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United Kingdom Crime Government The Internet

After London Attack, PM Calls For Internet Regulation To Fight Terrorists (cnn.com) 535

CNN reports that "At least seven people were killed in a short but violent assault that unfolded late Saturday night in the heart of the capital, the third such attack to hit Britain this year." An anonymous reader quotes their follow-up report: Prime Minister Theresa May has called for closer regulation of the internet following a deadly terror attack in London... May said on Sunday that a new approach to tackling extremism is required, including changes that would deny terrorists and extremist sympathizers digital tools used to communicate and plan attacks. "We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed," May said. "Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide. We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning."
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After London Attack, PM Calls For Internet Regulation To Fight Terrorists

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  • MO (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nemyst ( 1383049 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:04AM (#54545751) Homepage
    1. Terrorist attack.
    2. Call for increased surveillance, overreach.
    3. Learn more about the terrorists, but don't arrest the right ones in time.
    4. Rinse, repeat.

    This is almost starting to feel staged at this point. Every single country does this, and it always turns us more towards 1984. The terrorists are winning.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Don't forget, you need some laws in there about "saving the children"

    • by Jamu ( 852752 )

      Terrorism: The use of unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

      There needs to be a word for the use of terrorism in the pursuit of political aims. Terrorismism?

      Anyway, it wasn't long before some cunt used this as an excuse to further their own political aims.

      • Re:MO (Score:5, Interesting)

        by darkpixel2k ( 623900 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @10:23AM (#54546149)

        Terrorism: The use of unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

        Go find an old copy of Black's Law Dictionary from the 1700s. The original definition of terrorism *was* a government creating fear or harm for political reasons.

      • by kaur ( 1948056 )

        There needs to be a word for the use of terrorism in the pursuit of political aims. .

        Metaterrorism.

    • Re:MO (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:29AM (#54545873) Homepage Journal

      She is trying to shift blame onto the internet and companies that make secure apps, because she has utterly failed herself. As Home Secretary and now as PM, she has slashed police numbers by nearly 20,000 and tried to make up for it by increasing the use of ineffective surveillance.

      • Re:MO (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @10:59AM (#54546389)

        She is trying to shift blame onto the internet and companies that make secure apps, because she has utterly failed herself.

        You are right.

        I have yet to hear "we suspected the attackers were up to no good but while we were working with various Internet companies to try to get lawful access to their communications, they moved ahead with their attack."

        No. We never find that to be the case. At best, the people who do these things are on list of people who "knows a guy who is related to a guy who knows a guy who has the same name as someone who once said something that rhymes with a jihad slogan."

        "Regulation" won't do anything productive unless "regulation" means "blanket permission and ability to data-mine, tap, access, and record all communications at all times, without cause for specific suspicion." Which is exactly why the major governments of the world are begging for "regulation".

    • Re:MO (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:32AM (#54545879)
      Don't forget there is an important election this week in the UK, and facing another attack the PM has no choice but to propose shocking solutions, and Internet is easy to blame.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Oddly, I'm not that concerned about being run over by a van, on the internet, or stabbed to death by a terrorist, on the internet*, and slightly more concerned about being run over by a van, or stabbed in real life.

        * which was entirely my teams fault, I would've been fine if they defended mid or bombsite A where the fucking bomb was dropped. Also: Lag.

      • No choice because May & the Conservatives are losing to their opposition on every policy except security.

        • Re:MO (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @10:36AM (#54546253) Journal
          Which shows a bit how broken our country is. The opposition leader was shouted down by most of the press for having the temerity to suggest that bombing random stuff isn't the solution to all foreign policy problems and that maybe nuclear weapons aren't actually that useful in massively asymmetric conflicts.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There's a disturbing dead zone between the watch lists and the events. You might ask yourself why it seems that all of these terrorists were on watch lists, but nothing was done about them and they committed the heinous act they were anticipated to. What was the point of the watch list then?

      The government is in a position where they can't arrest you before you do something unless they have hard evidence of the plan. I have a feeling they're going to use these events as a means to push for public acceptance

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:05AM (#54545757)

    "Stop importing mass numbers of insane subhumans who want to kill us."

    What?! That would be CRAZY! It would be like... um... actually solving the problem?

