Remember all the tory trolls on here going on and on about freedom, and how New Labour was taking our rights away.

Looking forward to watching them defend this. But of course we all know that in tory trolls world it is ok as long as you are a tory.

A worthwhile heads up. Of course if the authorities spent a fraction of the billions mentioned on targetted intelligence gathering, training more people in the necessary technical skills and languages, interdiction of security threats based on “real” leads etc., rather than attempting quick fix mass intelligence gathering measures, we might be better off financially, in civil libeties terms, and more secure from actual terrorist threats they manage to miss because they are too busy trawling through a mass of useless information.

I spotted this last week – was wondering how long it’d take for LibCon to cover it.

IMP was originally a labour policy, of course; although they quietly dissociated themselves from it before parliament ended.

I believe the suggested implementation is just to ensure that the records are present in the event that the police need them, rather than sucking them all into a central database for mass profiling; but that’s bad enough, all by itself.

It’s a technical measure for a social issue, and like most of these things, trivially defeatable by anyone who feels a need to. I’m already immune, and not through any attempt to make myself safe, either.

Oh well – here’s hoping (again) that it won’t go through. Danny Alexander seems quite defensive about the whole issue, so I suspect this is really counter to the lib dems wishes. Can they be broken?

@ 3 – Nick

Please can you explain how these tracking and activity recording measures can be defeated please.

What I don’t get is that the Tories and the Lib Dems claimed, AFTER the election, that they were putting a stop to this rubbish. Why have the Conservatives abandoned the one thing that made them better than Labour?

” Why have the Conservatives abandoned the one thing that made them better than Labour?”

Because they answer to the same masters, The American military industrial complex. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Jim Killock,

Could you clarify whether they intend blanket retention of everyone’s telecoms data or if it is specific people’s telecoms data?

Incidentally, the quotes in the Telegraph article do not appear to match the National Security Strategy PDF.

Thank you and ORG for your efforts.

This is very worrying trend internationally. Many governments in the so-called developed western world are pursuing similar agendas. The USA, France, Australia etc. Not even the Chinese Governent goes this far, and we call them Communist! Please, give me a break!

I propose that should the ‘security services’ or the police require this type of information that they go to the courts and get a warrant for the capture of specific traffic, from the identified suspects ISP. There is no legal need or requirement to routinely capture everyones.

To have blanket capture of the record of communication between email parties etc is a ‘sledge-hammer to crack a peanut’ approach.

The Privacy and Civil Liberty concerns far outstrip any real ‘security concerns’.

We must resist this Tyrannical Policy and not let it be pushed through.

Also, I would like to add that it does not seem to matter whether the Party-in-power is of the Left or the Right, there appears to be continuity of Agenda that supercedes the Left-Right Paradigm. All parties seem to steer this type of thing in the same direction regards of their outward policies. Socialism has nothing to do with liberal ideas or workers rights. It is pure Marxist in it’s methods and policies.

4 – well, I could, but presumably it’s information likely to be of use to terrorists, so I’d be falling foul of the Terrorism Act.

Or something. Stuff that.

For those of a non-technical bent – rent a server somewhere with slightly more liberal legislation regarding internet activity, install OpenVPN on that (or rent the service from someone with the know-how – there’s AlwaysVPN in the USA, but of course, then your traffic is subject to the Patriot Act, so choose your jurisdiction carefully. StrongVPN, OverPlay, VyperVPN, … lots of choice), then install a pretty, whizzy, graphical OpenVPN client on each of your computers and log into the VPN you just created.

Nobody can see what your traffic is until it leaves the OpenVPN server. If there’s no IMP black box wherever the server is, job done.

That’s not my solution – but it’s a simple one. And more than good enough for any terrorist to be completely safe from detection by the IMP.

@ Nick, that’s right

@ ukliberty, it is blanket retention of communications data not currently retained by ISPs, such as who you instant message or talk to on facebook. Your traffic would be intercepted and scanned to retrieve and store this data.

Also, I would like to add that it does not seem to matter whether the Party-in-power is of the Left or the Right, there appears to be continuity of Agenda that supercedes the Left-Right Paradigm. All parties seem to steer this type of thing in the same direction regards of their outward policies.

Hurray. Somebody is getting it.

Political parties or governments are not motivated to act in the interest of their citizens, they act in the interests of the state and, by proxy, in their own interests. Without a formal constitution or a bill of rights, the power to oppress and control is without limit.

In the UK this was always true but it has taken the advance of technology to allow them to complete their agenda in a truly meaningful way.

It’s also worth noting that it’s not the /content/ of the communications that are being stored – just origin and destination, time and duration.

Again, still bad enough.

pagar – governments don’t /necessarily/ have to slowly become repressive, intrusive, interfering regimes. And corporations (naming no names, BT) can’t exactly be trusted not to abuse the same kind of data, either.

If only there were some kind of “middle way” between repressive government and all-powerful corporations. We can but dream, eh.

If only there were some kind of “middle way” between repressive government and all-powerful corporations. We can but dream, eh.

It is not a middle way we want- government and big business are not alternatives from which we can choose. They have a symbiotic relationship.

What we need is freedom from the coercion of both.

.

This proposal is especially dismaying because in past times, within the LibDems and Conservatives, there was a strong opposing argument. I genuinely hope that those opponents stand up again to explain the implications more honestly than civil service advisors.

For anyone dipping into this concept for the first time, it is worth noting that the stated intent of this proposal is to identify end to end communications (ie that Vince C and Nick C exchanged email between certain dates, but that the content of that exchange is not stored). In reality it means that if you post on a pottery discussion board alongside a closet Nazi, the cluster algorithms that are used to analyse the closet Nazi might draw you in as a friend or suspect.

The investigation will be very subtle, and in most cases, it will be pointless. On other occasions, the reputations of innocent people are injured.

Thompsons Solicitors

Hi everyone!

I’ve just popped in here from reality. This software already exists, and we all have weblogs.

The data they are referring to as having a problem obtaining, is simply the level of content accessed due to software and development diversity.

Some already willing affiliates with live programs:

Microsoft
Google
Yahoo
BT
AOL
Apple
BBC

America is saturated by this surveillance! We just need a few quid to play catch up!

Sigh.

Just as an update, no they will *not* be introducing the Interception Modernisation Programme:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/interception-modernisation-programme-no-its-not-coming-back-21801.html

I forgot to link to the history of this – it may be of interest. It may well be back.