Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnkhMorporkian | Hacker News Reader

Do they? There's no reason to think that anything creepy was going on. Surely one of GCHQ's legitimate missions is simple OSINT, and certainly forum trawling. Someone posts a copy of the supposed manuscript to some forum, some GCHQ minion sees it, off-handedly mentions it to a supervisor who is a Harry Potter fan, the supervisor calls the publisher, mentions he's from GCHQ, and 11 years later it's mentioned in a retrospective story.

When I was in the military, I discovered a vulnerability in a website while I was browsing the web bored at work. I did mention I was an airman. If somehow that resulted in a news story, I don't think it would be fair to demand a response from the Air Force. Sure, they were technically paying for me to do that, but it wasn't really the mission.

View on HN

There's a difference between "organisation helps corporate entity" and "employee of organisation helps corporate entity". One suggests possible altruism existing inside the organisation the other suggests the organisation is prepared to aid corporations either as its mission or views such operations as acceptable use of the organisations resources.

There is, a bit. But:

a) We don't know which this is

b) An organisation might choose to stand behind its - as you say, altruistic - employee

Then it should have been referred to the police. GCHQ is a security and intelligence organisation tasked by Government to protect the nation from threats.

A leaked copy of the Harry Potter novel is not a national security threat in any way, shape or form. GCHQ are not there to enforce copyright.

Is it so terrible that GCHQ referred it to the publisher rather than the police? I'm sure the publisher could have handled contacting the police if it had been legitimate.

It is terrible they saw it at all. It is terrible they acted on the information. As much as I dislike the tea party, I'd rather not have people targeted for auditing based on their (flawed) political affiliation or connections with wealthy donors.

GCHQ is way out of line here. I am very concerned that the agency will eventually use these capabilities to blackmail our elected leaders. As much as I'd like to have leaders who aren't corrupt, we have what we have. I'd still not want our corrupt politicians to be slaves to shadowy organizations.

The story is pretty vague. For all we know, they spotted it in a public forum or something.

A leaked copy of the Harry Potter novel is not a national security threat in any way, shape or form.

True. Good thing that GCHQ's mission is (and has always been) much broader than national security. For example, they have an arm which provides Information Security advice[1].

GCHQ are not there to enforce copyright.

Fire departments aren't there cats out of trees. This is a cat.

[1] http://www.gchq.gov.uk/what_we_do/Information_Security/Pages...

I've been thinking about this for a bit now. I read up on the Act that details the duties of GCHQ, and whilst I'm pretty uncomfortable about it (also, I'm not a UK citizen) it looks like this was indeed within their purview.

> GCHQ are not there to enforce copyright.

No, but part of their remit is to protect "UK plc", from cybersecurity threats as they relate to economic attack.

J.K. Rowling was (arguably still is), a huge economic force. Billions and billions in revenues over many years, and she pays tax on all of it as a moral obligation: no Panama-led duck-outs into trust funds for her, so far.

So, let's suppose you're one of the 4,000-5,000 estimated staff members at GCHQ. You are looking at a part of the dark web in an effort to understand if its being used to arrange illegal arms deals, trade child pornography or other criminal material that falls within your employer's remit.

You notice a document that reports to be a leak of the publication of this book. It's about 500 pages, and the first page reads OK. You talk to your line manager about it.

You and your manager are going to have to realise that the leak of this book could lead to a loss in tax revenue equivalent to the entire annual operating budget of GCHQ. If genuine, it could be a severe impact on GDP.

Do you want them to do nothing? Or do you think it should be escalated internally and dealt with appropriately, which is to check with the publishers if it has been leaked?

The tricky question becomes what would have happened if the editor had confirmed it was real? What action would they have taken? That's where it gets dark...

Well put. I'd go further to say protecting economic interests of UK is British intelligence's primary goal. Britain has been imperialist nation pulling shit on other countries for economic/political gains and justifying it internally with propaganda. To minimize risk and maximize opportunities, they definitely need a spy agency supporting that. Same as our CIA except maybe more active and effective due to legal differences.

On the side, they might try to stop this or that threat tl people's lives in UK or many eyes alliance. ;)

This is the same as the police helping ducklings over the road, or the fire department saving cats down from trees...

That supervisor would be subject to pretty harsh disciplinary action.

If GCHQ did want to alert the publisher there are very many ways they'd do this without calling and saying "oh hi semi-secret spy agency here".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com