  • We'll just add to the captcha.. check the box if you're a terrorist. Easy peasy.

    If the geniuses that lead our countries would just look in the mirror once in a while they might understand the problem. We let people in to our countries and they end up attacking us. The governments have already failed to vet these people. What the hell are internet companies supposed to do? Twitter is going to run a deep background check on every new account? Nope. Going to blockade certain countries? Well.. Trump tr

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Whorhay ( 1319089 )

      I think the only long term morally correct answer is to correct the behavior that helped provoke the jihad in the first place. We're talking about a decades long effort here. In the meantime there will be more deaths on all sides and we'll have to work through that and find ways to cope that don't involve inciting more violence. Essentially this is chickens coming home to roost that were released over the previous decades, centuries, and even eons. Is it fair, nope, but life isn't fair and if we want peace

      • by OhPlz ( 168413 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @12:17PM (#54546735)

        I think you're horribly wrong by suggesting that modern nations are responsible for this. Those aren't our chickens coming home to roost. Sectarian violence has always been a thing in the parts of the world that are fueling this fire. The mistake we made was letting "refugees" migrate to our countries. Now it's those refugees or the spawn of those refugees carrying out these small scale attacks. They come to our countries and bring their baggage with them. Anyone who doesn't believe what they believe must die. And now we've brought them inside our borders. That's reality. Letting this go on for decades with the hope that things will get better with no plan would be even more of a disaster. We're going to get to the point were everyday people refuse to put up with this anymore to the point where they defy our governments and then all hell is going to break loose. We don't have decades. Maybe the US does, but large parts of Europe do not. Censoring dissent on Twitter is going to change that.

      • "Provoke Jihad"? What the hell are you talking about. These people have been killing people at what any rational human being would describe as random for 1200+ years. It's a fundamental part of their belief system. All the other world religions grew out of it, but not Islam, it's as bat-shit crazy at it has always been.

        The only thing that has consequentially changed is that about 20-30 years ago, "western society" became so concerned about possibly offending someone that we started tol

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:13AM (#54545785)

    Islam and Christianity are both dangerous evils. Let's be done with this fictional nonsense.

    • by schwit1 ( 797399 )
      Religion? The same craziness is happening at Berkeley and Washington's Evergreen College. The student's attitude is I have a right to assault you if your ideas are different than mine.
    • Equating Islam and Christianity is a dangerous lie. You are willfully ignorant of vital differences in theology, and ignore the wildly different societies that spring forth as a consequence.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:14AM (#54545799)

    Why stop at regulating the Internet? They were driving a white van when they carried out the attack so clamping down on white van use seems like a good idea right now. They were also carrying knives so those must be made illegal or their sales closely monitored.

    What I'm waiting for is the usual statement that 'these men were already known to the security services', further proving that all of the Internet monitoring and phone tapping is of no use whatsoever.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:16AM (#54545809)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • You know what the difference between today and the 1980's were? That the attack in San Bernardino and Pulse Nightclub both could have been stopped. What happened? Oh that's right, people were afraid to call police/terrorist tiplines/etc for fear of being labeled "racist" because muslim. Huh let's look in the UK, and all those previous terrorist attacks with the same reason that nobody called tiplines. And how about more in the UK, with those girls raped and being sold as sex slaves(just a fyi it's happening in the US too). And the muslims trying to take over schools to turn them into extremist breeding grounds(see trojan horse scandal). Well what do you know? In those dozens of cases it was all the same thing too.

      I think we've got a problem. You know what it is? People are too politically correct and afraid of being labeled racist/islamophobe/etc. So afraid that they'll turn a blind eye to people preparing to carry out a terrorist attack. Until that changes this isn't going to change either. We could, avoid the whole "implement internet agenda thing." The answer is in this paragraph. And you know as well as I do that the left has a very long history the last decade of going after people for daring to say "that muslim looks like they're going to blow people up." After all, that's what happened in Rotterdam and why 1000+ girls were raped and used as sex toys after all....for over a decade.

      • by MtHuurne ( 602934 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:58AM (#54546005) Homepage

        Huh let's look in the UK, and all those previous terrorist attacks with the same reason that nobody called tiplines.

        People tipped the authorities about the Manchester attacker on 5 separate occasions. The problem in stopping these attacks is not a lack of information. Which also means that additional surveillance will not lead to better safety.

