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UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

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

#131

Post by grkvlt »

ionised wrote: post #127
grkvlt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worr…

> There are free and fair secret elections. Sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on this one. Lobbying and uncapped campaign donations are tantamount to legalised bribery. The system is utterly corrupt. Free they may be, but calling them fair is a gross misrepresentation in my opinion. > I worry about the thought processes that must occur for people to think this; or similar things, like conflating an instan…

> We're not saying it's a police state. We're saying it is becoming one because of the very tools that these agencies possess and abuse without accountability

Right, this is my problem. I have no problem with posession of these tools. States possess much worse things, nuclear weapons spring to mind. And abuse of these tools in an unaccountable fashion is wrong, 100% with you on that. However it is not clear to me that such abuses have occurred, or are occurring in a systematic way. Are there any documented (to the extent possible) cases of this? I didn't think even the Snowden documents showed that. In fact, it looked like they were full of caveats about US and UK citizen surveillance being a problematic area, and stated requirements for legal reviews and checks in these cases?

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

#132

Post by grkvlt »

alandarev wrote: post #45
peterlawest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it helps ensure security. I don't believe they'd bother doing it if it didn't. I think you're a bit arrogant for assuming they give a fuck what you write to your girlfriend on iMessages. I know you probably disagree with that, but this is my point - not everyone agrees that surveillance is bad. And I'm not alone - I think most people don't really care about surveillance. And this isn't a conspiracy - it's j…

Noone has mentioned there that they are afraid of their loveletters to be publicly available, as a consequence of surveilance. (It is possible, but whatever) Instead, our problem, is that surveilance is being used as a an invaluable tool for autocracy. And the question is not whether they will use surveilance for oppressing government opposition, but when if not already.

I think that is a good question. And if there were ever a case of surveillance being used to suppress government opposition, that would be terrible. But this has not occurred, and opposition to the government is a protected and valued right of every citizen of both the UK and the US. There are even entire organisations devoted to the opposition of the current government, some in the UK even go as far as having a 'shadow' group that mirrors the current ruling cabinet, to contest their decisions publicly.

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

#133

Post by madaxe_again »

king_jester wrote: post #113
rayiner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every cultural clash should be compared to the Holocaust. There are plenty of historical examples of societies that got eaten from within when they couldn't maintain their culture in the face of aggressive foreign ones.

> There are plenty of historical examples of societies that got eaten from within when they couldn't maintain their culture in the face of aggressive foreign ones. There's an implicit valuation of culture in this statement. Most cultures throughout history melded and adapted to other cultures, both in little and big ways. Xenophobia about cultural invasion is also throughout history, but the reality is that dominant…

You acquire culture through co-mingling and confusion of the elements and ideas of different peoples. Isolate cultures have common roots with others, and evolved in the same way. Drift happens with extended isolation, but if anything this is more of a degenerative process than anything else.

Our precious "British" culture is a Franco-Germanic-Nordic-Celtic-Romano-Pictish-Jutish-Afro-Indian-Sinesian and god only knows what else fusion. They should teach Bayeux, not Carta.

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

#134

Post by collyw »

grkvlt wrote: post #109
TeMPOraL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the secret laws are actually out there, what conclusion does this fact support?

What 'secret laws' are you talking about? No such thing exists in the UK, at least. Is there not a similar process for creating legislation publicly in the USA?

The ones you don't know about because they are secret.

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

#135

Post by jacobolus »

harshreality wrote: post #98
netcan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See Machiavelli: both The Discourses on Livy and The Prince are quite insightful on these topics. I recommend reading both near the same time.

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

#136

Post by grkvlt »

ivanca wrote: post #102
netcan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everyone should care about this; but as you said most people don't see the issue in practical terms. I think is our jobs as tech-savy people to put it in more practical terms for them, someway the average Joe can relate to, for example: - NSA and GCHQ are probably watching your kids naked, a lot, because exploits from webcams are very common, and they cannot know before hand if someone is using Skype to plan tewowist…

> Blackmailing is a piece of cake, because completely normal and legal activities such as watching porn are enough to defame you.

How can you blackmail someone with their normal and legal activities? Either watching porn is abnormal, and a source of blackmail opportunities, or it's normal and it's not, surely?

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

#137

Post by DanBC »

grkvlt wrote: post #136
ivanca wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should care about this; but as you said most people don't see the issue in practical terms. I think is our jobs as tech-savy people to put it in more practical terms for them, someway the average Joe can relate to, for example: - NSA and GCHQ are probably watching your kids naked, a lot, because exploits from webcams are very common, and they cannot know before hand if someone is using Skype to plan tewowist…

> Blackmailing is a piece of cake, because completely normal and legal activities such as watching porn are enough to defame you. How can you blackmail someone with their normal and legal activities? Either watching porn is abnormal, and a source of blackmail opportunities, or it's normal and it's not, surely?

The UK is probably more relaxed about this than the US but I can imagine situations where people watching legal[1] porn could come under sever pressure at work because of it. Scout masters watching gay porn; headmasters watching legal but "teen" porn; teachers watching BDSM; etc - these are all people doing something legal that has no impact on their job but who would face severe pressure at work, and may well lose their job inder a variety of "disrepute" clauses.

[1] the legal situation in the UK for porn is not straightforward.

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

#138

Post by grkvlt »

pizza234 wrote: post #39
peterlawest wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are a few problems in here. Most notably though, I find terrible the statement that "we have a democracy" when essentially what we're talking about are tools whose abuse (which is going to be very welcomed by the government[s]) is exactly to suppress the democracy itself. Not only this, but also that fact the this is put in a context where government[s] are increasingly given powers to silence dissidence and le…

> government[s] are increasingly given powers to silence dissidence and legally rape people

1. Governments have always had these powers. The state has 'a monopoly on violence' and that can be abused in many different ways, without the need for pervasive surveillance. But it isn't, at least in the USA and the UK, we don't have 'death squads' roaming the streets or summary extra-judicial executions by firing squad for supporting the wrong political party, or having the wrong religion.

2. Wait, legally rape people... What?

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

#139

Post by grkvlt »

Nursie wrote: post #85
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…

>> In short; it's not all about you, your vote is worth exactly one other vote. And how the hell am I supposed to know what I'm voting for? This is the problem. There has been no discussion. There is no mandate from the public at large, it's all secret programs, secret laws and secret trials. It's sick, and it's not democratic.

> secret laws

Can you explain how a secret law could ever exist?

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

#140

Post by GHFigs »

harshreality wrote: post #98
netcan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You may find this book interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
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