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GCHQ Tapping UK Fiber-Optic Cables
An anonymous reader writes "According to The Guardian, the UK government is tapping fiber-optic cables that carry global communications and gathering vast amounts of data. The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been sharing the data with its American counterpart, the NSA. 'The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate. ... The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m "telephone events" each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.'"
Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation
Christ, who names this stuff? That's worse than "Boundless Informant." Why don't they call these programs something friendly like "Shamrock" or "Blarney?"
Ladies and gentlemen, history will title this period "1983".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Terrorists: Ooga booga booga!
People: Oh, no! The terrorists are going to get us! Let's give away some of our rights to catch them!
Government: Trust us. We definitely won't abuse the power you've given us.
People: Yeah, there's no way you could abuse unchecked power; it's unthinkable.
People: Hey, you're abusing your power!
Government: National security.
People: Oh, okay.
this is what i dont understand...why is there a "need" for all of this. they arent stopping "terrorism" nor are they really using it in a way thats stopping any major crimes. dont get me wrong, i am weird and 100% opposed to all of this. but who are they protecting with all of this data mining?
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
Actually, the real question is this: Against such habits of secrecy, skirting any and all laws and regulations, avoiding public debate, and even not telling their own lords and masters what they're up to, fits only one remedy, that of immediate shutdown of the outfit and never ever letting such people near government anything again. How, as the world's internet population, are we going to manage that?
As usual, the solution is to encrypt as much as possible. Your SSL traffic is safe, and those who use encrypted email are safe. The point is that you really shouldn't have to protect yourself from your own government. It sounds like they're no longer *your* government.
You spy for a foreign power, that's treason and GCHQ are traitors. You're exposing Britain to political spying and commercial spying. You're exposing Europe to commercial and political spying.
CIA/NSA will use that data to ensure UK politicians do their bidding over the bidding of the voters. You made that possible.
CIA/NSA will use that data to ensure European politicians do their bidding over the bidding of the voters. You made that possible too. We have examples of it already in Wikileaks, with Holland.
RIPA did not give GCHQ the power to spy for the NSA. That's why they're demanding the snoopers charter. Trying to legalize what they're doing.
"The 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) requires the tapping of defined targets to be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or foreign secretary. However, an obscure clause allows the foreign secretary to sign a certificate for the interception of broad categories of material, as long as one end of the monitored communications is abroad."
So that means the NSA gets all the data it can't legally collect (but tries to anyway) from GCHQ and GCHQ gets all the data it legally can't intercept from NSA.
An illegal reacharound, sustained by secret laws that put a military man in charge.
It also means that GCHQ's loyalty is more aligned with General Keith Alexander, than with David Cameron. Those 40000 search rules the NSA provided? How many of them were against UK interests? How many of them spied on Brits for the benefit of the CIA? How many of them spied on Americans for the benefit of a rogue General?
What is needed is a boundary on who that intelligence is passed on to and used, not how much is gathered.
When it is all collected in one easy to query database the only "boundary" that prevents misuse is the laws of man.
When it remains distributed across the internet in the possession of only those are concerned with the creation and use of the data the "boundary" that prevents misuse is the laws of physics.
I'll take the laws of physics over the laws of man any day of the week.
Why does everyone think this is bad
Not "everyone" thinks this is bad, but everyone with even a little bit of knowledge about history knows that giving the government such powers so they can catch the scary bogeyman will inevitably result in the government abusing said powers. Everyone else... well, they're under the delusion that government workers are perfect beings, apparently.
Check wikipedia for project Shamrock
"The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA)[2] and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. "
The chance that I'll be killed in a terrorist attack are 1 in 20million.
The chance my government will put me in prison is 1 in 100.
I'll take my chances with the terrorists thank you.
Of course its susceptible to abuse, but killing the Golden Goose just because it lays a few bad eggs is foolish.
Freedom is more important than safety; far more important. I'd rather not have this system at all if they're going to collect all this data.
1. Hoover set up a massive index of FBI files on american citizens in the WWI era, it was later shutdown by congress as a massive affront to American law and history
1.a. Nixon used the security apparatus to damage his political opponents. That is why we had the Church Committee to investigate past abuses of the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc, where gross nazi-style human rights abuses were revealed. That's why we have FISA courts and why USSID 18 was supposed to exist and be respected.
2. World War II was an Actual War where 60+ million people died after genocidal dictators started sending millions of troops, tanks, and airplanes into each others countries and murdering civilians by the hundred-thousand. We are not in world war ii.
3. Back in 1929 the biggest threat to global security was the financial system that crashed and left millions and millions homeless and unemployed, including a huge number of disgruntled german WWI veterans, whom Hitler was able to mold into the SA and later the SS. Spying on people wouldnt have stopped the abuses on wall street. In fact, wall street typically grows fat on these abuses because it has inside information and links with spy agencies.
4. the US was not ready for WWII, but it became ready quickly enough to turn the tide of the war. Having a massive standing army is not a pre-requisite to victory. Having the moral high ground and a strong economy, well, those are. And the US is rapidly losing both of those things.
In other words, if people are wanting the NSA to prevent the next WWII, they are coming from a very ignornat, and arrogant point of view of history. Do you want to prevent "an enemy of the US", or do you want to prevent totalitarianist ideology in general? Because that ideology could take over the US just as it took over Germany's Weimar Republic if the principles of the founders are not adhered to and respected.
I don't agree. When in history has domestic intelligence not been used in unintended ways? Why do think it will be different this time?
The fact is all the firewalls don't work because nothing stops anyone from changing the rules later on. The only way to prevent a government any government, possible any organization from misusing data is to prevent it from collecting such data in the first place and even that isn't easy. Data gathering is very much a case of you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
And that's assuming there is a benefit to safety. But there's no evidence of that besides statements to congress from men who've already been caught openly lying to congress.
.: Semper Absurda
If the government knows where your encrypted files went, they just go there to that place with a warrant on "National Security Grounds" from a FISA court and strong arm the recipient, who probably just wet his pants when these guys stormed into his office.
The NSA has already said it holds all encrypted traffic for a long time or forever in the assumption you might be doing something against them. That suggests we could overwhelm them with 100% encrypted web traffic. Unfortunately, the government would want to use our tax dollars to store EVERYTHING at that point.
The Israeli security guys who have spoken say that well trained observers and spies on the ground with their literal ears to the wall are the best source of relevant intelligence.
Interesting that they chose not to go after any LIBOR fixers or financial criminals don't you think?
It's almost like there's a double standard in which the people who work in the government use the powers they have been given for their own profit rather than the interests of the public, all the while trotting out a couple of extremely rare bogeymen to justify their actions.
.: Semper Absurda
Reminds me of an old joke I read somewhere once:
A statistician worked out that 1 in 20000 aircraft could have a terrorist bomb on board.
The odds of having 2 bombs on board the same aircraft worked out at 1 in 50000000.
So, every time he took a flight, he carried his own bomb.
This is what confuses me... It is trivial to encode messages in ways that no one but the intended target would ever know what your talking about. "I am going to the store to buy eggs" could mean all sorts of terrible things, if we got together and prearranged meanings. You can never catch things like this, unless your lucky.
All of our "terorrists will kill everyone, so trust us" actions seem to work on the presumption that all terrorists are morons. Which is probably pretty far from the truth.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
The US government can search without a warrant, so physical security is limited.
A warrant does not magically embue a SQL command with the ability to search the log files of millions of individually owned computers. If it did, the NSA would not be centralizing as much of this information as they can get their hands on.