Brits' phone call information logged for police starting tod

[o'dium]

oi'he'sdumb

so many possibilities

You the man

[o'dium]

same thing I hear daily from your mother

Wait, subtle name changes AND mom jokes? Oh wow, you really are starting to get the hang of this internet thing!

Keep it up sport!

[scared?]

Hey dumbfuck, did you happen to notice that I was quoting o'dium there? Put down the bong, moron.

hey moron did i ever say i was talking about u?...lol idiot...

[scared?]

i never really even noticed odium until last week...has this guy always been this stoopid?...

[Fender]

I don't feel like arguing about it w/ the resident dumbass, so here's a link w/ some decent comments.

Response to: "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about"

[hate]

oh dee dum

what a maroon

[Hannibal]

[4days]

i never really even noticed odium until last week...has this guy always been this stoopid?...

to be fair, he is taking stupidity to a whole new level in this thread.

as a bit of the rip bill, call logging has been in the pipeline since '00, along with varying degrees of monitoring on every other form of communication and the legal obligation to hand over encryption keys - almost no-one gives a fuck about it and the government don't seem to have a clue how to use and manage the new information either.

there's another story in the news today about making highly detailed information of our mobile phone mast network available to terrorists and competing phone companies because it'll please the middle englanders who think that little julian is a retard because his mobile's given him brain cancer (and not because he spends all day swapping text messages written without vowels).

my own personal conspiracy theory, the one that still makes me shudder after i've laughed at half the twaddle you post - is that while we're all swapping gallows humour about how greedy and ignorant and lost in celebrity our leaders are, the machinery of tyranny is being built around us - and when it's finished, it isn't going to work. no-one's pulling the strings, there's no scaly overlord just putting off domination until he's come up with a snazzy enough red, black and white logo. the people who want to build skynet barely know how to change their fucking desktop wallpaper.

living in a totalitarian state might not be that bad. i'd take up skateboarding again if everywhere was covered in art deco concrete. i'd feel safe letting my girlfriend walk around alone of an evening if there was a heavily armed and jackbooted ubercop on every corner - but there won't be, there'll be an underpaid migrant worker slacking off his shift or some delinquent middle class psychopath contracted to the regional branch of blackwater. our credit details will be being traded in delhi while our nation's dna is sorted and categorised by nordic insurance companies.

[Ryoki]

Jesus
You should take up writing 4days

[eMu]

lol genius.

[Dave]

At least Britain doesn't have a Constitution that says the government won't fuck them, which it breaks at every opportunity.

[iambowelfish]

These issues are interesting, and it would be a shame if we didn't get some actual debate.

Laughing at odium isn't contributing much. His point may be a common one, but that doesn't prove it wrong (neither does bringing up Stalin or Hitler saying something similar). If you think it is wrong say why.

The MetaFilter thread was a good read, but there were a multitude of different reasons given. To me there's something a bit backward about "I don't like this statement, why is it wrong?" but it produced some interesting answers.

Many were versions of the following objections:

1. In reality people who have nothing to hide have plenty to fear, either because of incompetence or abuse of power, both inevitable. (Look at the innocent people who ended up in Guantanamo, on death row, tortured by the CIA etc.)

2. It's not about innocence or guilt, it's about privacy.

3. The government's idea of "wrong" is subject to change and is potentially unjustified.

I can think of some problems with these arguments, but would anyone like to correct or add to that? Am I right in thinking these are the main objections that some of you seem to think are self evident?

[Nightshade]

I would say that 1. and 2. are my primary objections. Given the fact that the US government is the largest and most intrusive it's ever been, there's no way I would sit idly by and let them collect all my phone call info and DNA. Now I had to give a DNA sample when I was in the Corps and I hated it. I was told that it would only be used to identify my remains, but I don't trust the government.
The other argument to be made here is what I was alluding to earlier, which is the "slippery slope". Take the DNA samples, once they're collected, who's to say who gets access to them? With as much money as the US insurance industry has to throw at spineless lawmakers, how long can it be before they're granted access to the collected DNA samples for "customer screening to better serve the public"? Which of course means scanning your genetic makeup to decide what illnesses you're predisposed to, so they won't cover them.

Bottom line is that the government needs to stay the fuck out of my business and stop assuming that I'm guilty of something until I prove I'm not.

[R00k]

I believe they're self-evident. If you value privacy in your society, then you shouldn't hand the government a mechanism with which to take it away.

If you don't value privacy, then feel free.

It is a matter of rights. If the government has the right to declare what information of yours is private and what is not, then your society is admitting that it doesn't have an inherent right to privacy, but rather that the privacy you do have is a gift from the government which can be taken away.

Like Dave said, the US is a bit different since we have a constitution which declares things like this sacred. That way, when someone abuses the public trust, we at least have a legal footing to declare things like this wrong. Not that it seems to make much practical difference lately mind you, but it does explain why we sometimes have a bit different perspective on these issues.

And our government has been able to access phone records for a long time -- but they didn't have a readily available secret database containing the information or anything like that. I may not be completely accurate here, but I believe the phone companies have had to keep the logs themselves, and then only after obtaining a warrant (on probable cause or suspicion) could law enforcement get at them, and then only at the specific ones they needed. Of course FISA allowed them to access it without court approval, but they had to justify it soon after retroactively, and that used to be a rare occasion.

[Nightshade]

Precisely. Phone records can be obtained by any local, state, or federal law enforcement agency, but there must be probable cause. Taking that away gives the government carte blanche to snoop at their whim.
And for any of you Euros that don't think this happens, read up on recent events in the US, specifically about how the Patriot Act has been abused by the Bush administration to keep tabs on political opponents.

