UK Taps 439,000 Phones, Now Wants To Monitor MPs 290
JPMH writes "With the largest density of CCTV cameras in the world, and an increasing network of automatic number-plate recognition cameras on main roads, Britain has long been a pioneer for the surveillance society. Now new official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s. It must be that it is bringing their numbers down: on the law of averages they should be monitoring at least 5 of the MPs."
Oh please let them be monitored (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh please let them be monitored (Score:5, Insightful)
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[...]Members might find some 'unusual' feedback on their lines, however.
Ugh, that is soooo last century. ;) 21st century surveillance is new and improved; you need not have a clue you are being watched at all!
Re:Oh please let them be monitored (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect this extention of phone tapping to MPs is specifically aimed as George Galloway as Blair's desperate for dirt on one of the biggest thorns in his side.
Re:Oh please let them be monitored (Score:5, Insightful)
So many people on slashdot seem to have difficulty in dealing with groups of people. I guess it makes it easier to argue.
I do agree with what you are trying to say, except for the last bit, nobody cares about George except his own staff. But nothing they have said is logically incorrect.
Re:Oh please let them be monitored (Score:4, Interesting)
You do realise that there is no amorphous blob called the police? You realise that the police are made up of a bunch of people, some of whom are very competent, some of whom are less so. This is why the police can do one job well, and one job badly, because there were different police in handling the issue.
'Tis true that police departments are composed of diverse sorts of individuals of varying levels of competence. However, particular departments can encourage development of certain ways of doing things, certain professional culture, through policies, hiring criteria, and subtler social pressures, such that the vast majority of the officers will behave in a predictable way given the same circumstances. The quality of that behavior depends upon those policies and what the interior culture is.
At the University I attend, there are two neighboring towns which have substatial contact with the students. They have separate police departments, and while they are all individuals as you say, I have a reasonable expectation of being treated fairly by an officer from one of those towns, and not so much from the other. Occassionally I am pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised, but not often. I suspect it has a lot to do with differences of priority, different internal cultures, and probably even different policies.
So many people on slashdot seem to have difficulty in dealing with groups of people. I guess it makes it easier to argue.
The formation of categories and identification of general delineations and trends are crucial to thought and discussion. I agree it can be done well or poorly, and some folks are better at it than others. The trick is to identify which factors of distinction are important and which are trivial. Not always easy, and easy thus to err on the side of excluding something important in the generalization.
Re:Oh please let them be monitored (Score:5, Insightful)
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A better test than you think! (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's the test:
If this push is rebuffed, that's MASSIVE and blatant hypocrisy on the part of the lawmakers of the land. They tolerate and direct
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Except Big Brother contestants, which, of course, has included an MP. I'd think they'd go for something like this, but in 1984 style, really only for "outer party members" and even then it wouldn't be 24/7, with politicians knowing how to get around the monitoring for when they're doing something dirty. It could be sold as a means of "fighting corruption" and even worse, it could be used for white washing - "look, I didn't sell peerages, here are the
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Brilliant. Spot on. Genius move. Master stroke.
I, for one, would prefer that public servants are 100% spied upon. I'm for full disclosure of their every move, such that paparazzi and gossip are unnecessary.
So, you want to serve the public? We'll forgive any past mistakes, but you must agree to be a truly public figure.
The very idea that leaders should enjoy more privacy (or perquisites, privileges, worship, etc), is an annoying leftover from kings, and ultimately rooted in
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Fuck this... (Score:5, Interesting)
May I be the first to say holy fucking shit. I mean, I knew it was bad. I once counted three hundred or so security cameras on a trip around Liverpool but I never once suspected that we had it anywhere near this bad.
And these goons want a road-pricing scheme via GPS tracking? Jesus f-ing Christ. Next they'll want to photograph people in toilets in case they decide to take drugs in them. They really are that bat-shit crazy!
