Government citizen surveilance program

[Tefal]

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.




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

“It has been standard practice to seize mobile phones from drivers at the scenes of very serious collisions for some time as part of the information and evidence gathering process

shes arguing the severity of the incident that requires confiscation.

but id seriously like to see how you would refuse?

 

[Amp34]

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?

The police are "utterly incapable" of policing in many real world situations. That doesn't mean we have allowed blanket surveillance and draconian stop and search powers (in fact we have decided some of the powers that were brought in as to draconian). Why should the Internet be different? If police are not allowed to blanket trawl and open physical post or blanket listen to phone calls then why the hell should the be allowed to blanket collect emails, video messages and other forms of electronic communication?

The police and security services are no different to us. That is the point of western societies. They answer to us and (should) abide by the same laws as us (in fact that's what the magma carta was written for). At the moment that is not happening with regards to electronic communication. That needs to change.

How should we regulate it? That is what a lot of the media and organisations are trying to discuss. There needs to be an open, national debate on the subject and open decisions made. At the moment it has got so bad that the security services are lying (or not even turning up) to Commons Select Committees, the very entities that are supposed to be overseeing them! Unfortunately they don't currently have to power to change anything. It's a ridiculous notion don't you think?

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

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



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

And remember, 3 years in jail if you don't provide your password...

 

[arc@css]

The internet is just another tool they can use to help them control and rule the world.

And is the most enslaving of all distractions, too. :/

 

[asim18]

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.

This is absolutely what happens and it will get worse. Corruption rules everything. People think it's not corruption because they see a cherry-picked trustworthy face, hear perfectly doctored script, and receive a succinct promise of security. We're all the same animals at the end of the day, one dressed in a suit who makes his crap happen with a pen is no different to any other group seeking dominance...

I see it happening every day, just look at the agents they sent to spy on diplomats at the 2009 G20 summit, was this for protecting us from terrorism or was this for helping them secure their future? You'd have to be pretty naive to think that any government hell bent on dominance and greed actually cares about some random people getting blown up. If anything they need people to get blown up, and have used people who have been blown up to seize more control.

People don't realise how easy it is to get people to do things and keep their mouth shut.

 

[Amp34]

Another point...

What I find almost hilarious is the double standards of many in power. An example being in the US. While government funds are being given to help create and maintain TOR, to allow people to break the law and maintain secrecy in states the U.S. believe are "evil" and backwards, they are also spending considerable money trying to crack it so they can catch people using it for things we class as illegal or against policy in the west...

 

[Castiel]

shes arguing the severity of the incident that requires confiscation.

Which is completely different from what you stated.

but id seriously like to see how you would refuse?

Just say no, get a warrant. I would quite happily show my phone to the police at the roadside, but I would refuse to allow them to confiscate it without a warrant to do so or as part of a formal arrest and detention procedure in which case the offence must be serious enough to allow the Police to confiscate the phone for the purposes of evidence or as part of the arrest and detention procedure, in which case any seizure must be fully accountable and justified formally as would any evidence obtained from the phone. Just arresting someone because they refuse to hand over their phone would be pretty dodgy ground for the Police.

 

[phill1978]

Which is completely different from what you stated.



Just say no, get a warrant. I would quite happily show my phone to the police at the roadside, but I would refuse to allow them to confiscate it without a warrant to do so or as part of a formal arrest and detention procedure in which case the offence must be serious enough to allow the Police to confiscate the phone for the purposes of evidence or as part of the arrest and detention procedure, in which case any seizure must be fully accountable and justified formally as would any evidence obtained from the phone. Just arresting someone because they refuse to hand over their phone would be pretty dodgy ground for the Police.

the point is all those who are nothing to fear nothing to hide are the ones who will shout the loudest and be heard the least when it comes finally to their door step. Rights were fought for and now many just take them for granted like everything else.

