UK intelligence forced to reveal secret policy for mass surveillance

Politicians love to shout about their successes. Only, this government hasn't really got any to shout about, so they're falling back to the old standby that all governments do in situations like this. Wave the flag and be proud to be British.

I'm a UK resident and I note that the propaganda machine is running on overdrive. The batshit sheep majority (sorry but it's true at least where I live) of the country is almost calling out for anyone with a beard and a turban to be hung and the armed forces are constantly in focus in the media and in public word. If you look around facebook it's terrifying some of the rants you hear yet at the same time these people are slating the Nazis for their prejudice. It's literally:

"Kill all the muslims", "support our boys", "Nazi's bad m'kay".

I will say that none of these people were alive when the Nazis had their gig. Those who were are suspicious and aware of the consequences of thinking and acting like this.

I too am suspicious of anyone who holds a noose.

Well, I'm sorry to say, but you English deserve your oppression. It will be a long road travelled hard before the UK is anywhere near the free, spirited nation it claims itself to be. I can only imagine there are new breeds of dissidents in the British isles, and I can only hope they rise some day to shock British culture out of its utterly self-righteous stupor.

There must be a name for this kind of fallacy.

Doffs tin foil hat.

I see this a lot on a variety of forums whenever topics like this come up.

It would be interesting to do an analysis of the age of the average commenter’s account by topic across popular comment type sites.

In a recent past, my great-grand-father was arrested and beaten up by the Gestapo for his political views (sorry for the emotional argument but i think it's appropriate). My point is that even if you perceive your country as a democracy where the leaders behave for the best, it may not be so forever. And as history shows, it can change very fast. It's important that we have strong laws that protect the people from their leaders.

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 legally rape people (or minorities, at worst), in an immoral (probable cause hello!) or worst, unlawful way (Snowden docs here).

All of this, with the fact that the "benefits" are not proven, and are actually very arguable. It's naive to think that indiscriminately listening to a billion conversations is an easy way to investigate "terrorism".

I don't think honestly that it's a well informed opinion to assume that we have a democracy just because we can vote somebody; more specifically, black/hispanic low-class people would not have the same opinion, at least, in some countries.

"If you have a problem with it, stand for election" is facile: First past the post electoral district representative governments are almost designed to eliminate single issue candidates from ever having any electoral power. The only way to make a difference is to convince the main parties that this matters & that takes years of ground work against a well funded group which will oppose your every move using its access to the machinery of government. It isn't called the military-industrial-congressional complex for nothing you know.

As an aside, very few people have a problem with targeted government surveillance. What I have a problem with is the dragnet sweeping up of every communication, keeping as much as possible for future use against anyone and anybody whilst keeping this policy secret from the population in question. Historically this kind of action has been seen as a signifier of a totalitarian states who are afraid of their own population revolting against them and I fear that the UK/US (and by extension the five-eyes countries) have put in place the full machinery for a panopticon, in which any dissent against the ruling cadres is quietly quashed. This isn't a road I personally wish to see my country taking, yet the politicians and public at large seem blind to the risk, handing over sweeping powers to the security services with almost no oversight or control.

Well, I don't consider that stance well-informed.

Surely its not informed of the tons of abuses of surveillance from "democratic" governments. And its also not informed of thousands of people rotting in jail, targeted by the police, tortured etc. Perhaps people who think that way, believe that all governments are like their local bubble -- or that it has to be some third-world dictatorship for those abuses to happen.

But I'm pretty sure they're also misinformed about the abuses in their local bubble too.

If you're an American for example, you might not know FBI has an attrocious record (under McCarthyism, under the the direction of Hoover, in the sixties against students and black protesters, up to Occupy Wall Street). If you're British, you might not know of an equally disgusting history. And don't get me started on places like Italy, Greece, Spain etc. Or Latin America for that matter.

Or they know those things but just don't care, because either "this time is different" ("and now we're fully and trully a transparent democracy" -- which is the most laughable ignorance one can muster), or they agree with the abuses.

