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UK Minister: British Cabinet Was Told Nothing About GCHQ/NSA Spying Programs
dryriver writes "From the Guardian: 'Cabinet ministers and members of the national security council were told nothing about the existence and scale of the vast data-gathering programs run by British and American intelligence agencies, a former member of the government has revealed. Chris Huhne, who was in the cabinet for two years until 2012, said ministers were in "utter ignorance" of the two biggest covert operations, Prism and Tempora. The former Liberal Democrat MP admitted he was shocked and mystified by the surveillance capabilities disclosed by the Guardian from files leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. "The revelations put a giant question mark into the middle of our surveillance state," he said. "The state should not feel itself entitled to know, see and memorize everything that the private citizen communicates. The state is our servant." Huhne also questioned whether the Home Office had deliberately misled parliament about the need for the communications data bill when GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping headquarters, already had remarkable and extensive snooping capabilities. He said this lack of information and accountability showed "the supervisory arrangements for our intelligence services need as much updating as their bugging techniques."'"
I keep hearing astonishment at how so much web traffic can be stored with relative ease.
Sure, it's going to be a lot of data, but a whole lot of that data is duplication, and where there is duplication there can be compression. And where it's not, even at level 6/7 you can identify significant commonality (facebook user home page) and simply store the delta.
It's not like they're storing every byte sent and received by every Internet user at all.
This is the big question. Now that you know you were duped, spied on, and the citizens you are supposed to be serving have been taken advantage of, what will you do?
My guess is nothing, it'll be USA part 2. A few bands will file suit, everything will be classified secret, and nothing will happen. It's not just the US that needs to be considering a revolt, the UK is just as bad as we are in nearly everything.
Interesting to hear Russel Brand talk about his own country here in the US, since we really get little information that is not "party line".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
...Any MP, minister or otherwise, is the highest directly elected representative of their constituents in our government system. As a basic principle of representative democracy, it seems very dubious to me that anything like this should be "off limits" to someone in that position, or to people in that position acting collectively by asking questions in Parliament...
Look at the history.
Security Service, SIS and GCHQ are DIRECT descendants of the equivalent services which were running during WW2. At that time there were many things which the state was doing which would certainly NOT be presented to Parliament - for obvious reasons. Encryption capabilities, military strategy, operational data - many things would be kept secret. For good reason. And Parliament would not expect to be told about these matters.
In most cases the state structures set up at that time (for instance, Bombing Target Policy committees) were quite happy to close themselves down and return to civvy street when the war ended. Not so MI5 and MI6. They were involved in the diplomatic politics during the restructuring of Europe and seamlessly went into the Cold War. During the 1950s to 1970s many MPs were suspected of Communist sympathies - they would certainly not be told anything about the activities of the intelligence community.
By now that mindset is rock-solid. These people have always lived in a world where they were (secretly) defending democracy against the Nazis or the Reds. This stopped, suddenly, around 1990. Only 20-odd years ago. But they are still trying to work as they always have - in secrecy, with an unlimited budget, fighting on behalf of their country against an implacable and highly organised foe.
That foe no longer exists. So they are simply making him up. Kid hackers become Master Cyber-criminals, in the pay of the Chinese. Individual political activists with a grudge - Muslim or Chechen - who set off a bomb, become shadowy agents of a vast world conspiracy instead of individual murders who should be dealt with by the police. We bomb local politicians/gang leaders in the Middle East who are fighting their own local wars, and pretend that that we are saving Western civilisation.
Yes, it's partly the money. Working in the intelligence community is a comfy, well paid position with no competition. But it's also this mindset. Everyone who does not support you whole-heartedly is suspicious, and should not be told anything. It's standard World War paranoia - institutionalised....