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British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

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Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#21

Post by charonn0 »

nbevans wrote: post #13
nbevans wrote: post #3

After all the stuff the Guardian published, and which has directly resulted in a massive reduction in Europe-wide security from terrorism, it's easy to see why. The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific details were announced. UK's spy agency has more powers than the NSA can dream of; and is largely responsible for protect…

Not really sure why this is being down voted. But I guess it is HackerNews after all. A lot of dumb people on here.

Because the first sentence is factually and ethically incorrect, and the second sentence is not supported by the available evidence.

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#22

Post by guelo »

xnull4guest wrote: post #18
guelo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been a global rise in violence and legal pursuit of journalists so brits are apparently going to refuse to take responsibility and are going to point fingers at the US instead.

Are you implying I'm British? (I'm American.) I don't really get your comment. It sounds important, could you say it again another way?

I was implying you are British, sorry for my mistake. It seemed like a macho British thing to do to try to deflect attention from this latest scandal by saying that the US is worse. (the UK is much worse).

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#23

Post by balladeer »

eru wrote: post #19
guelo wrote: post #2

What can you expect from a country that still has a functioning monarchy. There's a reason America revolted against England, you can see many of the reasons listed in our Bill of Rights.

Compare "Strictures upon the Declaration of Independence" by Thomas Hutchinson" ( http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-hutchinson-strictures-... ) "Mr Hutchinson believes that the majority of Americans were deluded into war with Britain by a few crazies. A common experience in history. Read it, it's short. Pay attention to Mr Hutchinson pointing out logical inconsistencies between the revolutionaries' calls for free…

    MY LORD,

    The Last time I had the honour of being in your Lordships company
I will be honest. I couldn't read past this. I just couldn't. I hope you do not fail to see the point.

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#24

Post by xnull2guest »

guelo wrote: post #22
xnull4guest wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying I'm British? (I'm American.) I don't really get your comment. It sounds important, could you say it again another way?

I was implying you are British, sorry for my mistake. It seemed like a macho British thing to do to try to deflect attention from this latest scandal by saying that the US is worse. (the UK is much worse).

My guess is that the UK is much worse than America based on their track record, history and handing of the Guardian documents. I don't live there or follow their politics as closely, so I don't have a list compiled for them.

It should also be said that there are many other countries that assuredly ARE worse than America with regard to the treatment of journalists. I have never been interested in 'lesser of two evil' false dilemmas, and don't find such comparisons very informative or important, but it should be said to make clear (if it was not) that this indictment of the Americas is similarly not a comparison with the British, with Egypt, with Belarus or anywhere else.

I would be very interested to see heavily sourced lists like this for modern day Britian (or essentially anywhere else).

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#25

Post by mercurial »

nbevans wrote: post #3

After all the stuff the Guardian published, and which has directly resulted in a massive reduction in Europe-wide security from terrorism, it's easy to see why. The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific details were announced. UK's spy agency has more powers than the NSA can dream of; and is largely responsible for protect…

> The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific details were announced.

Citation needed. What do you know of their electronic communications?

The thing is, even if it was true, which I frankly doubt... would it be worth it? The direction many US and EU politicians, especially David Cameron [1], want to go in, is a world without privacy, except for the governments (which means, in practice, a world where every government and cybercriminal can spy on your communications at any time). Even if it could prevent all terrorist attacks (which it won't, because drowning the security services in more data human analysts can process in a lifetime is a ridiculously bad idea...), this wouldn't be a society I would want to live in.

1: Who, at this point, appears to be either raving mad, a complete idiot, or O'Brien from 1984 in disguise.

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#26

Post by [deleted] »

guelo wrote: post #17
xnull4guest wrote: post #9

There's been global rise in violence and legal pursuit of journalists. But as many of the issues outside the US get attention I've compiled material related to the US: * The Obama Administration issued a secret surveillance operation against the Associated Press to break their sources [1] * Journalists like Ibrahim Jassam [2], Laura Poitras [3], Glenn Greenwald [4], James Risen [5], many others are being prosecuted a…

There's been a global rise in violence and legal pursuit of journalists so brits are apparently going to refuse to take responsibility and are going to point fingers at the US instead.

[deleted]

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#27

Post by eru »

balladeer wrote: post #23
eru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare "Strictures upon the Declaration of Independence" by Thomas Hutchinson" ( http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-hutchinson-strictures-... ) "Mr Hutchinson believes that the majority of Americans were deluded into war with Britain by a few crazies. A common experience in history. Read it, it's short. Pay attention to Mr Hutchinson pointing out logical inconsistencies between the revolutionaries' calls for free…

MY LORD, The Last time I had the honour of being in your Lordships company I will be honest. I couldn't read past this. I just couldn't. I hope you do not fail to see the point.

What's your point? Sorry, I am but a humble unAmerican and might be hard of understanding.

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#28

Post by kbart »

nbevans wrote: post #3

After all the stuff the Guardian published, and which has directly resulted in a massive reduction in Europe-wide security from terrorism, it's easy to see why. The Paris terror attacks probably would have been stopped if Snowden/Guardian never happened or was better controlled in how the specific details were announced. UK's spy agency has more powers than the NSA can dream of; and is largely responsible for protect…

Yeah, because terror acts have never happened before Snowden scandal. /s

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#29

Post by Perdition »

nbevans wrote: post #14
xnull4guest wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more specific about what massive reductions in Europe-wide security resulted from the publications, and how they presumably would have stopped the Charlie Hebdo attacks?

Well, just search. But even just last week there was an article from a UK minister explaining that many dozens of Paris-style attacks have already been averted in Europe as a result of GCHQ spying. But that the tide is now growing so strong, and the terrorists much more wise after the Snowden leaks, that it is basically inevitable now that the UK itself will be attacked. The terror plot/arrests in Belgium recently we…

So you are arguing that despite the US (and other Western governments) capabilities at electronic intelligence being openly talked about in the press since the '90's that the terrorists only learned about this due to Snowden?

Osama wasn't keeping an air-gap because of Snowden. He was doing it because Clinton was calling in cruise missiles on terrorist cell phones back in the '90's.

I think a better argument is that only stupid terrorists talked on the phone/internet and eventually they would nearly all be "naturally selected" out of the "gene pool" until all you have left are the smart terrorists who teach their disciples how to be smart.

Unfortunately the stupid terrorists were also the ones least likely to successfully carry out a significant attack.

Re: British Spy Agency Considers Journalists a Threat, Vacuums Up Their Emails

#30

Post by threeseed »

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #6

To me, this all smacks of weakness. If they were not breaking the law (at least in spirit), they wouldn't fear journalists. If they were capable of preventing or at least showing the danger of the acts they claim to fight, they wouldn't fear journalists. But because the danger is perhaps not as immediate or as severe as the political narrative might suggest, or because their intrusions into our privacy are not as nec…

Are you serious ? They don't consider journalists a threat but rather a source.

Many of the modern terrorist organisations I am sure are sending videos, hostage details etc to newspapers in order to promote themselves and their cause. Makes sense that agencies would target them.

I definitely believe that there should be laws against though. Surely in the process of looking for terrorists the agencies must be finding some interesting blackmail information.

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