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."

Comments

Re: And so, what is wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a chap in England - you what? The IRA were scary maybe, the ISIS in England issue is mostly noise.

Re:And so, what is wrong with this?

[The Raven]

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.

Zeitgeist

[cosm]

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.

Re:Zeitgeist

[AHuxley]

Or so many smart readers now have, want, need or will be needing Western gov security clearances. They feel they cannot comment on anything work related anymore.
Very chilling if you know your home network is your work network and every word that is seen is collected.

This is a popular online forum

[Atmchicago]

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.

Bank of England and insight on investments

[zedaroca]

From the second document, talking about their costumers and objectives:

Continue provision of intelligence relating to risks to UK investment overseas

Both US and UK "surprisingly" boycotted an auction for the right to explore huge oil reserves in Brazil a few months after Dilma complained about the spying on Brazilians, herself and on Petrobras (the top deep sea oil exploration company in the world), driving the prices down.
Right now Petrobras is under investigation for corruption of some of its leaders, mostly related to the federal government party, it's stocks went down by a lot and most of the infrastructure investments / constructions are blocked. This is the only news here and we'll get American help on the investigations, even though we just refused German help on the Siemens case (the corrupts on that case are on the opposition party). Some people on the opposition party are involved in this Petrobras case as well, but the prosecutors decided there was no reason to investigate them. Seems like they jumped out at the right time and then, after decades of corruption (according to the case witnesses), it started falling down.

I hope people stop talking like economic espionage is a Chinese only thing.

Re:Bank of England and insight on investments

[zedaroca]

I guess you didn't pay attention to the order of the events or what the events were. Collusion is not a losing scam, the involved parties usually win a lot, they have been winning for decades. It is strange that they didn't enter the bidding process of some of the largest oil reserves found so far, there was no investigation at the time.

Maybe you are right and it is just a coincidence that Petrobras (an oil company from a pacific country) was an espionage target, in which case the spying was really unexplained and for nothing.

Now, in a completely unrelated case, the document on the article says that the British spy agency does provide "intelligence relating to risks to UK investment overseas", does that sound like economic espionage?

Since when?

[Pete (big-pete)]

The OP states that GCHQ is, "purported by officials to be focused on foreign intelligence and counterterrorism". Since when?

My understanding has always been that there are 3 main "legs" to British Intelligence:

• MI5 for internal security within the country
• SIS (aka MI6) for international security outside the country
• GCHQ for providing communication intelligence and security towards both of the above, and for advice on protecting key national infrastructure (via CESG)

In this context, GCHQ should have always been providing internal communications intelligence for MI5, I'm not sure why this should be news to anyone?

-- Pete.

Re:Since when?

[Coolfish]

Congratulations Pete, you're one of those persons who is capable of taking a complicated, confusing law, and twisting it so as to make it look like what these agencies are doing is legal, when they are clearly not. As long as people like you exist, and they always will, it goes to show why we should never trust the government to have these sorts of capabilities.

Snoop on property within the UK .. fucks sakes, you realize we're talking about people here right. Nah, best to call it property and further distance yourself from what this really means.

Shame on you.

Re:Since when?

[AmiMoJo]

There were supposed to be very clear limits on what techniques GCHQ could use inside the UK and against UK citizens. Like most countries, the UK treats foreigners as somewhat less human than its own citizens.

The revelation is that GCHQ breaks the law in the UK on a regular basis, and acts against the interests of UK citizens on a regular basis. The emergency legislation last month that was quietly slipped through was simply to make some of their illegal activities legal.

And just like that, UK has a GeStaPo....

[gweihir]

Fascinating, how politicians never learn anything from history.

Re:And just like that, UK has a GeStaPo....

[Coolfish]

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.

Re:And so, what is wrong with this?

[gweihir]

Have a look into the KGB, the GeStaPo, the numerous other secret police forces in the various historical and present totalitarian regimes. Hint: These people never serve the people, only ever those in power. The secrecy eliminates all possibility of meaningful oversight, and these people cannot keep themselves under control.