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UK's new internet laws, are we going to lose our anonymity, and become as heavily censored and monitored as China, North Korea, Russia etc?

I don't understand people think their is some dytopian nightmare about to happen. It's ALREADY HAPPENED.

It seems Juvenal was right.

panem et circenses
 
Bleaney said:
Many of the dystopian scenarios that were predicted in the likes of 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, have either come to be in place, or soon will be.

It's absolutely terrifying. Just on the grounds of state propaganda, control of access to information and censorship, and personal privacy. Even if you're 100% clean in terms of being law abiding, you're still going to have your freedoms eroded.
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But at the same time, this is Britain. We can't even get a high speed rail system to run. Or even be built. We can't even get ID cards issued.

Our security services are admittedly excellent, but we'd have to astronomically increase our security spending. We can't even afford for the Old Bill to investigate Gladys' stolen bicycle. Let alone observe a multi-million population all the time.
 
4DQSAR said:
I don't understand people think their is some dytopian nightmare about to happen. It's ALREADY HAPPENED.

It seems Juvenal was right.

panem et circenses
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This is nothing. Wait till things get farther and farther toward a true dystopian nightmare. No Global digital currency. Yes they have been trying to come up with a global cashless society. Glad my drugs are prescribed and legal. That is one way to really fuck up the drug trade.
 
There's no sign whatsoever of a global cashless society. Over here, at least, cash payments have declined due to the convenience of card payments, but we actually average at £1000 in cash per person at any moment. I mean, who holds that level of cash (drug dealers / dodgy barbers aside)? Let alone the fact that figure is twice what it was ten years ago.

Cash is very much alive.
 
Oh what a a surprise, the government took no notice of the petition to stop digital IDs, they didn't even go through the motions of pretending to enter into a debate, they just basically said 'we're going ahead, no matter how many signatures this petition gets':

The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Do not introduce Digital ID cards”.

Government responded:

We will introduce a digital ID within this Parliament to help tackle illegal migration, make accessing government services easier, and enable wider efficiencies. We will consult on details soon.
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The Government has announced plans to introduce a digital ID system which is fit for the needs of modern Britain. We are committed to making people’s everyday lives easier and more secure, to putting more control in their hands (including over their own data), and to driving growth through harnessing digital technology. We also want to learn from countries which have digitised government services for the benefit of their citizens, in line with our manifesto commitment to modernise government.

Currently, when UK citizens and residents use public services, start a new job, or, for example, buy alcohol, they often need to present an assortment of physical documents to prove who they are or things about themselves. This is both bureaucratic for the individual and creates space for abuse and fraud. This includes known issues with illegal working and modern slavery, while the fragmented approach and multiple systems across Government make it difficult for people to access vital services. Further, there are too many people who are excluded, like the 1 in 10 UK adults who don’t have a physical photo ID, so can struggle to prove who they are and access the products and services they are entitled to.

To tackle these interlinked issues, we will introduce a new national digital ID. This is not a card but a new digital identity that will be available for free to all UK citizens and legal residents aged 16 and over (although we will consider through consultation if this should be age 13 and over). Over time, people will be able to use it to seamlessly access a range of public and private sector services, with the aim of making our everyday lives easier and more secure. It will not be compulsory to obtain a digital ID but it will be mandatory for some applications.

For example, the new digital ID will build on GOV.UK One Login and the GOV.UK Wallet to drive the transformation of public services. Over time, this system will allow people to access government services – such as benefits or tax records – without needing to remember multiple logins or provide physical documents. It will significantly streamline interactions with the state, saving time and reducing frustrating paperwork, while also helping to create opportunities for more joined up government services. International examples show how beneficial this can be. For instance, Estonia’s system reportedly saves each citizen hours every month by streamlining unnecessary bureaucracy, and the move to becoming a digital society has saved taxpayer money.

By the end of this Parliament, employers will have to check the new digital ID when conducting a ‘right to work’ check. This will help combat criminal gangs who promise access to the UK labour market in order to profit from dangerous and illegal channel crossings. It will create a fairer system between UK citizens and legal residents, crack down on forged documents, and streamline the process for employers, driving up compliance. Further, it will create business information showing where employers are conducting checks, so driving more targeted action against non-compliant employers.