 

[Amp34]

Just say no, get a warrant. I would quite happily show my phone to the police at the roadside, but I would refuse to allow them to confiscate it without a warrant to do so or as part of a formal arrest and detention procedure in which case the offence must be serious enough to allow the Police to confiscate the phone for the purposes of evidence or as part of the arrest and detention procedure, in which case any seizure must be fully accountable and justified formally as would any evidence obtained from the phone. Just arresting someone because they refuse to hand over their phone would be pretty dodgy ground for the Police.

And this procedure is the whole point of the thread.

Currently with physical activities, phone calls and letters these procedures HAVE to be followed. When it comes to electronic communication and activities on the Internet these procedures are thrown out the window.

There appear to be two legal systems currently at play here and around the world. All most privacy advocates want is the second system, used for electronic communications, to follow the same rules as the traditional one.

It's one of the reasons so many of the big Internet companies are taking matters into their own hands and removing their ability to access personal data, forcing security services to go through the more traditional channels. Obviously not being seen as providing a service that allows carte Blanche access from third parties also helps shore up their businesses...

 

[phill1978]

This is absolutely what happens and it will get worse. Corruption rules everything. People think it's not corruption because they see a cherry-picked trustworthy face, hear perfectly doctored script, and receive a succinct promise of security. We're all the same animals at the end of the day, one dressed in a suit who makes his crap happen with a pen is no different to any other group seeking dominance...

I see it happening every day, just look at the agents they sent to spy on diplomats at the 2009 G20 summit, was this for protecting us from terrorism or was this for helping them secure their future? You'd have to be pretty naive to think that any government hell bent on dominance and greed actually cares about some random people getting blown up. If anything they need people to get blown up, and have used people who have been blown up to seize more control.

People don't realise how easy it is to get people to do things and keep their mouth shut.

You are making too much sense .. stop please.

 

[AGD]

Honestly couldn't care less. Nothing to hide.

Proactive is better than reactive.

You naivete is shocking. The attitude of 'I have nothing to hide so it's ok' is selfish and dangerous.

Other people do have things to hide: journalists trying to protect their sources, whistle-blowers exposing corruption/illegal acts, lawyers and their clients, human-rights activists. Need I go on? If you don't protect others' rights, who's gonna be there when they come for yours?

If we allow the government to accumulate massive latent power, what can be done if in future they choose to exercise it?

It's not a surprise that mass surveillance is the standard weapon of dictatorships and autocratic governments worldwide. Even just the feeling of being watched is a powerful form of control.

 

[Castiel]

And this procedure is the whole point of the thread.

Currently with physical activities, phone calls and letters these procedures HAVE to be followed. When it comes to electronic communication and activities on the Internet these procedures are thrown out the window.

There appear to be two legal systems currently at play here and around the world. All most privacy advocates want is the second system, used for electronic communications, to follow the same rules as the traditional one.

It's one of the reasons so many of the big Internet companies are taking matters into their own hands and removing their ability to access personal data, forcing security services to go through the more traditional channels. Obviously not being seen as providing a service that allows carte Blanche access from third parties also helps shore up their businesses...

I was talking about phones and the claim that the police can/do routinely confiscate them even in the most minor of RTC's

 

[Amp34]

I know. I just used your description of the the way policing works in the real world to explain to those saying "got nothing to hide" why there are so many people disgusted with the current "laws" regarding internet snooping and surveillance. The post wasn't aimed at you.

 

[phill1978]

You naivete is shocking. The attitude of 'I have nothing to hide so it's ok' is selfish and dangerous.

and yet his attitude must in most ways reflect the general consensus because this thread will struggle to reach 3 pages and a few views. Yet the 1000th relationship breakup thread will hit 52 pages and tens of thousands of views.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

and us camping out in our back garden singing "I like to move it move it",

So what exactly do you like to move? - is it guns & bombs, is it?

