Great idea for 21st century Soviet style spying on citizens.

[Jon39]

Employing thousands to do spying is so expensive.
Could this way work better in the 21st century ?

Nationalise a telecoms provider, let's call it say Openreach, then give free broadband to every citizen.
It would become the only broadband provider, because the existing companies could not compete with free prices.

The London state Politburo can then monitor every piece of traffic on the entire network.

Edited by Jon39 on Wednesday 11th December 20:28

[Jasandjules]

Even better, get people to buy a product that they can speak to and it gives information. This device can be connected to the internet and will be constantly listening... People pay for their own spying. Magic.

[Jon39]

Jasandjules said:

Even better, get people to buy a product that they can speak to and it gives information. This device can be connected to the internet and will be constantly listening... People pay for their own spying. Magic.

I spot a weakness with your plan comrade.

Need to make the nationalised free broadband the only one available, so then every citizen can be monitored by the state. Emails, web browsing, chat, the lot.

[otolith]

Jasandjules said:

Even better, get people to buy a product that they can speak to and it gives information. This device can be connected to the internet and will be constantly listening... People pay for their own spying. Magic.

Also, somehow make it not trivially obvious for anyone capable of monitoring network traffic to debunk conspiracy theories about it. And build enough computing infrastructure to snoop on audio streams for 100 million devices.

[Getragdogleg]

otolith said:

Also, somehow make it not trivially obvious for anyone capable of monitoring network traffic to debunk conspiracy theories about it. And build enough computing infrastructure to snoop on audio streams for 100 million devices.

Alongside GPS, anpr and keyword sniffing i think its all coming along well comrade....

[ninja-lewis]

Jon39 said:

I spot a weakness with your plan comrade.

Need to make the nationalised free broadband the only one available, so then every citizen can be monitored by the state. Emails, web browsing, chat, the lot.

What makes you think GCHQ don't already have that level of access to everything, regardless of provider?

[glazbagun]

Jon39 said:

Jasandjules said:

Even better, get people to buy a product that they can speak to and it gives information. This device can be connected to the internet and will be constantly listening... People pay for their own spying. Magic.

I spot a weakness with your plan comrade.

Need to make the nationalised free broadband the only one available, so then every citizen can be monitored by the state. Emails, web browsing, chat, the lot.

Have you been living under a rock?

The government already do this. Anything your state ISP has your private ISP will have as well. The Tories (after the Lib Dems threw a spanner in the works) already require ISP's to log your internet history, the biggest email providers alreafy scan your emails and the operating system of every phone and pc is sending your location and habits back to a private company you can't vote out.

Snowden revealed that anything we.(or the Americans) can't do due to legalities on domestic mass surveillance, we get the foreign power to do and we swap it for what we've spied on their citizens.

Your dystopia has already existed for a decade or more and it was New Labour and the Conservatives who built it. Ownership of the wires would make no difference at all at this stage.

[Johnnytheboy]

This is all predicated on the idea that the public sector could carry something like this off competently.

[Zirconia]

People give all the info away freely to companies every day through social media. Who has a facebook account? No need to go after the individual when someone else has done all the leg work. Just give them a bung or hack them.