Theresa may calls for tighter internet regulations after London attack

[Greebo]

It really is dire that both Conservative and Labour seem to be led by idiots.

Sadly you get it all the time on any subject. My gf is a vet in the pharmaceutical and she cringes when the govt or opposition are on the radio or TV talking about issues involving that industry like Foot & mouth, TB, antibiotics etc,

She says what they are saying is so wrong normally its laughable except for the fact that none technical people listening will obviously believe what they are saying as its sounds like they know what they are talking about.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Which is why i think there is and always will be a place for the House of Lords full or experts from all areas.

 

[413x]

Can you imagine, the value of hacking into a data centre that contains the browsing histories of every single citizen in the UK and being able to extract that data unencrypted? Whether by someone very talented, or simply a disgruntled government employee (of which there are probably quite a few) just think for a moment..

Imagine how much it's worth to say, gambling companies, or the media - remember, nothing is encrypted - it can all be all be seen, the browsing histories of everyone, celebrities, sports stars, Joe public, absolutely everyone, what they do, who they associate with, what they buy, what they like, dislike, who they're dating, who they're investing in, I mean.. it's just endless when you think about what it really means to have this sort of information 'getting out' imagine being an insurance company and getting access to this data, imagine being a criminal and getting access to it.. The risk is beyond comprehension.

Yep the amount of data that exists would be worth insane amounts of money.

From life insurance to advertising.
I'm guessing Facebook and Google however have a good handle on a lot from being able to trawl your phone etc. But handing over more and more?

I know it will inevitably happen, but longer it doesn't, the better

Sadly you get it all the time on any subject. My gf is a vet in the pharmaceutical and she cringes when the govt or opposition are on the radio or TV talking about issues involving that industry like Foot & mouth, TB, antibiotics etc,

She says what they are saying is so wrong normally its laughable except for the fact that none technical people listening will obviously believe what they are saying as its sounds like they know what they are talking about.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Which is why i think there is and always will be a place for the House of Lords full or experts from all areas.

Indeed. I work in stats, and I know well why polls don't work well. But start telling the public little bits of information on difficult topics and everyone is an expert

 

[Ben3991]

Can you imagine, the value of hacking into a data centre that contains the browsing histories of every single citizen in the UK and being able to extract that data unencrypted? Whether by someone very talented, or simply a disgruntled government employee (of which there are probably quite a few) just think for a moment..

Imagine how much it's worth to say, gambling companies, or the media - remember, nothing is encrypted - it can all be all be seen, the browsing histories of everyone, celebrities, sports stars, Joe public, absolutely everyone, what they do, who they associate with, what they buy, what they like, dislike, who they're dating, who they're investing in, I mean.. it's just endless when you think about what it really means to have this sort of information 'getting out' imagine being an insurance company and getting access to this data, imagine being a criminal and getting access to it.. The risk is beyond comprehension.

Yeah, cos it's all the fault of the internet, nothing to do with the budget cuts and 20,000 police officers (many community supports and detectives) she sacked.

Have you ever heard of "mission creep"? How long before the databases built up will be used for other things? We've got to catch the paedophiles, then it will be bank robbers, then "serious crime", then anyone who downloaded a bit of music or a movie, because they are "stealing" from the media cartels. How long before they think of selling the data to private companies, because they want to save the taxpayer the cost of running the system? How long before they trawl through the historical data to find past "crimes" to justify the existence and cost of the apparatus? It's been shown time and time again, that if you give the authorities this kind of power, they will push it to the maximum and beyond.

I genuinely believe, and can you truthfully argue against the fact, that this is already happening? Again, not forgetting the fact that if Johnny Hacker or Mi5 agent really wanted to, they could find out exactly what websites youve been on today, what you've invested in and who you are talking to.

What I also think people are forgetting is that the Internet is a service, or a product that you pay for. If you don't like the terms of your purchase contract, which may in the future contain the fact you will be monitored, then don't use the internet. It is as though people think the internet is a human right, something they are entitled to.

 

[Dunks]

[...]

What I also think people are forgetting is that the Internet is a service, or a product that you pay for. If you don't like the terms of your purchase contract, which may in the future contain the fact you will be monitored, then don't use the internet. It is as though people think the internet is a human right, something they are entitled to.

Try telling the UN that then.

 

[Rroff]

I genuinely believe, and can you truthfully argue against the fact, that this is already happening? Again, not forgetting the fact that if Johnny Hacker or Mi5 agent really wanted to, they could find out exactly what websites youve been on today, what you've invested in and who you are talking to.

