Curiouser and Curiouser!

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Wherein Matt Mower (aka rubymatt on FreeNode) rambles about technology, the love of a good MacTop, ruby coding, rails, topics, knowledge management and learning, and politics.

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Curiouser and Curiouser! on ripa http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic ripa Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Speak up now or suffer the consequences! Sun, 16 Jun 2002 21:48:54 +0100 We've got until June 20th to get the government to listen!   <TABLE borderColor=#333333 cellSpacing=0 width=270 border=1> <TBODY> <TR> <TD align=middle bgColor=#ffffff><A href="http://www.stand.org.uk/"><IMG style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; FLOAT: left; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt="spook office?" src="http://www.stand.org.uk/images/spoffice1.gif"> </A> The UK police, the secret service, and the tax man can find out where you're surfing. In August, so will the Post Office. If a new rule passes Parliament, over <A href="http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2002/draft/20022322.htm">twenty government departments</A> will be able to spy on your browsing without a warrant. <A href="http://www.stand.org.uk/">Find out the facts</A>.<A href="http://www.faxyourmp.com/"> Fax your MP</A>. Stop the order. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000018.html We're not out of the woods yet Wed, 19 Jun 2002 19:24:27 +0100 I feel very happy to have gotten involved in the fight against the extension of RIPA.  Not so much because <A href="http://boingboing.net/#85182822">we won</A> but because it is the first time that I cut through my inherent apathy and fight it tomorrow mentality and took direct political action when it mattered. In fact, as those who've been reading about it recently will know, we haven't won at all. RIPA was not being extended as a means to extend the authority of a whole group of people (such as local councils and the FSA), but to regulate and legitimize the processes by which they are already getting this information. As a home minister let slip on the Radio, many officials are already getting this kind of information via informal channels - the extension to RIPA really was the governments attempt to regulate it. Of course the fact that the government is attempting to legitimize this is just another sign of their inherently anti-democratic leanings.  I wouldn't feel so agrieved if this legislation was going hand in hand with an effective Freedom of Information bill.  This government seems to have very similar tendencies to the secretive and power grabbing administration of the <A href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-02/17/091r-021700-idx.html">Shrub</A>. We should be looking closely at the powers we have already granted the police and secret services.  We should be reigning in access to information by officials, not licensing it.  I could stomach the requirement for police and the security services to do domestic snooping if and only if they were regulated by (and forced to justify their actions to) an oversight committee made up of judges, MP's, privacy advocates and lay people. The secret services are supposedly there to protect us - or at least British interests.  I for one would sleep much happier knowing that there were people capable of checking on that, and in whom I had at least a small amount of faith. I think the recent leaks by the Stephens enquiry about collusion between the security services and paramilitaries in the killing of Irish catholics should tell us everything we need to know about allowing unchecked and unsupervised powers to be granted to anyone in authority. Bah!   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000025.html You are whose ID you steal Tue, 26 Nov 2002 11:07:13 +0000 <A href="http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/2002/11/25.html#a253">Information Awareness</A>. Here is a good joke.  This Thanksgiving, be thankful that the government is <A href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36996-2002Nov25.html">cracking down on identity fraud</A>.  At least, that is what the Washington Post would have you believe.  If you read into the details, you'll find that: This article should have been an indictment of how the government has failed to protect the voters from identity fraud, and instead protects only the banks and government bureaucrats.  In fact, the government is completely impotent to prevent similar and ongoing fraud -- the problems with identity security across the entire economic infrastructure are so systemic and deep that it will take work on many fronts to patch them all.  The paper should just say, "Government surrenders in war on identity fraud.  Three poor people jailed; 30,000 screwed.  You're next and there's nothing you can do about it.  Government war against people who copy lame Courtney Love music progressing nicely." [<A href="http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/">Better Living Through Software</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Time to start lobbying your MP/Senator/what-have-you. Which reminds me, I owe my MP a list of sites where they can form their own opinion about the RIPA.  Mine is a little too dependent upon Home Office rhetoric for my liking.  Does anyone have any they would recommend?</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000853.html