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Edward Snowden Leaks Could Help Paedophiles Escape Police, Says UK Government

Posted by samzenpus on from the root-of-all-evil dept.

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."

42 of 510 comments (clear)

  1. May they burn in hell. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Those demagogical assholes are the worst terrorists of all.

    1. Re:May they burn in hell. by prefec2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, it worked before. The British have this fabulous web-filters for content, which allow to control the delivered content. A clear censorship mechanism. They defended it with the child porn argument and the keep porn away from children argument. It worked. In Germany it did not, but they only used the child porn argument and were caught lying, about its effectiveness. and yes it was only a scheme to gain votes for the conservatives. However, Cameron that little anti-democrat tries to transform the UK in one of Orwell's fantasies to finally abolish any opposition to his classistic view of the world. Poor Britain. :-(

    2. Re:May they burn in hell. by N1AK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Welcome to democracy. I'm not even sure many of the politicians believe this kind of nonsense but god forbid voters think of you as being soft on criminals or ineffective at fighting terrorists.

      The average UK citizen will accept, or in fact welcome, pretty much any kind of invasion of privacy by the state if it doesn't inconvenience them in going about their day to day life. So we probably shouldn't be lumping all the blame on politicians for expressing views that match us.

      The media also deserves considerable blame. We went through decades of terrorism with the IRA a group that was massively more dangerous, coordinated and smarter than the radicalised Islamists that threaten us now and we carried on regardless. Look up the 1996 Manchester bombing, which I remember vividly, and you'll see how dangerous they were and how recently. But we didn't throw away all our rights and privacy to fight it and we rebuilt the area better than it was before as a massive 'fuck you' to the scum bags that did it. Why are we so afraid of the idiots they call terrorists these days? Because the media constantly barrages us with stories about plots, dangers, threats from around the world like it's some kind of miracle that I've survived the last week.

    3. Re:May they burn in hell. by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 5, Funny
      The average UK citizen will accept, or in fact welcome ...

      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.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  2. Oh christ... by mirix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is there anything that they won't use the 'think of the children' line on?

    Pathetic.

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
    1. Re:Oh christ... by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Is there anything that they won't use the 'think of the children' line on?

      Healthcare.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Oh christ... by Freshly+Exhumed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They'll be adding the usual "You are either for us or you are for paedophiles!" line soon enough.

      --
      I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
    3. Re:Oh christ... by erroneus · · Score: 5, Funny

      Best Answer Ever.

    4. Re:Oh christ... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The worst part is people actually believe them. The security forces have been revealed to be little more than criminal scum, gleefully breaking the law and violating human rights, egged on my the Americans. It's disgusting and I'm ashamed to have them working in my name.

      You know what, I think GCHQ might actually be worse than a paedophile, if such a comparison is even possible. The latter ruins a few lives at most, the former has undermined our very democracy and hurt all of us deeply.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Oh christ... by beh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sorry - no moderator points today - The answer is bitterly funny, but - unfortunately - also very accurate. Labelling it is "funny" seems like primarily useful to discredit it as a serious answer.

    6. Re:Oh christ... by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      NO, you get that the wrong way around

      The problem is those evil pedophiles, praying on our children, preferably online.

      To prevent that from happening, significant and highly invasive surveillance is needed because those evil pedophiles are so good at hiding their activities.

      So it's those evil pedophiles ruining all our lives, not those saints working at GCHQ and NSA and the rest, those glorious people keeping us all safe and protected from those pedophiles, and all we have to do is give them complete insight in all our communications and our private lives. A tiny offer to make, just think of the children!

      Full disclosure: I'm practicing for a new career as politician. Aiming for a +5 insightful. As soon as I can manage that, will run for office!

    7. Re:Oh christ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "praying on our children"
      Clergical, Freudian slip.

    8. Re:Oh christ... by SirGarlon · · Score: 5, Informative

      In the US at least, all children are covered and have been for a long time.

      Not according to the US Census Bureau (see page 24). Somebody lied to you.

      --
      [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
  3. There we go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. And so it begins by Rumagent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:And so it begins by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Give it a couple of weeks and Snowden will be labeled a pederast

      Doubtful that many in the target audience know what one of those is, considering the trouble they've had with "paedophile" and "paediatrician" in the past.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  5. Ah yes, by ColaMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. Danger danger! by ibib · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The secret police state is at risk!

