http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17576745

And yeah, it would appear to be genuine. Feel free to be cynical about the timing

Of course, even if you believed the BS it won't make a blind bit of difference - there was terrorism long before technology came along ffs.

And are the Lib Dems the world's first collectively suicidal party?

George Orwell would be proud - gone even further than he imagined

Oh well - just encrypt your email and use a program to spoof/mask your real ip address - wonder how it would work on people without fixed ip address anyway?

Isn't this just them admitting to it?
It's not as if they haven't been able to do it before now.
I wonder what's going to be coming out further down the line that they're having to excuse themselves with this?

The ISP keeps logs off all the IP to mac mappings from the DHCP servers. They'll have the mac addresses from your router linked to your username.
All it takes is a quick search & they can link the info quite easily.


TOR & SSL based SMTP it is then

VPN, certainly.

Indeed, but if they see you using such stuff, they will become suspicious.

'Better to be silent and be thought a fool, than speak and confirm it'.

Under EU Data Protection law, it is currently illegal to pass on personally identifiable information (telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, street addresses etc.)to a third party, including authorities, without a court order.

If the UK Gov pushes that through, they are opening themselves and the ISPs up to prosecution.

Which is probably already being done by the most dangerous people this new law is being marketed as being created for.

i predict that the information overload that the dim wits are trying to see/view/intercept will just show them up as bigger/greater dim wits ...

Exactly.

Although bearing in mind servers such as this one (& gmail's, & hotmail's, & other webmail providers) are based overseas they can't monitor what's on them anyway.

As suggested to me today, now might be a good time to get into the 'paid for VPN Service' business.

They can monitor traffic coming to you at the ISP level though.

Indeed. The ISP could, in theory, keep a log of all the addresses you've looked up in their DNS but that's of relatively little use. And you can get round it just by using OpenDNS instead - they'd have to packet trap to see where you were going. If you use SSL'ed protocols they can't read what you're saying and if you use a vpn, they can't see who you are talking to either.

Yes, using SSL or tunnels might be considered unusual once but there are an increasing number of legitimate reasons to do so. I'd be somewhat surprised if 'he's using a VPN your honour' was enough justification to get an interception order and it if still is, it won't be for much longer.

As has been said before, anyone who actually has anything to hide already knows how to obfuscate their traffic to make it effectively unreadable. It's a land-grab by the security services which is frankly pointless and pretty deplorable.

Jon

Caller: “Hello. I’m calling from Windows Support Department. I am noticing that your computer is infected with internet virus and your computer is running slow and transmitting malicious code on the software part of the internet”

Me: “No - that’s just just GCHQ listening in. Nothing I can do about that. Why not give them a call?”.