Journal kevlar_rat's Journal: 4 horsemen of the infocolypse trotted out in Snowden backlash backlash 1
GCHQ is whining to the PM that Google and Facebook are now encrypting traffic between their servers.
As a reddit commenter explains, this only affects their mass surveillance, they can still get a court order for data on specific suspects.
The Daily Mail has a typically inflammatory headline "Internet giants including Google and Facebook are shielding terrorists and paedophiles".
The comments on the daily mail site are more insightful, among the highest rated comments:
"shielding terrorists and paedophiles"? Er no. These demands are not for this purpose though are they? These endless demands to intrude on the privacy of people are all about control and agencies hate any control over their ability [to] abuse it. We already have laws allowing agencies to plant bugs and spy on people that were supposedly designed to be used only with terrorists, only to discover that the local councils are using them to spy on people with a rogue pets, late library books or untidy gardens. This man can dream on if he thinks the people will be happy with the Big Brother society he wants.
In other words they are trying to pave the way for the government to control the Internet by using the same old scare tactics, peadophiles and terrorists...
The trouble is the government want blanket surveillance of the all communications; this and the fact that they use their powers for such trivial matters as name calling & so called "hate crimes" means that their current stance and statement holds no water for the majority of us. They got caught out and we just don't trust them any more. If they want data, let them get a court order for each person and instance and let them have to prove that it is necessary to collect evidence for terrorism or serious criminal offences.
It looks like the search engines are finally growing a pair and telling the various agencies where they can stick their unreasonable intrusions into the British people's privacy. It's only because of the whistle blowers mentioned that the rest of us know how invasive and unjustifiable these agencies abuses of power have been and how dishonest they've been regarding who they say they're after and why. Bring on quantum encryption, it's time to shut these agencies out for good.
I find the mainstream reaction to this interesting. It looks like people are finally picking up on what hactivists have been saying for years.
Glitch in the opinion generator (Score:1)