Doubleplusungood

[ciphergoth]

Thanks to akicif for the heads-up, propogating this one because it's important and fucking scary.

A headline (Government sweeps aside privacy rights) and a leader (British Liberty, RIP) from today's Guardian. It's not just the Police, Intelligence services, and the tax authorities who can get at anyone's telephone and internet communications data without a warrant or court order, but seven Whitehall departments, every local authority in the country, NHS bodies in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and 11 other public bodies ranging from the postal services commission to the food standards agency....

But it seems it's all necessary to continue the War on Terrorism. So that's all right, then.

Unchanged from akicif's text because I can't improve on how he put it! See also "'Snoop' plans raise privacy fears" (BBC News)

Update and, following wechsler's example, here's my PGP public key.

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Actually I lifted the BBC story from you after I posted. I tend not to mark things "updated" if I changed them only a few minutes after posting; my posts tend to go through incremental improvement...

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

I meant the theme, rather than the specific story; BTW, the PGP key I have from you appears to be unsigned and from an outdated email address.

Do you ever get the feeling than in privacy and rights (and for that matter transport/enviro) campaigning, we're doing nothing but fighting a rearguard action?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'll do a separate entry about the failings of even PGP-style PKI in a bit.

I'm not sure we're even doing that. They say "we're going to sweep away these of your rights", we say "no, don't", and then they do it. I have no idea how to push these things back.

I should certainly be using PGP more though.

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Well, quite.

It seems that the only way to 'regain' our rights and freedoms is to devote our lives to doing so.

Voting once every five years between two parties who agree on 99% of all of this will not be any help at all!

Perhaps we should start a new political party. Or should we infiltrate an existing one and bend it to our will?

Yes, that's it. We split into two main groups. Half join Labour, and half join Conservative. In each, we turn all the factions against each other, thus clearing the way for our SLAVE ARMY OF MUTANT CYBORGS to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

Then we can restore all the freedoms we want to...


J

[skx.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to sign your key if you like - I have your fingerprint in my pocket..

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Well, despite going on about the failings of key signing in another LJ, I can't actually think of a reason to say "no", so, yes please!

[skx.livejournal.com]

{Signed and mailed}

[akicif.livejournal.com]

miramon came up with the suggestion of using Fax Your MP and recommends that as many folk in the UK as possible do the same. He goes on to suggest a next step of trying to find a political party, any political party at all, that's opposed to this nonsense and offer to help out.

[lovingboth]

Lib Dems I should bloody well hope. It may be worth pointing out the business problems this will cause to the Tories.

Is this sort of thing devolved in Scotland?

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I don't know, to be honest, but as it talks about NHS bodies in Scotland and Norn Iron, I suspect it's not a devolved issue. Which means we're looking at the Lib Dems or no-one, really (I can't see a single issue party getting off the ground on this, somehow). At least if it was a devolved matter we'd have the extra choices of Liberals, Scottish Socialist Alliance or Scot Nats.

Still, Lib Dems are probably to the left of New Labour and more libertarian (in the small 'l' sense, not the barking large 'L' sense).

And we can't even rely on Europe to protect us from this one as the European Parliament did something similar a few weeks back. Don't these eejits realise they're digging a pit for themselves, too?