My internet use is none of Jacqui Smith’s business
Posted on Thursday 16 October, 2008
Filed Under Civil Liberties
MAINLY I spend my time online seeking out delicious home baking recipes and downloading Bible study podcasts. But suppose I was the type of guy who waited until the missus was out and then frantically googled for hot Asian teens? Shouldn’t my surfing habits should be for me to know, and not for Jacqui Smith to find out?
On general libertarian principle, then, the government’s plans to keep a record of every single phone call made, every last text message and email sent, and each website visited by everyone in Britain should be implacably opposed.
After all, I pay Virgin £17.99 a month from my post-tax income, and I am accordingly entitled to full access to whatever filth, depravity, lunatic conspiracy theory, finely honed polemic or government propaganda is out there in cyberspace, without this being recorded for posterity.
It’s none of the state’s business if I wish to watch footage of mature BBWs doing unfeasible things with vegetables, catch up on the latest announcements from the Belarus department of central planning, or even steal a furtive glance at www.labour.org.uk.
We already live in a country with more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world, and a four million strong DNA database that contains details of thousands of UK residents who have committed no crime. I am being entirely serious when I say that I cannot thing of a single state in history that has possessed technology with such obviously repressive potential.
Moreover, the government is determined to force through such tried-and-tested traditional dictatorship faves as ID cards and de facto internment, in the form of 42-day detention without charge.
Sure, it is entirely legit for the cops and the spooks to keep tabs on jihadi talkboards and kiddie fiddler picture exchanges, and maybe one or two other categories of website that don’t immediately spring to mind. But that’s about it.
Given the mindnumbing banality of 99% of the billions of texts sent every day – ‘not sure if turned off iron’, ‘luv u lots!@!!’ and ‘need anyfing from shops? onions?’ – it is highly doubtful that keeping them on file for up to a year takes the GWoT any further forward.
Anyway, only the most stupid al Qa’eda operative would use his own PC or phone for a crucial communication. That’s what nicked mobiles and internet cafes are for.
Or put it another way; if those bastards ever do get their hands on a genuine weapon of mass destruction, it isn’t likely to be because they were able to snap one up cheaply on eBay, is it?
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33 Responses to “My internet use is none of Jacqui Smith’s business”
SWP,bomb Brown, al Qa’eda ,hate, kill MP,osama allah terror.
I assume key words will be fun to overuse.
And don’t forget every car will soon be trackable…
p.s I only threw SWP in for a laugh…
Everyone has there own life and everyone has freedom to surf on the internet in their own way. No one should comment on anyone’s activity.
On the up side HMG will require thousands & thousands of new spooks to read and listen, even if its only those tagged items.
Could this be Gordons cunning plan to reduce employment ?
GW
HMG probably wouldn’t need anyone else, they currently use sophisticated automated programs to scan for either: key words, stranger forms of encryption, unusual behaviour or connections to certain monitored web sites
they’ve been doing that for years
all it would mean is that average users would be tempted to encrypt more of their traffic and use anonymousing technologies, such as TOR, or employ LiveCDs instead of using the hard drive, it is not complex or rocket science
the web won’t stand still if this comes about, technologies will be developed to circumvent such excessive State montoring
It’s useful to look at the NSA for signs of how “monitoring” may proceed.
Over in the States, whistleblowers have described eavesdropping on “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.” They weren’t just being cheeky bastards, though, they were ordered to record and transcribe the conversations. According to James Bamford, the NSA has so much information that they’re “running out of space”.
His Democracy Now! interview is worth listening to: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/14/james_bamford_the_shadow_factory_the
Ben
So, how would you monitor for terrorist plotters using the internet? It said in the Standard that they are increasingly using Skype which does not have the same sort of traceability as mobile phones, although someone in a letter said that that was not true. I am totally technologically illiterate (I just about grasp the science behind an ink-pen), so I would like it explained to me how you would selctively eavesdrop on wrongdoers? Er…that should be how the State could selectively eavesdrop etc, or do you think that there shold not be any sort of surveillance?
What do you mean, New Labour haven’t introduced this yet?