But there's an even easier explanation: they only care for themselves, and since they don't ever do anything to challenge things you think they are safe.

And it might even be true.

But those that do challenge things (from civil rights activists to new political parties, and from artists to people experimenting with new ways of living), are the ones who make society better. Not the cover-my-asses. And it's those people who challenge things that very much are targeted by the abuses.

And what exactly are the benefits? Living in a nanny state?

[edit: fixed typo, child commenter: you a funny man]

I think those are separate things -- being in a democracy means the majority decide what happens; it doesn't mean that the majority are well-informed rational deciders of objective truth.

If the government were kicking puppies for entertainment, and nobody knew about it, then the majority wouldn't use their democratic powers to vote against that either :P

The question is not so much can it be abused, but to what extent it is being abused. Remember, the security services are not above having people murdered if they're sufficiently troublesome: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21283169

You have cared enough to actually think about it and are prepared to engage in debate. Congrats, you are more interested/intelligent than 90% of the population.

>> I think it's sad that it makes you 'angry' that some people simply disagree with you.

No, I'm angry that most people don't care enough or aren't smart enough to think about it, and that's the majority, and so nothing can be done. Your assertion that I'm angry that people disagree with me is incorrect and patronising.

>> We have a democracy, and obviously only a minority consider this to be an issue of concern.

Our democracy is incredibly weak, it's arguable we even live under a democracy when we have secret trials and secret laws.

>> If you have a problem with it, stand for election.

That's a guaranteed way to waste time and money while achieving nothing.

To some extent I agree with you that there are benefits to mass surveillance, and that on the whole it is (probably) not currently being widely abused.

However, this is not predictive of the future.

By setting up such a pervasive surveillance machine, this massively enables abuses by future governments that may not be quite as benign towards its citizens.

Just consider how 'useful' this mass data mining of private communications would have been for the East German Stasi, or during McCarthyism in the USA, or many other examples of overly authoritarian governance.

The danger is that a system set up to protect state security, ostensibly with the best of intentions, can be subverted later on as a tool of governmental abuse.

For example, have you ever expressed a view about abortion, either for or against (or homosexuality, or religion, or politics? Right now any of the views you expressed may be socially and legally acceptable. It is conceivable that the legal views on this could change 10 years down the line and if you expressed a view that is out of favor with a government of the future you could potentially be in serious trouble.

It is disturbing how quickly we forget the lessons of history -- even history still within living memory that shaped the entire future of Europe -- and instead allow an "it would never happen to me" mentality to take over.

- 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 attacks or a video for their teenage boyfriend.

- They are watching everything related to any company, so if an NSA employee happens to have stock in a rival company, well, that's insider trading sponsored by the state.

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

- They want security exploits to exist (and they pay for those), because that's how the intercept your communications, the problem is, those are the same exploits tewowist and black hat hackers use against you.

You get the idea.

Can you explain how a secret law could ever exist?

Even without concerns over government survallence, it is probably a good idea to check this occasionally.

http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/ind...

The article is focusing on the fact that the tweet is an external communication and neglecting to mention that there are still additional restrictions on collecting external communications. What Charles Farr is saying in that document is a far cry from the article's wording: "By defining the use of ‘platforms’ such as Facebook, Twitter and Google as ‘external communications’, British residents are being deprived of the essential safeguards that would otherwise be applied to their communications - simply because they are using services that are based outside the UK."

(After skimming through RIPA, though, I will concede that UK laws can be very obtuse. Section 16 gave me a headache - but that's an entirely different issue than the external communication argument)

You know, we have been watching, for more than a year now, story after story telling us that the Five Eyes intercept, filter and store a range of communications between allegedly criminals, mere suspects and whole populations.

A tiny portion information is then used to "fight crime", while the rest sits there, waiting to be used for the economic and political interest of those nations, and to stop dissent and social movements -- even it the information is not used, the mere fact that somebody is watching works damn well to bring fear and distrust to potential unrest.