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Edward Snowden Leaks Could Help Paedophiles Escape Police, Says UK Government
An anonymous reader writes "Paedophiles may escape detection because highly-classified material about Britain's surveillance capabilities have been published by the Guardian newspaper, the UK government has claimed. A senior Whitehall official said data stolen by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the US National Security Agency, could be exploited by child abusers and other cyber criminals. It could also put lives at risk by disclosing secrets to terrorists, insurgents and hostile foreign governments, he said."
Those demagogical assholes are the worst terrorists of all.
Is there anything that they won't use the 'think of the children' line on?
Pathetic.
Sent from my PDP-11
Now we know they're desperate, hate the population, and have entirely run out of arguments.
Time to recall this government. Failing that, maybe just kick them some more while they're down. It's what they'd do to us, after all.
Give it a couple of weeks and Snowden will be labeled a pederast and it will play over and over in the news until it is true.
The old, "Associate your target with helping pedophiles" approach.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The secret police state is at risk!
If they are dumb enough to not know that the government was spying on them and looking for them. *government staggering - Must....catch...paedophiles...at...all costs (gasp)*
Society use your Sciences
Yeah, and sale and possession of firearms enables rapist to threaten and rape children! Yet we don't seem to imply the same logic there. How strange.
Child rape is becoming the new Godwin. Before we know it Glenn Beck will be using it every other sentence as well.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
We've heard from David Cameron that Snowden's leak "damaged national security."
Cameron made veiled threats suggesting he could take the media to court over publishing the leaks.
Government enforcers employed heavy-handed tactics to intercept, detain and threaten those even tangentially connected to the leaks.
Many were forced to destroy technical equipment in a quixotic quest to purge the unpurgeable.
Now, all of that failed. Predictably, this is the kind of horse shit they've resorted to slinging.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
If they ACTUALLY wanted to help kids they'd apply some actual knowledge gathered from study in this area and develop strategies to minimise occurrence, but it's SUCH a successful rhetorical boogieman/distraction...
Let's see.
"Save the children"? Check.
"Terrorism"? Check.
"For your own good"? Check
If you can't smell the heavy miasma of bullshit wafting off this, you need a new fucking nose.
Yes, the publicizing of the NSA and GCHQ's surveillance capabilities COULD in theory help paedophiles avoid detection... but I suspect that most paedophiles are not so technically savvy that the details will be important to them. For the majority of them, just as for the majority of the general population, the message they will take away is that "Big Brother Is Watching You", and if they do not assume that from the very start, then they are very naive.
The other side of the coin would be an interesting one - perhaps a Freedom Of Information request to GCHQ, to ask how many man-hours as a percentage of their total work is spent tracking and investigating paedophiles. I would wager a lot of money that, if they were to give an honest answer to that, it would be 0. GCHQ are not, and never will be, interested in tracking paedophiles.
In fact, no running without a permit!
You want to apply for a permit for running shoes? You are obviously going to need to submit for a background check, potential criminal!
This just in: Pedophiles often wear shoes. Everyone should go barefoot or be under suspicion of having something in common with one of them...
You sir! Do you have a permit for those genitalia? Oh you didn't know that was a requirement now? Not our problem. We're going to have to confiscate your testicles now.
In defense of the government's statements they've held out an extraordinarily long time before invoking children in this debate.
It's an interesting twist: instead of claiming spying is essential for the nation's foreign intelligence capabilities and security when faced with nation state adversaries, they are now claiming spying is needed to combat internal, run-of-the mill criminals. So they are basically admitting they are building a surveillance state where every possible law that the leaders imagine can also be enforced.
If we are to configure our society so that every sicko that enjoys child molestation videos in the privacy of his home is immediately apprehended, then it seems to me any type of dissent of conspiracy against the government becomes impossible. Good luck explaining to the public that's a bad compromise.
Paedophiles may escape detection because highly-classified material about Britain's surveillance capabilities have been published by the Guardian newspaper
As if another newspaper published it, it wouldn't have been a problem. This is what it looks like when old rich children throw temper tantrums.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Faith in humanity restored.
First, they said he was a traitor.
Then, they accused him of stealing.
Followed closely with the accusation that he has been a Soviet spy.
Now ?
Edward Snowden, according to them, is aiding pedophile and all other sexual perverts, especially those "exploiting innocent children", to evade surveillance by the "GOOD GUYS", namely, the spooks/cops/big brothers.
In other words, Edward Snowden, to some, is a de-human-izer.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
For confirming that nothing Snowden has leaked did actually endanger anyone.
Because if it had, we'd be hearing about that 24/7.
I was going to argue that the UK is a Banana Republic but it just occurred to me that they are a Banana Monarchy.
... so we better get some pollution going.
(Copied from a Techdirt comment):
I wonder if the CIA distributes pedo material the same way they get Swiss bankers to drink-drive?
