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Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged In Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda
Advocatus Diaboli writes: Documents published by The Intercept on Monday reveal that a British spy unit purported by officials to be focused on foreign intelligence and counterterrorism, and notorious for using "controversial tactics, online propaganda and deceit,” focuses extensively on traditional law enforcement and domestic activities. The documents detail how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) is involved in efforts against political groups it considers "extremist," Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud, and financial scams. The story reads: "Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in 'dirty tricks' like deploying sexual 'honey traps' designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks, and generally warping discourse online."
As a chap in England - you what? The IRA were scary maybe, the ISIS in England issue is mostly noise.
I think it's more that a group which claims to be focused on external threats, and uses tactics that few would be comfortable using on citizens of their country, is focusing mostly on standard internal issues which are normally the purview of the regular police.
To put it another way, when I use my handgun to deal with an armed intruder to my home nobody would think ill of me. If I use that handgun to deal with my disobedient teenager then it's an entirely different issue. Even if the teenager is (for example) stealing from me just like the burgler was trying to, it's not an acceptable response. We have acceptable means to deal with our children, and a handgun is not on the menu.
Similarly, using DDOS, propaganda, and blackmail on your own citizens is not the appropriate response even if we may condone it against foreign nations in limited circumstances, just as we condone (at least in the United States) the use of handguns in limited circumstances.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
10 years ago this story would have had over 1k comments. Now people just say meh. Collective apathy or mental resignation to the topic coupled with a demoralizing feeling of helplessness....it's been 1984 for a long time now.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
This is a popular online forum. You can bet that all sorts of state actors, megacorporations, politicians, and anyone else with clout or ambition will be shaping the discourse here as needed. Turn up your critical thinking skills a notch.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
This was all started for President Bush as part of the international war on terror. The rise of ISIS has excused spying on children. Which is strange since most converts are self-radicalized. Everyone calls such converts, disaffected youth, which is probably true, but I notice no politician is demanding better education and support services for at-risk teenagers: That's not part of the 'war-plan' in any country.
Of course they've learned from history! If you want to keep power, you need to distract the citizenry. They should be so preoccupied that they can't deal with some nebulous concept of having only the illusion of privacy. High unemployment, stagnant wages, but just enough entertainment to make sure the masses don't get off their couches after a long day. If you want to keep power, you need to know who the subversives are, because if they ever do get into a position of being able to do something, you want to have enough dirt on them to shut them down before things get out of hand. Or, more likely, have enough powerful media voices repeating the mantra that everything is okay, to drown out the voices that are pointing out what's actually wrong.
They saw how it failed in East Germany, in the old countries, where force accompanied the spying. Now they know that they need to cover their asses - pass laws that vaguely sound like they allow what you're doing. Have secret courts that are "independent" that rubber stamp whatever you want. Parallel engineering for cases where the information was gleaned illegally. I don't think these systems fell apart because of their secret police tactics, but rather a culmination of other various factors - economics, and seeing how things operated outside of their ridiculous bubble. So the Americans, Canadians, etc, made their bubble that much larger, so that they can say "Everyone else is doing this as well, quit complaining".
To be fair - this isn't the politicians per se - but rather the establishment, the bureaucracy. The politicians buy their lines about public safety and security hook line and sinker, and why not, they were paid for by the powerful, who want to ensure that they'll maintain the status quo. A small subset of the population will buy whatever it is their politician is selling, and it's just enough to give them a glean of credibility and legitimacy.
No, the only people who haven't learned from history are the citizens. The citizens who keep thinking that professional politicians are capable of fixing anything, of accomplishing anything, despite leading *democracies* into unjust wars time and time and time and time and time again. That politicians are capable of getting a handle on the bureaucracy, to prevent corruption and incompetence. Hah. To be clear - I'm not advocating we go to anarchy and get rid of government. No, we need democracy and even a *representative* democracy, but the representation has to be fair and equitable - it can't lean way out of proportion to represent the rich and powerful, which is what most every democracy has right now, because elections are such an easy thing to subvert. A democracy must be completely open and transparent, otherwise corruption and incompetence, hand in hand with secrecy, grows and spreads like a cancer. Until more people realize this, and decide to do something about it, things won't get any better.