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MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-us-look dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news that the head of MI5 is asking for more snooping powers following the attack at Charlie Hebdo. "The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, has called for new powers to help fight Islamist extremism, warning of a dangerous imbalance between increasing numbers of terrorist plots against the UK and a drop in the capabilities of intelligence services to snoop on communications. Parker described the Paris attack as "a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm" and said he had spoken to his French counterparts to offer help. Speaking to an invited audience at MI5 headquarters, he said the threat level to Britain had worsened and Islamist extremist groups in Syria and Iraq were directly trying to orchestrate attacks on the UK. An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said."

31 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. By all means by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We must give unlimited powers to the supreme chancellor!

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:By all means by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I caught part of a review of today's papers on the BBC News last night. The comments by the two guest reviewers actually made me nauseous. One claimed to be concerned about the implications about extending surveillance powers further and that we should have some sort of debate, yet clearly thought we should just hand over whatever it takes to keep us safe. The other was just saying he didn't care who read his e-mails, didn't feel that being spied on limited his freedom of expression, and MI5 were welcome to spy on him, with no apparent consideration for the implications of that policy for anyone else who might not share his views. The host actually quipped -- in possibly the only balancing comment in the entire segment -- that the guest sounded like he was making the old argument about having nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the guest just laughed and said he didn't think so.

      So it looks like there was at least one thing Lucas got right with episodes I-III: liberty really does die with thunderous applause.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  2. Vague article by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It doesn't say what new powers he wants. It makes it hard to decide whether this is good or bad, because general surveillance of everyone is very different from powers to monitor those who are already under suspicion - with prosper controls like court warrants, etc.

    1. Re:Vague article by carnivore302 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doesn't matter what new powers he wants, it will be one step further in reducing peoples privacy and freedom. At some point in time the cure becomes worse than the disease. I think we're already past that point.

      Let me be clear: it's awful what has happened. But so is the death of a child hit by a drunk drivers car. Or a swimmer drowning in the sea. If we were to stop swimming, or playing in the streets life would not be worth all that much.

      Like the drunk driver, these terrorists are losers. Don't make them anything more than that.

      --
      Please login to access my lawn
    2. Re:Vague article by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It doesn't really matter what they are, it's bad regardless.

      Why? because if we've learnt anything from terrorist incidents since 9/11 is that the perpetrators were all already known to the authorities.

      - Lee Rigby killers? Already detained trying to head to support Al Shabab by Kenyan authorities and sent back to the UK with MI5 informed

      - Boston Bombings? Russia already alerted the FBI to the fact they'd been hanging with Chechnyan extremists and were a threat.

      - Australian hostage taker? Already on trial for violent crimes and with a history of support for Islamic extremism

      - These guys? Already on the US no fly list. Already known to French authorities for extremist sympathies. At least one already had been in trouble with police for violent crimes.

      It seems to me that a taboo needs to be broken, that the general public needs to stop assuming the security services are competent. It's clear they're not and it's clear that no new powers are needed because in each and every case of terrorism that comes about the perpetrators are already known to the authorities.

      All that's needed is for the authorities to start better determining threats from the data they have, they don't need new data. If they simply started monitoring based on the following two criteria then all of the above would've been prevented:

      1) Does the person have extremist sympathies?

      2) Does the person have a violent disposition / have they been arrested and convicted of a violent crime?

      Simply monitoring on these two criteria alone would've prevented all of the above. No new data needed, no new powers needed. It's not rocket science but apparently the likes of MI5 are so entirely inept that they can't even figure out the basics.

    3. Re:Vague article by icebike · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At some point in time the cure becomes worse than the disease. I think we're already past that point.

      You have to know that the spy agencies have a list of demands they hold for situations like this. Strike while the terror is hot.

      If your tinfoil hat is on too tight you might suspect they fund some of these events when ever they don't get their way.
      Nah, that's crazy talk. Where are my meds....

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    4. Re:Vague article by Xest · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's exactly the problem, they shouldn't be monitoring tens of millions in the first place because there aren't tens of millions that are a threat. My point exactly was that they only need to monitor the few hundred or few thousand that match real actual threat criteria.