Last Saturday there was a 100,000 strong demo (not organised by “the left” as such) in Berlin against the same kind of thing. Data protection is big on the political agenda over here, for obvious historical reasons. And it was also a European-wide day of action, with (smaller) demos in other cities. London managed a few people with a jazz band (seriously) outside Scotland Yard, apparently. For more details:
http:// radio1984.de/ and
http:// radio.freiheitstattangst.de/ for audio from the demo here and live interviews with people on demos elsewhere (a fair proportion is in English: the MP3s are marked as such- either “English summary”, but also “Jerome from Paris”, “Interview mit Jan Nemetz” (in Prague) and “Interview mit Silvia aus Sofia” are in English
and more details on what went on elsewhere (in English)
http:// http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/lang,en/
or freedomnotfear.eu
Sue: when you write “I am totally technologically illiterate (I just about grasp the science behind an ink-pen)”
..you are qualified to be the Home Secretary.
German Minister for Justice (and responsible for the kinds of laws Dave mentions, already introduced in Germany) was recently asked by some “children reporters” (aged 6-7) on state breakfast television, doing something on technology, “which internet browser she used”. Her answer: “what’s a internet browser?”. It was good to see reporters having such contempt for their interview partner – it was a shame it had to come from some schoolkids. There are some similar quotes from the German Interior Minister, Schäuble, who is getting worked up about being compared to the Stasi (or “Stasi 2.0″ as we put it…), where he tried to explain in parliament how the internet works. “It’s like a telephone exchange but with computers, not telephones” was how I think he put it, but with a lot of umming and ahing, and he was clearly clutching at straws. I think he also said “I don’t actually know”. Which is just crap.
Did you accidentally delete an email message sent in June or July 2005? Don’t worry — your ISP or employer may still have a copy. Following the 7/7 bombings, many organisations with big mail servers were asked to retain any backups surrounding that date. Which is fair, given the circumstances.
And now the government wants to collect information about who we phone or where we surf. Note that the information being collected is about destination (email address, web site, phone number) not content. Even the control freaks know how little information can be stored in perpetuity. But you are going to be screwed if you misdial and phone a radical nutter by accident, or click on a dodgy link.
Mr X will be at the place. bring the essentials. Peter plays a trombone. the red kipper flies at midnight.
That was the old WW2 way of doing it.
nowadays you use a one time pad with encryption. so the same message is
dfve45rsf-kok-090-8iun- hygfr-.;74
If the state monitors somebody and he isn’t doing anything illegal, would he then be liable to arrest for wasting police time?
It might not be the state’s business whether you watch BBW’s doing questionable things with vegetables, but that doesn’t mean you should keep doing it!
Two serious, statistical effects of similar regulations/laws in Germany: in force since January 2008 -
the number of people seeking advice by either telephone or internet/email on HIV and AIDS has gone down by 15-20%. The main AIDS organisation, Deutsche Aids-Hilfe e.V. puts this down to the laws, as anonymous advice is no longer available.
Similar figures from the German Samaritans (Telefonseelsorge) – there has been a significant drop in calls since January, which they also attribute to the lack a genuinely anonymous way of contacting them.
The main point is: while Jackie Smith et al will claim “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about” – a lot of people do have something to hide anyway, even if they aren’t sleepers for the IRA or Al Qaida – and praise the record of the “democratic state” – nobody has a crystal ball. Today a “democratic state”, tomorrow a military dictatorship – the data will still exist and will still be used. For whatever purposes.
DZ, it’s all very well reminding us of the Nazis and how we can’t trust the State, but what would you actually do about surveillance? Democratic workers control of spying perhaps? Lack of knowdledge of the latest computer system is not a failing, that’s what consultants are paid handsomely for in this country, it’s political control that is the issue. There is also a growing issue with identity fraud in the world, what are we going to do about it?
Today’s Times has a story regarding the links between paedophile porn and terrorist activity. It is claimed that jehadis can encrypt messages into the porn and publish instructions that way. I don’t knodw about the science of it all, and undoubtedly some will say the Police are lying, but isn’t it something that should have an eye kept on it. Shouldn’t kiddy porn be under surveillence anyway? Even though the consumers of it do not rape little children, they are encouraging an industry that necessitates such abuse. Or am I being rightwing here?
It seems to me that kiddy porn would be a specatularly silly place to hide encrypted jehadi instructions since it is precisely that kind of stufff that is under the most scrutiny and surveillance by the state (and surely most muslim fundamentalists wouldn’t want to be thought of as looking at it either!)
Encrypting secret instructions in otherwise mundane trivia has been the tried and tested way of getting spying messages through.