[Massive Quasars]

Relying on the goodness and well intentioned nature of people in government, rather than a system that corrects for their corruptible nature, is just asking for abuse of authority. These aren't ennobled individuals of some fanciful fiction, they are cogs in the machinery of government that require adequate but sufficiently narrow operating parameters.

[plained]

oh wow someone had no idea about reality

except for stripeing gotch that is!

[iambowelfish]

Ok, I don't really want to discuss rights or constitutions or other legal constructions, since while they would be relevant for anyone who wants to take action against government surveillance, they don't get at the heart of the issue, and they vary from place to place. For example, I've never heard anyone in Britain argue against something on the basis that it's "unconstitutional."

The privacy thing is cultural I think, I don't mean to say it's not important but it might be open to change.

The other objections then, if I have it right, are about limiting the power of government because we don't trust or agree with them, they might change, and they may at an individual or institutional level abuse the powers they have or wield them incompetently.

I can understand that, but I guess this my big problem: You can apply these arguments to any power.

If we don't trust the Government, why are police allowed to patrol the streets, why give the NHS our medical records, why let the council collect our rubbish, why register to vote, why pay tax? These are all open to abuse. They've got the power to lock people up for life, OK not without a trial etc. but still, it's a hell of a lot of responsibility, given that we don't trust them, don't agree with them, they could change, and they're made up of incompetent and nasty individuals.

[Nightshade]

Uhh, I'm not following you here. You're trying to say that agencies which provide services within legal guidelines are on the same footing and have the same potential for abuse of power as the government of a nation? Sorry, no.

[seremtan]

Relying on the goodness and well intentioned nature of people in government, rather than a system that corrects for their corruptible nature, is just asking for abuse of authority.

exactly. unfortunately, people in high office tend to take an exceptionalist stance, believing themselves to be above that sort of thing, and construct laws and institutions accordingly

[iambowelfish]

I think we often focus on the powers of government to enforce the law when it's the laws themselves that are the problem. Here's two plausible examples I just made up that are at least vaguely similar to real cases I've heard of:

1. Police in some red US state break into an apartment after an anonymous report of gunfire. They catch a gay couple having sex and they're charged with sodomy,given a jail term and added to the sex offender's register.

2. A teenager is stopped and searched on the street, and ends up with a criminal record for possession of marijuana.

Both stories would be likely to get people agitated about civil liberties. But can you spot the injustice? Is it the part where the police broke into someone's house based on an anonymous tip off, or searched someone based on their own whim? Maybe. Or is it the part where the law is completely fucking stupid and outdated and out touch with reality?

Perhaps I'm just confused by the inconsistency in demanding that the state limit its power to prevent us committing crimes, on the basis that we ought to be allowed to commit crimes that aren't really wrong. If they aren't wrong, shouldn't they not be crimes? Does anyone else feel this way?

[iambowelfish]

Uhh, I'm not following you here. You're trying to say that agencies which provide services within legal guidelines are on the same footing and have the same potential for abuse of power as the government of a nation? Sorry, no.

Maybe I'm a little confused. I may be saying government when what I really mean is "the state". I was gonna say it's not as if Gordon Brown is gonna be reading my phone records but right enough the original article does say they would be made available to the government as well as the police.

Generally with these sorts of issues we're talking about information being made available to the police, or the CIA, or MI5 . These are "agencies" providing a service, no?

And no I didn't mean to imply that all state institutions have the same potential for abuse of power, but just that the difference is one of degree.

[Nightshade]

I think that there's a very LARGE degree of difference. Service? Yes, in a sense, but taking your dry cleaner to task for fucking up your pants is on an entirely different plane than trying to get the government to stop eavesdropping on your phone calls.
And again, the fundamental issue here is one of privacy. With no probable cause, state agencies should have no right whatsoever to monitor my daily goings on.

[R00k]

I think we often focus on the powers of government to enforce the law when it's the laws themselves that are the problem. Here's two plausible examples I just made up that are at least vaguely similar to real cases I've heard of:

1. Police in some red US state break into an apartment after an anonymous report of gunfire. They catch a gay couple having sex and they're charged with sodomy,given a jail term and added to the sex offender's register.

2. A teenager is stopped and searched on the street, and ends up with a criminal record for possession of marijuana.

Both stories would be likely to get people agitated about civil liberties. But can you spot the injustice? Is it the part where the police broke into someone's house based on an anonymous tip off, or searched someone based on their own whim? Maybe. Or is it the part where the law is completely fucking stupid and outdated and out touch with reality?

Perhaps I'm just confused by the inconsistency in demanding that the state limit its power to prevent us committing crimes, on the basis that we ought to be allowed to commit crimes that aren't really wrong. If they aren't wrong, shouldn't they not be crimes? Does anyone else feel this way?

I don't understand the disconnect here -- that's what this thread is about: a poorly written law.

The law gives 652 agencies access to these phone records -- including the Gaming Board and the Food Standards Agency -- and all anyone has to do to pore over them is ask a senior police officer for permission.

This law would make it possible for some cop who went to school with you and hated you, to look through your phone calls and find something to charge you with, as long as he could convince his boss to let him do it.

[Kat]

At least Britain doesn't have a Constitution that says the government won't fuck them, which it breaks at every opportunity.

That's the thing, oddly enough we do, Magna Carta. iirc the US consitution was drawn up based on it's language and principles (paraphrasing).