  7. Damn poop detector is going off again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Give them some credit. by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Funny

    In defense of the government's statements they've held out an extraordinarily long time before invoking children in this debate.

  9. The Surveillance State is now official by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:The Surveillance State is now official by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      they are now claiming spying is needed to combat internal, run-of-the mill criminals.

      It also seems a little desperate. That argument doesn't have a history of working too well.

      Actually, I can't think of any example where that argument failed, but plenty where it worked flawlessly: biometric IDs, Internet censorship, perceived violence in games and music, cell phone tracking (drugdealers etc.), anti-money-laundry legislation and many more. Never underestimate the gullibility and political clout of a nation full of semi-literate soccer mums and Joe sixpacks.

    2. Re:The Surveillance State is now official by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This post is important. They swore up and down these were emergency, temporary powers needed to combat terrorism. "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

      Drug war won't be far behind. These liars already took a law in the 1990s to fight terrorism, swore it would only be used for that, and immediately began using it to spy on and arrest prosaic drug dealers.

      They didn't even bother regurgitating the fiction drug dealers were akin to terrorists. They brazenly stated, "Well, the law doesn't specifically state only terrorists.". They wasted no time at all before deliberately abusing their power.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    3. Re:The Surveillance State is now official by Xest · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually I think the public do get it, the problem is that the public's threshold for saying enough is enough is just that much further down the line than that of the typical Slashdot poster.

      We saw it under Gordon Brown's government where the move towards a surveillance state simply went too far and it actually became an election issue. Labour lost the last election in part because for many people ID card databases, an ever expanding CCTV network, terror laws that were used by councils to spy on people who didn't pick up their dog's poo and to seize Icelandic government assets, attempts to get everyone on the DNA database indefinitely, the government's greenlighting of Phorm and such, internet monitoring programmes and the digital economy act were just too much. Brown's government also regularly used the "think of the children" argument and it did in fact wear thin with voters quite quickly.

      Of course it didn't do us much good as the guys that followed still had their flaws, and whilst they cancelled the ID card program, dealt with excessive DNA retention of people not convicted of crimes, and put curbs on some of the anti-terror laws they've still clearly let GCHQ spy on everyone and anyone, and although to be fair they seem to have delayed some of the Digital Economy Act ideas such as 3 strikes almost indefinitely at this point they still haven't scrapped it altogether.

      But fundamentally I think it showed that the public does have it's limits in terms of not wanting a police state, those limits just tend towards a lot less freedom and a lot more surveillance than most of us here would like though the public in general would still not accept that type of encroachment on freedom and rights that Gordon Brown and friends wanted. Unfortunately though that's the cost of democracy, it means we don't get our way as a minority, even if we genuinely believe that what we believe makes more sense. Freedoms and rights weren't the most important election issue, it still fell behind the way more important economy arguments, but it was definitely enough of an issue to be brought up in debates, policy, and papers a fair bit - it made it onto the radar precisely because people had had enough.

      This is why personally I don't really fear an out and out police state here in the UK - the general public wouldn't tolerate it, even with the paedo argument getting put forward, though I do fear things being a little more towards that direction than I'm personally comfortable with - we're already at that point.

  10. The verdict on Edward Snowden by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 !
    1. Re:The verdict on Edward Snowden by bfandreas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      These wankers in Britsh govt (and civil service) know very well how much are their sleezy sicko tricks are exposed .. so take the usual mud slinging tactic .. Edward Snowden, you are true hero.

      The kind of sleaze like running ads on vans for "illegals" to turn themselves in? If UKIP says something like this is going too far then you know they absolutely crossed all lines including the date-line. Calling them wankers is an insult to all masturbators everywhere.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    2. Re:The verdict on Edward Snowden by reboot246 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In the U.S. we hire our pedophiles and perverts to work for the TSA. No need to spy on them.

  11. Thanks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For confirming that nothing Snowden has leaked did actually endanger anyone.
    Because if it had, we'd be hearing about that 24/7.

  12. UK by thetagger · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was going to argue that the UK is a Banana Republic but it just occurred to me that they are a Banana Monarchy.

