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Big Brother is watching YOU

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Lofty's right, then. You are very naive.

 
I think I may need to look up the definition of naive because I don't think Chris is being naive. I just think he is saying that he isn't bothered about the things you are, surely he is entitled to that without being insulted.

Personally I don't like the idea of it but I can understand where Chris is coming from. He is right that not every e-mail is going to be read. It will be based on a series of triggers and red flags and your e-mails would only be specifically extracted for scrutiny if the powers that be thought there was a reason for doing so. If he doesn't care about that then why is he being naive? I appreciate that you mean that he isn't taking on board what other uses the Govt would make of the data but so far I haven't seen anyone state what they are and point out what it is Chris should be worried about.

 
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im 50/50 on this. i sort of agree with chris in that if you have nothing to hide then theres no problem. though i also wouldnt be too happy with some unknown person scanning any personal emails i send. its a similar argument over cctv and ID cards. if you have nothing to hide then you wont have a problem, in fact these two things will help you a bit. i know an email is a much more personal thing than where you walk or where you go and as such can understand why people would find it a massive intrusion. but i doubt it would impact on the majority of users, only a select few would find it a problem. i also think it will be a massively overblown version of the truth thats being reported, especaially when you consider where its come from.

 
naive = deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment ; credulous

I do think that to accept without concern the right of any government to examine the private mail, be it email or snail mail, of a citizen, is a sign of lack of wordly wisdom, hence naive.

 
But he (Christ) still won't answer the question - would you object to someone reading your post in the same way that the government proposes to give itself the right to read every single one of anyone's emails. Just a simple yes or no.

And another question. Are you in favour of this proposal .. to give the government the right to read every single one of your emails. Again, just a simple yes or no.

As for it being a problem? You say you can't see how it's a problem - sorry that makes you naive in the extreme. It's privacy that is at the heart of the issue, not whether you've got anything to hide, but whether the government should have the right to pry. Because pry they will. As for keywords being used as triggers. Merely discussing/mentioning certain issues will then result in your emails being targeted. Maybe you care deeply about global terrorism, perhaps it's a frequent topic of conversation - you could take a perfectly sound anti-terrorist stance and still end up targeted as a result of keywords frequently cropping up. Oh but that's ok, the police and the government will realise your innocence and so you have nothing to worry about. Perhaps.

Back to privacy: If you don't give a damn about your own right to privacy, that gives you no right to waive everybody else's right to privacy. The wish for privacy does NOT equal something to hide; privacy is a basic human right in all but the most totalitarian of regimes.

I haven't started on the freedom of speech issue yet. This kind of monitoring/tracking, call it what you will, could also be used to censor web pages. Couldn't happen? Web pages have already disappeared as a result of taking an anti-copyright lobby stance. Take a look at the Australian's government plans to restrict Internet access - which are said to be more stringent than those imposed in Iran.

So where could all this lead: A totalitarian regime that wants total control over your every thought, your every action; 24 hour surveillance in public and in private. A dictatorship that treats its citizens as guilty until proved innocent. A postal service subject to the same scrutiny as the proposals for emails. It could never happen here, you say? Oh yes it could.

But never mind all that. You carry on, dismiss the entire issue because "I've got nothing to hide".

 
Thank you for making my point for me moi - because Chris isn't concerned about the same thing you are you assume he is deficient in worldly wisdom.

 
Some quotes that sum up my feelings about e-snooping.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Voltaire

"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds." John Perry Barlow

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." V for Vendetta

To be apathetic about this proposal is to be complicit in the making of a totalitarian regime.

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe political systems where a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics. The term was applied to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. A perfect example of a present-day Totalitarian state is North Korea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian

 
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Lofty

First off let me admit I am being deliberately provocative here to try and get the debate going so don't get the hump with me!!

So to my point

I totally agree with your right to privacy and totally agree with your claim that nobody should be able to waive that right. So why is it that you think should allow someone to waive a gay person's right to get married. Surely it is right of every human being to be allowed to get married and therefore preventing a gay person from doing it is like saying they are not entitled to those same rights just because they are gay. (mixing threads I know)

 
Perhaps if they did start monitoring e-mail they would realise they need to spend a hell of a lot more on education.

And perhaps a point to remember is that you leave footprints across the whole net every time you log on anyway and people can read your e-mails today without too much hassle. No e-mail ever goes from A to B directly.

 
loz said:
LoftyFirst off let me admit I am being deliberately provocative here to try and get the debate going so don't get the hump with me!!

