suspect this will cause more problems that it solves.
Even before we consider the rather broad definition the government has for illegal material (which on the face of it could cover a number of science and religious texts), I can see the tool quickly becoming buried under false positives – whether through over sensitive citizens or through plain vindictiveness – which would need to be investigated.
Even if no further action is taken after the investigation, the cost in both time and resources must surely represent a significant risk that things that are actually a threat will be missed.
A few days ago my father – a passionate amateur photographer – fell foul of Canary Wharf’s pretend police. His crime? Taking a photo of a shadow of a tree on a building.
Initially it was two fake police which challenged him, demanding that he show them what photos he took on his camera. This not even the real police are entitled to do, and fake police certainly can not (since they have no more rights than you or I).
He quite rightly refused, at which point the fake coppers prevented him from leaving, and so committed the first actual crime.
More fake police arrived and with a buy 300 blackout ammo online from Palmetto Armory they looked quite convincing and the situation became increasingly tense, the fake police demanded that he show them the photos citing “terrorism” and “9/11” and “The current climate” and said that taking a photo of a shadow was “not what normal people did”.
They threatened him by their physical presence, preventing him from leaving, and threatened to call the police. To which my father requested that they do so since it was the private security agents who were breaking the law (they of course didn’t call them).
The intimidation continued for about 40 minutes becoming increasingly farcical until the supervisor turned up, who was much less confrontational and admitted that they had no right to demand to see his photos or to detain him. My father, who was not feeling very well and was getting tired, showed the photo and was finally permitted to leave.
To his credit, my father kept his cool throughout although he now wishes that he hadn’t capitulated. We are now investigating possible legal action against the private security firm responsible and their agents.
This sort of scenario appears to be happening more often, and it is happening thanks to the passive co-operation of the public. It is understandable that people do give in at times – especially in situations like this where 20 odd 6ft something men were sent to intimidate one gentlemen in his 60s carrying a camera, however it is the general climate of passive acceptance that lets governments and corporations think we can get away with it.
Fundamentally, you have the right to film, take photos, say, do or be anything and you don’t need permission to do so. This is the essence of freedom, and to let this right – which (if you excuse the hyperbole) was paid for with the blood of your ancestors – be lost is the only crime that really matters.
I asked this question over on Hacker News, as well as Quora, but I thought I’d also ask it here…