Cameron Proves Greenwald Right | Hacker News Reader

Cameron Proves Greenwald Right

dish.andrewsullivan.com

178 pointsmpweiher34 comments

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Let's enumerate how wrong this is:

1. This was done by the British for a slight against the American government.

2. This is against a member of the media, who are typically considered noncombatants in political conflicts.

3. It's really against a family member; doubly noncombatant.

4. The supposed slight is only the truthful announcement of a criminal act by the government in question.

5. This comes after the government recently argued that they could be trusted with such powers.

>> "1. This was done by the British for a slight against the American government."

Not true. He also exposed British spying through GCHQ.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/gchq

>> "2. This is against a member of the media, who are typically considered noncombatants in political conflicts."

It was done against a member of the medias partner. He is not a journalist.

NB: I'm not defending any of what happened it's very clearly wrong.

>It was done against a member of the medias partner. He is not a journalist.

>3. It's really against a family member; doubly noncombatant.

FWIW, it seems as though he was returning from Berlin having been there in some capacity for The Guardian, and not just on personal or non-related matters:

"While in Berlin, Miranda had visited Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has also been working on the Snowden files with Greenwald and the Guardian. The Guardian paid for Miranda's flights."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald...

>> He is not a journalist.

Nowadays, we are all journalists. We all have means to publish material to a wide audience.

From the 1st amendment: - Congress shall make no law ... etc ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

There is no distinction granting the "media" or "journalists" special rights that all of us don't get. We all should have freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

What does the 1st amendment to the US constitution have to do with events in Britain (or anywhere outside the US)?

The post I was replying to mentioned that this may have been done "at the behest" of the US government. If so, it would be a violation of the 1st amendment, which states that the State has no ability to abridge speech or hinder the press, with no reference to any national border.

The UK government acts under it's own laws, and so any 1st amendment violation depends on the US government's degree of involvement in the proceedings.

So here's an interesting note on the UK Terrorism Act 2000 (available in a handy-dandy annotated form from the Legislative website: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/schedule/7/cross... )

(1) An examining officer may question a person to whom this paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40(1)(b).

...

(4) An examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b).

Italics mine, of course. One of many laws passed I suspect that makes what happened entirely legal (and all that much worse when you consider the implications). I think we need to disabuse ourselves of the ideas of "western liberal democracies" or "rule of law" protecting our liberties. What is happening now is the very definition of tyranny.

Maybe if enough people realize this is happening this can be changed? I suppose only time will tell.

Thank you David Cameron for demonstrating so clearly and unambiguously that "trust us" is not an acceptable answer.

I thought this current government couldn't sicken me further with its conduct in this ongoing fiasco; clearly I was wrong.

For those who don't follow US politics and editorial writers, Andrew Sullivan is kind of a big deal to Democrats and the self-identified "left".

If he's changed his mind on the Obama's fundamental credibility on the NSA domestic spying issue, it could suggest the beginnings of a sea change in establishment political thought.

he's kind of a big deal because he's a self-described libertarian-leaning small-c conservative that often produces missives in agreement with the Democratic party. Contrast this with the libertarian-leaning small-c conservative Ron Paul, who often worked in conjunction with left-democrats - but generally not the Democrats (such as Kucinich, Barney Frank), and who is thus NOT a big deal to Democrats. To a large extent, the fawning over Sullivan is a sort of a political expediency. Now that the capital D Democrats have seemingly lost Sullivan, I would not be surprised if his big-deal-ness will fade, as he dismissed again as just one of those smarmy libertarians.

Sullivan is fairly far from anything reasonably described as "libertarian". He's a British conservative and was a huge booster of and apologist for Bush for most of his administration. He's stayed a big deal because he switched to being a booster of and apologist for Obama. He has an embarrassing Great Leader fixation.

But yes, if he stops writing paeans to Obama, he'll stop being nearly as much a Big Deal.

well - by libertarian leaning, I meant "fiscally conservative, socially liberal". But yes, his Great Leader fixation would disqualify him from being libertarian in the philosophical sense (versus the political - as in policy - or Political - as in Party) senses.

That's not what "libertarian" means, either.

In the "policy" sense, he's been an aggressive opponent of most libertarian stances, aside from when Abu Ghraib and PRISM broke. In the "Political - as in Party" sense, I'm not aware he says much of anything about the Libertarian Party.

