For twenty years the attitude of the main British political parties to the Net was pretty clear. The Tories neither knew nor cared about it, so they let their policy be driven by a minority of rabid free marketeers whose main aim was that no-one should reduce their profits by a single penny. So in practice their policy, or lack of it, was surprisingly liberal by British standards. The only exception was when the military got involved and waved the mantra of "National Security" in front of Parliament. There seems to be no shame to which a Tory minister will not stoop when asked nicely by a general. Especially if they get to have their photo taken in specially enlarged combat gear bung-holed into the top hatch of a shiny new tank.
Labour didn't know much more than the Tories, but they did know a bit more - being on the whole a little better educated and a lot cleverer (not that that was hard). And they were suspicious of the spies because they thought they were spying on them. Or they hoped they were spying on them, there's nothing that gives you quite so much credibility on the Left as having your phone tapped (genuine Spanish Civil War volunteers being a bit thin on the ground these days).
So Labour in opposition allowed their policy on computers and communications to be written by some very clever chaps who actually knew something about the subject. They published a policy statement (the party produces them the way Poland grows beets) that - give or take some well-meaning waffle about virtual village halls - was probably the best thing any political party has ever said about the subject.
Of course it was quietly shoved under the carpet as soon as they got into Government & had drunk the GCHQ magic potion. I have a copy somewhere but I won't put it on this page because it is too good - and this is meant to be a rant.
(The liberals, as usual, made cuddly noises about education, safe in the knowledge that no-one living further than walking distance from Richmond Bridge would ever notice that they even had a policy in the first place.)
A few months ago the new Government published their policy on encryption and other things. Almost no-one noticed - it's a bit techy for the average MP - but it was basically the US government policy of about 5 years ago, translated into English by GCHQ. In other words it was a complete capitulation to the old cold warriors who still run our military and now they have no Russians to fight want to turn their toys on us. GCHQ have one, and only one, aim in all this - that GCHQ shall be able to listen to every conversation and read every document in the world. They'll never get there of course, but they will go down trying.
During the second world war the organisations that later became GCHQ began to monitor all radio and telephone traffic, enemy and allied. Towards the end of the war the organisations that later became NSA started doing the same in the USA. At the end of that war they turned their attentions on Russia, and the Enemy Within. To save ourselves from ourselves theirt thought police decided they had to be able to read all our mail, listen to all our conversations, track all our movements. The Americans had some constitutional problems with this - they didn't care much about morality but they did care about their internal laws. Like the old racemasters of South Africa before the end of apartheid, who would always - well, fairly often - give a black man a fair trial before they murdered him, the NSA felt themselves unable to spy on US citizens inside the contiguous USA. That's the FBI's job, and they are civilians.
So they came up with the UKUSA agreement (which also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but they don't qualify for an acronym of their own). This allows the US military and NSA to eavesdrop on all phone conversations in the UK, and spy on UK citizens in their homes, and gives them legal immunity in this country. Yes, our laws allow the CIA - a military arm of a foreign power - free range in our country to do things that their own constitution prevents them from doing in theirs. We even gave them a few old RAF bases (notably Menwith Hill) to do it from. In return - well, amongst other things in return the British spies eavesdrop on US electronic traffic that NSA is too scrupulous to listen to itself. Especially on international undersea cables. Look at a map of the cable routes some day. Compare them with maps of British bases. Diego Garcia, Ascension Island, Kenya (yes we still have troops in Kenya, Gibraltar, Cyprus, Hong Kong as was... Oh, and we listen to US domestic radio traffic as well - from Canada certainly, probably from the Caribbean, and possibly from the USA itself - remember the 3rd biggest British military base abroad is in Canada, and we also have, believe it or not, at least 3 or 4 small bases in the US as well (Including one in Baltimore and another one that the Canadian post evacuates to every winter). Not all the bright young officers they send there are escorting journalists to embassy parties.
Of course everyone gets to spy on the Germans.
When satellites began to take over the usual suspects ganged up on them in the usual way, ECHELON, project 415 (whatever that is or was).
Anyway, all this pretty obviously won't work if They can't understand the messages that They overhear. So they are shit scared of routine use of strong encryption. So the new proposals suggest laws that try force everyone who wants to use encrypted messages to do business to leave their keys with a government appointed "Trusted Third Party". It is exactly as if you had to leave your house keys with the police, in case they should want to break in while you are out, or if you had to leave the combination to your safe with the bank so they could come and take your money if they thought you owed it to them.
Everybody, without exception, who has been paying attention to the issue knows that these misguided policies almost certainly won't work, if they do they will cripple the economy and they are probably a Trojan horse for worse later. I won't go into the arguments here - they are all over the web for everyone who cares to look, and even government officials, in private, agree that the government policy is nonsense. Anyway, this is a rant.
The government has for years been sneaking in potentially oppressive measures under a cloak of security - of course we need to do this it's just common sense it's just part of the Fight Against Crime, or the War Against Drugs, or paedophiles (why do we use that stupid word for men who bugger children? What is wrong with "paederast" which means the same but seems worse - if only because most people know what "phile" means but not "erast" - or "child molester" or "pervert" or "rapist"?) or terrorists or Evil Mafia Money Launderers.
Both parties do it but if anything Labour governments are worse because they are so scared of getting branded as Soft on Crime or Weak on Defence in the cess-pit Tory press (gutters are flushed out by rainfall) that they agree to every word the men with wide-bottomed trousers whisper in their ear.
And they've done it again. In an otherwise mostly sensible set of proposals about illegal arms trading they have sneaked in a definition of email across national boundaries as export. (Including email within companies. And oral discussion can be export). (And remember, ordinary public-key cryptography is a controlled military export).
All very sensible and well-meaning on the face of it. But how is such a law to be enforced? Only by passing laws that allow the government, or the police, or GCHQ to read everyone's email. Of course they can already do that - but this time they are going to make it the law.
Some quotes from this vile nonsense
The Government therefore proposes that new legislation should provide it with the power to control the transfer of technology, whatever the means of transfer. This power would be used to introduce secondary legislation, which it is proposed should do the following:- Given the ever increasing ease with which information can be transferred across national boundaries by electronic means, i.e. by fax or e-mail, the Government proposes to provide that documents transferred abroad containing controlled technology should be subject to export licensing requirements, whether exported physically or in electronic form.
- Information can also be passed on in non-documentary form (e.g. orally or through personal demonstration). The proposal to make it an offence to do something which it was known or suspected could assist a weapons of mass destruction or long range missile programme, described in paragraph 3.1.4, would catch transfers of information in non-documentary form. This offence would be implemented under the power to control the transfer of technology by any means [...]
and
3.2.3 The Government has also given consideration to possible controls on the publication of controlled technology on electronic networks such as the World Wide Web (WWW).[...]3.4.1 To assist in the enforcement of the expanded offences relating to weapons of mass destruction as well as on intangible transfers and trafficking and brokering, the Government proposes that new legislation should give HM Customs and Excise (HMC&E) the powers to require the production of records in respect of such transfers[...]
End of quotes from government document
So that's all right then. We can sleep safe in our beds, knowing that no-one can email any bomb-making recipes abroad without a licence from the Customs and Excise. And if anyone tries then they will be nabbed by GCHQ who are reading all our mail. Big Brother is watching you.