So to my point

I totally agree with your right to privacy and totally agree with your claim that nobody should be able to waive that right. So why is it that you think should allow someone to waive a gay person's right to get married. Surely it is right of every human being to be allowed to get married and therefore preventing a gay person from doing it is like saying they are not entitled to those same rights just because they are gay. (mixing threads I know)
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So you didn't like my answer in the other thread? In which you say you can't see the harm in it (gay marriage) - I say I can't see the point in it. Same sex marriage is a modern invention; I don't think even the Romans or the Greeks, societies that were extremely tolerant of homosexuality, had same sex marriages. Not that ancient Greek or Roman society can be used as a reliable yardstick against which to measure present day attitudes, but the point here is that (as far as I know) at no time in history, until very very recently, has there been any desire or requirement for people of the same sex to actually get married.

Simply put: there's no need for it.

 
Lofty said:
So you didn't like my answer in the other thread? In which you say you can't see the harm in it (gay marriage) - I say I can't see the point in it. Same sex marriage is a modern invention; I don't think even the Romans or the Greeks, societies that were extremely tolerant of homosexuality, had same sex marriages. Not that ancient Greek or Roman society can be used as a reliable yardstick against which to measure present day attitudes, but the point here is that (as far as I know) at no time in history, until very very recently, has there been any desire or requirement for people of the same sex to actually get married.Simply put: there's no need for it.
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read this lofty, it may open your eyes a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions

i must admit i was surprised.

 
No need for it in your mind but clearly a need for it in the minds of a lot of gay people.

There was a time when woman were not allowed the vote and didn't care about it, but times changed and woman started realising they were surely entitled - I dare say in the mind of many men there was no need for it.

There was a time when a black man couldn't sit on a certain bench, stand in a certain queue, get a certain job and way back black people didn't question it but then times changed and black people started to rebel - I dare say in the minds of many white people there was no need for it.

I just don't see how the argument of 'well it was never needed before' is a rational argument for why something can't be done now. There was a time not long ago when you would have gone to prison for being gay, then we moved on from that and just coasted along in an era when being openly gay just meant you ran the risk of getting beaten black and blue

Is it a great surprise that in those times gay people were not openly shouting about a desire for equal treatment - if they did they faced serious repercussions?

Now that society is becoming more tolerant they are just asking for the same rights everyone else has, and the rights that they should have always had. It is about their need for it.

 
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what goes around, comes around......so to speak.....ahem...... :P

 
Here's another article. Pay particular attention to the final paragraph:

Britain’s Digital Surveillance: Hiding from Her Majesty’s ‘Black Boxes’By Christopher Parsons

Nov 7, 2008, 12:20

There are plans to deploy ‘black boxes’ in UK ISPs’ networking hubs so that the government can capture and record every website that UK citizens visit. A similar operation is in full swing in the United States, where the NSA has hooked up their own ‘black boxes’ to American Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs) networks to capture ‘questionable content’ passing through these networks. Unlike the Americans, who only examine questionable content, the UK government is planning to develop a database to hold the contents of all messages passing along their nations’ telecommunications networks.

While this issue has recently been sensationalized in the media, I have yet to find a source addressing the actual technologies that will (likely) drive these ‘black boxes’. I want to address that deficiency, calling attention to the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies that will presumably be responsible for examining, categorizing, and heuristically evaluating the data flowing across British ISPs’ networks. In this piece, I want to briefly explain how DPI technology works, its technical limitations, and modes of actively evading its surveillance powers. Evading DPI-enabled surveillance is essential to participate in free, unsurveyed discourse in the contemporary digital environments that Western citizens find themselves within.

DPI Technologies

ISPs are uniquely situated to survey all of the data traffic that their customers are involved in. ISPs, unlike Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft, act as gateways that individuals must pass through to access the Internet-at-large. Thus, any attempt to comprehensively survey an individual’s online activities must occur at the ISP-level. While simultaneously monitoring millions of customers might seem a Herculean task, or one firmly situated in the realm of science fiction, networking hardware vendors such as Cisco, L-1, Ellacoya Networks, and Procera Networks have risen to the challenge, producing devices that can survey, filter, alter, and censor content in real time, as it passes through ISPs’ networks.

Packets of data traversing the Internet are composed of two parts: a header and a payload. The header holds the general addressing information – where the packet is going, what order it should arrive at its destination in, and so on. The payload holds information about the application that sent the packet, as well as the particular contents of the packet itself – in the case of email, each packet holds the address that it should be delivered to, a bit of information that notes that an email application sent the packet, and some of the email’s text. Metaphorically, a packet can be thought of in the terms of postal mail: the header corresponds with the address on the outside of the envelope, and the payload the letter itself.

