[Piprod01]

(Original post by n00)
Presumably the police didn't just follow everyone on the off chance they were paedos before the internet?

They don't need a warrant to follow you in the real world. And it's not always easy to obtain them, surveillance evidence is often used to justify one.

[Ray Bradbury]

IIRC wasn't RIPA just so that they could monitor terrorists.
The majority of times it has been used is local councils monitoring parents on the school run etc.
If people want to stop this they need to get up of their arses and protest. The next election is going to be a close run thing and all parties are open to persuasion.
I see David Davis standing up for civil liberties again. The best leader the Tory's never had.

[n00]

(Original post by Piprod01)
And it's not always easy to obtain them

[Fuzzpig]

But senior Tory David Davis said it was "incredibly intrusive" and would only "catch the innocent and incompetent".

Absolutely. Those who need to will tighten up their security and will use current and new ways to bypass systems and hide their identity.

Will this new system catch more criminals? Perhaps, but only the stupid ones.

[Aisha~~]

(Original post by ConnorB)
if I hear "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" once more I will roundhouse kick someone.

The best response is simply "Well, if you've got nothing to hide, come to my house and get naked then.".

Then watch them flounder as their arguments fall apart.

[BoringComputerGuy]

(Original post by n00)
Well thats easy enough to sort out. Make the work arounds illegal.

Computer security has always been a never ending cat and mouse game, if you make the workarounds illegal, new ones will be created.

[BoringComputerGuy]

(Original post by Aisha~~)
The best response is simply "Well, if you've got nothing to hide, come to my house and get naked then.".

Then watch them flounder as their arguments fall apart.

Or in the case of politicians, if you've got nothing to hide, let me tag along to your next private meeting with the Murdochs.

[Mr Dangermouse]

(Original post by PierceBrosnan)
Although, I abhor Thatcher, I do agree that this is akin to the Nanny State. God Damn it something really needs to be done about this draconian measure, we're slipping down the greasy pole towards the police state.

I'm going to take this a step further from the Nanny state and compare it to Hitler and Kim Jong Il.

[Logi]

(Original post by Piprod01)
They don't need a warrant to follow you in the real world. And it's not always easy to obtain them, surveillance evidence is often used to justify one.

They don't need a warrant to monitor you here either, only to access the info. It's the equivalent of having someone follow you everywhere noting down every action, conversation and relationship you have but only giving the notepad to the cops when they have a warrant. Would you be ok with that too?

My relationships, my conversations and my interests are my private business. The government has no right to this information.

[TheGrandmaster]

They may as well just set fire to the Reichstag, that seems to be an effective way to get people to give up their freedoms.

[Aphotic Cosmos]

Anyone who can use Google or Bing can find out about Tor or learn how to set up a proxy. David Davis is right in that this will only catch idiot criminals who could have been caught anyway, or, far more worryingly, used to entrap and persecute the innocent. If this bill actually makes to the Commons I will be out there with Anon protesting. It's exactly the same as a government censor checking everything that goes in my letter box and out through my post office, and keeping a copy of it all on a huge database, but in many ways much worse since the internet has become a primary portal for not just correspondence between individuals, but also for news, debate, commerce, finance and, well, pretty much everything. If I had a censor outside my letter box, they might be able to determine who my friends are, what magazines I read and thus what topics I might have an interest in, and which companies I am a customer of. An internet filter would give the government the ability to determine everything about me from my sexual preferences to my financial status to my political persuasions to a fairly comprehensive list of my possessions.

[TheHistoryStudent]

I honestly dont understand these proposals for a number of reasons:-

1) Blanket watching everyone's internet access surely uses more resources than having a watch list of people they think would be a threat, and could devote more advanced ways of watching their internet use.

2) It assumes everyone is a criminal in my view, as it seems to give the impression that everyone who uses the internet is going to commit a crime at some point, and so you monitor them all to catch them when they do...