        • Exactly. You have too many people that are effectively high-risk, and there isn't much you can do about them. I am somewhat surprised that the police don't have informants keeping tabs on more of them; it doesn't sound like the formula is that difficult.

          To stop terrorism, you need to stop the money. First focus on foreign influence, then local supporters, and eventually squeeze them from regular organized crime.

          You also need to stop labeling everything as terrorism. Limit the use of that word carefully, a
        • Which is exactly what the inquiries have said over and over and over again as well. Or did you miss the part where I said people were afraid of being labeled racist? You think that something like the Trojan horse scandal or Rotherham didn't happen because no-one called the tip lines? No it's because people were afraid of being labeled racist. And those people were in the police and security services.

          I made a general statement as people, not the agencies themselves. The agencies might have the info, it's again the people being afraid of using it because of rampant political correctness.

        • by Zocalo ( 252965 )
          I was going to say the same thing - they did, and that apparently not only included close associates, but one of them was the Imam at his mosque who had also apparently banned him from attending because of his controversial views. If the security services can't pick up on such a blatent red flag as that, then what hope have they got of picking them out of petabytes of mostly random innocuous data being hoovered up through bulk surveillance?

          The problem isn't lack of surveillance, or people failing to cal
      • Bull-fucking-shit.

        The attackers yesterday were shot 8 minutes after they started. How in your parallel universe would you expect a bunch of guys with knives and a van supposed to be stopped sooner? Are we to report all brown-looking people in vehicles? There are about 1 million 'muslim looking' people living in London.

        There are 2.7 million muslims living in the UK, and your advocating treating them all with suspicion. They are in the same boat as the rest of us, trying to get on with their lives while a few

        • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          How in your parallel universe would you expect a bunch of guys with knives and a van supposed to be stopped sooner? Are we to report all brown-looking people in vehicles? There are about 1 million 'muslim looking' people living in London.

          Bet in a few days we'll see that they were known to police, had multiple times they were picked up on the radar and they did nothing. Just like with the manchester suicide bomber.

          There are 2.7 million muslims living in the UK, and your advocating treating them all with suspicion. They are in the same boat as the rest of us, trying to get on with their lives while a few crazies make everything worse.

          You mean 50% of which are against gay marriage. ~25% believe that Sharia law is the only law, and roughly the same number believes that the UK should be forcibly converted to it? ~40% believe that a women should obey her husband? Haven't even touched on the believes homosexuals should be killed outright, that religious police a

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        He was reported on multiple occasions. Those people don't seem to have been afraid.

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]

        "he Manchester suicide bomber was repeatedly flagged to the authorities over his extremist views, but was not stopped by officers, it emerged Wednesday night.

        Counter Terrorism agencies were facing questions after it emerged Salman Abedi told friends that âoebeing a suicide bomber was okayâ, prompting them to call the Governmentâ(TM)s anti-terrorism hotline.

        Sources suggest that a

    • Uhm, no. It's not about porn. It's about control over, and access to, what people say to each other in private.

      The death toll in this attack is roughly equal to the number of people who have died in the UK because of DUI. The only difference is that DUI deaths are so common and so continuous that they're rarely front page news, much less international news.

      In the US, you have on average, 650 gun deaths per week. 500 can be attributed to 'Christians'. Less than one per week can be attributed to 'Muslim Extremists'..

      • Uhm, no. It's not about porn.

        It really is. May is fucking obsessed with filtering porn out of the internet. Just look at her history as Home Sec. This is an excuse to clamp down on the internet, which she loves to do because porn.

        The death toll in this attack is roughly equal to the number of people who have died in the UK because of DUI.

        Seems low for DUI, but yay on drunk driving becoming really socially unacceptable. Its fewer than the number of cyclists killed on the road in London last year. And VASTLY

  • At least someone benefits from the terrorist attacks.

    • At least someone benefits from the terrorist attacks.

      And just in time for the elections, too. ISIS are Tories.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:19AM (#54545835)

    "Madam, a bunch of barbarians with knives jumped out of a van and killed civilians!"

    "Begin spying on people on the Internet. That'll surely prevent it from happening!"

