http://boingboing.net/2015/01/13/what-david-cameron-just-propos.html
This article clearly shows how some politics seem to have serious problems in understanding security issues in Internet era. Many ideas that might superficially look like good ideas for some parties are actually crazy and bad for all when you seriously analyze them.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t use Charlie Hebdo to justify Big Brother data-slurp – Data protection MEP
Plans to monitor all flight passengers should be ditched
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/14/dont_use_charlie_hebdo_to_justify_your_orwellian_aims_says_data_protection_mep/
The European Parliament’s data protection supremo says calls from national leaders to monitor all airline passengers are “playing into terrorists’ hands”.
German MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht, who heads the Parliament’s overhaul of EU data protection laws, described the plans for mass storage of PNR (passenger name record) data as Orwellian.
“EU home affairs ministers are demanding Big Brother measures entailing blanket data retention without justification,” he said. “This approach is a distraction from the actual measures needed to deal with security and terrorist threats and provides a false sense of security for citizens, at the expense of their civil liberties.”
According to Albrecht, the scheme is actually illegal, as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled last April that the mass storage of private data, without specific grounds or time limit, is contrary to the EU charter of fundamental rights.
The EU already operates a PNR (Passenger Name Record) data-sharing scheme with the United States
Albrecht says this is the wrong approach. “Far-reaching data collection in France would not have prevented the odious attacks in Paris. As with previous attacks, the perpetrators of the Paris attacks were already known to security authorities and had been the subject of investigations and supervision measures.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Cameron: I’m off to the US to get my bro Barack to ban crypto – report
Plans to pressure President for tighter surveillance controls, sources say
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/15/cameron_wants_obama_to_back_crypto_ban/
UK Prime Minister David Cameron is hoping to gain the support of US President Barack Obama in his campaign-year crusade to outlaw encrypted communications his spies can’t break, sources claim.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Conservative Cameron would like to see left-leaning Obama publicly criticize major US internet companies like Facebook and Google, many of which have made strong encryption the default on their online services.
The President hasn’t taken a public position on the issue so far, but several prominent federal law enforcement officials have given internet firms lashings over their use of encryption tech, which they claim undermines national security interests.
Last September, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey went as far as to describe encrypted communications as “something expressly to allow people to place themselves above the law.”
According to the WSJ’s sources, Cameron plans to try to nudge Obama “in the direction of what the FBI has said about this.”
Those talks will more than likely include discussions on how to avoid future network security breaches like the one that hammered Sony Pictures in December, but you can bet Cameron’s anti-encryption hobbyhorse will figure prominently, as well.