  13. I read this on Techdirt: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (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.

    1. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What do you mean "the down side"? There is no up side.

      You can't point at other regimes and decry their dictatorial policies, and then have a secret arm of government of your own acting with the power of all three arms of government, with no oversight or accountability.

      Wake up. The dictators aren't in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt or wherever else you may think they are. The most insidious dictators are right here, ruling YOU.

    2. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 5, Informative

      You might also want to read up on J Edgar Hoover.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    3. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What do you mean "the down side"? There is no up side.

      If you're a banker or other criminal type with inside connections to the survellance complex, the up-sides clock into the trillions.

      It is only a matter of time before the men in charge of the NSA and GCHQ start getting invited to City dinners, if they aren't there already.

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
    4. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by datavirtue · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sociopaths are, for the most part, charming. The ones who do not get thrown in prison or institutionalized have adapted to demonstrate the proper behavior at the right time, simply to get what they want.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    5. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And you're just being a demagogue.

      To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".

      There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability.
      But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.

      The blame here I place (as usual) on Congress. If they were exercising responsible, firm, intrusive oversight - with absolute, immediate, and unremitting punishment for the people involved (firing certainly, prosecution as required - and not a bunch of chattering ninnies that have proven their inability to be trusted to keep secrets secret (so as to remain closely advised by the agencies without fear of destroying the value of intel and methods with self-serving 'unattributed' leaks), I don't believe we'd have this problem.

      But now we have self-interested politicians, committed to maintaining a political divide and advantage at ANY cost (even to the republic), who thus cannot really be trusted with anything important and who block each other (despite both sides' recognizing the need) from reforming anything substantively. I guess we lose then.

      --
      -Styopa
    6. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by nbauman · · Score: 5, Funny

      You at least *have* a pretty good constitution to return to, hard as that goal may be to reach.

      FOR SALE. A Constitution. In perfect condition. Hardly ever used.

    7. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by nbauman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And you're just being a demagogue.

      To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".

      There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability.
      But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.

      If I had to choose between living in 1984 -- which is what we're doing -- and the consequences of not having any secret spying at all, I'd go with the consequences. I think I'm more likely to be arrested for expressing my Constitutional rights than I am to be killed by terrorists.

    8. Re:I read this on Techdirt: by s.petry · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's disingenuous. Best you can do is blame the population for not offering principled people who run for office, or in the rare cases where this happens, blame the population for not supporting those guys in favor of the typical establishment stooges.

      How do you blame people when they are intentionally mislead, uninformed, and outright lied too? The take over of journalism started a long long time ago, and the last of the "journalists" for large print and television happened decades ago. You could blame the people that ignored the laws that allowed the monopolization of media in the 70s maybe, but corrupt journalism was rampant in the 60s even without monopolization.

      People warned us that when the AP becomes the only source of "News" we are fucked, but those voters didn't even know that there were laws being cooked because the "News" prevented those laws from becoming public knowledge. If you didn't pay attention to comedians like George Carlin you simply didn't know.

      Hell, if the Internet was censored as people in power want, you would still not know about any of these programs.

      I agree that it's disingenuous to blame just congress, but it's just as disingenuous to blame a public that has no knowledge unless they are actively seeking it. It should bother you that "News" agencies collaborate and release stories that the administration approves of. It should bother you that instead of Television "News" programs talking about real issues, the programming focuses on celebrities first, propaganda second, and misinformation third.

      The answer goes back in time and requires us to cut the strings tying all of these agencies together. Media monopolies need to be broken up, and journalism needs to once again become journalism. With an informed public we have a chance for reform. With an ignorant public there is no chance of reform, it will just be a few people that see reality bickering on sites like Slashdot.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  14. And yet - AKA Slashdots Ohanian moment? by FriendlyLurker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  15. Next thing you know: by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Next thing you know: by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Funny

      Edward Snowden thinks baseball is slow

      This is the UK, so the accusation would be that he finds test cricket slow.

      That would be unthinkable: 5 days and ending in a draw because they didn't manage to finish is gripping.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Next thing you know: by qbast · · Score: 5, Funny

      [...] baseball is slow and boring [...]

      Are you saying this was classified information too?