Daniel Harding
Under new plans announced by David Cameron and co., the UK government is planning on ‘improving’ their spying game, with plans to ban all forms of media which are encrypted and cannot be viewed by state security organisations such as GCHQ (see here). In an effort to protect us from scary people, popular mobile phone apps such as WhatsApp, iMessage, Facetime, and SnapChat could all be banned from the UK as they have protected their customers consistently, and have even increased efforts to avoid snooping since Edward Snowden revealed what the NSA were doing in the US.
Apparently the state doesn’t like not knowing what people are up to, and although there might be a few people who use such apps for the purposes of illicit behavior, and planning attacks (although I seriously doubt even that), it seems to me that something much more sinister is in the minds of the British state. Like anyone who is concerned about the state’s use of surveillance technology, they has certainly raised concerns that we are continuing to move in a direction where some day in the future, the state will be able to keep tabs on us at all times without requiring a warrant (if they even use one now). It is also worth noting that those who would do us harm probably aren’t daft enough to post everything they’re planning on doing somewhere on the internet, because it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that state security organisations are constantly monitoring it; I doubt such people would even risk planning attacks using encrypted services such as those mentioned above.
This all seems like another poor excuse to keep a closer eye on what we’re all up to in our private lives by using the deceitful claim that it is all for our own safety, and it comes as no surprise to me that such proposals have come out immediately after the attacks in Paris; it’s all rather convenient.
(Top Image from thenextweb.com – source)
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Reblogged this on Libertarian Musings.
My dear wife has just got whatsapp to talk to her chums on, as she puts it “free”. When told by me about these statist plans, she fires up and gruffs and expectorates in disgust as only a woman can do when told something utterly arse-like by her husband.
She says,
“Look! Stop saving bloody world and try save your family!”
I can understand, I’ve just started using SnapChat, and I’m annoyed to hear about these plans. Fortunately, I doubt that this ban will work even if they try.
It all sounds rather like we’re walking in to 1984, if gradually at this stage.
We are not gradually walking towards it. We are there.
Snowden revealed the extent of US government surveillance (though any even mildly perceptive observer could have read all about it in The Patriot Act in 2001). The ECHR “struck down” the Data Retention Directive (pushed through at EU level by Charles Clarke when he was Home Secretary in 2005 because Blair wanted to avoid another public bust-up with his back-benchers so soon after the Dodgy Dossier and David Kelly affairs) a couple of months ago, so the British government just enacted “emergency legislation” in Parliament… CCTV on practically every street corner… Political correctness is IngSoc by another name…
I agree that things are truly bad now, but there is still the potential for them to get worse. I still expect they use warrants on most occasions, and I don’t have cameras inside my house yet; they can’t get much worse, but there is still potential there.
“I don’t have cameras inside my house yet”
Yes you do. Your phone, ipad, laptop – whatever; if it’s a proprietary OS, then GCHQ / NSA probably have a backdoor built in. If they want to, they can just switch it on and watch / listen to everything you do.
HMG have learned on lesson from the EU “Never waste a good crisis”!
How did you get that graphic above the whole posting? I want to do the same.
Good post, by the way.
Thanks Sean.
I don’t know where the function features in the old (classic) dashboard, but in the new style one, it appears on the right hand side of the text box, and is called “Featured Image”.
Thanks. Will try out.
The stupidity of our leaders truly knows no bounds.
They’re not stupid at all. They know, have known always and will continue to know exactly what they are doing, why, to whom and on what timescale. Have you also noticed also, on googling and wikikicking-ing them, how many of the fuckers were up at Oxford? I didn’t know for example until yesterday, when prompted by a Muse to find out (she’s The Ed Miller Band’s Election-PR-girl) that that smarmy Lucy Powell was a Somerville chemist.
What does the university think it’s up to? The colleges should get a grip and have a clear-out of all the wrong dons and stuff: perhaps the PPE-School ought also to be shut down. There’s no bloody excuse for turning out so many awful EnemyClass dudes and dudettes. I thought a degree from there was meant to help you to help people, not produce useless and dangerously-hyperactively-busy scumbags.
(Blair/Cameron/Osborne/theSpeaker(can’t remember his name right now)/TMay/Balls/YCooper/Miliband/the list carries onandonandonandon….)
In the same vein, that curious-looking (she’s Lebanese) “Amal Clooney” is clearly also “one of them” since she’s now advising the Ed Miller Band over “dinners”. (She’s a St Hugh’s lawyer – also always strangely and pointedly described as “British-Born” – as if to try to rub in some point or other…)
But I’d forgive them Nigella Lawson. She’s a bit pretty at least, and can cook things.
Ah, and Boris Johnson…and Red-Ted-“traitor” Heath. And….THATCHER!
She is was that made The British State “efficient”. Is that why she in the end got (what was in all but name) a State Funeral?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9322492/the-politics-of-ppe/
I quote the relevant para:-
“A remarkable number of the politicians voters despised for their tricks learnt their politics at Oxford: David Cameron, William Hague, Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt, Ed Davey, Danny Alexander. Matthew Hancock, Ed Miliband, David Miliband, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Angela Eagle, Maria Eagle, Rachel Reeves and Stuart Wood. There are more PPE graduates in the Commons than Old Etonians (35 to 20). Remember I am not talking about Oxbridge-educated politicians, who make up 50 per cent of ministers and 28 per cent of MPs, but the graduates of just one Oxford course.”
Farage was disparaged for making “political capital” out of the Islamist attacks in Paris. Clegg and Miliband and Cameron had all sorts to say about his absurd suggestion that Islamist attacks may have something to do with the large number of Moslems that the “political class” of Western Europe have invited into our countries. The British government – led by the egregious Tory Party – using the crisis to double down on state surveillance elicits barely a whisper from the screeching ninnies who decried the UKIP leader.
The screeching ninnies will be the very next to go, after all the rather few “intellectuals, writers and other individuals who present a danger to society”.
Then, the PoliticalEnemyClass will have got exactly what it wants: themselves – relatively few, a few hundred thousands – and 74 million unbothered, compliant, uncurious or simply fearfully-cowering drones whose votes and labour and adolescent children they can farm.
For government (and bureaucracy in general, to include large corporations e.g. look at what happens with failed IT projects that are funded by the taxpayer) failure leads to reward. That is the nature of government. That is why small government is impossible and why government has to go. What to replace it with is what we should be arguing about here.