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GCHQ Warns It Is Losing Track of Serious Criminals
An anonymous reader writes The Telegraph reports, "GCHQ has lost track of some of the most dangerous crime lords and has had to abort surveillance on others after Edward Snowden revealed their tactics ... The spy agency has suffered "significant" damage in its ability to monitor and capture serious organized criminals following the exposes by the former CIA contractor. Intelligence officers are now blind to more than a quarter of the activities of the UK's most harmful crime gangs after they changed their communications methods in the wake of the Snowden leaks. One major drug smuggling gang has been able to continue flooding the UK with Class A narcotics unimpeded for the last year after changing their operations. More intense tracking of others has either been abandoned or not started because of fears the tactics are now too easy to spot and will force the criminals to "go dark" and be lost sight of completely."
Please remember that "serious criminals" included the entire population.
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"We can't do our jobs, while obeying the law."
--Gang leadership, er, correction, GCHQ leadership
I thought the enhanced NSA and GCHQ surveilance was about combating terrorism. Or is that rationale just given in the United States?
Yes, you're missing sufficient evidence to indict and you're ignoring due process.
Maybe if our police forces hasn't been so overbearing in their surveillance methods they wouldn't have had this problem.
It isn't so much that people are upset that police have the ability to listen in to phone calls or track us. Rather, they are upset that increasingly these powers are being used on everyone all the time, usually without needing a warrant or having any oversight. These powers have been, are and will continued to be abused by the authorities. The citizens - including whistle-blowers like Snowden - are making a fuss because they don't want everyone to be treated like a crook. Had the police and security apparat contented themselves with appropriate measures, there would have been much less impetus for Snowden and Assange to make the great revelations they did.
But no, we have cameras on every corner, our communications are bugged, our every movement and behavior tracked and analyzed. Don't try to shift the blame onto the people who helped make us aware of your overreach. Stop labeling everyone a criminal, stop depending on gadgets to do your work for you, and stop misusing the tools and powers we-the-people already gave you (and then demanding even more). Only then can you talk about how the bad whistle-blowers are making your job more difficult.
Don't worry, while they may have lost track of serious criminals, silly criminals are still being closely monitored.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
OF course, if you are tracking everyone, how the hell are you going to keep track of a few measly criminals?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
> One major drug smuggling gang has been able to continue flooding the UK with Class A narcotics unimpeded
And how is this different from the last 40 years?
Damn.
That's exactly like criminals whining that police is interrupting the normal flow of their criminal operations.
Disgusting. And very easy to see through, what a nonsense.
This just shows that gchq have lost track of some of the criminals it knew about but had not gained enough intelligence to form a case (or the crimes were not considered serious enough). It has not lost track of the criminals that weren't using the communications channels it had a viewport on because it didn't have them tracked in the first place.
Seems like they became complacent and sat waiting for the evidence to appear in front of them. Rather than following up the leads in the old school methods.
Essentially: c+ must try harder.
You must be thinking of the USA where the following offences merit mandatory jail time:
(1) driving while Black.
(2) walking while White.
(3) possession of a Penis.
Had GCHQ/NSA, etc. been spying ONLY on terrorists, drugs dealers, etc., then we wouldn't be reading this.
But they broke the law and got caught. Don't blame Snowden for having some integrity and doing the right thing. These agencies could learn a lot from Snowden.
As for the 'war on drugs', the Taliban declared opium poppy cultivation illegal just before the US/UK invasion of Afghanistan. Opium production - and by extension heroin production - was reduced to almost nothing.
In effect, the Taliban dealt the single most effective blow to the so-called "war on drugs" since its inception decades ago.
Since then the UK/USA invaded and allowed opium to be produced again - and now they produce record levels of opium and heroin. Billions of dollars of drugs. All controlled by UK/USA.
Now it seems that GCHQ can't monitor all of the drug dealers they'd like to. Are they worried that someone might be taking a slice of their pie?
You reap what you sow.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
The same accounting that brought us the banking crisis?
