Investigatory Powers Act signed into UK law by Queen Queen Elizabeth II today signs off on Parliament's Investigatory Powers Act, officially making it law in the UK. Her Maj not only had the last word on the new legislation — aka the Snoopers' Charter — she had the first. She publicly announced what the law would be called during the official opening of Parliament after last …
It'll all be kept. Making exceptions for a handful of people is easier in the client which queries the ISP databases than in each ISP.
And then there'll be some Konami code in the client which removes the exceptions, because someone will want that.
Perhaps everyone should change their name by deed poll to Prince Andrew.
It's the spinning engines of Babbage!
...none of these dazed and sullen portraits matched the memory. "Is there any reason why you wouldn't have this man?"
"Perhaps your man has no criminal record," Tobias said. "We could run the card again, to check against the general population. But that would take us weeks of Engine-spinning, and require a special clearance from the people upstairs."
"Why so long, pray?"
"Dr. Mallory, we have everyone in Britain in our records. Everyone who's ever applied for work, or paid taxes, or been arrested." Tobias was apologetic, painfully eager to help. "Is he a foreigner perhaps?"
"I'm certain he was British, and a blackguard. He was armed and dangerous. But I simply don't see him here."
"Perhaps it is a bad likeness, sir. Your criminal classes, they like to puff out their cheeks for criminal photography. Wads of cotton up their noses, and suchlike tricks. I'm sure he's there, sir."
"I don't believe it. Is there another possibility?"
Tobias sat down, defeated. "That's all we have, sir. Unless you want to change your description."
"Might someone have removed his portrait?"
Tobias looked shocked. "That would be tampering with official files, sir. A felony transportation-offense. I'm sure none of the clerks would have done such a thing." There was a heavy pause.
"However?" Mallory urged.
"Well, the files are sacrosanct, sir. It is what we're all about here, as you know. But there are certain highly placed officials, from outside the Bureau—men who serve the confidential safety of the realm. If you know the gents I mean."
"I don't believe I do," Mallory said.
"A very few gentlemen, in positions of great trust and discretion," Tobias said. He glanced at the other men in the room, and lowered his voice. "Perhaps you've heard of what they call 'the Special Cabinet'? Or the Special Bureau of the Bow Street police…?"
"Anyone else?" Mallory said.
"Well, the Royal Family, of course. We are servants of the Crown here, after all. If Albert himself were to command our Minister of Statistics…"
"What about the Prime Minister? Lord Byron?"
Tobias made no reply. His face had soured.
"An idle question," Mallory said. "Forget I asked it. It's a scholar's habit, you see—when a topic interests me, I explore its specifics, even to the point of pedantry. But it has no relevance here." Mallory peered at the pictures again, with a show of close attention. "No doubt it is my own fault—the light here is not all it might be."
Who can view my internet history?
A list of who will have the power to access your internet connection records is set out in Schedule 4 of the Act. It’s longer than you might imagine:
Metropolitan police force
City of London police force
Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996
Police Service of Scotland
Police Service of Northern Ireland
British Transport Police
Ministry of Defence Police
Royal Navy Police
Royal Military Police
Royal Air Force Police
Security Service
Secret Intelligence Service
GCHQ
Ministry of Defence
Department of Health
Home Office
Ministry of Justice
National Crime Agency
HM Revenue & Customs
Department for Transport
Department for Work and Pensions
NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England that provide ambulance services
Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service
Competition and Markets Authority
Criminal Cases Review Commission
Department for Communities in Northern Ireland
Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland
Department of Justice in Northern Ireland
Financial Conduct Authority
Fire and rescue authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004
Food Standards Agency
Food Standards Scotland
Gambling Commission
Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority
Health and Safety Executive
Independent Police Complaints Commissioner
Information Commissioner
NHS Business Services Authority
Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust
Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board
Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation
Office of Communications
Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland
Police Investigations and Review Commissioner
Scottish Ambulance Service Board
Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
Serious Fraud Office
Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust
No chance for anything to go wrong there.
Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust?
Why on earth should they have the right to look at anybodies browsing history (let alone mine...)?
What's the justification? Do the Welsh ambulance services national health service trust need to check to make sure their customers haven't caught a computer virus?
so what's going to happen :
The NHS will know your browsing and purchase history, then know you smoke, drink too much alcohol and eat too much junk food. ( or well have suspicions )
Then when you go to see Dr Donald Duck, your local NHS GP, he might say
"Well Mr X, I can see you've been a very bad boy, and now treatments are rationed on lifestyle I'm afraid you a well and truly b*****ed "
its the future, and I guess we all know this is how it could turn out ...
Use Cash in Canada and the government will consider that probable cause for further investigations. That was the reason given for removing the $1,000 dollar note from circulation and why cash deposits of $5,000 or more or cash deposits of large number of smaller denominations have to be reported. Using cash is a criminal activity.
It would be useful to have a brief description of the hoops through which one of these many agencies must jump before gaining access to the stored data. That, along with who can grant access, might be a deal more important than who can request and receive the data.
Careful now, sensible talk like that has no place on Internet forums:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473745/Factsheet-Internet_Connection_Records.pdf
Also states that local authorities will never have access.
Although I'm completley opposed to this and have been wondering if my UK based VPS provider will be required to keep records; and if I can buy a DrayTek Vigor and route all my traffic over an IPSEC tunnel to the VPS.....
All these references will be stored at your ISP & you'll pay for the storage, so the more you generate, the more you pay.
Plus it will soak up your data allowance, not everyone has an unlimited connection
Plus anyone searching your ICR log can search through a couple of gigabytes with a laptop in minutes the random entries won't help
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That's great until the plod break down your door because your script accidentally connected to a server hosting child porn.
Of course, you know you're innocent, but your lawyer will tell you that although you could try and fight it in court, it'll take years, and loads of cash, and everyone will still think you're a kiddie fiddler anyway, so the safest thing to do is plead guilty.
now there's an idea. A slight variant ... a script that randomly puts some characters or even words into Google, get a few search results from several pages. Just does a curl of some of them with randomised timing , run it via cron a plausible times. The ISPs search history would just be full of random poo poo.
My comments from 5 months ago http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2897276
And before that http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2797508
It seems no one listens
As soon as the ICR logs are up and running you can no longer trust any site you visit not to contaminate it with dodgy references, your only solutions are to use VPN's or Tor to bypass the ICR and these have their own drawbacks
The internet was designed to survive nuclear strikes, Theresa May just destroyed it with a pen
As usual, laws like this tend to suffer from the "Law of Unintended Consequences": secure messaging encryption, TOR proxies and VPNs are now commodified so that anyone who has something they want to hide from the state can easily do so and, more importantly, it's better hidden than used to be possible.
The government can collect all the fucking data it wants; it'll do them little good. But I worry a lot about what happens after the inevitable data breaches: criminals now have extremely good reasons to try and get hold of this stuff and the government have conveniently offered to put all the data in one place.
Bad guys getting hold of the log is one thing, but it's too easy to plant evidence in your ICR log without your knowledge, all it takes is a couple of lines of JavaScript inserted into a legitimate 3rd party script and content from any site in the world can be downloaded to your PC and be logged in your ICR without your knowledge and no antivirus or antimalware in the world can stop it.
> Bad guys getting hold of the log is one thing, but it's too easy to plant evidence in your ICR log without your knowledge
Yes but, according to my forensics course years ago anyway, it is difficult to prove to whichever standard is required by the situation at hand, that it was a particular person accessing the questionable material. Besides, in sane societies (which squarely excludes England) the mens rea would need to be unambiguously established.
Then again, that's a small consolation. If someone is trying to bring you down (e.g., because you would come in handy as a prosecutable suspect when they can't find the actual culprit, cf. the Guildford four) you've got a pretty big problem, because they're not just going to go away.
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