UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance • Hacker News Board

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#91

Post by jiggy2011 » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:24 PM UTC

skj wrote: post #89

jiggy2011 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you equating promotion of "british values" such as democracy,freedom,rule of law with nazism? Or am I misreading your argument?

I believe the GP was equating "British values" as a dogwhistle for racists, in the same way claiming you're a "real American" is in the US.

I assumed they were referring to this. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27853591

Which is a much more moderate message.

I'm not really convinced that the UK is becoming any more racist overall, it's just that the internet has given those who are already that way inclined a platform.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#92

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:29 PM UTC

ZenPro wrote: post #78

Disclaimer : I worked as an intelligence analyst. 1. I am not in favour of widespread, unaccountable surveillance of UK citizens. 2. During my time we disrupted a number of exceptionally serious terrorist operations.[1] [2] are public knowledge and there are a few others that are not open source at this time. 3. Neither I, nor any of my colleagues, were instructed to keep any files on individuals to be used as politi…

>The threat from Qutbism Islamic Fundamentalism (Wahhabi/Salafist inspired terrorism) is real and intelligence organisations work constantly to prevent attacks.

Is it more real than the threat from a government forcing disabled people into suicide? Or retooling 'reform' on the economy with zero-hours contracts, depressed wages, and asset inflation?

If anyone was looking to protect the elderly, the young, and the incapacitated, do you really think they'd hire GCHQ, Group 4, Capita, and the rest?

Oh - and we know the spooks keep personal files. This has been going on for decades. Anyone to the left of Enoch Powell was fair game - including at least one former Prime Minister.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/comment...

Are you telling us this has all stopped, because Internet, and because (we're told) you never saw it personally, so it doesn't happen?

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#93

Post by Silhouette » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #83

Nursie wrote: post #7

The 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…

There are issues that people care about in theory, in books & political science courses and such and there are issues that people care about in practice. In their political sphere, people care about their wealth (economy), their identity (nationalism, religion) & drama (political scandals). These are pretty constant. They are the bread and butter of politics and have ben since ancient time. When wealth decreases, ide…

I hate this post, but mostly because I'm afraid of how accurate it is.

It is disturbing how quickly we forget the lessons of history -- even history still within living memory that shaped the entire future of Europe -- and instead allow an "it would never happen to me" mentality to take over.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#94

Post by madaxe_again » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:42 PM UTC

fit2rule wrote: post #76

madaxe_again wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ourse…

The biggest problem in the UK is: groupthink. The national identity is oriented around just how conformant and pliable an individual is, in relation to their peers, and thinking what everyone else thinks is, fundamentally, at the core of what it means to be an Englishman. Don't rock the boat, don't go outside the boundaries of 'acceptable society', and so on. Well, I'm sorry to say, but you English deserve your oppre…

That's the human condition, and what you've just defined isn't "British culture", but all cultures. You can hardly have a homogenous whole without individual conformity.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#95

Post by lnanek2 » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:42 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #14

corin_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would you find that hard to believe? The NSA has been putting their own hardware in other people's data centers and requiring their SSL keys, for example. So it certainly happens in the US.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#96

Post by grey-area » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:45 PM UTC

ZenPro wrote: post #78

Disclaimer : I worked as an intelligence analyst. 1. I am not in favour of widespread, unaccountable surveillance of UK citizens. 2. During my time we disrupted a number of exceptionally serious terrorist operations.[1] [2] are public knowledge and there are a few others that are not open source at this time. 3. Neither I, nor any of my colleagues, were instructed to keep any files on individuals to be used as politi…

I am not in favour of widespread, unaccountable surveillance of UK citizens.

Don't you think Tempora constitutes widespread, unaccountable surveillance? Also why the UK citizens qualifier?

During my time we disrupted a number of exceptionally serious terrorist operations.[1] [2] are public knowledge and there are a few others that are not open source at this time.