I believe it when I see it. Comparing what happened during Bush era and during Obama era, I have very low hopes to see any substantial non-partisan response (i.e. one that could hurt your own party members in the name of liberty) to government abuses from these quarters.

They grounded President of Bolivia's plane (http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/07/08/inenglish/1373297508_109...) out of 'suspicion of transporting Snowden'.

So a mere citizen is pretty much a kid's play.

Well, I'd say "mere citizen" is worse. Spain owes nothing to Evo Morales. But the only reason why Prime Minister has his job and why he's not just a random Joe from the street is because citizens put him there and entrusted him with enormous power. Abusing this power against the very citizens who are supposed to be the source of it is much graver crime than disrespecting a foreign dignitary to whom you owe nothing, it strikes right at the heart of the whole concept of democratic society. If citizens become routinely abused by the government, why should they keep giving it their consent? And if government has no citizen's consent, what is it but a pure tyranny?

I agree with you but the sad fact is this, as long as this abuse only happen to a few 'others', majority of people don't really much care especially with abstract issue such as digital surveillance.

A lot of people will simply accept that these massive digital dragnet is a necessary evil to protect them from the evil terrorists.

edit: I am based in Cairo and you know what? Those bloody crackdowns against Muslim Brotherhood protesters are popular in the country. The sit-ins have been labeled as terrorists sit-ins.

Terrorism, criticizing the government, what's the difference?

I suspect that it was primarily an excuse to seize all his data. Perhaps they thought it would look less opportunistic if they held him for nine hours. With intimidation as a side-benefit.

Blaming David Cameron personally for this seems a bit of a reach: at this stage is there anything that actually shows that David Cameron himself knew about and approved of the detainment? He could still claim he knew nothing about the events of the last 24 hours...

You're right. By now, the UK government has probably setup a direct line between the White House and the UK security services.

I think it's perfectly reasonable. His stance is that abuses don't happen, and the law does not need to be written to protect us from abuses, since his government will [not abuse the law], and thus we should allow such abuses in the law as written. We all thought that was unrealistic at the time, but since this is his position, it is reasonable to attribute the consequences of his position to him also.

Maybe, but a bit irrelevant. He's the pm and even if he didn't know he has to accept responsibility for what happened and the laws that enabled this to happen. Cameron has been an enthusiastic supporter of these kinds of laws in the past, I suspect he will be in the future.

He's in a bind here.

Either he didn't know, in which case he needs to explain how he can possibly continue to insist that the anti-terror powers are OK because they supposedly aren't abused, as well as how come UK security services are sufficiently out of political control to allow something like this to happen without his knowledge.

Or he knew, in which case he's personally demonstrated why these laws needs to be repealed.

In either case, blaming him and every other politician that continues to support these anti-terror provisions is exactly what we should do. But especially Cameron, as the person ultimately responsible for the current governments inaction on the subject.

Does anyone have experience with corporate policies regarding the movement of data through airports? I'm curious about the prevalence of the wipe everything and repopulate the hard drive via sftp at destination approach.

Wiping properly is difficult. You would probably find it easier to simply purchase a disk at the destination (if you need bare metal performance), or use encrypted VMs for all work. Better yet, where at all possible, don't expect your people to move around, and allow them to work remotely from their chosen location. Good for the planet, good for (many technical) employees (most of the time), good for the security of corporate data.

Encrypted VMs won't work in the UK. You can be told to give access to them and have to comply. It could work with deniable encryption, but that's not an option for current phones / tablets.

Good points.

Personally I ditched mobile devices entirely a few weeks ago when the SIM java hacks became public. (Amusingly, I've since run in to well known mobile network provider architects in Europe who were totally unaware of the issue... but then, what's new?)

Travis Goodspeed gave a talk at 29c3 about forensic-resistant thumbdrives [1]. The idea is that the host OS can be fingerprinted by the pattern of reads it makes; the drive can return different data or erase itself if it looks like it's being imaged (sequential block reads).

Of course, you'd have to package your DIY thumbstick pretty carefully (and pot the PCB) for this to not look suspicious.

[1] : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZtkANvDxZA

The tide of world opinion is slowly, but surely, turning :)

>"but surely"

let us hope.

Duh.

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