Big Brother UK getting bigger... and bigger...

[Crazed Rabbit]

What makes it all the funnier is that apparently all those cameras watching your every move are no good for solving crime:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ved/article.do

London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost £200 million, figures show today.

But an analysis of the publicly funded spy network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its ability to help solve crime.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

The bad thing is the terrible ideas are infecting the US, starting with NYC.

Crazed Rabbit

[Xiahou]

The bad thing is the terrible ideas are infecting the US, starting with NYC.

Well, if one government develops an expensive, invasive boondoggle to spy on their citizens, it's only natural that other governments would be eager to emulate it.

[Geoffrey S]

Well, if one government develops an expensive, invasive boondoggle to spy on their citizens, it's only natural that other governments would be eager to emulate it.

...especially if said citizens swallow it whole...

[Blodrast]

What makes it all the funnier is that apparently all those cameras watching your every move are no good for solving crime:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ved/article.do



The bad thing is the terrible ideas are infecting the US, starting with NYC.

Crazed Rabbit

Rabbit, yes, good post - I was aware of that article, read it, and I toyed with the idea to post it myself, but then my brain started adding more and more examples of similar articles (referring to laws and/or analyses of their effects), so I thought I should pace myself.
But yes, very good to post that.

Baba Ga'on, I'll assume that poster is actually real, not a joke or sarcasm got from the web... If so, it's truly scary, and, frankly, shocking (because it looks _just_ like some poster you'd read about or see in books/movies about oppressive regimes and such: ridiculous in its claims, but serious enough to make you realize that this is for real, and not just a funny joke).

I understand the three "tiers" thingie, but why on earth do so many hundred entities need to know about my calls ?! I can understand the gov't (I don't agree with that, but that's a different matter), but six friggin hundred ??!

As for the other one, crypto-related, people pointed out so many ways it could be abused, it's not even funny.

[Crazed Rabbit]

As a note to Baba Ga'on's post, I have seen that image before and believe it to be 'real'.

You know what made V for Vendetta so fantastic (as in not real)? That the population of Britain would stand up to their government. Individuals, sure, but a great segment of the populace in open defiance? If they accept a poster like that and all it means, then I simply don't think it's possible.

CR

[Tribesman]

What makes it all the funnier is that apparently all those cameras watching your every move are no good for solving crime:

Wasn't it CCTV in London that identified the neo nazi nailbomber and the July trainbombers ?
Then again they were people who didn't like their government and stood up .

[Blodrast]

Wasn't it CCTV in London that identified the neo nazi nailbomber and the July trainbombers ?
Then again they were people who didn't like their government and stood up .

Tribesy, I don't think anybody (here) claimed there can possibly be no benefit from them, ever, under any circumstances; one can find some silver lining even in genocide (uhm, I dunno, less pollution, more resources for the rest of us, whatever).
I think the point is that 1) the price we pay for having those is not worth the (quite unproved, so far) results/benefits; and 2) the official reason for setting those up was that they would reduce crime, etc. Apparently, they don't, so then if they don't do what the gov't claimed they would be useful for, then what's the point in having them ?


I'd like to point out that the crypto thing is not as irrelevant as it may seem. What's more interesting about it, and very much different from your run-of-the-mill law, is the fact that the burden of proof is NOT on the authorities this time (*); it's on you.
More precisely, a reasonable belief on their side that you do have the key is sufficient for them to charge you, UNLESS you can prove that you do not have it.
In other words: if you cannot prove that you do not have the key, you're screwed - they can put you in jail, and they don't have to prove anything - just have a reasonable belief that you do in fact have the key.
If you can prove that you do not have the key, then yes, they are required to actually prove the contrary before they can charge you with anything.


So, let's say you literally forgot your encryption key: too bad; you can end up in jail, because not providing it to the authorities is illegal now.

Some of the more obvious (and unbelievably ridiculous) effects/exploits are that if someone sends you something encrypted with a key and you don't actually know the key, you could get in trouble unless you can prove that you cannot possible have a key for that.

Also, other people pointed out that criminals get a very nice cop-out in this case, since if you're actually guilty of something, you can just refuse to turn over your key to the authorities and only spend up to 5 years in jail, whereas if you had handed over the key and they had decrypted your data (and found out that you're a terrorist/pedophile), you'd have faced a much worse sentence.

So, very very ironically, the law actually benefits PRECISELY the kind of people it claims it is aimed against.

[Tribesman]

Tribesy, I don't think anybody (here) claimed there can possibly be no benefit from them, ever, under any circumstances;

If they are "apperently no good for solving crime" thats a pretty definate claim isn't it .

Though what I find surprising is that people are raising the subject that the UK government have publicly announced the telephone thing yet don't seem to realise that they have been doing it for decades .
Bloody hell the even delayed the launch of the european communications satellites solely because Britian wanted to fit more monitoring equipment .

Though whats really funny is the criticism by people who supported domestic surveilance in their own country .

[Blodrast]

If they are "apperently no good for solving crime" thats a pretty definate claim isn't it .

Well, frankly, I don't really wanna go into semantics, but from what I remember from the article, the findings didn't necessarily point either way: in other words, the findings didn't indicate that the cameras help solve crime, but didn't indicate that they don't, either.

However, like I said, this is just semantics; as far as *I*'m concerned, if they can't prove that the damned things help solving crime (i.e., in my eyes, the burden of proof is on *them* to show that the cameras are helpful), then there is no reason for having the cameras.

Also, on semantics, what I meant by my previous post was that because of the laws of statistics, I'm absolutely convinced that there may be cases when they end up being useful. But if those cases are not statistically relevant, and/or if the benefit of solving those few cases is not greater than the negative consequences of having the cameras in place, then, again, the cameras are not justified.
That's what I was trying to say in my previous post. I'm not sure if I'd managed to express that clearly and coherently enough.

Though what I find surprising is that people are raising the subject that the UK government have publicly announced the telephone thing yet don't seem to realise that they have been doing it for decades .
Bloody hell the even delayed the launch of the european communications satellites solely because Britian wanted to fit more monitoring equipment .

Well, I guess this makes it worse because it kinda enshrines it into law. I mean, sure, everybody is aware that your phone calls aren't really yours, and they weren't private for many years now, but, up to now, you know, they needed a court order, they needed to jump through some hoops, and/or it wasn't even legal to do so. But now, it's out in the open - and I think that's the difference. And it is much worse, in my eyes, because now they can practice it on a larger scale and without worries about whistleblowers and the legislative giving them a hard time about it when they overstepped their bounds too much and made a booboo.