DPI equipment lets ISPs examine the header information as well as the payload. This means that ISPs can examine the text of email, instant messages, cellular phone text messages, and unencrypted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications, in real time, as these messages are transmitted. Given the present state of available networking equipment that the world’s networking vendors have made available to the market, I strongly expect that the UK government’s ‘Black Boxes’ are, in essence, DPI devices that capture data as it moves across UK ISPs’ networks, and will transmit the contents of those packets to government databases while analyzing packets’ contents to identify if they are carrying ‘questionable’ payloads.

The Effectiveness of DPI

The Internet Evolution actually tested DPI equipment provided by Ellacoya and Ipoque earlier this year. In their tests, they found that these vendors' devices could not filter ‘unwanted’ content 100% of the time – the applications targeted by the devices continued to function, although at reduced speeds, in spite of the censoring and filtering heuristics that the devices employ. This suggests that attempting to capture unencrypted Voice over Internet Protocol conversations, as an example, will never be fully successful because some packets associated with a conversation will not be correctly identified, captured, and saved in meaningful ways by the UK government’s ‘black boxes’. Moreover, and pertaining to the following section, the tests that the Internet Evolution performed suggest that data-encryption strategies can prevent the capture and filtering of data traffic.

Evading DPI Surveillance

It seems that every day we hear about a new data scandal in the UK; some new database is accidentally leaked, putting the information of hundreds, thousands, or millions of UK citizens at risk of being used for nefarious purposes. The suggestion that all citizens’ digitized conversations and online actions be captured and stored by the UK government only heightens worries: what will happen when (not if) this proposed database is breached? How much information will be accessible to criminals?

Fortunately, UK citizens can prevent their government’s DPI equipment from ever capturing conversations or online actions, and thus simultaneously limit exposure to the risks of identity theft and ubiquitous government surveillance. A core weakness of DPI equipment is that it cannot read the contents of fully encrypted communications. This means that when you send or receive encrypted data packets that the government’s devices will be unable to capture the contents of your email, your VoIP sessions, or your instant messages.

Encryption isn’t something that is terribly hard to set up; Voltage Security has a product that will let Windows users encrypt their sent email at a low annual cost. By default, Skype encrypts its data traffic to prevent surreptitious snooping of your private conversations, actually providing more privacy than talking on the phone. When it turns to instant messaging, there are several open source clients such as Trillian (for Windows) and Adium (for OS X and Linux) that have built-in encryption and compatibility with all major messaging services. Finally, when browsing websites, access the ‘https’ versions of the sites whenever possible to encrypt data traffic to and from the websites.

Why Hide from Her Majesty?

You may be asking: why should I bother with this encryption nonsense? I don’t have anything to hide – as a law-abiding citizen. I find it offensive, but not necessary ‘dangerous’, that my government is snooping on me. Only criminals have something to hide!

The collection and centralization of large amounts of personal data gives criminals a single point that they can attack to access to vast swathes of information about law-abiding citizens. As the UK government persistently demonstrates, it cannot be trusted to secure the citizen data that it holds. By continuing to predominantly send unencrypted messages, you greatly enhance the chances that your personal information could be used to open lines of credit, create phony identification documents, and generally cause mischief in your good name. Encrypting your data, hiding your personal thoughts and communications from the proposed UK ‘black boxes’, is essential to prevent your identity being stolen, and ensures that you can continue to engage in free speech without worrying feeling the chilling effects of persistent government surveillance. Protecting your communications isn’t about hiding because you’re a criminal: it’s about limiting criminals from taking advantage of your good name while protecting your enshrined right of free speech.
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LINK

 
The data security part of it concerns me far more. I was going to mention it earlier but I thought Chris was getting an excessively hard time so left it at that point. The Government's track record with regard to data handling and security inspires as much confidence as a Brazilian goalkeeper.

When you think of how valuable the sort of data we are talking about would be in the wrong hands and think of how easy it would be for that data to get into those hands then you have something to worry about.

Add to that current plans for the children's database in England and Wales (ContactPoint) and you see a picture of a Government lording over a ridiculous amount of sensitive data but without offering any confidence that it will be properly looked after.

Furthermore, even if the data was appropriately secured, there is still little or no control over that one bad egg (and there are more than one) who has legitimate access to the data and decides to cash in on it.

 
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Deficient in world wisdom?

Think it's time to exit stage right on this thread then.

 
Big brother ain't watching me. I ain't got a big brother. I've got a big sister though. Does she count?

 
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