Most people by now will be aware of the Communications Capabilities Development Programme, A.K.A CCDP. Despite denials to the contrary this would appear to represent an expansion of the state and their powers to spy on us. The presumption of innocence disappears and we’re all treated as suspects.
What’s even more worrying however are the lies being told to Lib Dem MPs in order to get them to support these measures. One begins to wonder what lies have been told to conservative MPs in order to get them to behave and toe the party line. In addition to this we have policemen apparently conspiring with the media to spy on people, and SOCA getting involved in enforcing law for offenses that are not serious, organised nor criminal (copyright offenses come under civil rather than criminal law).
I would strongly urge people to sign this Number 10 petition and write to their MPs to voice their opposition to CCDP. This can be done by simply visiting the WriteToThem website and entering your post code. The details of your MP will then be shown and you will then be presented with the chance to fill out a form to send an email directly to them.
Some questions to consider asking:
- How can making the police’s work impossible by encouraging people to encrypt *all* personal web usage be good for law enforcement?
- They had one of the 7/7 bombers under surveillance *before* the bombing but had to stop watching him thanks to lack of resources. Isn’t data overload a bigger problem than insufficient access and won’t this sort of measure make things even worse?
- How can we trust the authorities to act responsibly when they are already acting either outside of their remit or in a way that can only be described as corrupt?
- Why is the ability to resist demands for information being removed when in the case of Google, almost 40% of demands are turned down and shown to be unnecessary or just plain wrong?
- Who will have access to this information and when will they be able to use it?
- Whose authority will be required to grant access to this information?
- Under what circumstances would access be denied?
- How much access will the ISP or their commercial partners have to personal data gathered for law enforcement purposes?
- What will the ISPs or their commercial partners be allowed to do with it?
- Who will pay for the extra hardware and expertise needed by the ISPs to comply with these new demands?
- How would they counter the suggestion that this system will be ultimately damaging to the UK economy by discouraging tech companies to base themselves in the UK?
- How can this system be realistically run without the cooperation of the US government when many of the systems used here are based in the US?
- Is your MP certain that they have accurate information and not the same sort of warped assessment intended to ellicit a specific response that was sent to Lib Dem MPs?