Posted on 04/01/2012 11:16:52 AM PDT by null and void
Ministers are preparing a major expansion of the Government's powers to monitor the email exchanges and website visits of every person in the UK, it was reported today.
Under legislation expected in next month's Queen's Speech, internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ the Government's electronic "listening" agency to examine "on demand" any phone call made, text message and email sent, and website However ministers believe it is essential that the police and security services have access to such communications data in order to tackle terrorism and protect the public.
Although GCHQ would not be able to access the content of such communications without a warrant, the legislation would enable it to trace people individuals or groups are in contact with, and how often and for how long they are in communication.
"Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address. It does not include the content of any phone call or email and it is not the intention of Government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications."
Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group, said: "This is an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran.
"There is an element of whoever you vote for the empire strikes back," she told Sky News's Murnaghan programme.
Conservative backbencher Margot James said ministers would come under pressure to water down the proposals as the legislation passed through Parliament.
"I am sure there will be considerable pressure brought to bear as the proposals are debated for protections to be built in to protect people's privacy," she told the Murnaghan programme.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
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What could go wrong with this?
This is already done in the US, and practically every country on Earth with a more-or-less competent national security agency.
Wasn’t it the NSA which prevented Blackberry from allowing users to enable 256-bit encryption because of the amount of computing power it would take to decrypt messages?
are there no Englishmen in England any more?
how about the Scottish? all gone?
I cannot believe the limeys are taking this laying down - the French, yes, but a Brit????
“...but a Brit????”
They’re all gone; the last one out turned-off the lights on the UK, years ago.
Hi Nully — Can you please add me to your ping list? Thanks!
Hi BQ! As soon as you follow the rules, I’d be delighted to add you!
The NSA Is Building the Countrys Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
By James Bamford
March 15, 2012Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center [in Bluffdale, UT] is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the worlds communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trailsparking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital pocket litter. It is, in some measure, the realization of the total information awareness program created during the first term of the Bush administrationan effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans privacy.
But this is more than just a data center, says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handlefinancial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communicationswill be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: Everybodys a target; everybody with communication is a target.
1930’s Germany redux, with updated technology.
Hmmmm. Maybe we can talk them into co-locating FR’s servers there?
And much more sophisticated propaganda.
Goebbels would be green with jealousy, in both cases.
LOL. Wouldn’t that be nice. Just think, with that much horsepower and intelligence, pages would load even before you clicked on a link!
They will be watching for any anti-Islam or anti-gay bias to charge people with thoughtcrime and hate speech.
They want to become 1984... in America we are becoming Idiocracy
1984? Idiocracy?
Tough call...
Please remove me from the ping list.
No problem, you’re gone.
Just remember, to get back on you have to threaten to sic The Mod Squad on me.
No more free ride as part of the original cohort.
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