UK government is at it again, wants "almost real time" internet monitoring and encryption backdoors

[Master Disaster]

Yep, a leaked document seems to outline some changes made to the draft Investigatory Powers bill and they don't make for pleasant reading. They're seeking the power to force ISPs in the UK to hand over data requested by a court order in 24 hours and are mandating that the data must be in a non encrypted form when its handed over.

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The "live" surveillance of British web users' internet communications has been proposed in a draft technical paper prepared by the government.

 

If made law, such access would occur via the Investigatory Powers (IP) Act, which includes provisions for the removal of encryption on content.

 

The paper was allegedly leaked to civil liberties body the Open Rights Group, which received the document on 4 May.

 

The Home Office denied there was anything new in the consultation.

 

Phone companies and internet service providers would be asked to provide "data in near real time" within one working day, according to one clause in the technical capabilities paper.

 

Such access would need to be sanctioned by secretaries of state and a judge appointed by the prime minister.

 

The paper also echoes the IP Act itself, noting that tech companies would be required to remove - or enable the removal - of encryption from communications as they would need to be provided "in an intelligible form" without "electronic protection".

 

Cryptographers often describe such access as a "backdoor" in the security of communications services.

The bill also stipulates that ISPs must keep theses actions a secret from users if and when it happens.

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Under the terms of the Investigatory Powers Act, telecoms firms would have to carry out the requirements of any notices to these effects in secret, so the public would be unaware that such access had been given.

 

Simultaneous surveillance could occur in bulk, but be limited to one in every 10,000 users of a given service - a maximum of roughly 900 of BT's 9 million British broadband customers, for instance.

A consultation period on the draft bill ends on May 19th but even then the government might keep the details hidden 

Quote

A consultation about the paper - due to end on 19 May - is allegedly under way at the moment, though this was not publicly announced by the government.

 

It does not have a legal obligation notify the public about draft regulations, which would have to be passed by both Houses of Parliament in order to become law.

 

However, the paper suggests that the regulations have already been seen by the UK's Technical Advisory Board.

 

A BT spokesman confirmed the company had received "a copy of draft regulations, to be made under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, in relation to technical capability notices" - but did not comment further.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39817300

 

Wow, just wow!!!!

 

You know the 'murica meme? I think its time we invented one for the UK too because this shits getting out of hand now.

[Castdeath97]

Can't wait for these backdoors to be leaked.....

[Master Disaster]

Just now, Castdeath97 said:

Can't wait for these backdoors to be leaked.....

They likely will be bruteforced by cryptography experts, most likely in Russia and/or China.

[Guest]

Who did they brown-nose to get acces to that back door?

[SeriouslyMikey]

Good thing the government is held accountable, and if more pressure is shown from the general public against this kind of nonsense, the more likely it would be altered. But that relies on the general public to be informed on something like this, which I doubt would be the case. Still wouldn't hold that against the people. 

Though, after signing a .gov petition last year, their response was "With increased terror, we feel it's in the public's best interest". 

[Mooshi]

Boy, I'm sure glad the Brits left the EU to get rid of the nanny state! #Brexit

[Tech_Dreamer]

When some random stupid terrorist do some shit to endanger as much people as you can , this shit happens.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, SeriouslyMikey said:

Good thing the government is held accountable, and if more pressure is shown from the general public against this kind of nonsense, the more likely it would be altered. But that relies on the general public to be informed on something like this, which I doubt would be the case. Still wouldn't hold that against the people. 

Though, after signing a .gov petition last year, their response was "With increased terror, we feel it's in the public's best interest". 

Yeh, their response basically was: No, the public needs this acts because of these reasons: terrorism, terrorism.... oh and terrorism

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

The paper also echoes the IP Act itself, noting that tech companies would be required to remove - or enable the removal - of encryption from communications as they would need to be provided "in an intelligible form" without "electronic protection".

Ah wtf... an entity that relies on secure and often secret communication should know better than this. They know secure communication even for general businesses is required so it's pretty damn rich they want to fundamentally undermine that. Good thing writing something down on a piece of paper is much easier than actually doing it, modern encryption standards are rather good (we hope).

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Under the terms of the Investigatory Powers Act, telecoms firms would have to carry out the requirements of any notices to these effects in secret, so the public would be unaware that such access had been given.

I can understand the requirement to be able to gather information and evidence in secret is a requirement however there needs to be clear limits to the scope of this and mandatory disclosure after a set time period. 

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, AUniqueName said:

Yeh, their response basically was: No, the public needs this acts because of these reasons: terrorism, terrorism.... oh and terrorism

The word terrorism is like the wild card/joker in card games, the one thing that can screw over even the best hand in the game.

[Guest]

 

Necessary? Yes, that's more than ideal, but you have to ask the question of whether or not this would make any fucking difference in terms of anti-terrorism. 

