Government citizen surveilance program

[Pawnless Endgame]

My hard drive has archived emails dating back to March 1999. File count came up with 33826 files in 829 folders. Gov't, if you were to break into my computer, then good luck in reading through all of that. Once you're done with that, then feel free to listen through my 23.8GB of tape recordings that I've made since 1993

In other news, I'll just turn on Orwell's telescreen.

 

[Rroff]

The positoves of mass surveillance far outweigh the negatives. I'd rather a criminal or terrorist attack was stopped because GCHQ picked up on it rather than it happen.

There is that - but the more sophisticated groups have moved on from the days they'd easily be picked up from internet traffic - proprietary encryption, custom compile *nix OS, proprietary tunnels making use of hijacked (as in flashed with a custom firmware so they can't lose control of it) residential wifi for exit nodes, etc.

 

[asim18]

The positoves of mass surveillance far outweigh the negatives. I'd rather a criminal or terrorist attack was stopped because GCHQ picked up on it rather than it happen.

That doesn't mean much in reality though... Any real terrorist who's going to use electronic communication is now aware of electronic surveillance (thanks to coverage from pretty much every single news outlet in the world) and will now easily employ methods which are impervious to that scope. Doesn't really stop anything except stopping people from joking around about blowing things up over whatsapp.

No doubt all of the data collected is fed straight into the Minerva project. People don't realise how useful data on this scale can be. How much you can actually analyse and make connections and generalisations from people's true and private data. If you feed so much data about a person into a computer algorithm you can come up with dozens of probabilities. Now if you have the ability to do it to every single individual in every internet connected country you have the most ultimate data that is possible to have. I'm talking on a huge scale. Like collecting data about your entire sequences of decisions. Like the things you read when you got your first Gmail account at 8 years old, and then linking it to how long you pause at certain points on particular videos when you're in your 20s (for a very acute example).


However at the end of the day this is all inevitable. The internet is just another tool they can use to help them control and rule the world.

 

[asim18]

My hard drive has archived emails dating back to March 1999. File count came up with 33826 files in 829 folders. Gov't, if you were to break into my computer, then good luck in reading through all of that. Once you're done with that, then feel free to listen through my 23.8GB of tape recordings that I've made since 1993

In other news, I'll just turn on Orwell's telescreen.

Mate the government has invested billions into securing the infrastructure to do precisely that. Would take one of the supercomputers at the government's purpose built state of the art Utah Data Centre about millisecond to trawl through your email and create a profile on you and for the algorithm to create all the relevant links.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Okies, fair enough Asim Emails are bog-standard friends, family, university, job-searching. When it comes to my cassette tapes though (recorded into my computer), I'm sure that the algorithm will enjoy listening to my synthesiser compositions, and us camping out in our back garden singing "I like to move it move it", and recording parodies of QVC etc hehe!

 

[Destination]

Mate the government has invested billions into securing the infrastructure to do precisely that. Would take one of the supercomputers at the government's purpose built state of the art Utah Data Centre about millisecond to trawl through your email and create a profile on you and for the algorithm to create all the relevant links.

A profile saying, no terrorism hot words or links found.
Then it moves along.
There is yet to be an AI construct good enough to actually decipher meaning from words. To relate this to a situation, it just doesn't happen, yet.
When it does, it won't be the government you need to be worried about.

Corporates will be as good as this as governments, isn't it target in the SU claim they can tell when a woman is pregnant, and how pregnant she is from her club card type account, knowing the change is shopping habits, then they specifically target their advertising in that direction.

If you're that worried, don't subscribe to GPS, or to the other various technologies they watch. Although that probably will put you on a list, a potential list of people avoiding detection, and need a bit of closer scrutiny.

 

[Castiel]

the seizure of all mobile phones in any RTC incident so they can be "checked" to prove if someone using the phone is resulting in lots and lots of peoples private photos filtering out too.

And if your car has integrated hands free? I was involved in an RTC recently and no one asked to even see my mobile, let alone seized it.

 

[Nitefly]

Edit - lighthearted but rather thoughtless (and potentially extremely boneheaded) joke.

