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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Antifrank on the GE2020 prospects for Tim Farron’s Lib Dem
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Antifrank on the GE2020 prospects for Tim Farron’s Lib Dems
Well, actually, no. There is a serious possibility that things could get worse for them in 2020. Of their eight seats, only one of them looks truly safe on current boundaries: that of their leader, Tim Farron. Three of their four most marginal seats look as though they may well lose their Lib Dem incumbents:
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That isn't a forecast of LD seats in 2020!
On second thoughts, having now read Antifrank's article, yes it is.
During the 2010-15 parliament by-elections, they lost 11 deposits from 19 GB contests, which is equivalent to 366 of 632 GB seats.
A by election in Richmond could make or break the Yellows
Whether it can be done by Tim Farron is unclear to me. I'm inclined to think not, but we shall see.
Cadbury have changed the Fruit & Nut recipe [doesn't bother me, as I don't eat nuts], but check the comments:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34718668
The majority of top comments have been referred to moderation. Seems people may be concerned about snooping laws, but furious about changing chocolate bar recipes.
Also, the cocoa content has reportedly been reduced.
I don't think there's much prospect of them winning back the Red Liberals until the Coalition is a VERY distant memory (and a leader who doesn't answer if he thinks gay sex is a sin would probably not be a great fit for those voters at the best of times). And any suggestion that "centrist" swing voters are going to see a party with 8 MPs as the credible moderates, is for the birds.
Cambridge looks like the only viable target from Labour.
It's not metadata anymore. It's substantive information.
It could well encourage discussion of ways around this and make more and more of the less sophisticated criminals aware of ways in which they could and should go about masking their online activities.
Some basic steps are cheap and as idiot proof as downloading an app to your pc / phone which automatically is on whenever you access the net.
1. Fiona Twycross AM
2. Tom Copley AM
3. Nicky Gavron AM
4. Murad Qureshi AM
5. Alison Moore
6. Preston Tabois
7. Feryal Demirci
8. Mike Katz
9. Emily Brothers
10. Bevan Powell
11. Lisa Homan
No emails sent at all and no idea who was logging in to read them.
www.politicalbetting.com for example would tell you all you needed to know!
Who are the Patchwork Foundation. Are they some sort of Peter Hain related think tank? Or perhaps a Mark Thomas prank?
if you like a lot of chocolate flavoured coating on your biscuit...
blame the french, apparently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob's_Club
meanwhile, I marvel at the life of the wikipedian who found the time to write about this subject above all others in the world
There seems little they can do, barring that poll revival the piece mentions they need just sort of happening from pure chance.
FPT: Well said. I may well have nothing to fear, save embarrassment at being a political wonk, but the potential abuses and broad reach that seem impossible to mitigate against effectively make the stated purpose seem an overreach, though I take Janan Ganesh's point in a recent article that the public at large don't generally seem to care about these sorts of issues, rightly or wrongly.
It's a tough, butusually accepted case, for spooks to have access, to override privacy, and widening that is risky.
No bar charts, sandals or beards will pass your lips ....
Time to buy shares in VPN providers.
This will be unseen, unless you get called in by the rozzers/spooks or blackmailed by dodgy people.
I hope this becomes a cross political issue.
I am very happy with my provider and their operating policies in relations to logs, connections and obviously speed.
I am happy to prove my identity and we should have at least one authorised 'something' which can prove it.
Personally what I despise its its patently not there to catch terrorists or even vaguely competent criminals, its so easy for the even marginally informed to sidestep completely. Its there for mass surveillance, and we should treat with deep suspicion any list of authorities with access that includes HMRC, that means its really about money.
It'd be nice if they could at least give some case studies where access to this information may have allowed the authorities to act more quickly to a threat or issue.
As far as I can tell, they have not. I therefore worry that, leaving aside civil liberties issues, they have not defined the problem(s) well themselves.
(I may well have missed such information, in which case the above is rubbish)
This law will do nothing to change how they operate, if anything it will just make them more careful. The spooks can already access TOR and VPN traffic and I don't have a problem with that. But to do so, they have to do some leg work. This bill has nothing to do with this.
It is a totally different thing for GCHQ to spy on a terrorist like that, than a whole host of other agencies looking at people general internet traffic.
