Wikipedia fights British snooping laws

[Methos]

At last... it's about time someone stood up against these stupid laws being pushed through...

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has joined the opposition to the Communications Data Bill that was proposed by the UK government earlier this year. Civil rights groups have raised the alarm about provisions that could require British ISPs to keep records of every website their customers visit for 12 months. Now Wales is threatening to enable encryption on Wikipedia for UK Web users to protect their privacy.

And here's a gorgeous quote from a live interview...

"This is not the sort of thing I'd expect from a western democracy. It is the kind of thing I would expect from the Iranians or the Chinese."

While Wikipedia is the first website to go public with denouncing this bill, i don't think it'll be the last... quite a few websites out there are just as concerned with users privacy as they are publicity for their own website, so being seen as standing up for user privacy would go a long way to ease concerns and gain good publicity for themselves

M

 

[Shatinator]

M,

So glad to see someone post this on the BBS, so rare it is that I see a post of real life personal "liberity-freedom" concerns at this site.

As egregious as what is happening in the UK is. And it is. However, the UK has been on a unwavering course for many years to more and more surveillance.

What we now have in the States is just as troubling. After the stumbling of SOPA, and SOPA-like laws. Certain powers than be have chosen to use commerce and trade in a domestic offensive manner.

TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement) has been negotiated in secret in the States, in such a manner to avoid congressional scrutiny. In fact copyright which the TPP, address as well as was a center point of the SOPA bill; copyright is now the new patriot act of these United States.

As such, if some get their way, it will effect freedom of speech and what citizens can legally post and discuss openly. Some foreshadowing, as already been presented in restriction to fair use; even in strictly educational settings.

But of course don't take my word for it read here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/09/aclu-joins-TPP-debate

and

https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

When reading this (if so inclined), you may want to ask yourself if this is the kind of world you would like to live in.

M-did not mean to steal your fire, just wanted to illustrate that this is a global threat.

 

[MacLeod]

Hopefully it'll never see the light of day and become law. Really this act won't make me feel any safer as part of it is to with fighting terrorism. Terrorist have been been around long before the internet and smart phones etc.. In fact having this law might make it harder, as alternate means of communications might be used.

 

[Deckerd]

As M says this is just a Bill and will probably not see the light of day, unlike the monitoring that goes on round the clock of any communication that might be considered un-american.