Most people would applaud you for that work and support some level of targeted spying, overseen by the judiciary, that doesn't mean spies should have carte-blanche to spy with impunity on everyone. Judicial scrutiny would make life more difficult when surveilling terrorists, but we have a limited justice system because it is fair and moral, not because it is maximally efficient.

Neither I, nor any of my colleagues, were instructed to keep any files on individuals to be used as political leverage or "for dirt" at a later stage.

If information is kept on everyone, you wouldn't need to be. The information is stored, ready to be used at any point in the future, and your boss doesn't need you to access it. The concept of keeping files seems a bit quaint in an age when massive datacentres are built to store our data, and every communication, no matter how mundane, is being logged for future use.

I would also note that British intelligence and police have on multiple occasions spied on individuals for use as political and economic leverage, and given Tempora, they wouldn't even need to spy on individuals specifically, so your assertion here rings a little hollow.

It's not all about us or some perceived intrusion, it's about power and the very real threat to a democratic and free and open society that universal surveillance and unaccountable spy agencies pose. Also interesting that you bring up the IRA and the attacks of the 90s - that violence wasn't settled by surveillance and repression, but by compromise and self-rule.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#97

Post by gizmo686 » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:50 PM UTC

janthinidae wrote: post #8

viraptor wrote: post #2

> 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…

I think we are pretty safe against MITM attacks (for dragnat survallance). As a quick test, I am sure that many people on this site have access to very public facing, SSL enabled, servers. Try verifing that the public key your server sends is the same one that you get visiting your site.

Even without concerns over government survallence, it is probably a good idea to check this occasionally.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#98

Post by harshreality » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:51 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #83

Nursie wrote: post #7

The 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…

There are issues that people care about in theory, in books & political science courses and such and there are issues that people care about in practice. In their political sphere, people care about their wealth (economy), their identity (nationalism, religion) & drama (political scandals). These are pretty constant. They are the bread and butter of politics and have ben since ancient time. When wealth decreases, ide…

Is there one (or a few) book(s)/article(s) that shaped your view on this (most of all the wealth, identity, drama triad)? I'd be interested in reading them.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#99

Post by quasque » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:51 PM UTC

peterlawest wrote: post #24

Nursie wrote: post #7

The 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…

I consider myself an educated, well-informed person, and I have no problem whatsoever with government surveillance. Like anything, it can be abused, but I don't think that outweighs the benefits. I think it's sad that it makes you 'angry' that some people simply disagree with you. We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern. If you have a problem with it, stand for elect…

I find this view rather short-sighted.

To some extent I agree with you that there are benefits to mass surveillance, and that on the whole it is (probably) not currently being widely abused.

However, this is not predictive of the future.

By setting up such a pervasive surveillance machine, this massively enables abuses by future governments that may not be quite as benign towards its citizens.

Just consider how 'useful' this mass data mining of private communications would have been for the East German Stasi, or during McCarthyism in the USA, or many other examples of overly authoritarian governance.

The danger is that a system set up to protect state security, ostensibly with the best of intentions, can be subverted later on as a tool of governmental abuse.

Re: UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

#100

Post by grkvlt » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 1:51 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #44

edanm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a fallacy? Part of democracy is accepting that you don't necessarily agree with everyone about everything, and you have to compromise.

When you have secret laws that protect secret proceedings or as we actually have now, agencies that operate in a legal black hole and are completely unaccountable then yes, the idea that this is somehow a democracy is comical.

No.

Just because one part of an organisation does not have a particular property, it does not negate that property for all other parts. The USA and UK are, quite obviously, democracies. There are free and fair secret elections for government in which anyone can vote, and anyone can stand for election as a candidate. That makes them democracies, the behaviour of their secret intelligence services is irrelevant.

I worry about the thought processes that must occur for people to think this; or similar things, like conflating an instance of some law enforcement department abusing its power with a totalitarian police state... I understand hyperbole as a rhetorical device, but it isn't helpful when assumed as fact.