Imagine you are a UK minister. Like most men you look at porn because you're biologically programmed to like pictures of woman doing stuff. Like most ministers you pretend porn is vial and evil, because that's how you get elected.
CIA wants to turn you into an apparatchik, so they do their 'redirect' attack, the one they use to MITM Google in one of the leaks. CIA redirects them to a kiddy porn server in Orlando, now the logs of both GCHQ and NSA show them visiting a kiddy diddling site.
CIA man visits minister and explains the shock and outrage at finding this, but assures minister that he's a good man and therefore the CIA won't tell.
Minister can't go to MI5 because Parker could be a CIA apparatchik (he is doing an attack on the free press FFS). Indeed he can't get help at all, because all it takes is ONE apparatchik among the people in the know and he is gone.
It may sound fanciful, but the mechanisms are already in place. Also read a few leaks. The plan to attack Greenwald & Wikileaks.
http://www.thetechherald.com/articles/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack -against-WikiLeaks/12751/
The leverage they got over a Swiss Banker:
http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-describes-cia-tricks-2013-6
The weird way ministers are behaving.
If you can't smell the heavy miasma of bullshit wafting off this, you need a new fucking nose.
And yet, the demonize Snowden rhetoric made it pas Slashdot editors to make front page. How many times is that now even just in the last few days?
Wikileaks has shown us that Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian was attempting to abuse his position, sell out and leverage reddit users by working for Stratfor. They turned him down apparently due to already having the area covered. Could we now be witnessing Slashdots Ohanian moment, now directed they peddle pathetic anti-Snowden properganda to the front page?
This reeks of desperation. Whitehall must really be on the backfoot.
May the Maths Be with you!
Up next: Edward Snowden thinks baseball is slow and boring and he hates his moms apple pie!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
as it implies a few things for starters.
1. Britain, having exhausted all other methods of corrective action against pedophilia and child exploitation that may prove fruitful given its nature in the UK, now relies on a clandestine american spy program that hasnt been proven to catch a single pedophile, let alone terrorist.
2. the spy program, although decried throughout europe and asia as invasive and inappropriate, is however of such great importance to the efforts of the UK to fighting crime as to be above critique. Nay, it is above even mentioning the very programs or policies in place.
3. That edwards revalations may prove fruitful to hostile governments neglects to inform the reader that the information disclosed is related to a government that practices rendition, harbored a network of secret prisons, exercises indefinite detention against foreign and domestic nationals, and practices torture. the hostile government in question also operates the largest prison population in the world.
4. that so far your only response to the snowden revelations has been to harass and intimidate your own journalists into silence has exposed the ineptitude and desparation with which you seek to just make the whole thing go away. That somehow you think this condescending appeal to the humanity of the UK through your 'think of the children' rhetoric is even plausibly considered valid is laughable. Glen Greenwald is evidence enough you couldnt care less.
as an american citizen i can only implore europe: please, stop us. this has gone on far enough, far beyond spy vs spy and into america spying on every foreign citizen of any foreign government it chooses under the guise of some malevolent executive privilege we awarded ourselves after jihadists bombed a financial center. we have, as we continue to do today, exercised rendition and torture based on the information we collect using these programs.
Good people go to bed earlier.
There's no other way to say it - "won't somebody THINK OF THE CHILDREN" is the "Godwin's Law" of todays generation.
Extra points if you recognize the irony in screaming "think of the children" (ie the problem is that someone was THINKING OF CHILDREN far too much already).
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
and whats with this "anonymous reader" submitter? The article reeked so badly nobody wanted to take credit (blame) for posting it?
"Snowden was a bankster ! He funnelled billions and billions to offshore accounts with his NSA know-how, he's responsible for the housing bubble and crash !"
SEX Crime! sex CRIME!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yes the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun case shows what the optics of an open trial can do.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Quicly looking at comment section of Telegraph article I see that it propably didn't succeed in indoctrinating anyone. Therefore I'm curious why such a piece of crap has been published at all. Maybe it is not directed to unwashed masses. Maybe it is directed to corporate/bankster/military/intelligence estabullshitment, not ordinary people. Maybe it is some kind of message sent by puppet government and puppet media saying something like: "See, we're (still) loyal. We'll go with you everywhere and we're ready to defend your (dirty) business even to our own detriment. We'll do anything, just give us some convenient, well paid position in your corporations when people throw us out.". I see this as a dangerous precedence. Politicians not afraid of what people think about them will not hesitate to send police or military to beat everyone "to the fuck'n skull" or "disappear" people if ordered so by TPTBs. The same with media: seeing journalists producing such crap without any signs of hesitation I smell crappy soviet-style system of propaganda (which I still remeber as I've spent my childhood in communist Poland).
