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The UK Will Police the Dark Web With a New Task Force (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes with news that the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and its top police counterpart, the National Crime Agency have formed a new unit to take on online crime. Motherboard reports: "'An NCA and GCHQ co-located Joint Operations Cell (JOC) opens officially today,' an NCA press release published Friday reads. 'The unit brings together officers from the two agencies to focus initially on tackling online child sexual exploitation.' This unit has been in the works for some time. Back at the end of 2014, UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced the plan for its formation at We Protect Children Online Global Summit. At the time, he said that 'The so-called "dark-net" is increasingly used by paedophiles to view sickening images. I want them to hear loud and clear: we are shining a light on the web's darkest corners; if you are thinking of offending, there will be nowhere for you to hide.' At the summit, it was said that GCHQ's technical skills would be its contribution to the unit. But the JOC won't just focus on child pornography cases. GCHQ Director Robert Hannigan said in the recent release that, on top of child exploitation, 'The Joint Operations Cell will increase our ability to identify and stop serious criminals."
They've been watching too much CSI.
Pure coincidence that they'll mostly end up 'catching' dissidents and whistleblowers
Governments usually bring out the "we're going after the sickos" announcements when they have nothing but need a publicity boost... or to divert peoples attention, in this case about the new monitoring laws....
If the US, Russia and China's governments cant crack it... good luck guys!
Come get me....
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Why weren't they thinking of the children when Thatcher’s government covered up a VIP pedophile ring
Funny how the UK police have enough time and resources to create entire new departments for the express purpose of policing the internet - ostensibly to protect the children - and yet they've got such a backlog on actual child abuse investigations that they can't get around to them for years.
Will the gallant UK police "look the other way" if they come across another Pakistani rape gang, who maybe has raped some 14,000 girls in a single town, in order to not "stoke racism"? (Like they did in Rotherham).
Cameron: it's time someone shone a light on the City of London and the tax evasion cesspool it is. There are the real malfeasants, together with the Luxemburg and Belgium tax evasion mafias.
Not that I like those pedophile rings and they should be treated as the criminal organizations they are -- but blowing up the problem out of proportion serves, as I see it, one purpose: hide the real criminals.
they make it sound powerful but it isn't. as if the nsa/etc hasn't been trying to crack tor/etc for a decade.
all they'll really try to do is social engineer themselves into some positions of power on "the dark net" communities and pick off the low hanging fruit.
if bringing down "dark net" communities was as easy as setting up a task force they'd have decimated things years ago. TLAs made a huge fuss over the silk road takedown, and that dude was terrible at opsec and several blackhats had blackmailed him before TLAs did anything.
fud and scare tactics. if they could bring anything down the press release would be how they DID bring something down, rather than how they WANT to take something down.
So the UK is going for the National Criminal Intelligence Service, Government Technical Assistance Centre, NTAC to try and use the GCHQ in public again.
Court workers, legal teams will see the documents just as they did in the past. The media will be informed of the methods and it will be journalists publishing pre trial stories all over again thanks to corrupt police.
Will a CIB3 (anti-corruption squad) like effort have to try and track leaks again as was done around early 2000?
Run integrity tests on everyone again? Who accepts a random offer for information in 2015?
Domestic surveillance is the domain of humans who know what they are doing without courts, media and corruption buying and selling their best results.
Bringing huge amounts of electronic GCHQ material into any open or secure court setting did not work. Too many people got to read of methods and sell information to anyone with the means to pay.
Technically Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... will get to every network in the UK per day.
Parallel construction, an offer to become an informant always worked wonders and left no trace to technical methods.
Announcing what the GCHQ will be doing to the public seems like past efforts.
Everyone with an interest will just buy the product as it flows down to police and courts in real time.
Anyone of interest will just stay away from any communications network.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's not a "dark web." It's a free web. It's a web where we don't have government security theater snooping on our every keystroke - to protect us from ourselves, of course.
I think this may have to do more with damage control than anything else.
These sickening images are evidence of the most heinous of crimes; which many of the so-called elite are involved in.
I think that they are likely 'patrolling' the darknet to hide/destroy evidence of their pedo rings and arrest a few sickos in the process to make it look like they are making a difference.
They have been getting away with these activities for a very, very long time.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Our freedom comes from Germanics, not from Athens: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing
The Greek are just very good at P.R.
>[...] on top of child exploitation, 'The Joint Operations Cell will increase our ability to identify and stop serious criminals."
This is what scares me.
What is a "serious crime" in the eyes of the UK?
Drug use? Whistleblowing? Political dissent?
Good luck! I'm behind seven proxies!
...think of the dead pigs! Dead pigs can't consent.
I have posted for years that no government wants to allow private communications of any kind. These days they are more brazen about that type of thing. Any claim of a security issue seems to justify endless spying by governments.
The UK thinks they own the world, I see.
There are a vast number of victims - of the order of hundreds or the low thousands. The cases dealt with so far have dealt far less than 100 perps http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...