There can be no secret laws in a democracy. Else it's not a damn democracy.
UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
11–20 of 148 posts
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#12> GCHQ is intercepting all communications - emails, text messages, and communications sent via “platforms” such as Facebook and Google – before determining whether they fall into the “internal” or “external” categories This should raise some interesting questions about the methods used considering all of that communication is going over TLS.
We all talk about using SSL everywhere protects people from NSA/GCHQ/... It may prevent script kiddies to use Firesheep but as far as I understand if the NSA/GCHQ has access to any key from any Root CA (which I highly assume) then it doesn't matter at all to the NSA/GCHQ what kind of encryption we use as they can do easily MITM attacks (anyone checking SHA1 from the certificates from a reliable source, whatever this…
Corporate IT departments tend to rely far too much on network level security like this. But if the users machine is compromised in some way network security is completely useless. Even if TLS was completely perfect there would still be vulnerabilities in software that could be attacked on-mass.
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#13> GCHQ is intercepting all communications - emails, text messages, and communications sent via “platforms” such as Facebook and Google – before determining whether they fall into the “internal” or “external” categories This should raise some interesting questions about the methods used considering all of that communication is going over TLS.
Or, as has been in the case in many of these stories, the public policy vectors are reported roughly accurately, but the specifics and, most especially, the scope aren't. So you have thousands or tens of thousands of FISA directives for specific accounts sent to Google reported as "NSA has a shell on Google servers". It's probably the case that GCHQ simply doesn't collect "all" communications, and can't do much about…
Google doesn't have any data centres in the UK.
http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/ind...
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#14> GCHQ is intercepting all communications - emails, text messages, and communications sent via “platforms” such as Facebook and Google – before determining whether they fall into the “internal” or “external” categories This should raise some interesting questions about the methods used considering all of that communication is going over TLS.
Secure technology doesn't prevent governments from getting the "platforms" to co-operate with them, as we saw with PRISM. I could be wrong, but surely it seems far more likely that they are providing GCHQ with the data rather than that GCHQ is cracking encrypted traffic.
Maybe I'm being naive, but while I'm certain there are easy ways for GCHQ and others to obtain data of chosen people, I have a hard time believing Google would just give them all-you-can-eat data access with no restrictions or monitoring. Simply because they are big enough to be able to take their data elsewhere.
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#15You might find this debate from Intelligence Squared interesting on this topic.
http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/state-snooping-is-...
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, as has been in the case in many of these stories, the public policy vectors are reported roughly accurately, but the specifics and, most especially, the scope aren't. So you have thousands or tens of thousands of FISA directives for specific accounts sent to Google reported as "NSA has a shell on Google servers". It's probably the case that GCHQ simply doesn't collect "all" communications, and can't do much about…
Google doesn't have any data centres in the UK. http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/ind...
Sorry, data center fiber connections, not data centers.
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#17The section regarding external communications starts on page 37. The same document seems to contradict this article's premise:
(from p.41) "Despite the fact that some UK to UK communications may be intercepted under section 8(4) warrants and that common uses of the internet by persons in the British Islands, such as a Google search, a Facebook post, or a "tweet" on Twitter, may entail the making of "external communications" for the purposes of Chapter I of RIPA, the section 8(4) regime as a whole is designed so as not to authorise the selection for examination of communications of this nature, except in the tightly constrained circumstances set out in section 16 of RIPA."
Disclaimer: IANA-(British)-L
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#18There can be no secret laws in a democracy. Else it's not a damn democracy.
Since the secret laws are actually out there, what conclusion does this fact support?
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#19The section regarding external communications starts on page 37. The same document seems to contradict this article's premise: (from p.41) "Despite the fact that some UK to UK communications may be intercepted under section 8(4) warrants and that common uses of the internet by persons in the British Islands, such as a Google search, a Facebook post, or a "tweet" on Twitter, may entail the making of "external communic…
It goes on though to say that tweets are posted to a US platform, not an individual, so they all count as external. Only email from one person to another both in the UK is "internal" but they admit it will be collected anyway, but say they can't look at it.
Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance
#20The political silence on this issue is indeed deafening. As was the press silence (other than the Guardian). The press in this country are far more interested in reality tv, political infighting, fanning flames about 'immigrants' and what the royals are up to. And I suspect it's because most of the public don't care either. There are people who would like privacy, who think that GCHQ should be accountable and then th…
Don't forget about "the muslim problem" and the "international islamic conspiracy".
I'm sorry to Godwin the thread, but it's pertinent. The push on "british values" (nationalism) and "preventing non-violent extremism" (such doublespeak) and "combatting islam" is fucking terrifying to anyone even vaguely familiar with the events that preceded the holocaust and the second world war.
The surveillance state we find ourselves under just makes it that much easier for atrocities to be committed and utterly hidden from view.