My Grandma died last year of cancer. She was one of the brave women that gunned down German planes over Widnes during World War II. Their generation's sacrifice, every single last one of them appears to be in vein. For we've become the very thing we fought sixty years ago. How did this happen? How did we let ourselves be cowed in to this?
The faceless little shits behind this will never be known. Their crimes will never go punished.
Any Canadians willing to sponsor a immigrating Brit?
Simon
Re:Fuck this... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Don't run away to North America just because you don't have the balls to stand up to the thugs in your own country. Your grandma didn't run away. You shouldn't either.
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BTW, do you really think the cameras are archived or looked at in any depth.
Tom
Re:Fuck this... (Score:5, Insightful)
That might make you feel safe for now, but what about the future. What about when image recognition if to the point that the computer can recognise you, and thus record everywhere you have been. Does that worry you? Is that really that far away? How much did the ministry of defence spend on Image Recognition last year? Any idea? A scary amount, whatever it is.
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Honestly, I agree the cameras are a waste of effort, but the privacy issues are just not there. You're OUT IN PUBLIC for crying out loud.
Tom
Re:Fuck this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck this... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I wanted to hide from the man I wouldn't go for a walk out in public with my face in full view.
So you're a hoodie, who likes stalking people? And you haven't got an ASBO?
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It's when you start interacting with them directly (speaking, touching, etc) that you cross the legal boundary.
My point is if you want to remain private you have to do private things. Walking about in public, with your f
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If you're walking about, in public, in plain view OF EVERYONE, expect no privacy in terms of your whereabouts. That's just common sense. Even the common criminal knows
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Right now I (and I suspect most people) feel free to leave the house without worrying that the government (or anyone else) will be watching me the entire time and compiling a dossier on my movements for later possible use against me. I (and again, most people) would like to retain that freedom.
You don't know what you've lost until it's gone, and when the day c
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People were being unlawfully detained althrough history. CCTV is not an enabler of this.
Yes, be angry at the CCTV, but not because it violates your privacy, but because it's a waste of money.
Tom
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, Tom. (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course not. But it sure makes it a lot easier to do it wholesale.
In the real world, things aren't determined by what is theoretically possible, but by what is economically feasible. Ubiquitous CCTV cameras make wide-scale person tracking economically feasible, and that is the key.
By analogy: You don't need a nuclear bomb to kill everyone in Chicago.... given enough time and effort, you could do it with a machete. But once you have a nuclear bomb, it becomes a whole lot more likely that you can pull it off, and thus a whole lot more likely that you will try.
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, Tom. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but I think it would be very tempting for the government to start using the data it gathers on everybody(!) for political purposes. (e.g. "Joe Schmoe goes to AA meetings on Thursdays and is having an affair with his secretary; they meet at the No-Tell Motel every other Friday night and prefer their sex doggy-style. We'll just file that information away for now, in case Joe Schmoe ever runs for office or ends up in a position of power and we need to 'lean on' him a little"). Blackmail can be a very effective way of getting people to do what you want without anybody else ever knowing about it. Or the government can just use it to keep tabs on the whereabouts of their political opponents... in fact they do this already [msn.com], just on a much smaller scale because they are limited by available manpower.
While I agree that government needs more accountability, I just don't see the V for Vendetta future. No supreme rule ever lasts.
V for Vendetta was indeed overstated (it was based on a comic book for heaven's sake!) but history has shown over and over again that left to their own devices, governments can and will do all kinds of nasty things. Power corrupts, and giving the government unrestricted access to everyone's personal details gives them a lot of power.
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Oh and here is an article about how How Facial Recognition Systems Works [howstuffworks.com]. From the article:
A ticket to Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa Bay, Florida, didn't just get you a seat at the biggest professional football game of the year. Those who attended the January 2000 event were also part of
Re:Fuck this... (Score:5, Funny)
In fact there is no electricity going to the cameras and those in the know often climb up and bash them open to release the candy hidden inside for all the gleeful British children on the ground below.
