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Comment by marshmallow_12 | Hacker News Reader

i'm not as concerned as i might be. My rather meager understanding, which may be entirely baseless, is, that unlike the NSA which is obsessive about collecting every single scrap of data (and many large chunks), the UK intelligence services are rather more discerning. Again, i would be happy for someone to correct me, that's just the general impression i get.

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I mean, the NSA famously uses the UK as a loophole to spy on American citizens. That suggests that they probably aren't particularly discerning to me.

All it suggests is that the UK is happy to curry favour with the US government and doesn't give a hoot about the perceived rights of American citizens. Harsh, but true.

Their own citizens are an entirely different ballpark, as you might say.

The UK government is also even more lax than the US one with regard to its own citizens privacy.

I don't know, i think the mentality here is that the government is spying for you, not at you. Is it different in the us? And is that because all revelations revolve around the fact that citizens are being spied on?

Then why do people light british spy cameras on fire so often?

As someone who lives on the UK, I've never once seen a vandalised CCTV camera or even a vandalised road speed camera (which I'm given to understand is more common).

I've seen many of the early "Gatso[0]" cameras vandalised.

My understanding is that they originally used film, which had to be retrieved, so trying to burn it down with a well placed tyre had a chance of avoiding a fine.

[0] https://www.speedcamerasuk.com/gatso.htm

Do they? I'd like to read about that

counter spies?

I recommend reading this article, which includes leaked documents from GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG).

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

That is truly nasty stuff. Stuff like this is part of the reason i try not invest too much of myself on the 'net and obfuscate as much as possible (i'm not really a marshmallow).

Are you also marshmallows 0 to 11? If so, that your whole internet profile right there.

no. As far as i can tell, those are real.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

Isn't there a fairly solid connection (read: partnership) between US and UK intelligence? Isn't such a chain only as strong as the weakest link? It's hard to imagine any of our European allies to be too far off the NSA's pace.

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