UK: Censors, Tracks and Balkanizes Its Internet; 10yrs for Pirates

[Sean Lynch]

One step closer to everyone ceasing to pretend the Internet is in any way
free or democratic. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted. Even where ISPs
are nominally private, you can't be a licensed user of the airwaves or have
fiber along government right-of-ways and expect not to have the government
impose its own interests on you. I wonder how long it'll be before they
outlaw any kind of overlay network they can't snoop on? I guess that's what
the attempts to outlaw useful crypto are all about. I bet we'll eventually
see warrants to decrypt legal, escrowed crypto envelopes entirely on
suspicion that the user is using a layer of unescrowed crypto inside. Which
will accomplish exactly what the content cartels want by forcing those who
care about privacy into low-bandwidth covert channels while doing nothing
to make it more difficult for genuine criminals to communicate privately.
Maybe it'll be harder to share kiddie porn. But at a huge cost to the
future of humanity, as we all know where this road is leading.

Maybe there's some hope for wireless services where the hardware is
licensed rather than the user. Or extremely line-of-sight stuff like FSO.


On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 11:38 AM, grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:

> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1420226/gchq-
> planning-uk-wide-dns-firewall
> UK surveillance agency GCHQ is exploring the use of a national
> 'firewall' in its fight against cybercrime, according to the
> organisation's head of cybersecurity. Alongside BT, Talk Talk and
> Virgin Media, GCHQ will work to filter out websites and email
> campaigns which are known to contain malicious content. The
> intelligence organisation believes that the best to way to set up such
> a blockade would be to build a national domain name system (DNS). In a
> speech delivered at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington
> DC, director general for cyber security at GCHQ, Ciaran Martin, said:
> 'We're exploring a flagship project on scaling up DNS filtering: what
> better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major
> private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming
> into contact with known malware and bad addresses?'
>
> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1512257/10-
> years-in-prison-for-online-pirates-a-step-closer-in-the-uk
> The UK Government's Digital Economy Bill has moved a step closer to
> becoming law after its second reading in Parliament. With unanimous
> support, the current two-year maximum custodial sentence for online
> piracy is almost certain to increase to a decade, TorrentFreak
> reports. From the article: Due to UK copyright law allowing for
> custodial sentences of 'just' two years for online offenses,
> anti-piracy groups such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft have
> chosen to pursue their own private prosecutions. These have largely
> taken place under legislation designed for those who have committed
> fraud, rather than the more appropriate offense of copyright
> infringement. Physical pirates (CDs, DVDs) can be jailed for up to 10
> years under current legislation. During the past few years, there have
> been lobbying efforts for this punishment to apply both on and
> offline. That resulted in a UK Government announcement last year
> indicating that it would move to increase the maximum prison sentence
> for online copyright infringement to ten years. They also urge Google
> to do something about growing incidents of piracy.
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