3) As has been said before people who are tech savvy can probably find a way around it anyway.

and lastly it's all being done under the assumption that no one will ever use this for nefarious means...ever. At the risk of violating Godwin's law what is to stop a later government from using it to identify more than just paedophiles and terrorists? Or even in a more logical case, what's to stop potential terrorists from accessing the information to get an idea of where somebody lives, their political or sexual preferences and so on? And all of this is not counting on the government cocking up as it will inevitably do given enough time, by leaving the information on a bus/train, or in a bin or something...

Honestly, the nanny state needs to just **** off out of people's lives and stop assuming that everyone is guilty before they've even commited a crime, it's almost as if they feel that people are incapable of behaving unless they're being monitored in everything they think and do 24/7, only then is everyone "safe" because surprise surprise, you dont have the freedom to do anything.

EDIT: Aside from the above, and to address the whole "nothing to hide nothing to fear" bull****, what I want to know is why the government feels it has the right to be able to check up on every single one of it's citizens private lives anyway, even if they claim it's for "counter-terrorism" or to "catch Paedophiles" (both of which I feel they've picked out purely because of the fear they instill in the public - which is nothing more than manipulation by politicians - which incidentally makes them scum in my opinion), as if the government is not competant enough to combat serious crime without resorting to simply spying on everyone, then frankly it doesn't deserve to be in charge.

EDIT 2: What makes it even more annoying I think is that if politicians were put under the same scrutiny and all of their private, personal, financial and sexual preferences/dealings were watched, recorded, and then potentially made available to people - it would probably make them feel a similar way to libertarian groups about personal privacy.

[SpiggyTopes]

(Original post by madders94)
This will happen and six months later a set of disks containing all this information will be mysteriously "dropped" on an underground train or a London bus and then we're all up **** creek. Sometimes I wonder how politicians ever got into power when they're so stupid.

It's Labour that do that!

[madders94]

(Original post by SpiggyTopes)
It's Labour that do that!

And what's to say the Tories won't do the same?

[Logi]

(Original post by SpiggyTopes)
It's Labour that do that!

Why bring party politics into this?
Every government will have incompetent people who make mistakes and every government wants more power over the people it governs. This legislation represents a line that should not be crossed and should be opposed regardless of your party political affiliations.

[Serentonin]

Oh look its suddenly 1984.

[Piprod01]

(Original post by Logi)
They don't need a warrant to monitor you here either, only to access the info. It's the equivalent of having someone follow you everywhere noting down every action, conversation and relationship you have but only giving the notepad to the cops when they have a warrant. Would you be ok with that too?

They can read this post because this is a pubic forum, so can anyone else. And I'm perfectly OK with that, so long as it actually helps solve/prevent crime and doesn't cost tons.

(Original post by Logi)
My relationships, my conversations and my interests are my private business. The government has no right to this information.

I think the point is that some police officer at the other end of the country doesn't care about your relationships/conversations/interests and almost certainly not be reading them. If you've been emailing a lot of people involved with distributing images of child rape, then having this sort of information about you is useful.

[kka25]

(Original post by The Lyceum)
But what can we do? Just protest?

This

[TheHansa]

If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear



This is awful, the people who have access to this are not cleaner than clean and even then it will probably get left somewhere. Giving up personal data should be something people opt-in to, because there are always massive risks that it will get mislaid, especially by incompetent civil servants.

I hate this constant misuse of people's fear of paedophiles and of being branded a paedophile.

[Logi]

(Original post by Piprod01)
They can read this post because this is a pubic forum, so can anyone else. And I'm perfectly OK with that, so long as it actually helps solve/prevent crime and doesn't cost tons.

By here I meant the internet. I should have been clearer.

(Original post by Piprod01)
I think the point is that some police officer at the other end of the country doesn't care about your relationships/conversations/interests and almost certainly not be reading them. If you've been emailing a lot of people involved with distributing images of child rape, then having this sort of information about you is useful.

If they don't care about that information then they don't need it. They can continue with the current system where they are able to trace the activities of those they suspect of being involved in illegal activity so long as they have a warrant. There is absolutely no need for them to create files on every citizen.

You didn't answer my question as to whether you'd be fine with that person with the notepad following you by the way.