 

[Amp34]

A profile saying, no terrorism hot words or links found.
Then it moves along.
There is yet to be an AI construct good enough to actually decipher meaning from words. To relate this to a situation, it just doesn't happen, yet.
When it does, it won't be the government you need to be worried about.

Corporates will be as good as this as governments, isn't it target in the SU claim they can tell when a woman is pregnant, and how pregnant she is from her club card type account, knowing the change is shopping habits, then they specifically target their advertising in that direction.

If you're that worried, don't subscribe to GPS, or to the other various technologies they watch. Although that probably will put you on a list, a potential list of people avoiding detection, and need a bit of closer scrutiny.

The difference is it will be a long time before Tesco can arrest and hold you for years/and or ruin your life by amalgamating all that data. It's the power issue that is the problem. Tesco aren't breaking the law yet there seems to be a consistent run of the government/security services and police breaking the law and either ignoring it or changing the law to allow them to continue doing it.

You could legally do what Tesco do, you can't legally target malware at people to take control of their computer (US FBI), access others emails and phone records without a warrant or permission, access others photos and webcam streams etc.. All are highly illegal for the common person but are misused time and time again by those in power, bending the law to suit their needs.

 

[phill1978]

Tim Berners-Lee said we need an internet magna carta.. he is probably right.

Just one random example in a sea of other examples of abuse? ... Remember how Yahoo video chats were being captured ( of course good intentions )

They literally have bots + agents sifting through hours of UK residents personal videos and yes most of it was people sexual activities.. so that's a highly trained public sector worker who might live next door to you or down your street. You might be thinking where you can get one of those jobs? perhaps so did they We have a tradition of trusting (")authority(") in this country "keep calm and carry on" .. In the US the leaks revealed an insider trading card system of personal image captured sent between agents.

We do need a bill of rights for this stuff and proper oversight from a 3rd party body. Its to protect people and even helps to protect those that work in those institutions

 

[Destination]

The difference is it will be a long time before Tesco can arrest and hold you for years/and or ruin your life by amalgamating all that data. It's the power issue that is the problem. Tesco aren't breaking the law yet there seems to be a consistent run of the government/security services and police breaking the law and either ignoring it or changing the law to allow them to continue doing it.

You could legally do what Tesco do, you can't legally target malware at people to take control of their computer (US FBI), access others emails and phone records without a warrant or permission, access others photos and webcam streams etc.. All are highly illegal for the common person but are misused time and time again by those in power, bending the law to suit their needs.

While I agree with this.
How do you plan to tackle the possibility of terrorists using said networks for communication, and planning of terrorist actions within this nation?
How will you keep my child safe?

Who will guard the guardians?

 

[snips86x]

Sounds like something from Person of Interest

 

[OhEsEcks]

Tim Berners-Lee said we need an internet magna carta.. he is probably right.

We do. It's called the 'Hacker manifesto'.

 

[phill1978]

While I agree with this.
How do you plan to tackle the possibility of terrorists using said networks for communication, and planning of terrorist actions within this nation?
How will you keep my child safe?

Who will guard the guardians?

unfortunately you have fallen into the black or white trap. It's either blanket surveillance or nothing and in doing so have gone for the most emotive argument .. the children. Yes we need protection as part of the population and yes some organisation will communicate online but if you remember the last attack involved a kitchen drawn and a knife..

What happened to good policing and Why are warrants being shunned ?

What's the difference between Russian/China vs the West ? surely we should uphold our values to an extent even in the digital domain, should peoples text & emails be auto-read and archived?

Most sensible peoples argument is that its good to have security systems in place but if you have read any of the Guardian / Independent articles you will see that its potentially something far more sinister if left unchecked and unregulated.

that's all people want, proper oversight and regulation. Same as anything, if left unchecked it will get abused. After that's all in place and working then yes do get these people in jail or on a boat ..

 

[Destination]

What happened to good policing and Why are warrants being shunned ?

that's all people want, proper oversight and regulation. Same as anything, if left unchecked it will get abused. After that's all in place and working then yes do get these people in jail or on a boat ..