What I also think people are forgetting is that the Internet is a service, or a product that you pay for. If you don't like the terms of your purchase contract, which may in the future contain the fact you will be monitored, then don't use the internet. It is as though people think the internet is a human right, something they are entitled to.

Emphasis being today that is bad enough but very different to the problems of a large history/activity dump sitting in storage.

Not even sure what the second part of your post is trying to say - completely the wrong direction for any sane person to advocate.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

I can actually foresee a situation where you hand £50 to some guy stood on the corner, in the rain on a dark night - in return for a piece of paper with a private key on it, for an illegal VPN, just so you can look at some pornography.

I think there might be other people you could exchange cash with on a rainy street corner if you're looking for some kicks in that department.

 

[Felon]

I genuinely believe, and can you truthfully argue against the fact, that this is already happening? Again, not forgetting the fact that if Johnny Hacker or Mi5 agent really wanted to, they could find out exactly what websites youve been on today, what you've invested in and who you are talking to.

No they can't, absolutely impossible right now - which is why it's bugging them so much, why do you think it's such a huge issue for them - if they can secretly already do it.

If I send messages via iMessage from my Mac or WhatsApp via my phone, turn on my VPN on my PC and start surfing - they can't see anything in terms of usable data, nobody can - if they had the power to do this, then everybody would be being hacked left right and centre, - because the government are always have been and always will be very far behind with technology, teenagers in their bedrooms would have broken it before MI5.

The one thing they can do (because I helped work on the technology of it) is lawful intercept,

Where there's intelligence that someone is doing something naughty, with a warrant they can order your ISP to flow-tap your connection at the BNG (broadband network gateway) all of your data is then injected into a VPN that goes to "the man" for analysis...... problem is - if the person they're flow-tapping is using a VPN, all they get is gibberish.

 

[Ben3991]

Not even sure what the second part of your post is trying to say - completely the wrong direction for any sane person to advocate.

It's quite simple what i'm trying to say, if you don't like the terms of the internet, then don't use the internet.

Of course, we have to use it for work, but in this case you should be working with data that isn't personal to you, in which case moans about personal privacy is a not a problem.

 

[Mynight]

I genuinely believe, and can you truthfully argue against the fact, that this is already happening? Again, not forgetting the fact that if Johnny Hacker or Mi5 agent really wanted to, they could find out exactly what websites youve been on today, what you've invested in and who you are talking to.

They can to an extent but it's targetted. It's a huge difference between being targeted and being swept up in a dragnet. Now all johnny mi5 hacker has to do is attack one repository and gain access to millions of records on millions of people.

Yea, I mean the thought of the Government organising a killing spree in order to get votes is just laughable. They can't even fiddle their expenses without getting busted. The allegation is wrong on so many levels... but my point is that an unrestricted internet allows nonsense like that to spread like a disease.

I see their fake ineptitude smokescreen has you fooled too .

 

[Ben3991]

They can to an extent but it's targetted. It's a huge difference between being targeted and being swept up in a dragnet. Now all johnny mi5 hacker has to do is attack one repository and gain access to millions of records on millions of people.

Of course, it's not ideal. But they aren't doing 'just cos', they are doing in an attempt to stop people being mowed down, blown up etc.

To me at least, it's no difference if my information is in a massive database that's (relatively) easy to access or that could be accessed by someone if they wanted to anyway by targeting me alone. Either way my information isn't safe, so hey, why not make terrorists life a bit more difficult?

 

[Felon]

Of course, it's not ideal. But they aren't doing 'just cos', they are doing in an attempt to stop people being mowed down, blown up etc.

Well they need to be realistic and go back a bit, as I've already pointed out - if they were seriously concerned with preventing people from being blown up, they should have acted on the legitimate, sound intelligence that was given to them in the first place. In each and every one of these attacks - they failed to act when intelligence was handed to them on a silver platter - why do you suddenly think they'll act when they have practically infinite amounts of extra information to go through.

More information doesn't necessarily mean more security.

 

[Ben3991]

Well they need to be realistic and go back a bit, as I've already pointed out - if they were seriously concerned with preventing people from being blown up, they should have acted on the legitimate, sound intelligence that was given to them in the first place. In each and every one of these attacks - they failed to act when intelligence was handed to them on a silver platter - why do you suddenly think they'll act when they have practically infinite amounts of extra information to go through.

More information doesn't necessarily mean more security.

100% agree - and it's a disgrace that these people were known, yet nothing done about them.