My guess is that he was given credit for time in custody, and he's now on parole after serving 1/2 of his sentence, so he hasn't "served a 5 year prison sentence."
And for those who wish to argue this is slightly off-topic, white collar crime has ruined his victims' lives. Surveillance of known white-collar criminals should be fairly easy, since many of them depend on the internet for at least a portion of their scams, and you know who you need to keep an eye on.
"Oh, but he needs to make a living."
Sure, but not in anything that can allow him to commit more white-collar crimes while out on parole. Let him pick up garbage, learn how to lay bricks, whatever.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The UK has probably done more than the US in terms of spying on it's citizens and now they are running a piece to place blame on the person who literally just said "what you are doing is illegal, i'm going to tell" It's not surprising that the original telegraph.uk article names the overlords as "spy bosses" because they have been illegally spying.
Knowing something and proving it in a court of law are two different things.
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
Whoa, cowboy. You did not "forfeit every asset." Those assets weren't yours to begin with, since they were got with stolen money. If you had stolen a car, you couldn't say "well, I got caught and I forfeited my car." If you had fenced that car, and bought a big-screen TV, it's still not something that you rightfully own - it's the proceeds of crime.
Also, "The misconception that my criminality did not lead to immense knowledge is wrong." Sure, you had to be knowledgeable to defraud people out of millions. Too bad you couldn't do it legally - guess you didn't have enough knowledge or smarts on how to do it right. You set out from the beginning to defraud people, So, why should anyone trust your "immense knowledge", when others in all walks of life make it without resorting to multi-million-dollar frauds?
Thinking you can just sit on your arse and write a couple of books and that will solve the problem is like the frequent posters here who ask slashdot "I just got laid off and I hear there's big money in programming." You have less credibility in finance than an Ouija board.
I'm not trying to be mean or anything - but you, and people who thought like you - that they could "take lots of money out and we'll cover it with huge profits" - were part of the reason for the financial crisis. Time to turn to "sweat of the brow" work, even if it will never give you the lifestyle you used to have. Certainly your victims are in the same position because they trusted you.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
No, but countries that call themselves democratic have to follow certain customs or they aren't really democratic. Unfortunately most countries aren't really democracies as they do things like: murder (death penalty), restrict voting (ie deny prisoners the right to vote, those under a certain age, etc), target dissidents and make "examples" out of those who they oppose.
Do I have to remind people of: Silk Road founders, Aaron Swartz of reddit fame, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange who did nothing illegal, Jacob Applebaum founder of Tor who did nothing illegal (constantly harassed at airports apparently), Kevin Mitnick, Bernie S who didn't even commit a crime, Dot Kom who probably didn't commit a crime within the scope of the law as it was written, Jon Lech Johansen for DeCSS fame who also did nothing illegal), among many others. Most haven't even been found guilty of a crime- but many have / are being harassed, locked up, and intimidated, or died at the hands of government.
The "War on Drugs" has been as serious, if not moreso, of a driver in the infringement of civil liberties than terrorism. Terrorism may have been the angle to push through many of the changes, but the "War on Drugs" is where it's being put to use. See Parallel Construction, Civil Asset Forfeiture, and similar topics. That this particular article focuses on the UK shouldn't distract from the fact that we're facing the same thing here in the USA.
Actually, it didn't work. If you make every offense a capital one, even minor offenders are now faced with a choice of obeying the law (and dying), or revolution. When every minor offender is suddenly a recruit for a rebel army, well, that tends to undermine the authority of the state rather than increase it. It's probably worth noting that the Qin dynasty was one of the shortest in Chinese history.
I'd say that the abuse of methods used by the authorities against normal citizens was revealed and that has also caused some trouble for the authorities when trying to monitor criminals.
This is a common syndrome in erstwhile free societies: the police are always complaining that they can't catch criminals, that they need more leeway and exemptions from the law themselves in order to do so.
And when people believe them, the inevitable result is less freedom and more Big Brother.
Anybody who thinks Snowden did not ultimately do us all a huge favor isn't seeing straight.