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Re:Fuck this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fuck this... (Score:5, Funny)
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Raise awareness, and if people care they'll vote someone in who wants to put an end to this. Even if that person doesn't get in the main parties will see that they can get more votes if they appeal to those concerned about privacy.
The noble grandma you talk about probably never considered moving to Canada, did s
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This may come as a surprise to some, but GWB is already on his second term. A person can not be elected to more than two terms as President. Therefore, he absolutely will not be 'coming back next time' and it has nothing to do with the present administration's handling of the attack on Iraq. Well, unless he declares martial law and suspends the Constitution...remember when the tin foil crowd was claiming that Cl
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I should hope not, because there's supposed to be a two-term limit on the Presidential office. There isn't supposed to be a "next time" for him.
Otherwise I agree. The government is supposed to be a servant of the people, not the other way around, and the closing and dismissal of the petition should itself be a focus of public action. What we (both in the US and the UK) really need is a mechanism to have recall elec
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Re:Fuck this... (Score:4, Funny)
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Sure. But I think you'd be disappointed.
The population here in Canada is still under the same level of control, but it's just done more subtly. Seriously. EVERYBODY is already wire-tapped. Echelon [wikipedia.org] takes care of that. It's just not discussed in parliament. And with the kind of Cell phone systems in place and RFID and satellite imaging, and heaven knows what else, (a lightbulb can function as a two-way EM transceiver if you have sensitive enough equipm
Re:Fuck this... (Score:4, Interesting)
One word. Alcohol. The alcohol based culture of the UK causes both street crime and traffic fatalities so you end up with cameras in the streets and cameras on the roads, perhaps it also leads to numbed citizens that don't really care as well (debatable).
I lived in the UK till I was twenty and it's only when you leave and look back that you see just how much people drink there.
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It really happened because of two words, just like here in the U.S.: apathy and fear. I don't know how long this crap has been going on in the U.K., but this culture of fear really took off in the U.S. after 9/11. The government, of course, sensing a chance to greatly expand its powers by capitalizing on fear, jumped all over this golden opportunity. Unfortunately, people in this country have become so complacent--after all, the government is there
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Saving Widnes isn't something to be proud of -- unless you mean the planes crashed into Widnes, which is a glorious triumph!
Re:Fuck this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't sentencing people who have committed crimes the whole point of the criminal justice system?
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Something I've been waiting for someone to try for a while. If you've informed them that you don't have a TV (or, conversely, do have a licence), but they continue sending the letters anyway, they may be in breach of the Malicious Communications Act, 1988 [opsi.gov.uk].
It'd be fun trying it, at least.
WTF? Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
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How in the world can intelligence that can't be used in court be very useful? even if you use it to stop a plot you wouldn't be able to hold on to these bad guys according to your own rules. Why can't our governments (the US and UK in this case) that all this crap does is erode there credibility and marginalize the one thing they are sworn to protect above all else.
President Bush once said "They hate our freedom" and I am beginning to think that his plan for combating this is to lower our fre
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You are making the mistaken assumption that there was ever any intent to use the intelligence in court so that they can "hold on" to the bad guy
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I might be wrong, but 'can be used in court' != 'can be used by police in the course of their investigations'. A phone intercept might, for example, lead to a raid on a premises, which would then reveal evidence that could be used in court.
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That does make a certain kind of sense. However, doesn't this pretty much suggest that the powers that be are actually more interested in gathering and hoarding massive amounts of data than actually using the data they have to catch criminals? It seems to me a bit like b
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Not really. Wiretaps are only going to reveal what people are talking about doing. Better to keep them under surveillance until they actually try to do something, don't you think? That way it's easier to prove and they get put away for longer. Furthermore, if they are all talk, arresting them won't
One wiretap for every twelve crimes? (Score:5, Informative)
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None. Wiretap evidence is inadmissable in court.