Well clearly the police are utterly incapable of acting and policing in a digital age, there isn't the time, nor the resources.
I am a realist, I do not expect my internal police force to act as my internal intelligence agency, nor as my external agency.

I understand that you are saying the system can be as corrupt as its operators, and can be tuned to tasks it isn't meant to be used for.

So enlighten me as to how you regulate it?
You can't bring a warrant system, as without broad catch all nets, followed by focus you cannot realistically expect anyone to discover a plot, or planning or whatever else.

How do you regulate this system, while still keeping it potentially secret and secure?

 

[phill1978]

Well clearly the police are utterly incapable of acting and policing in a digital age, there isn't the time, nor the resources.
I am a realist, I do not expect my internal police force to act as my internal intelligence agency, nor as my external agency.

I understand that you are saying the system can be as corrupt as its operators, and can be tuned to tasks it isn't meant to be used for.

So enlighten me as to how you regulate it?
You can't bring a warrant system, as without broad catch all nets, followed by focus you cannot realistically expect anyone to discover a plot, or planning or whatever else.

How do you regulate this system, while still keeping it potentially secret and secure?

Why should it be secret ? In the sense of knowing what happens in your own nation, not the gritty details. How do you guard against corruption.

You can bring a digital warrant and redesign the warrant system rather than no warrant at all.

regulation works, but it only works when you don't self regulate. Non affiliated entities should oversee public sector bodies ( perhaps something that could be tendered for bringing extra tax revenue ?)

I think tax spending should be more transparent when talking about these agencies. How much do they cost the public ? How effective are they etc..

Finally there are 70,000,000 people in this country. There are people who want to do harm on a large scale but those who would be most successful would probably not use the sorts of methods that would get them caught. I believe in international surveillance for incoming counter threats and a strong military to protect the nation. But on UK soil we have to set a limit on what is being harvested and intruded to and it needs to be clear for a citizen to understand and read.

again, a bill of rights for digital data.

 

[Tefal]

And if your car has integrated hands free?

doesn't mean you were using it....

and if your phone shows texts then its also a bit of a warning sign.

I was involved in an RTC recently and no one asked to even see my mobile, let alone seized it.

might not be all police forces or only a certain severity but it is policy in many areas now.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

Something that always irks me in these debates, which ever side of the fence your sit, is this narcissistic idea that government agencies are somehow interested in your Facebook posts and toileting habits. The truth is, nobody cares about you. Not in an emo, depressive kind of way but a realistic, you are not important enough to warrant attention kind of way.

 

[Amp34]

While I agree with this.
How do you plan to tackle the possibility of terrorists using said networks for communication, and planning of terrorist actions within this nation?
How will you keep my child safe?

Who will guard the guardians?

Like any other crime. You build up the evidence and when strong enough apply to a judge to a warrant to view a specific set of data.

Having an email address or name that just so happens to be connected to the person you are interested in does not mean you had carte blanche to infiltrate their life. Currently there is a major mismatch between electronic communication and traditional communication. One of the main things I'm suggesting is upgrading the law to allow emails and other electronic communication the same protection that your phone records and post get!

The terrorist and "paedo" are the modern bogey men used to justify this surveillance. The reality is you're more likely to be hit by a car today than killed by a terrorist and your child is (far) more likely to be abused by a family member or friend than someone over the Internet.

The terrorists have "won", in tandem with the media and politicians, all using the idea of terrorism for their own needs. lets catch them the traditional way, rather than tramping all over the rights of everyone else.

 

[Castiel]

doesn't mean you were using it....

and if your phone shows texts then its also a bit of a warning sign.

The point being that if your your car has hands free looking at your phone to see if it was making a call (texts also) doesn't prove you were doing anything illegal at all....being connected doesn't mean a thing.

might not be all police forces or only a certain severity but it is policy in many areas now.

Policy isn't law. Just because police policy says they should confiscate a mobile phone from everyone involved in a RTA doesn't mean they can actually do it if you refuse.

In fact the ACPO say it's nonsense.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/22783...obile-phones-after-all-road-traffic-accidents