 

Seem to have managed fine without it so far. Probably because they were doing this illegally anyway but hey ho my tin foil hat is getting creased. IMO the only thing this will result in is extremists saying.... Oh, I suppose GMail really isn't that secure anymore then? Maybe we should go back to carrier pigeon?

[Doobeedoo]

Haha wow some real bs there. 

[Castdeath97]

Just now, Kumaresh said:

Taking away our privacy and civil liberties in the name of "protection", where have I sent that before......

If only they could just MONITOR IMMIGRATION CAREFULLY and improve policing and monitoring of certain groups, we wouldn't have these problems in the first place.

Is the UK even in any serious terror danger now compared to before? With the IRA almost gone things are easily better than 80s and 90s.

[Castdeath97]

30 minutes ago, Kumaresh said:

In case you haven't heard, there's this organization called ISIS which is hellbent on world domination. They have this penchant for sending people to western countries to behead people, stab them, run them over, shoot em up, etc. They are also hellbent on enforcing their ideology on everybody by any means necessary. They are extremely socially backward and barbaric. They keep discussing ways to send people over to western countries and stir up trouble as a more viable strategy than fighting in the middle east, where they are losing. Enough about them though, we are starting to get off topic here

That's why I said compared to 80-90s , the IRA was no joke back then as well.

 

Correction Provisional IRA, RIRA IRNA. Not the IRA.

[peanutsrevenge]

Do something about the big killers of poverty, pollution, disease? Nah cos terrorism (that we totally aren't fuelling with our greed and self-righteousness at all, honest).

Society's so broken

[ArduinoBen]

Doing this is terrorism in itself.

[ArduinoBen]

26 minutes ago, peanutsrevenge said:

Do something about the big killers of poverty, pollution, disease? Nah cos terrorism (that we totally aren't fuelling with our greed and self-righteousness at all, honest).

Society's so broken

Governments only care about what will get in the news and make a big cry.  Honestly.

 

Yes, society is fucked!

[Fetzie]

Exactly how is an ISP going to be able to decrypt traffic that they didn't encrypt?

[Master Disaster]

19 minutes ago, Fetzie said:

Exactly how is an ISP going to be able to decrypt traffic that they didn't encrypt?

Backdoor or some kind of master key.

[Thony]

UK government comes up with the stupidest excuses to spy on the citizens. Every time they manage to find something more mindblowing than previously...

[Kobathor]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

The word terrorism is like the wild card/joker in card games, the one thing that can screw over even the best hand in the game.

 

 

And terrorism is a perfect scapegoat, since the general public is terrified of terrorism. I'm sure tons of the citizens of the UK would bend over for you to probe their butts in the name of anti-terrorism, so nobody in the UK would fight this bill anyways. "I have nothing to hide" mentality, right?

 

Sad how politicians say "we won't let terrorists change us!" but then immediately further their surveillance and general powers in the name of fighting terrorism, and the majority of the populous is none the wiser.

[kuddlesworth9419]

And this is why I'm leaving the UK. I'm done with it, sucks for me. Gonna go live in Finland in the middle of nowhere. 

[ZestyJalapeno]

Fuck this bullshit. Who's the real terrorist here? The government who's literally curtailing people's freedom, or some deranged fairy worshipers who occasionally commit murder? 

[peanutsrevenge]

Just now, Dogeystyle said:

Fuck this bullshit. Who's the real terrorist here? The government who's literally curtailing people's freedom, or some deranged fairy worshipers who occasionally commit murder? 

The government's just doing as their 'donors' and blackmailers instruct, within the limits of what they can get away with/spin.
As for the fairy worshipers, if their country's hadn't been getting ripped to shreds for centuries (roughly starting with Genghis Khan), they'd likely have evolved their belief systems beyond such stupidity and/or the extremists wouldn't have such a pull in the region due to be able to feed people thanks to funding from vested interests like Saudi Arabia. 
I point that out as it's clear from the millions of peaceful Muslims and violent Christians that it's not the religion but the environmental context.

[Soonercoop]

I'm calling it now, The UK is going to be the first nation to go completely Orwellian. It's only a matter of time given the progression of legislation over the last few years.

 

Any government is immensely short sighted if they think they can curtail terrorism by monitoring the general population. There will always be ways for terrorists to get around this until it's a completely unitary government and society where nobody has any freedoms. This is just like the gun control or drug arguments in the U.S. Making something illegal does not prevent criminals from obtaining it and it doesn't take a genius to see. Just look at the American prohibition in which illegal alcohol became rampant and further unregulated when it was banned. The only good way to curtail effective terrorism is to completely limit everyone's rights, and it shouldn't come to that until the risk of death to terrorism is thousands of times higher than it is currently.