UK government to impose Orwellian-style surveillance

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov20 ... -n01.shtml

The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition is pushing ahead with plans to allow Britain’s security services and police to spy on the activities of every citizen who uses a phone or the Internet. The secret services and police will have unlimited powers to track every single phone call, email, text message and website visit made by anybody in the UK.

The plans were contained within last month’s “Strategic Defence and Security Review” in which the government stated, “We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.”

They are based on reviving, with a few modifications, the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) first proposed in 2006 by the previous Labour government. The government is implementing this massive surveillance dragnet, despite making an election pledge that it would not do so. The pledge was specifically cited in the “Coalition Agreement” for government, published May 12.

The decision to carry on with the imposition of blanket state surveillance of the entire population exposes as nonsense the civil rights pretensions of the Liberal Democrats. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg used the occasion of his first speech after the coalition came to power to reiterate that the government would “not hold people’s internet and e-mail records when there is just no reason to do so”.


The reality is that the government has been developing these anti-democratic plans throughout the six months it has been in office. In a barely known and little publicised document, the “Home Office Draft Structural Reform Plan” released in July, the coalition stated it would, “Publish proposals for the storage of internet and e-mail records, including introducing legislation if necessary”. Using language George Orwell would immediately recognise as “Doublespeak”, the proposals were listed in a section entitled, “Protect people’s freedoms and civil liberties”.

[caspian]

I wish them the best of luck dealing with encrypted communications then. Any terrorist worth his salt is going to be doing all his work behind an encrypted proxy or via Tor or something.

[sam_uk]

Once you have grabbed all comms, you can then just check out who is using encryption, correlate their IP address to their facebook status and run a bit of network analysis.

Hey presto you have a list of possible terrorists, and other potential trouble makers.

Tor is great but it does not actually give you anonymity and it is pig slow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anony ... Weaknesses

[Vortex]

I wish them the best of luck dealing with encrypted communications then. Any terrorist worth his salt is going to be doing all his work behind an encrypted proxy or via Tor or something.

Hmm ... none of that would hinder GCHQ.

[Sarge]

doubt if hardcore terrorists use encryption-would draw too much attention to themselves, or so i've read, better to use code words, dead drops and informal networks

[JohnB]

I thought the idea was to record senders and recipients details rather than the content of the message, so they know who has been in contact with each other, and what web sites they've visited, not what was said.

[caspian]

doubt if hardcore terrorists use encryption-would draw too much attention to themselves, or so i've read, better to use code words, dead drops and informal networks

In an email, perhaps, but encryption is routine on the Internet, and wouldn't be considered particularly unusual. Every time you log in to your bank account on the Web you're using encryption (I would hope).

[Sarge]

"In an email, perhaps, but encryption is routine on the Internet, and wouldn't be considered particularly unusual. Every time you log in to your bank account on the Web you're using encryption (I would hope)."

yes, I agree-I was referring to their person to person communication methods i.e. email

yes encryption abounds these days

[woodpecker]

Gosh, I've had almost 200 emails about IMP since 2006.

Here's one from 2008 that covers the Hansard report of what it's about.
Because IMP comes under the security services, you're never going to find out exactly what it costs, though I think the estimated cost is GBP2bn.

Of course, in opposition the parties were against. But now they are in power and have appointed a security old hand to write the report. And thus the whole thing is being resurrected. Sigh.