It's like banning post-its or having a post-it registry because terrorists have been using them.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/new-powers-for-police-to-hack-your-pc-1225802.html
When it comes to thought police I do concede we have something to worry about.
The Tories are horribly divided by the question of the EU - so much so that Cameron does not even dare to reveal what he is trying to negotiate. Once this becomes apparent, surely the Conservative Party will also fall to bits.
Meanwhile, the Lib Dems are reasonably united and beavering away to build up their election-winning machine again. In some places more than others, perhaps - but local government byelections have not been as totally grim as the PB Commentariat would have us believe - far from it! - and all the signs are that there is considerate enthusiasm and commitment for the excellent Jane Brophy´s campaign in Oldham.
Is there anything to be gleaned by the police from knowing how terminally thick we all are for wasting our time on PBdotcom?
I confess to watching thousands of hours of forensic dramas/docus - my history would make me a person of interest if any of my acquaintances were murdered!
The larger point you are completely missing is the ISP wont have the facilities or the inclination to crack VPN end points, never mind try and unravel a TOR for every request received for every use, which is what will go in their logs. When the spooks or rozzers come along and ask for the details for a users traffic and get told its lots of encrypted VPN traffic and damn all else, THEN the spooks can set up the infrastructure to tap that persons communications and crack the VPN open, but the historical record will be worthless.
Possibly there are people around that know more about information security than you give them credit for.
[Edit - apart from enriching the treasury]
Of course there are only a few of these nutjobs but it only takes one. I suspect they are laughingtheir socks off at the naïve stupidity of the sanctimonious free-for-all apologists.
Criminals of all kinds do stupid things.
What is been requested is currently used by most large companies to monitor traffic (esp. in industries like financial services where there is pretty much a requirement for it). Companies can also have a 'spyware' agent on your computer that reports back on activity when you're not at work. See http://www.spector360.com/ if you want to be scared at what your IT department can do, yes it can be set to make a screenshot every 10 seconds and yes it does record keystrokes and report back in real time!
Internet logging systems are also used in other countries which the UK likes to talk about in negative terms with regard to personal freedoms.
This is a system that I currently have to deal with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etisalat#Internet_censorship
It's accepted where I am now that there are limits to certain freedoms that in the UK we think of as normal. Parents and employers, on the other hand, love especially the blocking systems. Parents are much more concerned with trying to get the BBC iPlayer working, they're quite happy that their kids are protected from 99% of the bad stuff on the internet.
One difference between here and the UK is that the ISPs are really quite open about the blocking and monitoring - if you go to a banned site you get redirected to a page explaining that your requested site is blocked. Compare this to the UK "Cleanfeed" system which is supposed to be only for blocking known child abuse websites, but is completely transparent and just doesn't return anything. How do we know what else is being blocked by this?
It's an interesting debate that's to be had, my personal view is that other countries look up to the UK to be leaders in the rights of individuals, that is something not to be underestimated. It is coming up in casual discussions in other countries, that if the UK allows this collection and monitoring of personal data then it must be OK for everyone to do it.
In the UK this logging of traffic should only be for spooks looking at issues of national security. Police investigating a murder or misper can already access relevant suspects' computers, which unless they are very careful to hide their tracks will usually reveal what is required.
Incidentally, I voted Lib Dem in May, so I don't want anyone getting the idea that I've got a downer on a party that I disapprove of.
If I were being helpful, I might suggest that they try to take charge of the Remain campaign. Neither of the main parties seem too anxious to own it.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/17/four-men-charged-terror-arrests-london
etc
Now back to the real world. Intelligence officials are on record as saying the problem isn't breaking the codes (with one or two notable exceptions) the problem is knowing which bit of encoded traffic to break. It all takes time, breaking a heavily encrypted message could take several hours or days of effort from a very expensive computer, they are not going to do it unless they have a reasonable assumption that the result is going to be worth the cost. Breaking encryption on billions of messages, on the off chance that a few of the might be useful isn't on the cards.
As such the spooks can disregards the 90% of traffic that we all transmit on our daily business and concentrate efforts on the content that the originator is try to disguise and hide.
It should make the targeting effort much easier and more accurate for the spooks leaving them free to ignore most of the innocent traffic.