More likely it's just the Big Lie. Repeat often enough and people will start to believe it (so they hope). Especially when you load it with all sorts of right-minded emotional terms.
After all, you're either with us or you're with the paedophiles.
It worked for Iraq.
how much this reeks of the average smokescreen "how can we possibly paint him as evil since, well, he is not evil for those that we try to influence". Pretty much anyone here has read the same kind of spiel a billion times, and how $technology or $whatever_big_business_hates helps terrorists and pedophiles, from filesharing to 3D printing to whatever else the powers that are don't like because it hurts their profits and/or reduces their power.
The problem is that we're preaching the choir here. It's patently pointless to point it out here. Everyone here knows that it's the usual "paint the good as bad" spiel. Problem is that a lot of the people out there actually believe this bull. They didn't learn that it's bull back when they tried to pull the stunt with some technology that we know and hence know that it's not "evil", and that the claims of its potential use to "bad guys" is skewed, at best, and more likely simply a bunch of baloney.
Because they don't know the technology.
They could not debunk it back then, and to them it was either believing politicians or us. And, well, why believe the geeks? We just wanted to keep our free songs and movies, even if it means that pedos sneak up on every kid and terrorists flood our cities, right?
I just hope that the people wake up before it's too late.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The last refuge of the true fascist: the straw man of child pr0n.
It's been overused lately, they had to let it cool down a bit or else it does lose its impact completely.
Even terrorists have been used very rarely lately. And while I can understand why money laundering isn't used anymore (after all, a craze about it would hurt those that propagate it the worst, since they're usually the worst offenders in that area), I really wonder why drug dealing isn't used more. Well, maybe 'cause even they can't find a way to pretend there's some kind of way to stuff dope through a cable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Exactly. Pedophiles and terrorism by now are well understood by governments as the magic keys to sidestep legal protections and process.
See, if you just go straight to sidestepping things, people get upset. But if you say "Zomg the terrorists" or "but, pedophiles" people accept that you're sidestepping things and it's OK.
It's essentially become the point at which you know governments are losing the argument. Because it amounts to the veiled argument of "we're doing this to protect against (terrorists|pedophiles), and if you're opposed to us fighting the (terrorists|pedophiles) then you must be in favor of the (terrotists|pedophiles)"
It's disingenuous in that it basically is used to bully us all into accepting them cutting into our rights and legal protections, because, after all, they're doing it to save us from the (terrorists|pedophiles).
And it's also the point at which all of the other politicians will vote for whatever you're suggesting, and much of the populace will say "well, I'm not a (terrorist|pedophile) so what do I have to hide?".
It is, however, a complete horseshit argument, and a cheap excuse to bypass the controls and protections put in place. But people seem to keep falling for it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hell, it's gotten to the stage where even pedos seem like decent and honest blokes compared to the NSA.
And for good reason. I'm way outside the scope of any pedo's interest. No such luck with the NSA, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes. If you think of the children all the time, you're most likely a pedo.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hell, go to the source. The availability of CHILDREN helps pedophiles. So outlaw kids, please!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
could also help paedophiles escape. So let's close all the roads, shut down the trains, and require everyone to "shelter in place" permanently. After all, someone must think of the children!!!!
Nonaggression works!
Well, we'd better institute martial law if we want to be certain these buggers are caught.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
In the US, they keep pointing out that their program is only about terrorism, and only spies on non-US citizens.
Not so in the UK, where the program is apparently about spying on everybody, including Britons, even if no terrorism is involved. That is a significant admission.
In other news, government officials announced they have conclusive evidence that the information leaked by Snowden is causing an acceleration in global warming.
I enjoyed 1984 a lot more back when it was fictional.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
There's plenty of propaganda articles making it to Slashdot, but I don't think this is an example of what you're saying it is. The general "Slashdot hive mind" mentality is not friendly towards claims of "oh noes, think of the pornchildren!" being used to suppress information. As a piece of propaganda, this article is guaranteed to backfire (as demonstrated by all the upmodded comments in this thread). No one here is being swayed to the conclusion "Snowden helps pedophiles"; the only message coming across is "Whitehall officials are lying liar scum."
To spot a real propaganda article, look for pieces that harness the "groupthink" to produce a positive reception for some corporate agenda (rather than producing a near-unanimous backlash against the article claims). This article is simply ordinary tabloid clickbait for the Slashdot audience. The propaganda work was the original Telegraph piece linked, aimed at an audience who are terrified of the lurking pedos they've been trained to fear --- those are the people intended to be deceived by the crap coming out of Whitehall.
It's useful to know that the anti-Snowden hysteria has reached this level. We've moved past the "traitor" and "terrorist" rhetoric and moved on to more serious "pedophile" rhetoric.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The average UK citizen does not believe a word the politicains say, and is far to busy looking at page 3 to give a shit.
I thought that's what these rags were *for* -- something to look at while on the shitter.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."