David Cameron Promises To Do Away With 'Safe Spaces' On The Internet

from the treating-everyone-like-terrorists dept

"We just want to ensure that terrorists do not have a safe space in which to communicate. That is the challenge, and it is a challenge that will come in front of the House.



"We have always been able, on the authority of the home secretary, to sign a warrant and intercept a phone call, a mobile phone call or other media communications, but the question we must ask ourselves is whether, as technology develops, we are content to leave a safe space—a new means of communication—for terrorists to communicate with each other.



"My answer is no, we should not be, which means that we must look at all the new media being produced and ensure that, in every case, we are able, in extremis and on the signature of a warrant, to get to the bottom of what is going on."

"Britain is not a state that is trying to search through everybody’s emails and invade their privacy..."

For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.... This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach.

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Earlier this year, there were some questions raised when it appeared that UK Prime Minister David Cameron was suggesting that he wanted to undermine all encryption on the internet. Later, some suggested he was looking more at undermining end point security . However, after being re-elected, and apparently believing that this gave him the mandate to go full Orwell , Cameron is making it clear that no one should ever have any privacy from government snoops ever.Responding to a somewhat nonsensical question about if he believed the recent attacks in Tunisia meant that the big internet companies need to "understand that their current privacy policies are completely unsustainable?" Cameron insisted that the UK always needed to be able to read communications . It is, of course, not at all clear what the privacy policies of Google, Facebook and Twitter (the three named by the questioner) have to do with the price of tea in China, let alone the attacks in Tunisia, but... alas:Of course, he also insisted that you regular people shouldn't worry:Except, well, it. This whole thing seems to be based on the idea that it's blatantly obvious who is a "terrorist" and who is a good citizen of the UK. Cameron can't really be so naive as to think that "terrorists" are somehow easily differentiated from everyday people, can he? Then again, this is the same guy who once pushed for this Snooper's Charter by talking about how fictional TV crime dramas proved it would be a useful tool.This is extremely troubling. Cameron's desire to undermine encryption is dangerous for the privacy and security of, especially those in the UK that Cameron is supposed to be helping to protect, because lots of people really do need "safe spaces in which to communicate." The only way to take those away for "terrorists" is to take them away for everyone, and that means not just for the purpose of government snooping, but for others as well. Introducing backdoorsand makes everyone much, much, much more vulnerable to all sorts of attacks.And, again, this is the same guy who said:Does that really sound like someone who will only use such snooping powers to track down terrorists? He's blatantly admitting that he will use it against law abiding citizens, admitting that merely "obeying the law" should not leave you free from being hassled by the government.These kinds of statements are cartoonishly evil. They're the kind of ridiculous statements one would have hoped you'd only see in late night TV fictional TV dramas, not coming from an actually elected leader of a major western power.

Filed Under: david cameron, encryption, privacy, snooper's charter, uk

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