How much is the government allowed to know?

As a citizen in this glorious country I am always a bit dazzled by something. As a nation the British stop things like identity cards and population registries, shouting freedom and demanding liberty. Yet at the same time the government has one of the most powerful secret services in the world and is using it against it's own citizens under the banner of "anti-terrorism".

 

You might not be aware of this, but increasingly GCHQ is getting its fingers on all your online information, this might not mean a lot to you until you get some insight into how this actually works. I am speaking as someone who has worked closely with, and has a strong interest in, information retrieval and semantic technologies.

 

Imagine this: Instead of a search-engine there is something called a find-engine. It is an automated process that is continuously trawling the web for information on specific people. To be effective it simply has to index ALL people, because you never know when a human operator goes: "This fellow Tim, I need to know why he is defending muslims on sheffieldforum."

 

(The below is illustration, skip for TLDR)

 

The operator plugs in my name and, very unlike google does (but can do!) finds out that I have aliases on several fora, that I bank with Bank X and these are the account numbers/last withdrawals. Although I am a Dutch national (this is my SoFi number, pob and dob) I do have a NI number which is XXX. That I have money saved here and in the Netherlands, that I went to China in year X to visit communist party member Y. That I spend quite serious money on alcohol, so likely to be a drinker and that I have worked at numerous universities in the last twelve months, as well as for some consultancy firms. It finds images of me through Facebook (despite it being locked down) and analyses my Twitter feed to conclude I talk about football, basketball and internet related things a lot. Every now and then I use TOR, so perhaps I am an online activist, but after using the exploit for TOR recognition they realise I only use it to test things. They realise I never had a speeding ticket, but did get a tramgate one recently.

 

This is all already possible. It is in fact very likely that there is far more than the above that the government knows about me. Add in the advances in semantic technologies and machine interpretation and they can start profiling my life even more - they know I am online a lot, when I am not active on-line must be when I am either away from the house or asleep - this matches my debitcard behaviour, so they can now plan what would be a good time to come into my house (Monday night, basketball and fitness related tweets - let's go then).

 

TL;DR: Why do we let the government get away with this? Is it because we trust them? Do we???

 

I don't, certainly not under the moniker of anti-terrorism.

Wouldn't they need a warrant to pull your debit card purchases, as this data would be stored on secure servers by your bank and not accessible??

 

The information on Facebook and Twitter is fair enough, it's more than likely you put it up there to begin with anyway.

The government are about to ram through emergency legislation to force comms providers to retain our metadata for their perusal.

 

This will not be a democratic vote, the bill will be read and whipped through, there will be no debate or discussion as to whether it is necessary, just or fair to blanket surveil the entire population of the UK without a warrant or probable cause beyond 'terrorism'.

 

Ask your MP how they're going to vote on this, and if you get an answer, they'll tell you they're going to support it, if you press them they may tell you the party whip is making them support it.

 

This government that cannot lay hands on important documents supposedly in it's possession such as those relating to paedophile activities, wants to know about every intimate SMS message you send your loved ones or every holiday snap you put on facebook as somehow this will defeat terrorism.

 

UK emergency surveillance legislation expected soon - Computer Weekly, Warwick Ashford 10/7/2014

Metadata does not include the content of sms, calls or emails. Just the detail of the fact that you sent it, and to whom.

 

Edit - nor is GCHQ legally allowed to surveill within the UK as just described (which doesn't mean they don't, but it's not legal).

The way I see it is, if you are not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide.. I don't mind my information being out there and looked at if needs must.

 

If I am honest my life is quite boring, average! So I actually feel sorry for someone looking into all my details - must make for a very uninteresting read

 

We live in an age where we spend a lot of time online, social sites, shopping, internet banking etc so it can't really be surprising that all our activity is logged. Of course our personal data is going to be saved and used. Freedom is a myth.

 

But as I said, if it means that terrorists and paedophiles are stopped in their tracks and brought to 'justice' then I really don't mind being part of the whole mixing pot.

Hard to imagine how much GCHQ would have to pay people to monitor sites as interesting as SF.

Unless they needed to know where the Police helicopter was.

Here we go,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2686859/Spy-laws-rushed-monitor-calls-web-use-Legislation-brought-amid-concern-threat-posed-Jihadists-returning-Syria.html

The problem with this type of thing is that it doesn't remain 'contained' for use only in the area for which it was proposed.

 

Legislation brought in using the catch all excuse 'security reasons' is then used for whatever purpose they wish.

 

Take the extradition treaty with the USA for instance.

 

The first use made of it was to extradite three British businessmen to America to face charges which would not have been brought in this country.

 

To rub salt in the wound the reciprocal agreement with the US was thrown out by Congress because 'we do not extradite our citizens to foreign countries to face their laws'.

 

This leaves us with the situation whereby the US can demand the handing over of any British citizen without habeas corpus for a suspected crime under US law but we cannot do the same.

 

Now this might be considered OK if governments were all honest, honourable and never made mistakes, but as none of that applies it is a dangerous path to proceed down.

 

As to 'you've nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong' I was told recently by a family member of an unbelievable injustice done to an innocent person which took two years of hell for him and his family before the police held their hand up and apologized.

The government are about to ram through emergency legislation to force comms providers to retain our metadata for their perusal.

 

The way I understand it is they already have been doing this under an EU Directive, it was declared illegal by the EU courts so the new law is to by-pass the courts judgement.

 

So it's nothing new, they were already at it beforehand.

Metadata does not include the content of sms, calls or emails. Just the detail of the fact that you sent it, and to whom.

Correct. Though Joe average might be surprised to find out just how much info can be encoded in the metadata of a digital photograph. Especially one taken with a GPS-equipped camera/mobile phone

Edit - nor is GCHQ legally allowed to surveill within the UK as just described (which doesn't mean they don't, but it's not legal).

Probably why their data farms are based around the Arabic peninsula

 

There is nothing new under the sun: what you don't want others to find out (too easily), don't publish it and/or leave it to the care of a third party.

 

E.g. there's a number of accounts I have, which will of course exist electronically in the relevant banks' systems, but with which or about which there is positively zero electronic communications ever to or from me/any of my devices (whether email, log-in or the like). All old-school paper-based in sealed envelopes.

 

Personally, I've never understood this atavistic need people seem to have about spreading their entire lives open on social media

 

[cynical] I'm just waiting for the furore which will erupt when this "anti-terrorist-purposes" data makes its way to the RIAA/MPAA's hounds [/cynical]