British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ • Hacker News Board

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#61

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #36

peteretep wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm suggesting that we already knew the NSA and GCHQ were doing mass data collection. The article headline - and its very existence - suggests that politicians were being targetted, or there was some suggestion that GCHQ agents are reading politicians email in particular. That the published had to clarify (at the end, ad views already banked) that they didn't mean the emails are being read tells you that the arti…

You can argue that it is a way to spin it, but if the aim is to make politicians react, I don't think it's bad to tell them: all emails, including yours, are monitored.

Politicians frequently say that they're only looking at metadata and they only want to monitor metadata.

If you want to persuade them that it's a bad idea to gather metadata you need to focus on that. Creating bullshit scare headlines that aren't true allow them to dismiss it as fearmongering.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#62

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

joshfraser wrote: post #7

lucaspiller wrote: post #4

This coming to light is a good thing, because the MPs will finally be scared enough to do something pro-privacy and stop all the anti-encryption nonsense.

Unfortunately the GCHQ has a ton of blackmail material on all of those MPs to shut them up if they get too loud.

This is the only motivation that has ever mattered for domestic surveillance in any nation: control.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#63

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #51

Harry101 wrote: post #23

It's surprising to most Yanks, but Britain is the most heavily surveilled western country. It's much worse there it is in the US. (So far.)

Actually it's a common trope. That and the idea that much of England and Europe have been conquered by slavering Muslim hordes intent on instituting Shari'a. The second is more due to American tabloids

What, the National Enquirer? Weekly World News? I'm not an avid reader, but I can't recall any articles about Norbert Hofer in those publications...

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#64

Post by walshemj » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 3:37 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #43

jdietrich wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone smuggling heroin into the US would expect a sentence of at least 30 years. We happen to think that automatic weapons are at least as dangerous as heroin.

I think smuggling is a less serious crime than murder.

And if the guns are used in a Charlie Hebdo style massacre or a stade de france style attack?

America is lucky in that its home grown terrorists have ben to be blunt a bit crap.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#65

Post by walshemj » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 3:39 PM UTC

triplesec wrote: post #32

alephu5 wrote: post #12

What if there are terrorists in parliament? How will the security agencies be able to find them if they are allowed privacy?

Sarcasm alert! (I hope)

There have been MP's caught spying and its surprising that no congressmen or senators haven't.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#66

Post by wfo » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #27

This is a dreadful article, and the title is deeply misleading. Literally the only information this article contains is that MPs use Office365 and MessageLabs. That they've felt the need to clarify, right at the end of the article: > Computer Weekly also points out that we have not made > any suggestion in this story that GCHQ “routinely > reads” MPs’ emails. I would say that is exactly the suggestion that the verb "…

I'm not sure it's all that misleading, what I got out of the article was that there was apparently an explicit law (Wilson doctrine) in the UK designed to prevent spy agencies from spying on political officials. But now that they have begun using cloud services, etc, the doctrine has been quietly rendered irrelevant because of routing technicalities.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#67

Post by vertex-four » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #43

jdietrich wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone smuggling heroin into the US would expect a sentence of at least 30 years. We happen to think that automatic weapons are at least as dangerous as heroin.

I think smuggling is a less serious crime than murder.

A gun being smuggled into the UK is only going to be used by a criminal (and by criminal, I mean they're committing violent crimes other than ownership of a gun) for killing someone - a gun smuggler, therefore, is providing a killer with a murder weapon with full knowledge of what it's going to be used for.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#68

Post by dmix » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

samscully wrote: post #29

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact all non-establishment groups - CND, anti-nuclear power protesters, anti-globalisation protesters, trade unions, animal rights activists, UK's own Occupy movement, anarchists, even worthy intellectual left-leaning blogs, and so on - were and are routinely infiltrated and manipulated. There's nominal press freedom, in that it's possible to call politicians rude names. But if your movement or leaders become powe…

Fortunately the non-establishment groups sometimes infiltrate and manipulate the establishment too [1]. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/17/jeremy-corby...

Highly unlikely this happens very often at all. Counter-intelligence by the FBI (the primary intel agency dealling with domestic political organizations) is very thorough. It would take an extremely skilled person to get through their interviews, background checks, mandatory polygraph tests, etc.

The FBI are the best trained people in the world at eliciting information from people unwillingly/unknowingly - which is enough of a barrier on it's own.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#69

Post by andy_ppp » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 7:39 AM UTC

lamby wrote: post #13

joshrivers wrote: post #2

The British are so strange. This kind of abuse of power would never be contemplated by American authorities.

Brit here. Another interesting angle/reflection is that if this was happening in China then there would be a shitstorm here..

The Chinese directly sensor and tell you what you can and can't do. In "democratic" countries anything that changes the status quo or stands up to power puts you at risk of being targeted; maybe you'll end up in a relationship with a state official or maybe you'll be goaded by someone into breaking the law. Maybe you'll never be able to trust anyone ever again.

Re: British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ

#70

Post by sievebrain » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

JupiterMoon wrote: post #20

sievebrain wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has never had to deal with a truly oppressive government, at least not within anything like living memory. There's also the problem that nobody outside of the software engineering community really understands what the tech can do, or what GCHQ is capable of. My mother's primary comment on the whole thing was, "well we're much too boring to spy on" and that's a sentiment you see a lot. It reflects a misundersta…

> "well we're much too boring to spy on" Have you asked her why her government feels that it is necessary to spy on her if she is so boring?

The Snowden story was vast and limited to the Guardian. In the UK the other media outlets didn't cover it at all, or actively attempted to undermine the reporting (e.g. with stories planted by the British government that were carefully worded to sound like they were from Snowden even if they weren't).

The vast majority of people have not read any of the Snowden leaks and have no idea what they contained beyond "the government spies a lot". So the concept that they might be targeted themselves is just unimaginable to them.