For clarity, it will not be a criminal offence to not hold a digital ID and police will not be able to demand to see a digital ID as part of a “stop and search.”

Privacy and security will also be central to the digital ID programme. We will follow data protection law and best practice in creating a system which people can rightly put their trust in. People in the UK already know and trust digital credentials held in their phone wallets to use in their everyday lives, from paying for things to storing boarding passes. The new system will be built on similar technology and be your boarding pass to government. Digitally checkable digital credentials are more secure than physical documents which can be lost, copied or forged, and often mean sharing more information than just what is necessary for a given transaction.
The new system will be designed in accordance with the highest security standards to protect against a comprehensive range of threats, including cyber-attacks.

We will launch a public consultation in the coming weeks and work closely with employers, trade unions, civil society groups and other stakeholders, to co-design the scheme and ensure it is as secure and inclusive as possible. Following consultation, we will seek to bring forward legislation to underpin this system.

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
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Click this link to view the response online:


https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194?reveal_response=yes


This petition has over 100,000 signatures. The Petitions Committee will consider it for a debate. They can also gather further evidence and press the government for action.


The Committee is made up of 11 MPs, from political parties in government and in opposition. It is entirely independent of the Government. Find out more about the Committee: https://petition.parliament.uk/help#petitions-committee

Thanks,

The Petitions Team
House of Commons
 
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To be fair, that's the same approach they take to all petitions. They're always 'considered for debate' regardless of whether it's 100001 signatures or (like this one) in the millions.

I've no doubt that this whole system reeks of soft totalitarianism, but having been part of the heroin world I know there actually are thousands of people in the country with no sufficient ID documents. Which means it's a pain to get a job, get a bank account, get a place to live or do anything.

It costs about £100 to get a new passport, and you not only need to get it signed, but you have to go through a weird interview process too, even if you're 54 years old and you've always lived here. A free issue ID would open up a lot of possibilities for some of these marginalised people.

If you have a gov.uk account (which by design nearly everybody does), then your goose is pretty much cooked anyway when it comes to potential surveillance. Same goes for card payments at any shop / organisation. They just largely don't care. And at least our government website is well-designed and easy enough even for Auld Gladys to navigate.
 
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Reading the blurb it's wont be mandatory to have a digital ID, but I already have a .gov account that I've used a fair bit. They are making the whole thing sound entirely benign, and obviously omitting to mention that any apps installed will likely be rammed with spyware and surveillance features.

If it's just an app to install on your phone, at this stage I don't think that would affect me very much at all. I very rarely use my phone for internet activities, apart from Google maps, and sometimes email and a bit of social media. I don't care if that gets monitored. But at least 90% of my internet activity is on my computer. And I would imagine and hope that an app on my phone, is going to miss all of that.
 
If you have a .gov account, they can inspect your bank account if they like. They can pretty much access anything. Whether that's on a your phone, on a laptop using a VPN; anything.

They're pretty hot on it, but they're not omniscient and they can't afford to be. So unless big amounts of money are moving through your account then they usually don't care.
 
Bleaney said:
If it's just an app to install on your phone, at this stage I don't think that would affect me very much at all. I very rarely use my phone for internet activities, apart from Google maps, and sometimes email and a bit of social media. I don't care if that gets monitored. But at least 90% of my internet activity is on my computer. And I would imagine and hope that an app on my phone, is going to miss all of that.
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What OS does your home computer use?

Because believe me, if Crowdstrike got hit twice within hours (first by Cozybear, the FSB Direct Measures Unit & then by APT 41, the Chinese equivelent) then it's reasonable to suggest no major OS is secure. My GUESS is that when Cozybear was detected, the Chinese group decided that their own exploits would be detected so it was a case of 'use it or lose it'.

I would also be EXTREMELY surprised if the NSA isn't doing exactly the same. We KNOW that they now perform annual 'red team' exercises in which they attack US military digital targets to see how well defended it is. After the first one, in spite of it being a 14 day exercise, after just 3 days red team had achieved all objectives. Only a couple of bases had IT people who spotted what was happening and stopped them. But that's two out of how many?

I've said this before but just as the electromagnetic spectrum became a domain of warfare, so now is the digital domain. I mean, have you ever seen WHERE Cozybear are based in St. Petersburg? It's a huge and modern high-rise office block.
 
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4DQSAR said:
What OS does your home computer use?