 

[Cosimo]

Ignore

 

[Cosimo]

There was an article in The Times last weekend about Police in the UK being able to access British citizens emails without a warrant which may even worse than this TBH... Unfortunately I don't have a times online subscription so haven't been able to read the entire article. If it is as it says then that's a nasty indictment of the "legal" system... Anyone got access to the article?

This:

Police are hacking into hundreds of people’s voicemails, text messages and emails without their knowledge,*The Times*has discovered.

Forces are using a loophole in surveillance laws that allows them to see stored messages without obtaining a warrant from the home secretary.

Civil liberties campaigners reacted with concern to the disclosure that police were snooping on personal messages so often, without any external monitoring and with few safeguards.

Surveillance laws protect the public from having live phone messages, texts and emails accessed by police unless a warrant is granted by the home secretary.

Forces are able to get round these rules if the messages have been sent and are in storage. Officers can simply obtain production orders from a judge and force telecoms and computer companies to hand over records of customers’ messages.

This newspaper asked the biggest provincial police forces how often they used production orders to access stored communications.

West Midlands police did so on 329 occasions during a three-year period. At the same time, Northumbria police obtained 72 production orders, Merseyside 25 and Thames Valley 16.

EE, the mobile phone operator with more than 27 million customers in Britain, said that it was receiving about 150 production orders a month from police.

Northumbria police, asked why its officers applied for production orders rather than requesting a warrant from the home secretary, said: “Warrants from the secretary of state are to intercept a communication that is in the process of transmission. However, stored communications can be accessed by means other than a warrant, through existing statutory powers such as a production order or a search warrant. There is a subtle but significant difference between the two.”

Customers may be unaware that police have been reading or listening to their messages. “They are alerted if the message is to be used as evidence, otherwise it is handled and disposed of,” Northumbria police said.

Gavin Millar, QC, of Doughty Street Chambers, whose areas of expertise include privacy, said: “If one force used it 300 times it is being misused because there couldn’t be that many serious cases in the jurisdiction of one force. It needs an oversight mechanism. There has to be legislation for this.”

He said of the production order process: “There’s no hearing. You never find out what’s happening. I’m a little sceptical about how closely the judges look at the material put in front of them. There’s no oversight of what the judges or [police] forces are doing. They are coming into your data records. You know nothing about it.”

In Northumbria a superintendent authorises an approach to a judge; in Thames Valley a detective inspector, a more junior rank, must give authority to apply for an order. Merseyside said that its production orders related to four inquiries. Greater Manchester police said that its counter-terrorism unit had used the power. West Yorkshire police did not give statistics, citing cost.

When police want access to live messages they must apply to the home secretary under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The regime is presided over by the interception of communications commissioner, whose spokeswoman said that production orders were outside his remit.

Production orders are granted by circuit judges who need be satisfied that an indictable offence has been committed; that the material is held by the communications provider; that it would be of substantial value to the investigation; and that it is in the public interest to hand it over.

Julian Huppert, the Liberal Democrat member of the home affairs select committee, said: “Clearly there are a number of occasions where production orders like these can be incredibly helpful to the police, but they need to be constrained by appropriate safeguards.

“It doesn’t seem right that we don’t keep track of cases where [information] has been stored as we would do if it was still being transmitted.”

EE said: “We are legally required to release the information as set out in the order by a judge. EE strongly supports a balance between supporting law enforcement agencies and protecting our customers’ privacy and data.”

The Home Office said: “A production order will only be agreed by a judge if the request meets strict criteria.”

 

[Rroff]

Another point...

What I find almost hilarious is the double standards of many in power. An example being in the US. While government funds are being given to help create and maintain TOR, to allow people to break the law and maintain secrecy in states the U.S. believe are "evil" and backwards, they are also spending considerable money trying to crack it so they can catch people using it for things we class as illegal or against policy in the west...

It might give you a degree of protection from a random 3rd party but TOR doesn't hide you much from law enforcement anyway these days.

 

[arc@css]

I'm assuming that no search engine available will give us privacy then (like Ixquick or duckduckgo)?

