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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."'"
There's a reason these programs are kept secret (along with their budgets) from the general "civilian" government. It's because they're huge money pits. They're pork. Free money for security services contractors. It's not some boogeyman new world order shadow conspiracy for power.
It's a much, much, older and familiar monster. Greed.
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.
In other words pompous self-aggrandizing politician learns his true standing in the pecking order and what the powers that be really consider his worth.
His own reputation might be less than exemplary at this point, but I don't see that his ministerial position was particularly relevant here. 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. I can accept reasonable arguments for keeping the specifics of individual cases or ongoing operations on a need-to-know basis and not routinely disclosing them to a few hundred MPs, but not the underlying principles and the existence of systemic practices.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's always easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.
Step 1) Run a secret, illegal surveillance program with no oversight
Step 2) When a terrorist attack is averted, locate actionable intelligence about it within the data previously gathered
Step 3) If and when the public face of the government (those little people who have to stand for elections) finds out about your secret, illegal surveillance program, show them the data from Step 2 and claim the attack would have succeeded without your secret, illegal surveillance program
Step 4) Accept some toothless, ineffective oversight measures and continue as you were
There's nothing complicated about any of this. Ignorant legislators behave like frightened masses of people when you frighten them. They'll do anything they're told to do by anyone who projects authority and control over a scary situation. Whether it's impending market collapse, terrorist attacks, or the next killer plague, frightened masses will let you do just about anything you want if you promise to keep them safe and convince them you can do it.
This is the ultimate flaw in every system of government.
In other words pompous self-aggrandizing politician learns his true standing in the pecking order and what the powers that be really consider his worth.
You do realize that "Yes Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" were documentary and not comedy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister
This quote combined with what the NSA/GCHQ have done reminds me a lot of "...or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm." The state should serve us, yes. The state should prevent us from harm, yes. But there is a point at which we are no longer served by harm prevention, and the NSA has clearly passed it. Even if they started off with good intentions initially (as implausible as that may be), by simply doing their jobs well they have come over to the dark side, and that's pretty interesting to me. There aren't that many good things you can do so well they start becoming bad.
Why would they tell every minister everything, or every Congressman everything, when far too many of them have their own agendas from an extreme third party, or can't keep it in their pants, or are in and out in 2 years.
He was a privy councillor and member of the National Security Council, so would have been security vetted. There's ten members of the latter at the moment, so it's a fairly exclusive club.
...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....
There was a "Yes Minister" episode that went over this ground, let's see if I can find some quotes:
This isn't what I was looking for, but it is a start:
Or this one (still not the exact quote I want to find):
Perhaps my memory is failing me. Here's another one which is close, but not quite:
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
He was on the NSC, the body in government that overseas the security services.
Take your propaganda cold fjord and fuck off. Yeh, we get it, anyone who speaks out will be attacked with propaganda, and anti terror laws.
Do you get it? You are not defenders of democracy, you are the Stasi, you are the ones undermining democracy.
I understand that when it was on, the lady was not for turning.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell