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UK's GCHQ Admits To Using Vulnerabilities To Hack Target Systems
Bismillah (993337) writes "Lawyers for the GCHQ have told the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in the UK that the agency carries out the same illegal Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) operations that criminals and hackers do. Except they do it legally. GCHQ is currently being taken to court by Privacy International and five ISPs from UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe and South Korea for CNE operations that the agency will not confirm nor deny as per praxis."
Thankfully, the beta project has been abandoned.
How much abuse was required to accept what the users were complaining about from day one? It must be over a year?
How can voters 'approve' of secret programs, to spy on them?
Their people in the House of Lords recently tried to slip 'snoopers charter' into an amendment, the Lords rejected it demanding instead a debate of surveillance. Hence nobody can pretend this has approval, even the Lords want to find the details of it and debate it. Also you don't try to legalize something that is already legal. We found out they have a huge database of private British info, and its freely accessed by Ministry staff. No warrants, no checks, and Snoopers Charter would have made it legal retrospectively.
Good luck telling a judge that his private info, and that of his family are freely available to everyone in certain ministries without so much as a warrant, or check.
Fearmongering isn't necessary if approval is given:
https://www.privacysos.org/node/1660
"If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that ‘We won the war on terror and everything’s great,’ cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half. You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’—it’s ‘Keep Fear Alive.’ Keep it alive." - FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes