Wednesday, April 08, 2009

UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email

UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email, article.
It's like they're testing what we'll stand for.
The headline is not accurate, but it's still durn Big Brother.

Pascal ranted:

And it doesn't even remotely sound like an April Fool's imposture. Bloody great.
As if hardened pro terrorists life former CIA operative Osama BinLaden were in any way embarrassed circumventing all that orwellian nonsense.

"Even in 2009, that kind of storage doesn't come cheap"
Three guesses as to who will be paying the final bill in these times of financial crisis...
Reminds me of the very recently abandoned Chinese State tradition, of billing the family of the condemned for the price of the bullet they would put through their head.

I'm sincerely hoping that the insanity of that tracking ambition will be its own demise, because it's probably impossible to achieve. The Internet is already about to implode as it is.

But a directive from the EU?!? I knew the UK were going over the deep end, but this... D'OH!
Again, I'm hoping that the citizens, already very edgy with all the going-ons, will not stand for it. In France, I'm POSITIVE the CNIL (Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertés) will very vocally veto this vile violation of the vox populi's vanished virtue, voluntarily viewing us all vexatingly as if voyeured vagrants on a veranda, or vivacious vipers in their vivarium. How vitally vicious, I'm more vivivdly livid than a vindicated vampire vowing vigorous vegetarianism!
Or what was that tirade again in V for Vendetta?
One Fawkin' awesome film, that was.

8 comments:

neeraj said...

IMO it's the best advertising strategy in order to introduce email encryption for all ...

(Nonencrypted emails are like postcards: Everybody can read them on their way. Hopefully mostly not, because there are so many, but if they are stored ...)

Privacy-obsessed ... nice Newspeak!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Indeed. The press puts an edge on everything if it doesn't have one.

neeraj said...

Addendum:

Email encryption e.g. by PGP is still a bit too complicated to handle for many users, because one has to distribute a personal key (different for every email partner), preferably not by email, furthermore one has to install a transparent email routing using an own email server or a special plug-in (e.g. enigmail with Thunderbird) ...

It is much easier to use a VPN (= Virtual Private Network) account tunneling your message already encrypted. From my own experience I can recommend www.hideway.eu - I think, there are many other VPN hoster with probably good service, too, but I don't know them. Of course, a commercial service like this is not free of charge, but I think it's worth the money.

Using a VPN your Internet provider will only know, that you had on 'date d' at 'time t' a connection with 'VPN server x', exchanging 'encrypted data y' ... so, nobody can know what it is. And the handling is totally transparent and easy.

Additionally to this kind of email encryption, any possible censorship as well as any data collecting by your Internet provider while surfing in the net is impossible as long as the VPN account itself is open and not censored.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

And it doesn't even remotely sound like an April Fool's imposture. Bloody great.
As if hardened pro terrorists life former CIA operative Osama BinLaden were in any way embarrassed circumventing all that orwellian nonsense.

"Even in 2009, that kind of storage doesn't come cheap"
Three guesses as to who will be paying the final bill in these times of financial crisis...
Reminds me of the very recently abandoned Chinese State tradition, of billing the family of the condemned for the price of the bullet they would put through their head.

I'm sincerely hoping that the insanity of that tracking ambition will be its own demise, because it's probably impossible to achieve. The Internet is already about to implode as it is.

But a directive from the EU?!? I knew the UK were going over the deep end, but this... D'OH!
Again, I'm hoping that the citizens, already very edgy with all the going-ons, will not stand for it. In France, I'm POSITIVE the CNIL (Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertés) will very vocally veto this vile violation of the vox populi's vanished virtue, voluntarily viewing us all vexatingly as if voyeured vagrants on a veranda, or vivacious vipers in their vivarium. How vitally vicious, I'm more vivivdly livid than a vindicated vampire vowing vigorous vegetarianism!
Or what was that tirade again in V for Vendetta?

One Fawkin' awesome film, that was.
):-(

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Vividly.
Got slightly carried away with the 'V's.
But who wouldn't? :-(

Ron said...

I'm sorely tempted to turn off my server-side spam filters and filter my mail just before it hits my Inbox using Mailwasher (some years ago, when my Spam hit over 3,000 a week, MW coped very well with that). If they want to archive all that crap they're very welcome.

Perhaps, if we all did the same, we could crash the system? Or at least make them wish they hadn't bothered.

Actually, though, this isn't the keeping-the-message system - that's still to come. What's happening with this is that they record the time, date and destination, not the content. Even so, dumping Spam in their laps would serve the buggers right.

Alex said...

And some of us are living in glass houses anyway, g-mail is holding all my mail on their server. I'm sure there is an easy mechanism for a federal warrant to get into that data.

I sometimes wonder how much EU stuff the UK Government let in to

a) make Brussels our Emmanuel Goldstein (Farmer jones)
b) distract from UK policies.
c) break the EU up.
d) slavish British towing the line and keeping a stiff upper lip.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Ron,
Very clever. Hurry and do it while it's still allowed! ;-)
I think as much as 90% of all email traffic in the world is spam alone. So this is a very efficient tool for citizens to fight back.
Add to it the massive flow of purely chain-forwarded humour... or the good old chain letters!
Who knew trash could be so useful?

The other day, I was entertaining the little ones with the Dora saves the Mermaids videogame. Saving them from a mean octopus dumping garbage in the sea from a huge barge. One of the "quests" was to rescue a whale that got covered in trash. Guess who helped do it? Swiper the fox! The kleptomaniac vulpine can't help it, so... "Swiper, GO swiping!"
LOL! That one actually amused me good, hyuk!

"Actually, though, this isn't the keeping-the-message system - that's still to come."
If the day comes when they can do it, be sure they'll try.
But hopefully, I think it's just too huge a data mass to archive.
Yay.

"g-mail is holding all my mail on their server."
The simple fact that their bots go through it, I decided I'd never use them. At least Yahoo! doesn't target-spam you. And PRESUMEDLY doesn't go through your correspondence either. :-/
They barely rat you out if the CHINESE govt has marked you for termination as an "offender of the Regime". But then, everybody (Google, Microsoft) does it, "so it's normal". ):-P

"I'm sure there is an easy mechanism for a federal warrant to get into that data."
True story: if your internet porn passes through a server located in Virginia, where it's illegal, they can prosecute you anywhere in the US for it. And they do.

"c) break the EU up."
I recently read a Sci-Fi novella in French, where the galactic confederation is still named the "European Community". Which it expanded from, to encompass the whole of Earth, then the other planets, including alien races. But "they kept the name for administrative convenience reasons, changing all the stationery and headers of management softwares would've been too much hassle". ;-)
"The EC began as a grouping of European countries -and Great Britain riding alone-. Then it expanded to the Mediterranean countries, then all the rest of Earth. Today it regroups thousands of planets all under one common legal, monetary and measuring System -except for Great Britain, still riding alone-."