Orwell is approaching lightspeed in his grave
Why must governments be such fascist assholes? The UK government wants to record details of every mobile phone conversation, email and possibly instant message (not mentioned but possible) made in the UK for the prevention of Terrorism™ and for Saving the Children™. Jacqui Smith (a pox on her) has gone out of her way to say that the content of the communications will not be monitored, just the location and identity of the comms.
I hope I’m not the only one thinking “Yeah, right” to that. It would be so easy to flip a switch and monitor everything.
Whats the solution? As a first step, encrypt EVERYTHING! It won’t stop the location monitoring but when they flip that switch (not if), it will be a lot harder for them to snoop on stuff. Grab a cheap pay as you go phone that does nothing except call and text. Only pay for credit with cash. Pull the battery when you are not expecting a call.
To avoid the current level of snoopage proposed, I suggest we follow what SKTFM said and create our own internet, with strong encryption as standard. Look into packet radio, can’t be that hard to do.
Lastly, vote Labour out of government. The other parties seem to be less fascist about our privacy. If that doesn’t work, run like hell.
Good call on the encrypt everything route, just wondering if a nice heaily fortified VPN system running over the normal internet might not be an option in the short term. Your views?
There was that court decision a few days ago that said you must give up your encryption keys and if they found out about a VPN then they would just arrest you and hold you until you co-operate.
I did have an idea though, would require cooperation from a few folk though. If you don’t know your key then they can’t really make you give it over. Store all your documents on a system controlled by someone else and vice versa. This does need quite a bit of trust between the involved parties and reliable access to files. Might not be the best idea in the world.