      The fact they're monitoring tens of millions is precisely the ineptitude that needs calling out and dealing with. There aren't tens of millions of real actual threats present within each country, there are a few hundred or maybe a few thousand at best. You don't need to monitor anyone abroad, that's the job of external security like MI6 and your foreign partners to do. MI5 can't keep track of internal threats precisely because they're too busy snooping and gathering mountains of data on non-threats.

      As I've said before, instead of working on becoming better at finding the needle in the haystack, all MI5, GCHQ, and it's counterparts overseas seem to do now is build a bigger haystack so that even when their counterparts from overseas say to them "Hey, you've got a bunch of terrorist threats here" they seem to just respond "Sorry, too busy with head buried in massive haystack to care".

    5. Re:Vague article by Vintermann · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "These guys? Already on the US no fly list. Already known to French authorities for extremist sympathies. At least one already had been in trouble with police for violent crimes."

      Yeah, but it looks like they also checked all the flags for troubled kids. You'll find lots and lots of foster home boys(which those were) who are kind of attention-seekers, kind of flirting with various radical political cults, kind of narcissistic, kind of sociopathic/antisocial. What are you going to do?

      There are tons, tons of people who fit your 1 and 2. And much as they may be personality-fucked up people who go on to cause a lot of suffering for people they encounter, the vast majority of them are not terrorists. Surveilling them is not free, and is not without consequences in itself.

      --
      xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
    6. Re:Vague article by kevinbr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So when you can't monitor the obvious threats you already know about the solution is to add more and more to the pile ? Really? Why not ask for more manpower to monitor the known threats? Or are they busy monitoring politicians and journalists ? Who the fuck knows how they are burning manpower but the Paris incident shows that they can't do threat assessments nor properly monitor who they know about.

      If they knew these guys were a threat, then they can get a warrant already an scoop up everything. Phone locations etc. No one objects to monitoring via a legal process known threats. But with current powers available, they did not. So adding more and more powers leading to more and more data is in my opinion not a solution.

      Potentially the whole world flies under the radar.

  3. Who says the events are connected? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack

    I think it's fairly likely that he was seeking new powers before the Paris attack as well. It's just more newsworthy now.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Who says the events are connected? by tehcyder · · Score: 3, Funny

      Good point.

      Bad point.

      Counter point.

      Numberwang!

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  4. MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He's constantly "seeking" new powers, not just after "Paris attack".

    On another --similarly surprising-- news, Marine LePen is thinking aloud about death penalty in France.

    Disgusting pack o'rats. Just instrumentalising the occassion for their little dirty agendas. I'm sure *no one* of the dead folks at Charlie Hebdo would have liked that.

    Now excuse me while I go puke.

  5. Fuck the Nanny State by mentil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said.

    I, for one, would rather be shot or blown up than live under a government that can 100% guarantee my safety. Better to live under a Sharia theocracy than a tyrannical nanny state.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Fuck the Nanny State by hlavac · · Score: 4, Informative

      Fuck them both. People are forgetting what freedom is...

    2. Re:Fuck the Nanny State by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      Better to live under a Sharia theocracy than a tyrannical nanny state.

      Why?

      Neither would be my first choice but if they were the only options I'd take the one with beer.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  6. No matter how much power we gave them ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... as long as the top level politicians are disciples of the cult of Politically Correctness the real problem, the problem with the Islamic barbarism will still remain

    In fact, those at the top are secretly encouraging them barbarian to commit more barbaric acts so that they can ask for EVEN MORE POWER

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by rmstar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As long as the top level politicians are disciples of the cult of Politically Correctness the real problem, the problem with the Islamic barbarism will still remain.

      That is true. Admitting that there is a problem with islam would be a very big step towards improvement. But since this is categorically denied, it is not possible to find a solution.

      BTW, the vast majority of the victims of radical islam are themselves muslims. Maybe it is time for muslims to stand up and say, no, peeps, contrary to what political correctness suggest, we actually do have a problem in our religion, and here in the west it is actually possible to do something about it.

      The point, rather obviously, is not to exterminate muslims, but to make the fringes of islam less barbaric.