    As if said barbarians are using internet to communicate at all, much less for openly discussing their acts... "Nahoul, have you acquired the weapons of our holy jihad to take place on London Bridge on June, 3th?" — "Yes, Assoud, very long sharp knives and a Hertz van".

    They probably discuss shit in private in some back alley or something, geez.

  • Instead of ours, oh yeah then the politicians can't get their jollies by exerting more control over the populace.

  • goto step one. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:25AM (#54545857)

    Does she have any evidence these people actually used the internet to plan what they were doing?

    And if so, why didn't all the existing mass surveillance catch them? Is ratcheting up the level of surveillance really going to help? That was their excuse for implementing it to begin with, and so far it hasn't.

    There is no end to it:

    (1) call for more censorship and surveillance.
    (2) another attack happens anyway.
    (3) goto step one, because it must not have been enough yet.

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:37AM (#54545903) Homepage

    Since the dawn of time, people have confused 'stopping speech' with solving the problem. It doesn't. Despite the lying panic, communication does NOT 'radicalize' people. Instead it lets other people find out about the radicalization. While it is true that a small number of lunatics that were considering minor criminal actions upgrade to larger actions, free speech does not create problems, it REVEALS them.

    Stopping free speech delays the problem at best, rather than solving them. Eventually the pent up issues burst forth into violence.

    Better to have a constant small stream that is deal able rather than a flash flood.

    • Terrorists obviously think spreading videos on facebook etc helps their cause, even if you don't. This in of itself should be enough reason to stop it. Even if this wasn't the case, why would anyone in their right minds want to allow terrorist organizations to use FaceBook/etc as their publishing and distribution partner? FaceBook is an immoral compacy - they'd rather err on the side of keeping users than on offending a few by taking a moral stance and stop supportng terrorist material under the guise of "f

    • if the problem is "Acts of Violence against the general population" then yeah, doesn't work. If the problem is "Theresa May isn't going to get re-elected because she's hopelessly in over her head and can't govern since she hails from a party that doesn't believe government can be effective in the first place", well, carry on then.
  • by TheGoodNamesWereGone ( 1844118 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:38AM (#54545907)
    How about starting to fight back in a serious way? They are at war with us. It's time we realized that
    • by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:57AM (#54545997)
      The idea of "fighting back" in the last week was a deal for billions of dollars worth of weapons to the country spreading the twisted cult that's given all of Islam and all of the middle east a bad name - epic fail there. The whaddists (such as Daash/ISIL) must be laughing at how stupid we are, helping those who are funding and supplying them instead of cutting off their money supply and making it more difficult for them to influence people like the bunch of criminals that attacked in London.
      They WANT us to treat it like a war, and attack the mainstream so they can get more recruits to their cult from the mainstream.
    • Fight back against who? We're not at war with a nation. We're at war with an extremist sub-ideology of a major world religion.

  • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:46AM (#54545949) Journal

    The terrorists and the political leaders who are most vociferous about "fighting terrorism" need each other. It's almost like they're fighting for the same side.

    One thing for sure: nothing that any of these leaders have proposed or implemented - mother of all bombs, travel bans, heightened security theater, arming the populace, internment, keeping people from bringing nail clippers on airplanes, foreign wars, building walls - is going to do anything to reduce terrorism.

  • by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @10:07AM (#54546049) Journal
    Interesting people can move messengers around the world and wait for a week for a message to be delivered in person.
    Faith groups working in closed communities don't need to bother with an internet that is been watched. They have their leaders, teachings and have a large protective community around them.
    This is not groups in the 1980's getting funds from banks, making phone calls and moving funds around using computers, emails and fax machines.
    This is not the Soviet Union where the GCHQ can surround the Soviet Union and listen in on Soviet officials making daily phone calls.
    The UK needs to fund MI5 overtime and get its expert surveillance teams out into UK cities.
    Fund the army, MI5 and let them do their work in every UK city. Watch groups, who they meet, who they talk to, who they listen to.
    Map the networks of people.
    Keep all results away from any groups or people in the UK gov who talk to the media.
    Learn for Ireland in the 1980's. Trust only the GCHQ, MI5, the elite UK mil units and any version of Special Branch that is as secure and dedicated as the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch was. That will ensure no information gets to groups/workers/contractors who will sell/talk/give UK policy information to the UK press/media/their company.
    Learn from the 1920-70's issues when the UK had to hire a lot of experts on trust. Just as Communists filled the UK clandestine services for decades expect interesting groups to try and fill the ranks of the UK security services with needed new staff. Only hire on merit and after deep vetting of all new UK staff.
  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @10:08AM (#54546059)

    Basically all terrorists in Europe of the last 10 years or so were _known_ to the state before. Did that help at all? No, it id not. And now they want to put everybody else under surveillance, despite it being completely clear that this will not help? That is at best utterly stupid, and at worst a preparation for the establishment of full-blown fascism.

