UK - Government will spy on every call and e-mail of BT and Vodafone customers

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by The Sunday Times

Government will spy on every call and e-mail

David Lepard
Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.
GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project.
Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.
Ministers are braced for a backlash similar to the one caused by their ID cards programme. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “Any suggestion of the government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister.”

MI5 currently conducts limited e-mail and website intercepts which are approved under specific warrants by the home secretary.
Further details of the new plan will be unveiled next month in the Queen’s speech.
The Home Office stressed no formal decision had been taken but sources said officials had made clear that ministers had agreed “in principle” to the programme.
Officials claim live monitoring is necessary to fight terrorism and crime. However, critics question whether such a vast system can be kept secure. A total of 57 billion text messages were sent in the UK last year - 1,800 every second.

Article taken from the Sunday Times, 5th of October 2008. The original can be found here

Not sure whether to put the thread here or in some for all, but it certainly is highly important for the drug community to know about.

[discodave]

ok, the government isn't about to get overthrown so they don't need to increase their hold on the population from that aspect, and the real hardcore terrorists and criminals will juse use PGP. this is nothing except an abuse of power and it won't stop anything except the Z-list terrorists and criminals. i don't see what they really get out of this except more power over normal citizens... R.I.P. GREAT britain, hello communist party

p.s. this won't make you a new beijing, london. you need patriotism for that, this will have the opposite effect

[Panthers007]

Here in the Untied Snakes, they store digitally encrypted copies of every communication one makes/has made. No time limit. They are there to edit and paste together to fuck you with anytime they want to do so to you - like if you become a key-player in the anti-war movement: You're asking Aunt Sally for her blueberry muffin recipe just became code for centrifuges for the Iranians. Just a little snip-snip here and a little paste-paste there. And, as noted in the news the other day here - racial profiling is now the law of the land. You are black? That's grounds to go after you with direct covert operations. Black people are more likely to adopt the Moslem faith. So...Gotcha!

As long as it's done "In good faith" - the skies the limit on how much intrusion and otherwise hate-crimes are permitted. Seig Heil!

Reputation Comments on this post:

excellent post about government spying

[porchy]

This is not good, or should I say may not be good. Either way I don't like the idea of everything being monitored. 'They' would say its in order to protect national security or whatever but I think its a major invasion of our privacy and am not very happy about this. It really angers me.

[wisol]

Originally Posted by porchy

This is not good, or should I say may not be good.

Its fucking terrible. Complete erosion of our civil liberties. It seems the government is so concerend with what a miniscule fraction of the population is up to that we all have to face the consequences. The old argument is that if you haven't done anything wrong then theres no need to worry. Personally however, I don't fancy being locked up for 28 days with no charge because someone misinterpreted an email i sent. Whats more it feels frankly uncomfortable having 'the powers that be' staring over my sholder the whole time.

Meanwhile we have our government poking the hornets nest in the middle east which from a terrorism point of view is only going to make us more of a target. Whilst i can see that there is no easy solution to these problems, it seems to me that what we need is sensible foreign policy rather than spying on the whole british populous.

[Mutil]

the US seems to be going forward as planned, taking over right under our noses while we're looking away at communism, drugs, terror, etc. i guess the same is happening elsewhere too...it's really sad. we're completely trapped on this planet. there's no way to get away from society. i guess Shakespeare was right...the whole world is a prison.

[Alfa]

I think customers of BT and Vodafone will never get a better reason to switch to other providers. You can bet your house or granny, that GCHQ's project will report many innocent people to the government, as that's just the nature of the beast.

[bennett211085]

New World Order

[FrankenChrist]

Originally Posted by Alfa

I think customers of BT and Vodafone will never get a better reason to switch to other providers. You can bet your house or granny, that GCHQ's project will report many innocent people to the government, as that's just the nature of the beast.

Question to anyone who is familiar with the business side of the British telecom market:
I take it BT is the token former state-owned monopolist, (much like in my country) and that the actual, physical land lines and infrastructure are still theirs in one way or another?

Then, will it be of any use that users switch to other, usually smaller, providers, if these smaller providers also rely on BT's infrastructure?

Second remark:

Terrorists are inventive and do not need to rely on technology. They'll use mail pigeons and smoke signals if need be.