My comments are made in the context of hoping the information gained on these people through internet monitoring is actually used to take action!

 

[Felon]

100% agree - and it's a disgrace that these people were known, yet nothing done about them.

My comments are made in the context of hoping the information gained on these people through internet monitoring is actually used to take action!

That sounds like we're putting the cart before the horse to be honest.

You have to have the basics first, the bedrock and foundations have to be rock solid, this means not repeatedly failing due to a lack of resources and competence, rather than a lack of good information - of which there has been plenty of, to the point of these people being on the TV on jihad documentaries, and they still somehow get through the net and successfully attack.

If channel 4 can find, film and document these people - without having to break encryption or snoop on everyone, why the hell can't the security services protect us from them..?

 

[Dirk Diggler]

I see their fake ineptitude smokescreen has you fooled too

Are you suggesting that the government have organised these terror attacks in order to gain votes?

 

[Mynight]

Of course, it's not ideal. But they aren't doing 'just cos', they are doing in an attempt to stop people being mowed down, blown up etc.

To me at least, it's no difference if my information is in a massive database that's (relatively) easy to access or that could be accessed by someone if they wanted to anyway by targeting me alone. Either way my information isn't safe, so hey, why not make terrorists life a bit more difficult?

While I do see what you're saying I don't agree on the basis that if they do get access to the database it's not just you that's at risk it's everyone on the database. Blackmail is a huge problem if such a database gets leaked. Theres also phishing. It wouldn't just affect those that are guilty.

Targeted is fine in my opinion but there's already methods in place for targetted surveillance.

They can't seem to stop those they know about so adding in a load of false leads certainly isn't going to help the issue any more.

Are you suggesting that the government have organised these terror attacks in order to gain votes?

No I'm suggesting people are insane .

 

[Dirk Diggler]

No I'm suggesting people are insane .

Phew!

 

[asim18]

For example they have banned certain file sharing websites. But it takes 5 seconds to google proxy to get around it.

Exactly. You are absolutely right it takes 5 seconds to circumvent it using a proxy. So why do you think they banned it, and at the same time held a massive free advertising campaign for the said websites?

This is why I used to warn EVERYBODY that it's simply a charade to warrant future governmental seizure of VPNs and proxys, and then, the internet as we know it.

As I predicted, hits to these websites actually SURGED following the nationwide advertising campaign for all the best Torrent sites and so has VPN usage. Heck even I didn't know about most of the sites myself! Even people who didn't have computers were taught exactly how and where to download free movies and whatnot!

As I warned many years ago, turns out this was just a charade to increase/normalise VPN usage, thus giving them the reason to pounce on the internet now. I mean just look at OcUK, "spec me a vpn" threads have increased exponentially.

 

[Tefal]

They'd probably introduce some sort of licensing arrangement, where if you're a company or somebody doing a specific job - you're allowed to encrypt your traffic for a small fee, for example if you need site-to-site VPNs, or if you're providing a payment gateway that requires SSL (like any online shop)... or something vaguely along those lines, seeing as it's literally impossible to break the encryption algorithms.

(and yeah, the whole idea is the biggest load of **** to come out of the government, for a long long time)

Nah they'll scrap it just like they scrapped banning SSL after banks and every business pointed out it was esential

 

[asim18]

Nah they'll scrap it just like they scrapped banning SSL after banks and every business pointed out it was esential

Businesses/banks don't use public open access VPN/TLS providers - and they don't use the technology for anonymisation purposes. They do want to stop it for anonymisation purposes and they probably will end up winning that. But yeah businesses should certainly be allowed to use actual closed-access VPNs for actual technical/networking based needs.


VPNs are not specifically for anonymisation purposes. Business VPNs are closed access, they're not an anonymising service, they are strictly using it for virtual networking purposes - not to anonymise themselves.
The providers like "PureVPN" have come along and started using the technology as an anonymisation service.

So maybe they will be focusing on anonymisation services, as opposed to VPNs as a technology.

 

[Haggisman]

To me at least, it's no difference if my information is in a massive database that's (relatively) easy to access or that could be accessed by someone if they wanted to anyway by targeting me alone. Either way my information isn't safe, so hey, why not make terrorists life a bit more difficult?

If you genuinely believe that, then feel free to go ahead and post your Facebook, email, online banking etc. login details for us all to see, since they apparently aren't safe anyway.

What you're suggesting is essentially the same as saying no-one is allowed to lock their front door in case the police fancy having a poke through your stuff while you're at work.

Of course no-one malicious would possibly take advantage of that to steal your TV, would they...?