Back in 2000, the UK government introduced the widely criticized "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000".
It was even heavily criticized in the House of Lords, but still made it through to Royal Assent on the 28th July 2000. The bill started in February of the same year and was pushed through as fast as possible in order to "prevent internet crime and paedophilia".
The core criticisms [1] surrounded the inclusion of the requirement for suspects to give up encryption keys or face prison (reverse burden of proof), and the expansion of the act to allow almost any government body to snoop secretly on the public.
It was dubbed the "Snooper's Charter" [2], and here we are 16 years later and that bill is now law and abused every day by councils across the UK to snoop on people "putting their rubbish bins out on the wrong day" [3]. Seriously, I'm not making this shit up.
Make no mistake; There is little we can do within the current political framework, in order to prevent this bill from passing into law, albeit with minor amendments and other hidden little nasties that we discover later were snuck in on the quiet.
The government is playing the long game, against a public that doesn't even realise they are even supposed to be playing the game.
Meanwhile the public are more concerned that "I'm a Celebrity get me out of here" is about to start, and the tax on petrol and beer to due to rise in the next budget.
"The only way to win the game is not to play", sadly doesn't apply to this game.
>> Meanwhile the public are more concerned that "I'm a Celebrity get me out of here" is about to start, and the tax on petrol and beer to due to rise in the next budget.
First of all, "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here" doesn't start until autumn time.
In all seriousness the lack of concern by the general public surprises me especially after the high profile coverage of Edward Snowden. I spoke to someone training as a lawyer (specifically in human rights) and they'd never heard of Snowden or mass surveillance - and didn't seem to care either when I explained. That was pretty worrying.
On the other hand the decline of privacy rights has concerned me so much that I plan to retrain in Law (been in technology for about 9 years since I left high school) with the sole aim of working to maintain our privacy rights. So although not everyone cares right now (they probably will when it's too late) I'm sure there are enough people who do who are willing to do what they can to try fix this.
It was even heavily criticized in the House of Lords, but still made it through to Royal Assent on the 28th July 2000. The bill started in February of the same year and was pushed through as fast as possible in order to "prevent internet crime and paedophilia".
The core criticisms [1] surrounded the inclusion of the requirement for suspects to give up encryption keys or face prison (reverse burden of proof), and the expansion of the act to allow almost any government body to snoop secretly on the public.
It was dubbed the "Snooper's Charter" [2], and here we are 16 years later and that bill is now law and abused every day by councils across the UK to snoop on people "putting their rubbish bins out on the wrong day" [3]. Seriously, I'm not making this shit up.
Make no mistake; There is little we can do within the current political framework, in order to prevent this bill from passing into law, albeit with minor amendments and other hidden little nasties that we discover later were snuck in on the quiet.
The government is playing the long game, against a public that doesn't even realise they are even supposed to be playing the game.
Meanwhile the public are more concerned that "I'm a Celebrity get me out of here" is about to start, and the tax on petrol and beer to due to rise in the next budget.
"The only way to win the game is not to play", sadly doesn't apply to this game.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/oct/24/qanda
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009...
[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-counc...