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islamirama
12-12-2016, 06:23 AM
Britain Has Passed The 'Most Extreme Surveillance Law Ever Passed In A Democracy'

The law forces UK internet providers to store browsing histories -- including domains visited -- for one year, in case of police investigations.

By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day November 17, 2016

It's 2016 going on 1984.

The UK has just passed a massive expansion in surveillance powers, which critics have called "terrifying" and "dangerous".

The new law, dubbed the "snoopers' charter", was introduced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2012, and took two attempts to get passed into law following breakdowns in the previous coalition government.

Four years and a general election later -- May is now prime minister -- the bill was finalized and passed on Wednesday by both parliamentary houses.

But civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government "document everything we do online".

It's no wonder, because it basically does.

The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer's top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand -- though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that that; and even disclose any new security features in products before they launch.

Not only that, the law also gives the intelligence agencies the power to hack into computers and devices of citizens (known as equipment interference), although some protected professions -- such as journalists and medical staff -- are layered with marginally better protections.

In other words, it's the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy," according to Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group.

The bill was opposed by representatives of the United Nations, all major UK and many leading global privacy and rights groups, and a host of Silicon Valley tech companies alike. Even the parliamentary committee tasked with scrutinizing the bill called some of its provisions "vague".

And that doesn't even account for the three-quarters of people who think privacy, which this law almost entirely erodes, is a human right.

There are some safeguards, however, such as a "double lock" system so that the secretary of state and an independent judicial commissioner must agree on a decision to carry out search warrants (though one member of the House of Lords disputed that claim).
A new investigatory powers commissioner will also oversee the use of the powers.

Despite the uproar, the government's opposition failed to scrutinize any significant amendments and abstained from the final vote. Killock said recently that the opposition Labour party spent its time "simply failing to hold the government to account".

But the government has downplayed much of the controversy surrounding the bill. The government has consistently argued that the bill isn't drastically new, but instead reworks the old and outdated Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). This was brought into law in 2000, to "legitimize" new powers that were conducted or ruled on in secret, like collecting data in bulk and hacking into networks, which was revealed during the Edward Snowden affair.

Much of those activities were only possible thanks to litigation by one advocacy group, Privacy International, which helped push these secret practices into the public domain while forcing the government to scramble to explain why these practices were legal.

The law will be ratified by royal assent in the coming weeks.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/snooper...s-becomes-law/
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Serinity
12-12-2016, 09:30 AM
:salam:

No privacy I see. But is this article true?

Allahu alam.
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Born_Believer
12-17-2016, 09:00 PM
This law was almost passed as long as two years ago. It's crazy that we, the british people, have slept through it.
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Huzaifah ibn Adam
12-17-2016, 10:25 PM
If laws like this one continue to get passed, how long would it be until the British people get sick of their government and revolt against them? What's the likelihood of that? I don't know how they are. They're not like the Arabs. Arabs are much quicker to revolt.
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Huzaifah ibn Adam
12-17-2016, 10:31 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Serinity
:salam:

No privacy I see. But is this article true?

Allahu alam.
وعليكم السلام ورحمة الله وبركاته

Even if this particular article was proven to be untrue, it doesn't change the fact that the Kuffaar governments are known to be spying on people. It's 2016 and the number of ways and means even ordinary people can use to spy on others and steal their information is problematic. The governments obviously have much better and more advanced methods of spying.

If you have a camera on your laptop - and all laptops these days have built-in cameras - then even a regular hacker worth his salt can hack into your laptop from wherever he is in the world and remotely turn on your camera to spy on you. That's why people are advised to cover the camera with a sticker or something if they want to avoid that. Even Zuckerberg of Facebook covers the camera of his laptop.

It's a reality. If you want to acquire information about a person, it's never in history been easier than it is in these times.
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ruglifeTX
12-19-2016, 08:10 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Huzaifah ibn Adam
If laws like this one continue to get passed, how long would it be until the British people get sick of their government and revolt against them? What's the likelihood of that? I don't know how they are. They're not like the Arabs. Arabs are much quicker to revolt.
The amount of technology and control the governments in the west have besides pure fire power have the people blind to what is going on in their countries. They are more worried about what famous people are doing than what their government is doing . Plus staged events to distract the masses. People are blind. The book 1984 is very very real here.
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ruglifeTX
12-19-2016, 08:11 PM
Plus there are so many different types of people in the west that everyone has a different agenda or they think this protects them against a problem they aren't really sure of .
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