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Tuesday 18 June 2002

RIPA - write to your MP! [Lurks]

Check out this story in the Guardian about the new proposed changes to the evil RIP act being debated next Tuesday. Essentially these changes will allow a whole bunch of government agencies to have access to the logs which ISPs are being forced to record on all Net users as part of the RIP act. This is not good, this is insane. We're talking about agencies from your local council to Consignia gaining access to this data. I actually wrote to my local MP about RIP when it was first proposed and she wrote back. She defended it saying that it was not evil, it was only to catch criminals and only law enforcement agencies would have access to the data. Well these latest proposed changes appear to be in contravention to her views and I played on this fact in a fax to her today.

This cannot be allowed to stand, please write to your MP - Fax Your MP is quick, easy and free. You know you need to do this.

11 comments:

  1. Very well structured and relevant fax Mat. However, don't you think it might be taken a little more seriously if you didn't sign it with your @plothatching.com address?

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  2. What the hell is wrong with my plothatching.com, it's my e-mail address?! Are you lazy slack motherfuckers really going to let this RIPA shit slide in without a protest? What exactly does it take to get you up in arms over what the government is doing? We're all Net heads, surely this fundamental attack on our privacy is of some concern?!

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  3. I think I'm a little apathetic towards it because I know firstly that if anyone really wanted to read my email they could without too much trouble anyway, and that to prevent this law from affecting me, I can take measures to protect my privacy such as using a foreign secure ASP for email such as hushmail. It seems pretty poorly thought out, and a genuine hinderance towards promoting the UK as a backoffice solution for businesses

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  4. it is poorly thought out and it does harm the UK relative to the rest of the world. Which is why it's important. Sometimes you can't sit back and just let the government do this shit. It's not about anyone really wanting to read your mail, the problem is that whole loads of government agencies can access records about your electronic lifestyle without any trouble at all. Reading your e-mail being easier to get done than tapping yo

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  5. RIPA is one of the issues that really worries me - I just don't believe in giving governments powers like that without strict guidelines for their usage, just a vague assurance that they'll only be used to catch the bad guys. This RIPA crap is unbelievable - gross intrusion into personal privacy, massively damaging to Britain as a 'new economy' centre... What kinds of crack are our elected rulers on, eh? Oh yeah - and using something like hushmail doesn't help greatly. The Government is entitled to lock you up for refusing to hand over stuff like PGP keys, passwords and so on under the terms of the act.

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  6. Yes, you need to hand over your keys on demand. But then if you're a paedo the penalty for not handing over your keys is far far far less than what you'd get for handing them over. The problem with this legislation is that everyone will use crypto, mechanisms to use crypto and to aid anonmity etc will become common place so that casual/stupid criminals get access to it. The government should protect our basic rights of privacy so that none of us feel the need to run around encrypting our mail. Then law enforcement people can treat encryption as some evidence to warrant obtaining an order to intercept traffic or confiscate physical machines etc.

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  7. To be fair, crypto has applications for normal citizens who aren't criminals - in terms of simple internet security, protecting commercially sensitive information and so on. I don't think that criminalising crypto is the way forward - you might as well try to criminalise envelopes and insist that everyone writes all their letters on postcards so they can be easily read by all and sundry.

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  8. I'm currently involved in a cursory examination of the RIP act amendment and how it will affect business communication via email - currently we don't have in place any system to secure communications which usually involve highly classified commerical data, yet this 'access for pretty much whoever fucking wants it' is slightly worrying.

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  9. I never said a thing about criminalising crypto. My point is that these stupid amendments to RIPA will mean that ALL of us will encrypt our e-mail. This makes it easy for stupid criminals to encrypt stuff in the longer term. I thought I'd covered this well enough already...

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  10. To be honest.. in this day and age, e-mail encyption shouldn't just be for the paranoid and people with 'dubious' hobbies.. If your using it to send mission critical confidental information, then your mad not to make use of some form of encryption. Hackers and rogue admins can easily place filters on mailq's to pluck out interesting bits of unencrypted info, and although the general stereotypical hacker seems to be a teenage weenie whos only skill is to download and run scripts.. there are those out there who have the inteligence to actualy exploit the info and screw you over. in response the RIP act.. Yep.. I agree that the act is fundimentaly flawed and needs knocking on the head immediatly before any more govermental resources are squandered (the goverment/s seem to have a knack for throwing away cash on ill thought out IT systems).. However.. I do belive that there should be a law passed that states that ISP's should implement within their infrastructre, ways in which 'wire taps', like they want implemented, can be introduced on individual accounts, quickly and reliably, when it is deemed neccecary by the appropriate authorities.. something more than some geeky tech running tcpdump hastely and providing techno-babble which will be counterproductive to any real investigation more than likely. The people who can access the info really needs to be looked at immediatly too.. I've never recieved a DPA request from the post office before.. so god knows why they should be able to do that and more now.

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  11. Oh my, it looks like the backlash against the RIPA amendments has begun. The BBC is reporting that Plans to extend surveillance of e-mail and telephone records have been postponed at the last minute amid growing concern from MPs about the invasion of privacy. Result! It gets better! Now the BBC is reporting that The UK home secretary admits he made a mistake over plans to increase access to e-mail and phone records and puts the idea on hold. Well there you go, writing to your MP works no thanks to you slack fuckers! :)

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