UK law UK law mandates software backdoors, jail for disclosing vulnerability

[Reefa]

It’s the hottest trend in spooking: Take law-abiding citizens, usually business owners, and use the justice system to compel them into being your enthusiastic deputies. People pitch in by opening their doors, both physically and digitally, so the government can make use of any supposedly private user data they might have. The seeming enthusiasm of the collaboration comes from the fact that these same orders make it a crime to reveal the collaboration, so service providers must also actively deceive their own users about the true level of privacy they provide.

Now the UK is getting in on the action, as it’s been revealed that under the upcoming Investigatory Powers Bill it will have the ability to order companies to build software “backdoors” into their products, and revealing that collaboration could result in up to a year in prison. More than that, the government is also empowering itself to enlist the services of talented individuals like hackers, and to also legally restrain these people from revealing the work they’ve done — even in open court. In the US, these orders are called as National Security Letters (NSLs), and they have come to be routinely served to everyone from a small business owners to major corporate executives.

The bill, widely referred to as the Snoopers Charter, could also mean that citizens subjected to these secret orders, who decide to defy them, would be tried by secret courts and appeal to secret tribunals with zero public accountability or even disclosure of its decisions. This fundamentally makes resistance impossible — try to make a stink about what you see as improper use of government power in the UK, and the UK government may soon be able to respond with a judicial system not all that different from a black bag over the head.

The most famous battle over a National Security Letter in the US came when the creator of Lavabit decided that the only way to alert his customers to government snooping without going to jail was to shut down the service without notice or explanation. These sorts of laws, which not only grant powers but build into the system secrecy about those powers, stultify the discourse and make democracy fundamentally impossible. How do you set defense policy when you are not legally allowed to discuss the full range of defensive practices?

In the documentary CitizenFour, among many other places, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden makes a point of saying that of all the Western intelligence powers, GCHQ, the signals intelligence agency of the United Kingdom, is the most invasive. While NSA has a strong sense of entitlement to push the boundaries of its constitutional limitations, it does exist within the context of those limitations and the tyranny-phobic American system in general.

As a Canadian, someone who has tried investigating even minor details about Canada’s SIGINT body, let me just say that while things may be getting worse in America, they are absolutely not the worst out there. The current parliamentary democracies, whether in Britain, Canada, or elsewhere, have the capacity to produce far less restricted governments and government agencies, while also subjecting those agencies to less meaningful public oversight.

Not that Americans should become any less noisy or demanding about their digital rights — things may be bad all over the Western world, but the fact that Americans are willing to complain so loudly is the only reason things haven’t gotten even worse than they are today.

extremetech.com

[CODYQX4]

I honestly do hope this cesspit of a world we live in today gets hit with an asteroid.

That this is the end result of human nature means we all most likely deserve it one way or another.

It'll also be a lot less awful way to go than a long and drawn out collapse.

[Cerberus]

We spend more time spying on our own little ppl then going after the true criminals. Sad times for sure. The internet is going to sh*t.

[Enigmatism]

We spend more time spying on our own little ppl then going after the true criminals. Sad times for sure. The internet is going to sh*t.

This is simply because the criminals are in charge now, we are thier true enemies. If this isn't clear to everyone by now, I don't know what else to say. Order out of chaos is thier motto and they demand chaos first. To have a better understanding of what this all means, go to YouTube and watch "ENDGAME Blueprint For Global Enslavement". Even though it was made in 2007, a lot of the stuff talked about in that film has already came true and the rest is yet to come.

[CODYQX4]

We spend more time spying on our own little ppl then going after the true criminals. Sad times for sure. The internet is going to sh*t.

If all the government spying and gun confiscation actually worked, nobody would have died in Paris. 007 level spying and no guns but dudes with bombs and AK47's just show up.

Meanwhile after the fact, apparently they had some leads they did nothing about. They caught a few people smuggling weapons and got warnings/snitches/etc.

Why, because they're going to milk those deaths that could have been prevented to gain more power. They surely already know the next 10 ISIS targets by now. These traitors probably hope they bomb the US like 9/11 so they can pass more freedom stealing laws. They wanted those people to die to further their own ends.

[humble3d]

Criminals coming out of the closet ?? :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[SnakeMasteR]

They come from everywhere but those from the closet are the sneakiest ones. :P

[flitox]

nah you guys are paranoid, freedom is still here, you still have the choice to bend over or get fucked. :P

[CODYQX4]

nah you guys are paranoid, freedom is still here, you still have the choice to bend over or get fucked. :P

Hey, it's not that bad, you get to vote on which brand of lube too!

[steven36]

Whats funny is Microsoft acts like opening data centers to the UK is going protect you're privacy when in reality it will cause windows to have more back doors than it already does now . As far as putting people in jail for disclosing there backdoors , Someone will disclose them sooner or latter anyways just like Edward Snowden done to the NSA . :P

[CODYQX4]

Whats funny is Microsoft acts like opening data centers to the UK is going protect you're privacy when in reality it will cause windows to have more back doors than it already does now . As far as putting people in jail for disclosing there backdoors , Someone will disclose them sooner or latter anyways just like Edward Snowden done to the NSA . :P

No country is safe.

Oddly enough the EU has Data Retention laws that make the US a better place to provide a VPN service, as it's easier to no log.

My VPN here should suffice against the internet companies. I have no illusions of being able to thwart NSA-level people with just a VPN, regardless the country.