Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
The people in charge and their rented politicians need power and money.
Probably a case of institutional panic. You know, like others are so deathly afraid of child porn on the internet that they're loudly clamouring for (and getting!) nation-wide filtering against "badness" on anyone's internet connection. Nevermind that most actual child abuse happens within families or other obvious relations of trust, like teachers or preachers. Similarly with terrorism on the internet and espionage on the internet and clamouring for "cyber-offensive capabilities" or whatever it's called this week. Or... ah you get the picture. The internet is quite a fsckton of traffic, collecting is easy once you have the infrastructure, and most of the analysis can be automated.
Also a case of "let's see how far we can take this". Because, hey, they can claim it's all for the good of the country (of course) and it means they can spend spend spend on shiny spendy toys! Isn't that fun?
They have to, of course, since it's a clear case of catching up to the industry with their big data and things, you know. And so on. I'm sure there's plenty of other perfectly reasonable (to bureaucrats and/or politicians) reasons to be thought of.
Because, simply put, signals intelligence is what these outfits do. And what bigger source of signals than the internet?
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 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.
I don't mean to defend the program, but what makes you so certain it does not (and cannot) detect terrorist plots? That would be the stated purpose, anyway, and when a plot is detected and pre-empted, they wouldn't publicize how they did it, as doing so would give other terrorists information on how to avoid detection.
Binary thinking is an oversimplification -- it's perfectly possible for a program to be both an Orwellian privacy nightmare AND an effective tool for catching terrorists.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
The UK interest in coded product goes back to the Soviet embassy codes before ww2.
After that code breaking effort political leaders in the UK have really asked "how can we help" and for "more" over every generation.
As US tech got cheaper more became "everything"
GCHQ has had its ups and downs trading the Empire ie land to the USA for NSA product.
The GCHQ was also very smart in staying out of the press, not going to court vs spies and some publishers (so did the NSA for a long time).
The bulk data interest could always be seen as with the first Intelsat (international satellite telephone calls) efforts at Goonhilly Downs -CSO Morwenstow,/GCHQ Bude got every keyword of interest in the late 1960's.
http://cryptome.org/jya/gchq-etf.htm international telephone calls to and from Ireland.
The finding of any keyword of interest on all phonelines was always the aim in the 1960-80's.
re protecting with all of this data mining - the gov, the celebrities, press, trade, disruptive technology, arms deals, diplomatic blackmail, dissidents, protesters, disarmament, peace protesters, bases, police corruption, local elections, trade unions - anything and anyone that could get traction in the community or be a worry to the establishment.
The file placed before a political leader becomes addictive and gets wide domestic budget cuts turned into expanded projects.
Major crimes where only been an issue in ~1990-2000 and seem to have stopped due to the ability of major crime networks to slowly stop using all electronic communications once the court cases start.
CIB3 (anti-corruption squad) and 'Operation Nigeria' also showed what could go wrong for the GCHQ. Corrupt police officers very quickly learn of huge new efforts wrt to "major crimes" and guess what - all electronic communications stop.
Better to let the perception of anonymity keep people talking.
The future is just like the NSA - a rewinding of anyones 'internet' life once they are discovered.
To keep that amount of data you have to collect it all, store and in the past filter for keywords/known links. Add in facial recognition, voice prints, cell tracking, spyware, drones.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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 are using it to keep themselves in power. That is all. You know the saying Power Corrupts? Well, this is what they are talking about.
First Google was collecting info on me, but I was cool with it, i used their free services.
Now every company is collecting info on me, but I'm cool with it, after all, it's for business right?
Then the Government request access to the data from the companies, but it's okay, it's for terrorist prevention, right?
Then the Government just starting tapping the source and forgets to tell me about it, and I say, wtf? Who said that was okay?
Then the Government tells me its in the name of terrorism, and I ask them, why you are terrorizing your own citizens?
Then the Government locks me up for questioning them, but you don't know because they don't tell anyone anything.
Be seeing you...
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.
Indeed. "Mastering the Internet" sounds like an evening class that teaches old people how to use email and facebook.