Reply to: Where's the "All your emails and texts and phonecalls are belong to us" thread then?

[minestrone]

Quite why facebook constantly runs on my android phone with permissions to help the feck to what ever it wants pisses me off as I am not a user.

Really need to get that phone rooted and boot the thing off.

[wim121]

Anyone? https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Na...55277607840980

I found it very funny because of the suggested sites ...

[scooby]

Anyone? https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Na...55277607840980

[OwlHoot]

Or parents snooped by councils in case they're in the wrong catchment area for their kids proposed school using anti terrorism laws

The press photographer arrested for being 'too tall'

Absolutely

For example, one can well imagine the Government wanting to sneakily give councils powers to snoop on emails & broadband comms to see who is living at an address, for example to detect sub-letting.

[amcdonald]

Look at how the anti-terrorist laws have been laughably misused and extended way beyond their original purpose. Remember that old guy arrested at the Labour conference a few years ago?

Or parents snooped by councils in case they're in the wrong catchment area for their kids proposed school using anti terrorism laws

The press photographer arrested for being 'too tall'

[OwlHoot]

My major problem with all this is that, as people have already pointed out here, the list of public bodies (even private companies) authorised to access the data is bound to grow, as sure as God made little apples.

It may be one thing for GCHQ or MI5 computers etc to be rifling through it all; but allowing local council officers to snoop through it manually for some trivial purpose is something else entirely.

You just can't trust any Government not to broaden the scope of something like this, especially if they think that can save a few pennies or make life easier for themselves.

Look at how the anti-terrorist laws have been laughably misused and extended way beyond their original purpose. Remember that old guy arrested at the Labour conference a few years ago?

[wim121]

Maybe they did but the Tories before them weren't much better, maybe you're too young to remember the SUS law? I remember our phone being tapped back in the late 70's and early 80's (more than likely) due to political affiliations that our family had...

Or one could even rationalise skin colour huh?!

The suspected person law has been around since victorian times. I dont see how we can blame the tories too much though for the trouble during the 70's and 80's seeing as a lot of paranoia revolved around the cold war which is devoid of governmental regulation.

[wim121]

Before this nonsense, he would walk free as he committed no crime.

But isnt that what should happen?

Well done for stating the obvious and what I have already stated.

What should happen and what does happen are two completely different things. That is why you should try reading the rest of that post.

- police/intelligence/gov want to imprison a radical
- obtaining evidence in this manner is legalised

However now he doesn't as if he isn't found guilty of treason, he is found guilty of another made up crime in the insane mind of labour that we are left with.

Or are you subscribing to the idea of pre-crime, that you haven't actually committed a crime but the police think you will so that is good enough to punish you for the crime.

I never said that. You are completely misunderstanding this conversation and making up your own delusions and assumptions. My point was:

> Let us assume there is a radical or someone who the goverment/intelligence/police want to imprison/silence

> Then you dont have to find them guilty of that crime (ie: treason). You can lock them away for unpaid parking tickets or do whatever you want to remove them from society.

It has nothing to do with pre-crimes or punishing you for a crime. You have to understand how the legal system works. You are trying to rationalise it with absolutes and assume you can only be tried for the crime that they want to incarcerate you for.

[amcdonald]

Couldn't you just leave a hidden message in a book in a skyrim mod ?

[wim121]

So what? You can argue about that until the cows come home.

The point is that this legalisation, if it happens, is being sought to enable the use of such evidence in court. Despite what you say, there was nothing wrong in my original statement at all.

There was, that's why I countered it:

Making it legal should mean they can bang more villains to rights.

No, making it legal increases the power to a totalitarian state.


All of us are felons in our lives. Talked to a mate about the great rate you're getting on your ISA? You're a criminal. Anything you ever say or do can be twisted and get you locked up for, should you give anyone the motive.

The sad fact is, our society and justice is so ill, so polluted and sick, that the innocent have more to fear than the guilty.

[escapeUK]

Before this nonsense, he would walk free as he committed no crime.

But isnt that what should happen? Or are you subscribing to the idea of pre-crime, that you haven't actually committed a crime but the police think you will so that is good enough to punish you for the crime. Of course we have this in in a fashion already under conspiracy law. Hard to believe but just discussing a crime and coming up with a plan makes you guilty of an offence. It might well be that you woke up the next day and thought how stupid it was what you was contemplating, but too late, you are already guilty of conspiracy to commit the said crime.

It might well be the spam ones that contain the real messages between the bad guys.

Yes, that's one way to do it.

[Sysman]

It might well be the spam ones that contain the real messages between the bad guys.

and not even the contents necessarily - Quite possibly just the timing of a certain email, or anonymous posting of certain porn pics on a usenet alt.binaries group, might be indicative in themselves to those looking out for them.

Ah, like the Times Personal Announcements section of yore. We used to have fun imagining some of those messages came from spies.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I am making plans to automatically forward all of my e-mail to my MP. She must think she needs it, after all. I will also repacking all the snail mail I don't need to send to her - after all, we must all be good little citizens and tell our government everything. It's for our own good - they do it in places like that nice China so it must be OK.

[OwlHoot]

... Hardly. So we are to believe that they cant make a simple database to hold NHS records work, but they can make a database that holds all e-mails, texts, and phone convos. Lets not forget that its just not the 3% of e-mails that you want, its the 97% of e-mails which are spam. ..

It might well be the spam ones that contain the real messages between the bad guys.

and not even the contents necessarily - Quite possibly just the timing of a certain email, or anonymous posting of certain porn pics on a usenet alt.binaries group, might be indicative in themselves to those looking out for them.

[Sysman]

OK, this is from the US, so not about our own boys in blue, but this is what happens.

Documents show cops making up the rules on mobile surveillance

The documents also suggest that selling customer information to law enforcement has become a significant revenue source for cell phone companies. A particularly illuminating cache of documents comes from the Tucson, AZ, police department. It catalogs how much various wireless companies charge for a wide variety of surveillance services.