“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resist all calls for GCHQ to monitor all email and internet activity within the UK”
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/privacy-matters/
More detail about the petition here.
After you sign, don’t forget to click the link in the verification email you’ll be sent.
Almost all of the most alarmist predictions made over the last few years are coming true. Little seems to have been too extreme or exaggerated.
Next stop: “We don’t like that free software vendor, one of our “consultants” has advised us it that its offerings might potentially violate patents held by a respected member of our business community, so we’re afraid that their website will have to be blocked….”
Don’t even bother trying to persuade me that this won’t happen. Yes it will. Business and government are going to combine to restrict our choice, compromise our privacy and civil liberties (they’re already doing that big-style, of course), and will attempt to force us to pay for as much of our online activity as they are able. The perpetrators are the new digital authoritarians, turning technology that they didn’t create, champion or (in the case of the majority of politicians) understand, against the general public.
Government and politicians fear the Internet because it enables the general population to have conversations and to access knowledge that those supposedly serving us don’t control. Remember Tony Blair’s moaning about the Internet and how it had made the population much harder to govern? It was prophetic.
I just want to write a string of expletives, but what’s the point?
UPDATE: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au
Which one is the real quote from Jacqui Smith?
A:
“Our ability to intercept communications and obtain communications data that passes between you and your loved ones is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking”
B:
“Our ability to monitor conversations and activity in private homes is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking.”
C:
“Our ability to fly surveillance drones over private property is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking.”
D:
“Our ability to know the details of all electronic and voice communication engaged in by the general public is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking.”
E:
“Our ability to monitor activity within the brains of individuals is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking.”
F:
“Our ability to track members of the public as they move through public spaces is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking.”
G:
“Our ability to intercept communications and obtain communications data is vital to fighting terrorism and combating serious crime, including child sex abuse, murder and drugs trafficking.”
Answer here.
Have just been sent this link by a friend:
http://www.pistonheads.com/speed/default.asp?storyId=18782
Look on the bright side, at least there won’t be so many terrorists, paedophiles or fly tippers clogging up the bus lanes.
And eco-warriors, titter ye not with vengeful glee, for it’ll be but a Pyrrhic victory. They’ll be doing the same to pedestrians next, including the ones that only eat vegetables. They’ve already got the face recognition software, and it can reportedly “see through” beards and cosmetic alterations.
They’re simply wrecking our society with this totally unnecessary surveillance porn and attendant authoritarian attitude. I’m losing track of the number of people of my generation who have registered an intent to emigrate. Intelligent people don’t want to tracked every inch of their journey through a public space, they don’t want flourescent jacketed “officers of the council” scratching and sniffing their rubbish bins each week, they don’t want pilotless police drones flying over their homes and observing them in their gardens and yards.
It’s not terrorists destroying our public spaces and society in general, it’s our own government and its authoritarian, technology intoxicated, control freak minions.
Quite honestly, I think our government is going collectively mad.
Lawrence Lessig predicting that the US government will use the pretext of an “Internet 9/11” to clamp down on the freedom of the network (the following is my own incomplete transcript):
“I had dinner once with with Richard [?] … and I said to him, is there an equivalent, is there a ‘Patriot Act’ or an ‘i-Patriot Act’ just sitting waiting for some substantial event that will become an excuse for radically changing the way the Internet works? And he said, ‘Of course there is!’ and I swear that this is what he said, and I quote, ‘And Vint Cerf is not going to like it very much’. So this is the big terror, right? They’re just sitting waiting for the invevitable to happen, and then SLAM!”
It’s even more alarming given the information in the first half of the clip about how the Patriot Act was conceived and introduced. This is Lawrence Lessig, a Professor of Law at Harvard, not some hysterical conspiracy nut. We’ve been warned people!