*********************


>
> Hansard: 8 July 2008 : Column WA75
>
> Home Office: Interception Modernisation Programme
>
> The Earl of Northesk asked Her Majesty's Government:
>
> What are the aims of the Home Office's interception
> modernisation
> programme. [HL4465]
>
> The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office
> (Lord West of
> Spithead):
>
> The objective of the interception modernisation programme
> (IMP) is to
> maintain the UK's lawful intercept and communications
> data
> capabilities in the changing communications environment.
> It is a
> cross-government programme, led by the Home Office, to
> ensure that our
> capability to lawfully intercept and exploit data when
> fighting crime
> and terrorism is not lost. It was established in response
> to my right
> honourable friend the Prime Minister's national
> security remit in
> 2006.
>
> The Earl of Northesk asked Her Majesty's Government:
>
> Whether the current Comprehensive Spending Review
> allocation contains
> any financing for the Home Office's interception
> modernisation
> programme; and, if so, how much. [HL4466]
>
> Lord West of Spithead:
>
> As part of the Government's Comprehensive Spending
> Review (CSR 07) a
> central bid was made to HM Treasury on behalf of the
> security and
> intelligence agencies. Funding for IMP was included in
> the bid, and
> the exact programme allocation across the CSR years is
> currently being
> finalised between the Home Office and HM Treasury.
>
> The Earl of Northesk asked Her Majesty's Government:
>
> What are the Home Office's current budgetary
> estimates for
> demonstrating the feasibility of the interception
> modernisation
> programme. [HL4467]
>
> Lord West of Spithead:
>
> A significant proportion of the programme investment over
> the CSR
> period will be used to test feasibility and reduce the
> risk associated
> with implementing the proposed IMP solution. The private
> sector is
> likely to play a major role in this work and the
> programme will be
> conducting a competitive tender and entering commercial
> negotiations
> to commission its services.
>
> The tendering processes are not yet complete and
> therefore the budget
> for the feasibility and de-risking activities is not
> finalised. For
> this reason, a precise figure cannot be given at this
> time.
>
> The Earl of Northesk asked Her Majesty's Government:
>
> What are the Home Office's current budgetary
> estimates for the
> interception modernisation programme. [HL4468]
>
> Lord West of Spithead:
>
> The interception modernisation programme (IMP) will
> require a
> substantial level of investment which will need to tie in
> with the
> Government's three-year CSR periods. The scale of
> overall economic
> investment is very difficult to calculate because of the
> complexity of
> the project and wide ranging implementation solutions
> currently being
> considered.
>
> Given this complexity and the commercial and national
> security
> sensitivities, the precise costs of the programme cannot
> be disclosed.
> Further detail on budgetary estimates for the IMP will,
> however,
> become available once the draft Communications Data Bill
> is published.
>

[Vortex]

Most major ISPs have to add an email divert box to allow MI5 to receive, read, check and release your emails.

Fir a few weeks some years back I suspected this was happening to me ... my emails were hanging around my ISP for many hours.

A phone call with them resulted in their tech support guy getting very evasive and embarrassed. He wouldn't raise a fault report and couldn't get off the phone fast enough.

I then sent myself an email asking the spooks to be a bit quicker in their vetting of my emails.

Normal speed was resumed a couple of weeks later.

Maybe it was a mail server technical problem - but it certainly made me think.

[ziggy12345]

No terrorost worth his salt would use any form of electronic communication. Its all word of mouth and written communications usually encrypted in books

[woodpecker]

I thought the idea was to record senders and recipients details rather than the content of the message, so they know who has been in contact with each other, and what web sites they've visited, not what was said.

John, have you looked at how content and header might be separated? When every online mail provider has a different format? Which changes by country and over time?

The IMP plan is to gather all metadata, including location. This requires deep packet inspection (probably by hardware). Then how to deal with the data content vs 'communication data' (GCHQ new department?) Which needs to be updated every few months (think: Skype etc services coming online needs system rewrite).

And how do you find out who someone is meeting in Second Life? Probably only by finding out where *everyone else* is in at the same time Second Life, no??

None of the online email providers have standard format, and there's a whole lot of stuff beyond email (chat within programs etc)

I could go on - PAYG phones etc. etc. - but there are significant issues here already.

[JohnB]

I thought the idea was to record senders and recipients details rather than the content of the message, so they know who has been in contact with each other, and what web sites they've visited, not what was said.

John, have you looked at how content and header might be separated? When every online mail provider has a different format? Which changes by country and over time?

No, but that's what I'd heard/read was the idea. To record who has been in contact with each other, not what they said. It doesn't mean it will work like that!

[caspian]

Most major ISPs have to add an email divert box to allow MI5 to receive, read, check and release your emails.

Unlikely, but even if it were true, how would that help if the contents of the email were encrypted? Sure, they'd know the sender and the recipient, but that's not particularly helpful on its own.

Strong encryption cannot be broken without a key in any kind of sensible timeframe. Don't get all tin foil hat about it. Encryption is a real problem for agencies that need to break it.

[MacG]

Anyone who has been close to a SAP implementation will sneeze at the whole thing. When it is such a bloody mess to gather limited information in a benevolent environment where everyone tries to help with the gathering, any attempt to harvest 'intelligence' from open email is outright stupid.

I guess some consultants from Oracle, SAIC and IBM will eat pretty nice dinners for a number of years to come though.

"Military intelligence is to intelligence as military music is to music"

Edit: A number of completely innocent people will end up in severe problems.