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NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

theguardian.com

1–10 of 60 posts

Re: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

#4
The leaked papers reveal the UK's biggest fear is that "US perceptions of the … partnership diminish, leading to loss of access, and/or reduction in investment … to the UK".

Talk about being bent over.

Maybe it's time to cut losses now and discuss UK's expulsion from the EU (unless of course the other EU members are able to exert heavy pressure upon the UK, which I honestly doubt).

Re: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

#5
The linked article only provides the highlights. A more in-depth article is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/aug/01/gch...

As well as discussing the funding and various projects in more detail, it also sheds some light on what life is like for the rank-and-file.

It is a world of decoding and cake sales, programming and pub quizzes.

Nobody at Cheltenham is particularly well paid, compared to the private sector at least – a junior analyst might earn £25,000. "We can offer a fantastic mission but we can’t compete with [private sector] salaries," one briefing note lamented.

There are protocols on the clearing of desks at the end of the day, with particularly sensitive documents being locked in special cupboards, the keys to which are then stored in other reinforced –lockers which can only be opened by following a set of complex instructions.

Re: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

#8
>Snowden warned about the relationship between the NSA and GCHQ, saying the organisations have been jointly responsible for developing techniques that allow the mass harvesting and analysis of internet traffic.

>"It's not just a US problem," he said. "They are worse than the US."

Interesting. The Brits care less about privacy than the U.S.

Re: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

#9
post #6

Money gets things done. It's no news that this basically is how DC operates. But it is extremely worrisome to see this culture of corruption swapping over to Europe.

Why do you think this is something new in Europe (or at any place on Earth)?

That's not what I think. Corruption is a problem every human being is prone to.

I'm talking about the scale of corruption. In this regard, DC is the sickest known example in the western world, I'd say. And now this kind of scale seems about to be extended further.

Re: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

#10
post #3

More damning than the headline here is that GCHQ apparently explicitly stated that a major selling point for the partnership is the UK's lax legal regime, which allows them to be "Less constrained by NSA's concerns about compliance."

It's been reported elsewhere that the NSA may uses GCHQ to spy on Americans, as a deliberate run around the fourth amendment.

I guess, funding GCHQ makes that worse, as well.

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