 

[Amp34]

Cosimo. Thanks. Now that begs the question, what is a "stored" and "live" email? I'd assume a stored email is just about every email you have right now? Or is it one that you have specifically clicked "Archive" on?

Rroff, true, although most of the issues appear to be due to law enforcement spoofing websites and/or infecting other websites with malware that is downloaded to your machine than the TOR protocol itself.

It doesn't appear to be going down well with the "spoofees" however, especially if they are large news organisations... E.g. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...es-fbi-investigation-link-spy-suspect-outrage

The goo thing is the major software companies are fighting back, much to the annoyance of the law enforcers. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/16/fbi-director-attacks-tech-companies-encryption

The director of the FBI savaged tech companies for their recent embrace of end-to-end encryption and suggested rewriting laws to ensure law enforcement access to customer data in a speech on Thursday.

Remember guys, encryption is only used by the "bad guys"

“Are we no longer a country that is passionate both about the rule of law and about their being no zones in this country beyond the reach of that rule of law? Have we become so mistrustful of government and law enforcement in particular that we are willing to let bad guys walk away, willing to leave victims in search of justice?” he said.

Unfortunately yes. Much like a child who has broken the trust of parent you need to build up the trust again before we allow you access again...

We gave them the opportunity, they wasted it.

Comey acknowledged that the Snowden disclosures caused “justifiable surprise” among the public about the breadth of government surveillance, but hoped to mitigate it through greater transparency and advocacy.

Yet the FBI keeps significant aspects of its surveillance reach hidden even from government oversight bodies. Intelligence officials said in a June letter to a US senator that the FBI does not tally how often it searches through NSA’s vast hoards of international communications, without warrants, for Americans’ identifying information.

So again, why should we let law enforcement have free access to everything again? Just a reminder, the same issue is prevalent with the security services here and the Commons Select Committees that are supposed to be overseeing them...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/09/edward-snowden-mps-commons-report-spying

A highly critical report by the Commons home affairs select committee published on Friday calls for a radical reform of the current system of oversight of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, arguing that the current system is so ineffective it is undermining the credibility of the intelligence agencies and parliament itself.

Their report says Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, responded to criticism of newspapers that decided to publish Snowden's disclosures, including the head of MI6's claim that it was "a gift to terrorists", by saying that the alternative would be that the next Snowden would just "dump the stuff on the internet".

The MPs say: "One of the reasons that Edward Snowden has cited for releasing the documents is that he believes the oversight of security and intelligence agencies is not effective. It is important to note that when we asked British civil servants – the national security adviser and the head of MI5 – to give evidence to us they refused. In contrast, Mr Rusbridger came before us and provided open and transparent evidence."

If the governments get their way it'll get to the point that we can't protect our own data. Encryption is very useful in protecting phone data from thieves as an example. Apple are also now forcing people to opt OUT of encryption on their new version of OSX, a good idea as most Apple machines are laptops. Instigating backdoors for Law Enforcement are just inviting trouble. All that happens is the criminals find it and use it to their advantage. Just look at a similar problem in the "real" world

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29786320

Organised criminal gangs are increasingly targeting high-end cars with keyless security systems, a UK motoring industry group has warned.

The thieves are able to bypass security using equipment intended only for mechanics, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said.

Anyway, remember, in the UK you can get imprisoned for not handing over passwords and encryption keys, for example:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/0...al_to_give_up_crypto_keys_jail_sentence_ripa/

It can be up to 5 years in some cases.. So much for the right not to incriminate yourself... (if of course you've done something wrong in the first place).

 

[krooton]

So basically if you want to have privacy (regardless of the reason), you pretty much would have to go down the TAILS + TOR + VPN route. The irony is that the people who couldn't be bothered with all that hassle aren't the ones the government is trying to catch, they might get some low-level lazy/stupid criminals, but all the big time bad guys will put in the effort to cover their tracks.