On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 12:28:11PM +0200, Adam Back wrote:
Apparently the UK is worse than the US even - less pretense about not spying on their own subjects,
This, depressingly, does seem to be true in just about every sense. To make matters worse, there are far more open debates at the political level about increasing the ongoing level of surveillance, even in response to what has become known recently. At least the US has the decency to be ever-so-slightly ashamed in public.
less legal restrictions (to the extent the NSA and their nominal oversight even respected the restrictions, which clearly they did not much respect and subverted with clear internal complaints of the oversight to the extent that the info was disclosed to them.).
The advantage that the UK, or at least its population, has over the US comes mainly from European law and the protections afforded there. (Of course, this is all predicated on the fact that most laws seem to be largely ignored behind the scenes, but let's work with that while we're talking legal restrictions.) There was an interesting discussion of this recently on the ietf-privacy mailing list, based on Caspar Bowden's research note for the European Parliament. The whole thread, and the note, are worth a read for people who haven't seen them: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-privacy/current/msg00326.html
You are her majesty's subject not a citizen
This, at least, is just incorrect. Since the British Nationality Act of 1981 came into force in 1983, only a small (and diminishing) set of people are British Subjects, and as far as I understand it it is no longer possible to become a British Subject. The overwhelmingly vast majority of the British population are, in fact, British Citizens. See, for example: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/britishcitizenship/ and, specifically, http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/britishcitizenship/othernationality/britis... (The term 'subject' does still occur in old laws and traditions for historical reasons.) Joss -- Joss Wright | @JossWright http://www.pseudonymity.net