    2. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by chthon · · Score: 3, Informative

      The police officer which was murdered by the terrorists was also a muslim.

    3. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have a very hard time seeing that the same problem doesn't exists in Christianity and Judaism

      Yeah, all of those contemporary examples of Christians and Jews doing things like shooting up rooms full of satirical journalists, and sending mentally challenged young women into vegetable markets with bombs strapped to them - they just won't stop doing that! All of those Christians and Jews that post online videos of themselves beheading their captive hostages, lining up villagers and gunning them down, burning teachers alive for daring to teach girls to read - it's definitely just like what all those thousands of Muslims are doing, no question.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    4. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You know, the reason why radical islamists are so powerful in middle east today is mostly western intervention. Be it Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or the gulf states... The islam is not more or less barbaric than christianity, it is just that the wrong people are in power right now, just like the wrong people were in power in medieval christian Europe.

      Mankind would be better off accepting that there is a fundamental problem about most religions (not faith, mind you. I am speaking of religions) and overcome it as a relic of the past.

    5. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Haven't you just disproved your own point? that if the vast majority of victims of Islam are innocent victims then the problem isn't actually with Islam but simply violent thugs?

      If the problem is with Islam itself then it seems odd that literally about a billion other muslims manage to practice it entirely peacefully. A problem with the religion itself would imply that all muslims would be effected by it, but they're clearly not, so instead we need to understand what the differentiating trait amongst the subset who are actually problematic is.

      It may be that it's another trait in conjunction with the religion itself that's the problem, sure, but it's not clear that it's definitely the religion itself, and it seems very clear that it's not wholly the fault of the religion due to the massive majority that aren't impacted.

      Note that I'm not defending religion per-se, I think it's unhelpful and demands people opt for ignorance over evidence, and maybe that is the problem - it makes them vulnerable to extremism, but I think it's clear we can't wholly blame religion, again, given how many peaceful followers of Islam there are - over 10% of the entire world's population in fact.

    6. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by herve_masson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > BTW, the vast majority of the victims of radical islam are themselves muslims. Maybe it is time for muslims to stand up
      > and say, no, peeps, contrary to what political correctness suggest, we actually do have a problem in our religion,

      I'm uncomfortable with this. Many public persons in my country (france), being journalists, politicians, whatever, make the same claim, urging muslim to react, clearly and loudly. I mean: *more* than other people. I was thinking the same way, but I recently realized it's a trap.

      This indirectly suggests that muslim people have something to do with those barbarians asses. It even go further in the direction: "if you don't yell loud enough, you're with them and against us", and that's really really bad to my opinion.

      We count million Muslims in our country, and a handful of dumb asses. Yes, a handful: a few hundred people have been filed as "potentially dangerous radical Islamist". The 2 that killed journalists a few days ago were in that list. Not high enough in the list apparently, but that's another story.

      Is there really a "problem with islam" ? I feel like its more a problem with a really tiny proportion of incredibly dumb people giving no value to life. They occur to attach themselves a religion, and make it a meaning of life.

      We have seen fanatics in every religion in the past, the religion of the day for those guys happens to be islam. That does not make muslims potential killers. That does not make them responsible for those assholes. We should know that Islam and those dudes have nothing in common but a name. We should not need Muslims to remind us this fact more than others.

      Now, you may consider that islam has in its foundations the seeds for such violence. I just don't feel this way myself.

      Anyway, just my one cent feeling.

    7. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm from Northern Ireland, it is/was a hell of a lot more about land, allegiance and which constitution you're following than if the pope was the head of your religion or not. Actual arguments about religious dogma never featured very much at all when I was growing up around paramilitaries. It was very much country on country hate, religion just happened to also be a convenient divider - and remember Wolfe Tone was a protestant...

    8. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by dablow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are correct, organized religions and dogmatic though is a serious problem for the human race.

      But, as much as I do not like saying this, it is more of a problem for the uneducated & poor, who are more easily duped into committing atrocities. It's not their fault, they just never had a proper education and given the required skills to be able to avoid extremism. It's also a lot easier to blow yourself up when you have 0 hope of ever earning a decent living and getting married (you would be shocked how important this factor is actually).