I don’t think you are being “right wing” Sue R to suggest that the child pornography industry needs some attention but Jacqui Smith’s plan would not help in that.
An analogy – there is undeniably smuggling that goes on in this country – some of it using the postal service. But that doesn’t make it useful or legitimate to record the sender and destination of every item of mail that goes through the system (and certainly not for the state to decide which of your letters they can open and read).
I repeat how would those who disagree with the Government’s proposals survey the traffic on the internet etc go about collecting such intelligence? (I am not suggesting we give the Government carte blanche, I just want to hear some practical suggestions rather than defenses of civil liberties.).
Sue: I (reluctantly but realistically) accept the necessity for some kind of “communications survelliance”.
What I don’t accept, and deplore, is governments treating the entire population as criminals and automatically storing all communications data “just in case”.
It won’t be the old fashioned paper files of the KGB and the Stasi (and MI6), it’s automatically searchable for ever. It’s also about the interests of business – people breaking the law to download music are going to be hit by this mass data retention and are treated the same as terrorists. Though the chances of kids downloading the latest album by whoever getting prosecuted is much higher, obviously. It’s like the copied cassettes that passed around my junior school first had to be handed to the police before we could listen to them (which then wouldn’t happen). And in what countries does that kind of thing happen? The “Black book of communism” mentions one land where video and cassette tapes are routinely “inspected” by governent officials, to see if they are “defective”. Who wants that kind of culture of fear (and that’s not a wide imagination at work- see the protests of the German Samaritans, the AIDS advice centres and also some doctors’ organisation)?
All kinds of databases can be linked together to profile people, and they will be. Googling your workmates is nothing compared to this.
On your last point, Sue (the governments across the EU are giving themselves carte blanche, anyway), I imagine that in an open society where freedom of expression is guaranteed and self-censorship isn’t necessary, the “intelligence” required would have a much easier job. If you monitor all communications (the equivalent of opening every letter, photocopying it and filing it away for ever, but making it immediately searchable by computer) the chances are that those who are planning some kind of bomb attack etc. (I use the example because the governments claim this is all about “prevention of terrorism”) will use other methods of planning. Not a chatroom, not email, not telephone, not textmessages. Unlike Joanna Bloggs, who might be a trade unionist or some other kind of campaigner, or just be lesbian, or be interested in informing herself on the subject of drug use or health issues, or downloading a MP3. Everything she does will be (is) stored and be (is) traceable to her. And if/when some homophobe, genocidal, anti-worker, pro-business anti-civil liberties government comes to power, they’ve got her, for any one of a range of reasons. Got her “bang to rights”. A blog comment here, an email there…. Imagine if a Pinochet came to power somewhere and had access to that kind of information on the entire population for years (decades) previously? Or just imagine the end of state/public healthcare provision? Those searches for information on drugs, or the use of NHS Direct to look at details on certain symptoms or illnesses (not to mention things stored in the new online health file) could mean no health insurance, or significantly more expensive cover.
I’m sorry if that’s not “practical enough”, but I don’t think that the storage of all communications traffic is practical or healthy either. And I won’t even start on what “anti-terrorism legislation” post 9/11 in the UK has been used for.
What other forms of communication are there for international communication? Carrier pigeon, letters, couriers? What makes you think that in an open society where free expression is guaranteed that people seriously at odds with that society would clearly identify themselves? You compare terrorist plotting to copyright infringement…not sure if I agree on that one.
No, Sue, I’m not comparing those two things. That’s what the “anti-terrorist” laws do.
And you turn the rest of my argument on its head as well. In a non-open society where everything anyone says or writes is stored for future use, people like you and I more likely to stop saying what they think, or will at least be careful about what they say, where, and to whom, “just in case”.
Terrorists won’t, and they’ll find another method to communicate in order not to get caught. They’ll still make and set off bombs, etc. Everyone else will censor themselves.
I’ll ask you a question: why do you support the government copying and keeping all of *your* emails and blogposts, your telephone data, your text messages, where you go, and where you spend time, and for how long, with accuracy in cities of up to 100 metres or more (assuming you have a mobile phone)? For ever. I take it you’re not a terrorist.