[cannabis-sam]

People, we need to start fighting shit like this and the ID cards scheme people have become too fucking passive, the government seems to introduce new and more fucked up laws, this country and even more so the world is becoming like 1984 : we have the politicians who "double speak", we're constantly watched are phones, our emails (soon) all being looked at, and the worst thing is. No one seems to give two shits the goverment do worse and worse things and nobody bats an eyelid they can already block any sites they don't like (clean feed I think it's called). Theres what 300 of the cunts who run this country and 60million of us and we let these fascist cunts control everything we do why? It's really fucked up and I get the feeling things are only going to get worse.

We need to fucking stand up if we wanted to take control we could and so easily, increasing politicians are becoming all the same moronic arseholes who try to shove the lies of democracy and freedom down our throats whilst telling us what and what not to take, what to eat, what to do, how to act. Who the fuck are these people anyway and why are we letting them control us. But no one wants to do anything about it. Why are there no riots in the streets anymore when they do this stupid shit. Why are we not marching into parliment and kicking the shit out of these fuckers and returning the power to where it should rightly be : in the hands of the people not these fucking fat cats who sit up there in their big fancy houses locked a way from the general population, drinking champagne and driving nice fucking cars and making laws from behind their fucking gates, thinking they know whats best for me.

I'm never getting a fucking ID card I'm never giving them my fucking DNA and they're not going to moniter my fucking internet so fuck those fucking cunts and let's take the fucking power back.

Sorry for the rant, pisses me off though.

[wisol]

Originally Posted by cannabis-sam

No one seems to give two shits the goverment do worse and worse things and nobody bats an eyelid

The levels of apathy are fuckin extraordinary mate. people are happy just bumming along, minding their own business thinking 'it won't effect me'. Regardless of this its the principals of the matter. put yourself in the situation where this does happen to you. is that what you want. I can't help but feel i'm preaching to the converted here though.

[KomodoMK]

No-one who wants to send something seriously private would do so without at least using PGP encryption unless they are really stupid. Whilst I feel it's not right for powers that be to spy on us in such a way, what small crimes I may openly talk about over e-mail are not sufficient enough to have consequences. If they really wanted to monitor you they would do it anyway.

[wisol]

Originally Posted by KomodoMK

No-one who wants to send something seriously private would do so without at least using PGP encryption unless they are really stupid. Whilst I feel it's not right for powers that be to spy on us in such a way, what small crimes I may openly talk about over e-mail are not sufficient enough to have consequences. If they really wanted to monitor you they would do it anyway.

My concern is the eagerness of the powers that be to jump the gun. I have faced accusations of bomb making for having a jar of salt in my room. Lord knows what could of happened if I had a bag of fertilizer lying around.

[gimphood]

SWIM has worked in the data security industry for 10 years.

This is nothing new. voice, video and data has been watched and will continue to be watched by GCHQ for good. The fact is that these (media) articles are written is a softner for the general public, AND to make them feel secure in the height of terrorism and threat, not to mention putting out a message to the bad guys.

The thing for swiy to remember is the propaganda statements of World War 2 - The walls always have ears, someone will always be listening, that gent next to you could be your enemy.

Regardless of swiy ISP or provider, there are only a few "IP Backbones" or in laymans terms - "data motorways" that travel up, down and around the UK.
BT own most of the copper network (most of the physical wires) out there and rent this to other providers such as Skx, britishxxx, XYZ provider , Cable and xxxliss, etc. Which covers 99% of the population.
The fibre is Virgxxx / teletubbywest / bk-NTL etc..(names you would know)

Most data goes in and out of a few points around the uk and the government made sure years ago that they have access to all of this.


No voice, video or data can be guaranteed private unless money is invested in private encryption - even then, the product cannot be sold in the UK unless the UK agency GCHQ has been able to crack it. However this doesnt stop individuals creating their own encryption methods and using these over the internet.


SWIM hopes this give an insight as to the "watched for your own good" world we live in ..

Reputation Comments on this post:

	just what I wanted to know!
	Interesting stuff about IT security

[Synesthesiac]

Blackberries are the ultimate weapon for drug users, its all encrypted to a very high safety margin. But for severe "national security" reasons, no-one is entirely safe nowadays, but this is hardly ever used for drug issues unless its huge cartels.