Surveillance train has left the station, can't be stopped any more. It's just too cheap to use cameras, wireless and large HDDs. AI can sift through videos efficiently.<p>So, the only way back to balance is to do government surveillance, and more generally, to have a multi-way surveillance society in which a single actor doesn't have monopoly. We have to go all the way now, short of destroying all surveillance equipment everywhere and making sure nobody recreates it, which, given incentives, it's impossible to enforce.<p>The main problem now is balance of power, not if we like surveillance or not. This new power must not be put only in the hands of an elite. By the same doctrine of "separation of powers", we should not concentrate all surveillance power in a single point, because it lacks checks and balances.
As one example: the act requires ISPs to log <i>every IP connection</i> that their customers make, for a period of one year.<p>There's a PDF factsheet on this provision, and a full list of other provisions on Wikipedia.<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473745/Factsheet-Internet_Connection_Records.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act</a>
It's odd that the usual hysteria by media, academics, assorted human rights organizations and concerned citizens about surveillance has been 'toned down' since the Snowden revelations.<p>It's nearly guaranteed there would be an earthquake of hysteria and frothing about totalitarianism and human rights were the revelations not about western countries. There is nearly zero activism about surveillance apart from the odd EFF press release.<p>It telling about the things we are supposed to care about, and the level of manipulation in local and global affairs over the last few decades and how countries are run. It seems like all societies we too want to think the worst of others and make excuses for ourselves. But that kind of posturing by our media, human rights orgs and reps is now going to become impossible to pull off with any credibility.
Spending my day off upgrading router to dd-wrt, installing openvpn in an country that is less friendly to this shit, hardening all my personal machines and encrypting everything I can encrypt (most of which I should frankly have done ages ago but I got lazy).<p>This was pretty much the straw that broke the camels back for me, I've nothing to hide but fuck them for doing this anyway (and everything they've done before).
You could argue that this is another unfortunate consequence of brexit. Theresa May is now prime minister, which she wouldn't be if it wasn't for brexit.<p>The only thing we can do now, as developers and creators, is to create simple and easy tools, softwares, systems for the general public that make this kind of surveillance difficult or impossible. We need to work together to conserve and expand what little privacy we have left.
Years ago most people believed they were being watched by God 24/7. Now we're being watched by AIs 24/7 and everything is recorded forever
This government seems determined to destroy the internet in the UK: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/nov/19/pornography-sites-face-uk-block-under-enhanced-age-controls" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/nov/19/pornography-...</a>