Slashdot Mirror
UK Telcos Went Above and Beyond To Cooperate With GCHQ
An anonymous reader writes with this news from the Guardian: "GCHQ lobbied furiously to keep secret the fact that telecoms firms had gone 'well beyond' what they were legally required to do to help intelligence agencies' mass interception of communications, both in the UK and overseas. GCHQ feared a legal challenge under the right to privacy in the Human Rights Act if evidence of its surveillance methods became admissable in court. GCHQ assisted the Home Office in lining up sympathetic people to help with "press handling", including the Liberal Democrat peer and former intelligence services commissioner Lord Carlile, who this week criticised the Guardian for its coverage of mass surveillance by GCHQ and the US National Security Agency."
... why can't they prevent that soldier boy Lee Rigby from being chopped to death in the Woolwich area of London, by two Moslems from Africa ?
In America too ... refugees from Somalia returned to Somalia to become terrorists
If the surveillances are so effective, why can't they prevent all these from happening ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This morning I saw a British politician claiming that without the ability to tap into all devices, then the public is never going to be able to be safe from terrorism. This argument fails when inevitably, knowing human nature (absolute power corrupts absolutely), the only end result must be a police state.
should be kicked out of the upper house for assisting in the pro-surveillance propaganda. They helped keep things secret for fear the rule of law would be duly applied. Its a disgrace. Those shills should be locked up.
lobbied furiously to keep secret the fact that telecoms firms had gone 'well beyond' what they were legally required to do to help intelligence agencies' mass interception of communications, both in the UK and overseas.
Had this shoe been on the "other foot" - I mean in those other "non democratic countries", folks here and on other websites would be saying somethig to the effect...
"What do you expect? We're so lucky here in , where we are democratic and have 'established' rules of engagement..."
Now that this shoe is on their foot, I am anxuious to see what their rant is gonna be like.
Rick Falkvinge points out that "with 100% absolute certainty [we know] that the wiretapping industry – NSA, GCHQ, FRA, etc – has stopped a total of exactly zero terror plots". See http://feeds.falkvinge.net/~r/Falkvinge-on-Infopolicy/~3/0uW0HpNnG-k/
davecb@spamcop.net
They are just being honest. The "War on Terror" is a complete non-issue. For one thing, terrorism is not a relevant threat. For another, surveillance does not help against it at all. And, and that is the real issue, why would the GCHQ do anything about terror? Whenever the population goes stupid because of another overblown terror scare, they get more money and power. While they have not (yet) sunk so deep as to create their own fake terrorists as the US TLAs have, they doubtlessly have thought about it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The "War on Terror" has not had the jingoistic power in the UK it enjoyed in the USA. The UK was dealing with domestic terror attacks by the IRA in recent decades, and learned harsh lessons on domestic terror involving small weapons or personal explosives. Their civilian security is generally no-nonsense, and has had centuries of dealing with violent protest by under-armed civilians from occupied territories. They have certainly not always _won_ such conflicts: the USA itself was once just such a remote territory, first engaged in guerrilla warfare, later in open revolt, and certainly including what would not be called "terrorist attacks".