Because believe me, if Crowdstrike got hit twice within hours (first by Cozybear, the FSB Direct Measures Unit & then by APT 41, the Chinese equivelent) then it's reasonable to suggest no major OS is secure. My GUESS is that when Cozybear was detected, the Chinese group decided that their own exploits would be detected so it was a case of 'use it or lose it'.

I would also be EXTREMELY surprised if the NSA isn't doing exactly the same. We KNOW that they now perform annual 'red team' exercises in which they attack US military digital targets to see how well defended it is. After the first one, in spite of it being a 14 day exercise, after just 3 days read team had achieved all objectives. Only a couple of bases had IT people who spotted what was happening and stopped them. But that's two out of how many?

I've said this before but just as the electromagnetic spectrum became a domain of warfare, so now is the digital domain. I mean, have you ever seen WHERE Cozybear are based in St. Petersburg? It's a huge and modern high-rise office block.
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One of the recent-ish Windows releases. (I don't really want to state exactly which one on an open forum.)

Do you think I could be any better off getting rid of Windows and installing one of the Linux OSs like Ubuntu instead?

I guess the more obscure your OS, your chances that 'they' won't have compatible software increases? But that could also mean increased difficulty of finding VPNs that work with an obscure Linux O/S. I'd have to look into that.

Or, do you think they'll already be several steps ahead in terms of their preparedness for things like this?

Or could I just use tor to foil them, any time I might want to buy benzos etc on the clearnet? (Assuming such sites remain operational.) Otherwise I'd be forced onto the DNMs., And I'm not sure what 'they' could do about that.
 
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Bleaney said:
One of the recent-ish Windows releases. (I don't really want to state exactly which one on an open forum.)

Do you think I could be any better off getting rid of Windows and installing one of the Linux OSs like Ubuntu instead?

I guess the more obscure your OS, your chances that 'they' won't have compatible software increases?

Or, do you think they'll already be several steps ahead in terms of their preparedness for things like this?
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Well, one interesting technique a RISC processor emulating an x86 or x64 processor.

Yes, it's very inefficient BUT puts any attacker in a very difficult position. They CANNOT gain 'superuser' status of the processor, only of the emulator.

So I bet it's extremely bad for gaming but if your use isn't particularly 'compute' intensive, it will likely work fine. It's also going to be pretty easy to check if the extended-BIOS modification or other persistance techniques (like microcode modification) are in play. I'm pretty sure a 128 bit RISC-V processor would do a good job.

No compatibility issues either.
 
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Perkins : Reborn said:
There's no sign whatsoever of a global cashless society. Over here, at least, cash payments have declined due to the convenience of card payments, but we actually average at £1000 in cash per person at any moment. I mean, who holds that level of cash (drug dealers / dodgy barbers aside)? Let alone the fact that figure is twice what it was ten years ago.

Cash is very much alive.
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£1,000 is a lot of money? I guess a different perspective.
 
4DQSAR said:
Well, one interesting technique a RISC processor emulating an x86 or x64 processor.

Yes, it's very inefficient BUT puts any attacker in a very difficult position. They CANNOT gain 'superuser' status of the processor, only of the emulator.

So I bet it's extremely bad for gaming but if your use isn't particularly 'compute' intensive, it will likely work fine. It's also going to be pretty easy to check if the extended-BIOS modification or other persistance techniques (like microcode modification) are in play. I'm pretty sure a 128 bit RISC-V processor would do a good job.

No compatibility issues either.
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Unfortunately that level of technicality is over my head. So in simple terms in sounds like simply installing an Ubuntu O/S won't help?

I honestly have a hunch it might, having previously had experience on Ubuntu of various software just not being compatible with it.

And Ubuntu is one of the more commonly used Linux o/s too.

At this stage they are saying in their statement that you don't have to install or use the digital ID if you chose not to. But I imagine they'll engineer things so that you'll need the damn thing to be access certain essential things, like your own bank account maybe. I should think it will 100% be required to access any of the .gov records and services. Most people will need to access that to check their state pension updates etc.....
 
Bleaney said:
Unfortunately that level of technicality is over my head. So in simple terms in sounds like simply installing an Ubuntu O/S won't help?

I honestly have a hunch it might, having previously had experience on Ubuntu of various software just not being compatible with it.

And Ubuntu is one of the more commonly used Linux o/s too.

At this stage they are saying in their statement that you don't have to install or use the digital ID if you chose not to. But I imagine they'll engineer things so that you'll need the damn thing to be access certain essential things, like your own bank account maybe. I should think it will 100% be required to access any of the .gov records and services. Most people will need to access that to check their state pension updates etc.....
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Well, I would pay an IT expert to set it up. If you reach the state of paranoia where someone you know through word-of-mouth or by looking in a local newspaper STILL ends up being a government asset, you've gone too far.

Sure - using a less common OS WILL have a significant impact and will defeat scammers and similar, an inherent weakness of x86 and x64 based systems is that they are so ubiquitous that instead of a 'top down' attack, it's entirely possible to exploit the CPU itself. But each time an exploit is used, it risks being detected and a patch issued. So unless you are in the business of funding terrorism, you likely aren't worth risking multiple zero-day exploits.

I suppose it's like if you have a garage with a 2004 Ford Focus in it, a reasonable lock possibly combined with a steering lock, that's enough. If you have a brand new Bugatti Chiron, you would fit sensors, alarms and whatever.

Mate - unless I am much mistaken, you're a great guy and I don't think for a moment ANYONE is going to be wasting resources on you just trying to live your life.

Don't forget that the GDR likely represents the most surveilled nation on earth with over 1% of the population working for or with the Stasi. But even they could not stop people who were peacefully protesting (The Monday Demonstrations) where hundreds of thousands of citizens took part.
 
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There are many, many good reasons to switch to a Linux distro. Personally I’d recommend Mint to novice users. It just works, as they say. Ubuntu is a bit bloaty these days tbh.

Dunno if it will help with mass surveillance - honestly I think that horse has long since bolted - but every new Linux user is a win in my book - fuck Windows! :p
 
Ah, I have an auld memory stick with Linux Mint on it. I just couldn't stand the complexities of it. I was probably just not engaged enough.

Unbelievably, my work experience was training guys with DOS for mainframe use!
 
Perkins : Reborn said:
Ah, I have an auld memory stick with Linux Mint on it. I just couldn't stand the complexities of it. I was probably just not engaged enough.

Unbelievably, my work experience was training guys with DOS for mainframe use!
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Honestly Mint is literally install an go for almost all general PC use cases. You don’t even need to install “forbidden” codecs to use media functionality as you do with Ubuntu.

Even gaming is fine now (if you’re not wedded to mainstream COD-type online multiplayer games).

There is quite literally no reason no to switch imo. Declutter your PC, stick two fingers up to Microsoft, and embrace Freedom ❤️

Do eeet!!!
 
Shambles said:
There are many, many good reasons to switch to a Linux distro. Personally I’d recommend Mint to novice users. It just works, as they say. Ubuntu is a bit bloaty these days tbh.

Dunno if it will help with mass surveillance - honestly I think that horse has long since bolted - but every new Linux user is a win in my book - fuck Windows! :p
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As someone who essentially just uses social media and reads .PDF documents, I doubt compatability issues would be an issue with anything I use my computer for... oh, and audiobooks.

Windows most certainly is bloatware and I note it's only Windows 11 that doesn't emulate DOS. So that only took three decades!

OK there were some major issues with early vesions of DirectX (as someone who had to convert a game to use it, I know) but I STILL think third-party DOS emulators will find a market. The scary thing being that it seems to be the case that in the 1980s, people wrote niche applications that ran under DOS but likely didn't comment them and have now retired. So institutions are stuck because the 'institutional knowledge' to write a Windows version has been lost.

It's like seeing an ATM crash to reveal that underneath it's Windows 95 (and even Windows 3.1 in a few cases).

I honestly don't know if Linux-based OSs still use the (now expanded) BIOS in all PCs. But if I was looking to install a persistant malware, BIOS and Microcode are the two things I would look at first. As recently as March 2025 a researcher discovered that the AMD microcode updates were insecure.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that there are brokers for such zero-day exploits. We only know when researchers of white hat hackers make them public. But who knows when they were first discovered? I note that it's becoming surprisingly competitive with a supposed Apple privilage escalation tool selling for $500,000 but just three years later, a similar exploit 'only' fetched $90,000. I can understand why those who have ability in this field see it as a career.
 
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