      This is also the outcome of when you go in and destroy the legitimate governments of other countries and leave a power vacuum. Local warlords fight, and sometimes these fights spill over to other nations.

      Saddam Hussein, for example, was no angel, not by ANY stretch of the imagination. However he had succeed in creating a relatively safe and peaceful state in the middle east, mostly secular (at least at the central government level) and women enjoying unusual amounts of freedom (compared to it's neighboring states). Is the world a better place, overall, now that the west violently removed him? I personally do not think so (although I am sure a lot of people who suffered at his hands might think so).

      Same with what happened in Iran in the 1950's....And so on and so forth....

    9. Re:No matter how much power we gave them ... by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Informative

      They were not standard terrorists, That was a military strike team. This is not the typical idiots that shoot with the gun over their heads, these guys were Navy Seal level of skills.

      Yet none of the news outlets are talking about it.

      Yes and no.

      They had *just enough* training to be comfortable with the weapons and have a plan, but consider that they went up against newspaper editors in an office, and not a hardened military squad. And yes, judging by my radio on the way in, it is being discussed (albeit on the more right-leaning shows... the left-leaning ones are too busy trying to loudly restate the obvious, as in "OMG islam is a peaceful religion and these guys are not representatives of it and OMG they're no different from Jerry Falwell when he sued Hustler!**

      I mean, c'mon - we're used to bumbling fools like the frickin' underwear bomber, so any terrorist with even a small modicum of military training is going to look like a 'SEAL-Delta-Para-Ranger-Force-Space-Shuttle-Door-Gunner(!)' to the masses.

      TBH, at most they probably have about the same skill and training as, say, the typical Army boot half way through OSUT training. In other words, they know and are skilled enough to pull off the stunt they did, but would most likely collapse/die/fail if they faced anything stronger than a gaggle of cops (which is pretty much the most that they'd had to go up against so far).

      ** No shit - some idiot commentator on MSNBC made that comparison yesterday. And they wonder why no one takes that damned channel seriously these days...

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  7. "They always want something more..." by Loki_1929 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "They always want to meet; the SS love to meet, and they always want something more, 'til they have everything."

    — Dr Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, Conspiracy

    --
    -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  8. Insult to injury by seoras · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was just waiting for some dick head in the establishment to show the same sort of insecurity that led those self righteous arseholes in Paris to murder cartoonists.
    In they step over the bodies and blood looking for the best spin, angle and outcome for their own agendas.
    They didn't stop these deluded morons this time and their laws won't stop the next ones. There, sadly, will always be a next time.
    What pisses me off is that they patronise us with their "we'll do something about preventing it happening again in exchange for you giving up some of your rights and freedoms".
    The truth is they (the establishment) are as afraid and insecure about all of us as the few violent extremists that are out there.
    What happened in Paris in 1793 at the Place de la Révolution is probably of more concern to Andrew Parker than what happened to Charlie.

  9. Re:Would that help? by nickmalthus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fear is a great fund raiser for the military industrial complex. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars will cost between four and six trillion dollars. Think of what all that money could have paid for and what we got for it. I am much more afraid of dying a long and painful death from cancer rather than being killed in a terrorist attack which is statistically next to impossible to happen. All four of my grandparents were diagnosed with cancer and two died from it. Where is the trillion dollar war on cancer? On the other hand some brainwashed malcontents assaults a small group of people and one would think it is the apocalypse. Certainly the government, the media, and their corporate sponsors will exploit every penny possible out of this tragic event to further their institutional objectives.

    --
    If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
  10. No one is calling for extremination of Islam by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    What I am talking about is the problem of Islamic barbarism --- not Islam itself

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  11. The barbarians will murder anyone they want by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Remember that American aid worker Peter Kassig that got his head cut off?

    He has converted in Islam but that still didn't prevent them barbarians from cutting his head off

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:The barbarians will murder anyone they want by tehcyder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Remember that American aid worker Peter Kassig that got his head cut off?

      He has converted in Islam but that still didn't prevent them barbarians from cutting his head off

      Surely this shows that it is not Islam itself that is the problem?

      It is not "political correctness" to differentiate between ordinary Muslims and terrorists who are Muslims.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it