And: imagine you are a terrorist. Would you use email, mobiles or the internet to communicate if you knew everything was being stored? I assume not. What would you do instead? Of your three suggestions, I reckon one of them is more likely than the other two. You might use other people’s phone lines, you might steal their mobile, you might use a mobile registered to a fake person…etc. But then *you* wouldn’t be the person arrested, it’d be someone else. Helping “intelligence” not one bit.
Also: why don’t you sign your blog comments with full name, date of birth, and a photo? (And that isn’t a mad suggestion: it’s on the cards in some EU states that all bloggers have to identify themselves in their own blog and comments with name, address and phone number, etc., and if not face prosecution).
The questions are serious – I’m interested in your response.
Terrorists won’t, and they’ll find another method to communicate in order not to get caught.
There’s a big typo/a bit missing there: I meant to write:
“Terrorists won’t – at least not in the same way. To their co-terrorists they’ll communicate everything they need to, and they’ll find (or already have) another method in order not to get caught. They’ll still make and set off bombs, etc. Everyone else will censor themselves. Terrorists have to do that anyway. So where’s the benefit?”
I don’t use my real name and give my contact details because I am worried about nutcases coming round my house and killing me or my children. There have been cases where this has happened, plus I am essentially a private person. However, as I have led a life of mind-numbing banality, I have no problem with the State knowing all my details. I appreciate that in other societies, where there has been a history of fascism or state controlled murder, this would be a more contentious issue. Assuming that one day there will be a Socialist Revolution, then such laws will not be a barrier to the transformation of society. As for terrorists, why make it easy for them? It’s the same problem with drug dealiers. They can be chased out of one estate, and then move onto another but at least one estate has got rid of the menance (at least temporarily). Otherwise, we should just go and lie in the middle of the road. Does anyone know about how this problem has been dealt with in countries such as the Soviet Union and China, or did the draconian laws in those countries stop any sort fo organisiing of such elements?
Ok Sue, on the first sentence – I understand all too well. But all data that is collected can be all too easily “lost” – and “found” – maybe by some “nutcase” (or perhaps some nutcase buys the information from someone else).
That data will show exactly *who* you are (and who I am, as well). That is the nature of the internet and modern technology. Nothing is anonymous.
And we know the record of governments (and not just the British one) when it comes to leaving files on the 5.47 to Brighton (or to Mönchengladbach, Paris, Rome, or Bratislava), or leaving them on old laptops which turn up on the world’s favourite place for finding stolen goods, erm, I mean auction house. A future socialist revolution (which will obviously, as history has shown, work out perfectly and for the good of humankind), or a future fascist state is neither here nor there. Chile has (had) the longest record of democracy (based on Britain’s, I believe) in South America. It couldn’t happen there, everyone was convinced. Why shouldn’t it happen here?
In a nutshell: if the state knows all your details someone else will, at some point, too. Data protection is too weak. Files have to be accessed, somehow, and all chains have a weak spot (or many of them), enabling “unauthorised access” – either directly, online; or (I suspect, less probably) via the left on the bus/stolen memory card route. And it could be one of those “nutcases”. It doesn’t have to be google or amazon using them for a profit. Which is almost as bad.
When it comes to draconian countries and drug dealers etc. – perhaps they get around such problems by “nationalising” such industries. North Korea got caught smuggling cocaine (I think) into Australia a while back.
I don’t suppose this is a way of helping the enteratinment industry track and prosecute file-sharers and illegal downloaders…?
OK, so what are you going to do to counter international terrorism?
I have no intention of going round in circles. “Tell me what you would do” is an easy get-out. Don’t you have any opinion on what I wrote? Do you think it’s baloney, or fair comment, or something else?
Just as easy, and just as valid is my question: why should the entire population be treated as criminals, and how would this do *anything* to counter international terrorism anyway? (The CIA knew all about 9/11 beforehand, but they didn’t know they knew, because they already had too much data they couldn’t deal with or understand. Collecting even more information won’t help them at all, surely?)
Why should the government(s) treat *you*, Sue R, as a criminal?
Asking for a considered leftist opinion upon the security of a population is going round in circles, but reiterating all the old platitudes about state power is going forward? I see.
‘Why should the government treat ‘you, Sue R, as a criminal?’. Because it will stop nasty people blowing me up on my journey into work? They can treat me as a criminal, but I’m not one so they wouldn’t be able to pin anythin on me, not even drugs. I suppose you are thinking of ‘The Lost Honour of Katerina Blum’, where she was identified as a terrorist, when she wasn’t. There’s nothing to stop the police framing me for murder, pimping or drug dealing either.