  • will they also want cellphone firmware that has no auto wipe / pin code time lock down. So they can force update an locked phone and try code after code to unlock it?

  • by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @11:17AM (#54546465) Homepage
    Theresa May thinks she'll be able to get global social networks and application to sacrifice data integrity and encryption because some people in 2017 still think religious views, belief and devotion, is anything else then a mental illness.
  • Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Elixon ( 832904 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @12:28PM (#54546805) Homepage Journal

    - Year 2013: "BBC's websites killing Press and threatening local democracy, says Theresa May" https://goo.gl/ccgTPH [goo.gl]
    - Year 2014: "Theresa May: We need to collect communications data 'haystack'" https://goo.gl/Ew4gMf [goo.gl]
    - Year 2015: "Theresa May: Internet data will be recorded under new spy laws" https://goo.gl/1hNBdk [goo.gl]
    - Year 2016: "Theresa May's Snoopers' Charter dealt major setback as EU court rules against 'indiscriminate' collection of internet data" https://goo.gl/455OWU [goo.gl]
    - Year 2017: "Theresa May Wants A ‘New’ Internet Monitored By The Government" https://goo.gl/mGPKlx [goo.gl]

    That woman simply hates that people can freely speak through the medium she does not control!

    Terrorist attack? We need more control and censorship.
    Child abuse? We need more control and censorship.
    Meteor heading to earth? We need more control and censorship.
    Is it Sunday today? We need more control and censorship.
    Nothing happened? We need more control and censorship.

  • by Deb-fanboy ( 959444 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @02:26PM (#54547417)
    This news is no surprise. For as long as I have been reading about Theresa May she has been campaigning for more internet regulation. She was instrumental in eventually getting a UK 'Snooping Charter' on the books while she was UK Home Secretary. She is reputed to be a control freak in Government, which figures that she wants to create a new UK internet that she can control.

    Her main problem is that she seems to have limited grasp of her brief, and is very exposed when she is asked unprompted questions. For example when a nurse told her that she has been on the same salary as a National Health Service Nurse as she earned in 2009, she looked the nurse in the eye and declared that there is no 'Magic Money Tree'

    She has coped with her poor people skills by refusing to turn up for election debates, instead using the tame UK media, papers like the Daily Mail, and the BBC to promote her. However her lack of ability has become so obvious that what looked like a massive majority (which is the reason why she called a early election) is evaporating and it looks like the UK will enter Brexit negotiations with a hung Parliament)

    To add to her problems She has refused to liaise with the Scottish Parliament to the result that they have asked for a referendum on Scottish Independence to co-inside with the end of the Brexit negotiations.

    Theresa May may go down in UK history as the most incompetent Prime Minister in our long history.

  • Heroes (Score:5, Informative)

    by myid ( 3783581 ) on Sunday June 04, 2017 @02:55PM (#54547553)

    These people are heroes:

    1) A British Transport Police officer [telegraph.co.uk] didn't have a gun. Instead of running away, he fought the terrorists with his baton.

    2) As people were escaping out of the back of a restaurant, a woman [walesonline.co.uk] stayed at the front of the restaurant. She stayed there to block the front door closed with her body, as the terrorists were trying to force their way in. Her blocking the door saved about 20 people, by giving them time to escape. After the terrorists overpowered here and forced their way in, she was able to escape.

    I sometimes wonder how unselfishly brave I would be, if I were in a situation like that. I hope I'd unselfishly brave, like those two people.

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      She stayed there to block the front door closed with her body, as the terrorists were trying to force their way in. Her blocking the door saved about 20 people, by giving them time to escape.

      So keeping terrorists out of a place saves lives?

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