Wait, haven't I seen this movie? (Score:2)
In the original Day of the Jackal [imdb.com], the inspector is trying to determine the source of a leak, probably coming from someone at the highest level. He finally determines that it's come from one of the ministers on the board that oversees his investigation. After announcing which minister was the source of the leak by playing a tape from a wire tap, one of the ministers asks "How did you know whose telephone to tap?"
His response, "I didn't, so I tapped them all."
UK res
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Yes, but read the article carefully. The big problem with this figure is that it's only the requests. How many were denied? It doesn't say. Also, this isn't all "wiretapping" in the commonly understood sense. It also includes applications for phone numbers dialled, email addresses, and so on. And is it one request per person? One request per email address? It doesn't say.
The real problem with this article is that it is extremely unclear about what is being
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Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioneer for 2005-6 [official-d...nts.gov.uk]
Report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner for 2005-6 [surveillan...ers.gov.uk]
The 439,000 wiretap requests resulted in 2,243 warrants - I don't know whether multiple requests can be granted in a single warrant. For human surveillance, which is covered by the second report, 2,177 authorisations were granted under the Police Act, of which roughly half involved drug offences, and 418 authorisations were granted under
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More like the submitter did a hack job of citing the relevant figures.
Know thy (internal) enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Know where everyone is.
Pick them up when the time's right.
I sometimes think freedom is simply a government not having the right to know where you are.
Dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
I would of thought rule number one for any competent terrorist these days is "don't use electronic communications of any sort". We know that real terrorist cells can lie dormant for years - I'm sure they don't worry about the couple of days it might take to send a letter or spoken message.
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But that does not justify wholesale spy
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Try this, be muslim and not support the war in iraq. See how quickly you're shown contempt not only from the man but from society as well.
There are more citizens than policy makers. If anything the citizens are letting it happen, they're supporting it, and not doing any meaningful action to stop it because it's inconvenient.
Tom
If it saves one child .... (Score:3, Insightful)
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When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think. -- Pat Schroeder
The UK is a parliamentary dictatorship (Score:2, Insightful)
is nothing to stop them, as long as they can win votes of confidence and continue to maintain a majority. There are no checks and balances at all, except for the control of the House of Commons.
Look at the Iraq War. Is there any public support for it in the UK ? Not much. Is there any chance of the public's will actually being
translated into a change in policy ? Not apparently.
An
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There are no checks and balances at all, except for the control of the House of Commons.
As an American I find it ironic that we broke away from Britain because of King George and now the only remaining check and balance for the UK is Royal Assent and maybe the House of Lords.
Not that we are much better off. In theory we have the Judiciary to keep the Government in line. History says otherwise though.
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Actually, Wikipedia says that it was withheld in the case of the "Military Action Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill" in 1999; since the purpose of that legislation was to stop the government going to war without parlimentary approval, it's not a hopeful precedent.
The House of Lords is slowly being destroyed by the government: a few days ago they had a scheme to change the voting rules in parliamen
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Re:The UK is a parliamentary dictatorship (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not true. First the party in power has to write a law that makes it a crime to have such a name. Then they have to convince the democratically elected House of Commons to pass it. Then they have to convince the House of Lords to pass it. Then they have to convince the Queen to give her assent.
The party in power does not have the authority to imprison people at will without passing a law. That is a constitutionally protected right found in the Magna Carta [statutelaw.gov.uk], dating back almost eight centuries.
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They've got people in Guantanamo who've been held prisoner longer than many Nazis leaders were after WWII.
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The House of Commons is hardly democratically elected. Our "first past the post" system means that despite only 22% of the population voting for them at the last election, and not even winning the popular vote in England, Blair's Labour party currently have an absolute majority in the Commons.
Or just invoke the Parliament Act.
Now you've gone too far. Or not. (Score:3, Insightful)
What, do you expect empathy from a system that let things go this far? Once those in charge are comfortable with their own security under such a system, they're free to become increasingly afraid of change, of differences, of people interested in learning what they themselves don't wish to have looked into.
