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PRESTON: The UK's "Big Brother" Comprehensive National Database System (theregister.co.uk)
gb7djk writes: The investigative journalist Duncan Campbell has written an article at The Register claiming that the UK Government has been secretly creating a database of all telephone calls, financial and travel records for the last 15 years. From the article: "Located inside the riverside headquarters of the Security Service, MI5, in Thames House, PRESTON works alongside and links to massive databases holding telephone call records, internet use records, travel, financial, and other personal records held by the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC), a little known intelligence support agency set up by Tony Blair's government in a 1999 plan to combat encryption and provide a national centre for internet surveillance and domestic codebreaking."
Poe's law coming out in full swing early today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've been living under the impression that all phone and internet traffic is at least logged and probably monitored.
That some details of the operations come out from time to time doesn't alter the basic idea that this is what governments do.
Did anyone think differently in recent years?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You do realise that by and large the Guardian is seen as a joke these days and is turning into a Buzzfeed clone? Apart from anything else, Duncan Campbell has a long and very respectable reputation for digging where few dare to go and has uncovered a hell of a lot of otherwise secret goings on over many decades.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I used to like the Graun but it's gone to hell in recent years. This has been very notable since Corbyn's campaign started when they've been running attack articles pretty much daily. It's got to the point I'm having to go to the Morning Star for balanced reporting...
To be fair, an apology was eventually issued and he's now been pardoned. After he's been dead over 50 years but better late than never. Now how about pardoning everyone else convicted under those laws, some of whom are still alive.
If it's this Duncan Campbell, you might want to pay some attention.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I started reading the Graun to counterbalance the Torygraph. However the guardian has gone so batshit insane that I often feel I should now be ready the Mail to counterbalance it. The Independent isn't much better either.
That and all the stories which are basically reporting of Twitter spats, endless "Ten reasons why we must x" listicles, aggressive moderation in 'Comment is free' (was free), Their odd obsession with petty aspects of feminism, Adele, rap and a raft of young writers and sub editors who seem to be writing for personal blogs rather than doing proper journalism.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Exactly, a Pardon for Alan Turing is just the UK government saying he was still wrong for being Gay, but he was a significant enough historical figure that they wanted a happier ending to his story.
But if you aren't a significant enough person to be recorded in the history books then tough, you are wrong for being gay. Full Stop
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
It is amazing how George Orwell predicted all these half-a-century or so ago.
Even Yes Minister has one episode on a similar issue, that was three decades back.
Are we ignoring warnings from the past? or decided to be selective in terms of learning from the past?
a coincidence? I think not!
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
" BT data centres are also directly linked to NTAC for the supply of subscriber information, telephone call records, and domestic internet interception."
i wondered why BT's internet service slowed down massively during peak hours (especially when children got home from school). now we know why. the system which farmed off the monitoring so that we could be spied on wasn't fast enough. hey fuckers: if you're going to spy on us, do it in a way that doesn't affect the profitability of the companies you're shafting, ok? remember what's happening with cisco right now?
Named after the robot dog in "A Close Shave?"
Wendolene: "Daddy created him for good, but...he's turned out evil!"
http://wallaceandgromit.wikia....
It would probably have been The Daily Mail if it weren't for the face The Daily Mail are a bunch of bootlickers and tend in the opposite direction on this topic.
So it would never have been the Daily Mail, ever, in a million years. Your mention of them is an irrelevant addition for effect, and just another globule of crap in your smear.
>How long will it be before the NSA exports all it's 'interesting' databases to GCHQ, and vice versa.
"How long"? This was the purpose of ECHELON which we spoke about here at length in the 90's. Back then we thought they were merely skirting the law - today we know that they were ready to flip the "full-on illegal" switch after 9/11.
The NSA is even on public record at this point about paying the Israelis to spy on Americans, and that's beyond Five Eyes.
If even Slashdotters don't know the surveillance status quo, is there really any hope that the public writ large has any idea what's going on?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's true the Guardian broke and continued to cover Snowden in some detail but that's one of the few plus points in recent times.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I can't disagree with a single word here.
I don't know if it was the moving on of Rusbridger, financial pressures or some sort of coup behind the scenes, but the Guardian has become a lot less Guardian in the last year or two.
I did see a pro-Corbyn artocle tere the other day. The funny thing was a comment Below The Line saying it was just some soft soap to make the next attack piece stand out less! When it gets to that level of distrust by your readers (it seemed plausible enough to me) then your readers have all but abandoned you.
Quite why the Guardian thinks there are plenty of customers in the right-wing section of the news reader marketplace, I do not know. Maybe the expansion to the USA is a factor (although Bernie Sanders' popularity would suggest there's a substantial appetite for something left of (genuine) centre there).
It's a bad day when you see Guardian readers looking to the Huffington Post for something resembling decent reporting.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
To be honest, it's never been the same since the legendary Peter Preston left... although Ian Mayes as the Readers' Editor kept it honest for a while. Once he left, to be replaced by some faceless lawyer type, the decline REALLY set in.
Any paper that purports to be "left wing" (as it then did) but then sacks first Mark Steel, then his replacement Jeremy Hardy, for "being too left-wing" on their op-ed pages, isn't a paper I want o read. The Max Gogarty affair (the paper's reaction to their readers' criticism, more than the deed itself) was the final straw for me.
And yes, Duncan Campbell (the investigative journalist, rather than the Grauniad journalist of the same name), is probably the UK's leading journalistic authority on these matters.
Perhaps because ever since MI5 paid the Guardian a visit and smashed up that laptop of theirs in the basement, they don't want to do any more of this stuff?
Especially now it's under a new editor; whatever I might think of Rusbridger's qualities in comparison to his predecessor, I *do* give him credit for publishing the Snowden stuff.