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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
As a former federal inmate (Read my story via The Market is Not Random), I was able to witness the expanding overcrowding of the system. The United States Sentencing Commission has been stating for many years that prison sentences are too long, and that non-violent criminals (like me) are prime candidates for alternative sentencing. In fact, regardless of crime, the majority of Americans believe a prison sentence of 2.6 years is long enough.
That said, I don't see that as the complete problem. Once released, federal inmates are subject to supervised release sometimes in excess of 10-15 years. The ability to track the ever expanding populous of inmates does a disservice to tracking the non-reformed. If one was to believe that prison did not lead to reform, then the proper conclusion is that all prisons (including myself) should be executed, regardless of crime.
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artlu.net
I thought the enhanced NSA and GCHQ surveilance was about combating terrorism. Or is that rationale just given in the United States?
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.
So the intelligence officers let three quarters of the UK's most harmful crime gangs operate peacefully in spite of being in on their communications? If they are not doing anything about them, it can't be that important.
At any rate: if the criminals avoid the eavesdropping anyway, how about stopping the eavesdropping on the law-abiding citizens?
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.
the BBC
Parliament
Buckingham Palace
Just three of many places where criminals operate with impunity.
Evidenced and in the public domain.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
But its keeping a close eye on the humourous ones.
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.
a) They shouldn't have overdone the surveillance to an extent that made it neccessary to have a Snowden to restore protection of those who the three letter agencies are supposed to protect and
b) this is based on the fallacy that before Snowden, criminals did not know about the surveillance protocols. Well, obviously, SOME didn't know. But those criminals who managed to bribe or blackmail a someone on a Snowden-like position into sharing their Snowden-like knowledge wre never monitored by the GHCQ.
bickerdyke
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 warrantless wiretap surveillance of citizens was originally justified as a national security necessity to fight terrorism. But it is ostensibly being used for a different purpose.... law enforcement against drug crimes. And you can be sure that it will also be used for surveillance of political enemies and for industrial espionage. There is a reason the Constitution guanantees that no search can be made without a warrant. It's because the power to snoop is a drug in itself, addicting those who have it to abuse those who don't.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
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.
You forgot that
(1) walking while black and
(2) selling loose cigarettes while black and, my favourite,
(3) carrying a toy gun in a toyshop while black
are punished by on-the-spot execution.
The hilarious part of (3) is that he was shot for carrying a toy rifle in an open carry state.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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.
California once had very liberal gun laws. In response to police brutality a group of Black Panthers stormed the California Capitol building armed to the teeth. This was legal, mind you.
Very quickly Governor Ronald Reagan passed stringent gun laws.
Now that's funny...
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.