I don’t know if the CIA knew all about 9/11 but had failed to process the information. Sounds a bit troofer to me. Wouldn’t that be an argument for expansion of intelligence services though if it’s true?
I repeat, how do you (d z bodenberg or anyone else)see the state/government dealing with the longterm threat of random terrorism without warnings? I think the left has to give some attention to this question because at the end of the day it’s workers and their families that are blown up.
Just because I’m in Germany, Sue, it doesn’t mean you have to assume the Nazis are in my mind for some reason, or even people wrongly accused for “Baader-Meinhof” activities.
And you contradict yourself. First you say, no-one can pin anything on you because you haven’t and won’t do anything. They you say the police can frame you now, “for murder, pimping or drug dealing either” anyway. To frame someone, some kind of ‘evidence’ is provided. Don’t you think it’d be easier for severe miscarriages of justice to come about if the ‘evidence’ already all exists and just the selected bits need to be pulled together to fit the crime?
And I repeat: where does this idea of “random terrorism without warnings” come from? The evidence pre-9/11 was all there. The “intelligence services” were too stupid, incompetent, or isolationist (not having enough staff who could understand the languages in which the phone calls, etc., they’d recorded existed, having sacked them all), to understand the warnings.
And I repeat as well (and I know this gets us nowhere, but I can do the same as well): why do you think that a police-observation state is any kind of answer?
If that’s the society we are going to have to live in (and one you want to live in), you accept that the terrorists have won – and have little problem with it.
My point is not that the State should be allowed unfettered access to our phone records, internet records etc but that teh Left needs to discuss what it is going to do about the threat of terrorism, which will undoubtedly grow over the next few years. Maybe it won’t grow, I don’t have a crystal ball, but it is certainly a threat at the present. Not just for us in the West but in Islamic countreis as well.
If the Police wanted to frame me for a bank robbery, for example, I am sure they could do it. Just invent a list of telephone calls and contacts. I would ofcourse respond that I have no links with organised crime (which is true). Have you read Kafka’s ‘The Trial’? How can a person prove their innocence against a corrupt system. They can’t, but that is a far reaching discussion and perhaps a tad philosophical for this moment.
As for your German-ness, I merely wanted to show you that I was aware that different Euroepean nations have different political histories. I’m sorry if you found that offensive.
I don’t knowd about the 9/11 stuff, I’ve always kept well away from it. Same as crop circles and alien abductions in my book. I am not privy to discussions in the CIA or even MOSSAD as to what they knew or did not know.
I repeat, I would just like to see a far-left strategy for fighting terrorism. What line did the German far left take over the Baader-Meinhof. It would be interesting to know.
I’m not offended, I just thought it was a bit lazy – and wrong – to claim there might be a connection. I also don’t have detailed knowledge or interest on the “9/11 stuff” – I’m certainly not a conspiracy-theorist “truther”, heaven forbid. It’s hardly tin-foil-hat stuff to point out that secret services are often pretty incomptetent or government departments overwhelmed.
There wasn’t much of a “German far left” line on Baader-Meinhof, as far as I know. The German far left, or at least its intellectual capability, was wiped out by both nazism and Stalinism. Otherwise such a stupid phenonemon could never have existed.
At the same time there was said to be significant – passive – support in certain sections of the West German population for “left wing” terrorism – I suspect to a significantly higher level than was ever the case within the organised, political left.
I don’t really want to prolong a fruitless discussion but I was interested to see that you daid that there was a level of support among the certain sections of the West German population. In my experience, working class people are not that upset if wealthy people and bosses get blown up. When the IRA blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton and Thatcher narrowly avoided being splattered, my doctor (a rightwing Labour loyalist) said to me, jokingly, ‘Bloody IRA, cocked that up.’. Obviously, people like to see other people who they know are benefitting by their oppression, getting a drubbing. Yesterday, on the Socialist Unity website, so poster was saying how clever the pilots of the airplane that crashed into the Twin Towers were to hit the exact spot to cause the Towers to collapse. He (?) also said how happy it made him when he thought of all the suffering caused by white people in Africa that they were getting what they deserved. (Guess he has a noble savage view of Africans). There are probably quite a few people who think like this. It doesn’t make it right.
It certainly doesn’t.