Even if the result doesn't reflect the expected fictions, you can expect it will be harder than ever to reverse, or to justify a revolt against to fix. Now that it is becoming a fully ubiquitous part of your nation, it will become a point of your nation's pride. Hell of a legacy for the ultra-reactions from a four planes hitting three buildings in another nation, and its aftershocks.
Ryan Fenton
My definition of a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
Transporter_ii
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There's a long tradition of special privileges for MPs in Britain, especially while Parliament is in session. The American concept of Free Speech essentially started out as a reapplication of the prohibition on restricting speech within debates in the British Parliament. America's constitution just applies that same rule to all Americans because in the United States the people are sov
Several things wrong (Score:2)
However, the biggest one I find is that your average citizen can be subjected to that level of invasion, yet it is illegal to do the same to a member of parliment. That is a travesty. They need to start showing parliment what the bugged life is like. Let a damaging private phone call be exposed by a system abuse. It's the very best thing that could happen. Perhaps after a parliment member actually has real stakes in what they are allowing to go on, the may make some more rational decisions about it, an
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So I would bet they are already spying on each other just in case they could use those information to trash an opponent.
So what? (Score:2, Informative)
Why shouldn't MP's be treated the same as ordinary citizens? They are not above the law, and can be sued/tried etc like any other citizen.
When the next London bombings occur everyone will complain that nothing was done to stop anyone, and it will all be the
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot title: 439,000 phones tapped (dramatic)
Actual report:
- 439,000 requests (i.e. a bit less dramatic)
- link to TFA states telephone *and* email addresses (i.e. a bit less dramatic)
- TFA says telephone, email and postal addresses (i.e. a bit less dramatic, again)
CYA (Score:2)
I saw this in a movie once. (Score:2)
Just the UK huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
You yanks are all bleating on about how bad this is and how high these figures are. What makes you think your own government is being any less nosy about your affairs? Ignorance is bliss
Who to monitor is not teh question.... (Score:2)
People are people and in any field of occupation there are good, bad and somewhere in between.
Information is power, but who is getting the information and how will they use it?
With this in mind, does monitoring improve society or just provide more opportunity to do others wrong?
Headline is WRONG! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not saying that is a good or bad thing, just that the headline is incorrect and sensationalist.
SirWired
No, wait, I've got it! (Score:3, Funny)
Naturally there would be a public concern of targeted "viewing", so we just have to hire people to monitor these sets and do it at random. That way, people won't actually know if they're being monitored or not.
We could call these modified TV's... telescreens.
Finally, Proper Big Brother (Score:3, Insightful)
That must be why there has been proposal after proposal for more and more big brother style policies, few if any of which are/would be effective. It was to get to the point where the government could monitor itself, which is far more likely to succeed, as there are a lot less people to watch.
The walls have ears! (Score:2)
We all need to speak in code (Score:2)
Predictable Reaction (Score:2, Insightful)
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Surveillance and car tracking in the UK (Score:3, Informative)
This petition has been in the news a lot this week, but if you've not already signed it, you should consider doing so as it's due to close TODAY (20th Feb). So far, an incredible 1.7 MILLION people have signed.
This is getting mathematically scary... (Score:3, Informative)
The Economics of Mass Surveillance and the Questionable Value of Anonymous Communications (PDF [kuleuven.be])
by George Danezis and Bettina Wittneben.
You may think that half a million phone tapped is not that much... well think again, the social network effect is probably exposing all of Britain. Ask for your rights to be respected now.
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Actually, they do. Haven't you noticed all those cameras in the street? Didn't you realize that thousands of people are employed to watch the images from those cameras, all the time?
Pastor Martin Niemöller (Score:3, Insightful)
>> anyone who is against this is clearly on the side of the terrorismists,
>> and actually WANTS us to get bombed.
To quote Pastor Martin Niemöller: