Slashdot Mirror
UK Intel Agencies Have Been Spying on Millions of People 'Of No Security Interest' Since 1990s (arstechnica.com)
The UK's intelligence agencies such as MI5, MI6, and GCHQ have been collecting personal information from citizens who are "unlikely to be of intelligence or security interest" since the 1990s, a thousand pages of documents published on Thursday revealed. The documents were published as a result of a lawsuit filed by Privacy International, a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. According to the documents, GCHQ and others have been collecting bulk personal data sets since 1998 under the provisions of section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984. J.M. Porup, reports for Ars Technica: These records can be "anything from your private medical records, your correspondence with your doctor or lawyer, even what petitions you have signed, your financial data, and commercial activities," Privacy International legal officer Millie Graham Wood said in a statement. "The information revealed by this disclosure shows the staggering extent to which the intelligence agencies hoover up our data." Nor, it seems, are BPDs only being used to investigate terrorism and serious crime; they can and are used to protect Britain's "economic well-being" -- including preventing pirate copies of Harry Potter books from leaking before their release date. The so-called "Bulk Personal Datasets," or BPDs are so powerful, in fact, that the normally toothless UK parliament watchdog that oversees intelligence gathering, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), recommended in February that "Class Bulk Personal Dataset warrants are removed from the new legislation." These data sets are so large and collect so much information so indiscriminately that they even include information on dead people.
Well, at least this report was obtained legally.
Kriston
So the wizarding world is switching from owls to parrots? That would be cool. Shame on you GCHQ!
Telecommunications Act 1984
*1984*
Suits the year.
The queen just got 90 years old! Isn't she doing well for her age?
And that little prince George, isn't he adorable?
Er, yeah, what did you spend the money that was created from thin air on? REAL labour or REAL goods, I suspect. So there's no need to be upset that you are expected to pay that REAL labour or REAL goods back, now, is there?
I have been told again and again that the Orwellian surveillance nightmare states of the 21st century only exist to protect us from terrorism. And also that only terrorist-sympathizers would ever oppose them. Surely this can't be right?
I'll just defer to Captain Picard on this one...
A Matter of National Security
'secret services' and the likes should be completely eradicated from modern society. The sole idea that there 's something 'hidden' working behind the scene means that who's in power is not behaving transparently in the first place... just the idea of 'secret' anything makes me throw up...we are born equal and we shall remain so...
This is a lie.
They've been spying on everyone they can for centuries. This isn't new. This isn't conspiracy. This hasn't started in the 1990s. Lies.
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
-- George Orwell, "Animal Farm"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Really. Who care anymore? The ideals of western democracy have been dying for a long time, and most people are too overworked, in-debt, anti-informed, and propagandised to bother caring anymore.
What pretense our ascendancies have for respecting the rule or law, the betterment of society, or the shared social contract are evaporating along with the value of our jobs, currencies, values and way of life (such as remains). Backwards, totalitarian, extremist, reactionary philosophies are springing up left and right, young people inflamed, groups openly rejecting and condemning western society outright, it economic, intellectual, philosophical, and even democratic basis. And who can blame them for being so energized, when our own ruling classes increasingly in their deeds and even words, hold all foundations of our civilization in contempt. At least bigotry, jihad, and greed offer something to believe in. Our leaders offer us lies, decay, and lives with no purpose.
So of course the UK and US intel agencies are transitioning to secret police organisations. More and more people are getting fed up of the raw deal the elites have handed them, and the empty propaganda is beginning to stop working. When the Ideologial State Apparatus fails, the Repressive State Apparatus must step in. The ruling class knows this, and has moved accordingly.
I'm too tired to care anymore. I say, let the people be shown the consequences of apathy, and of believing in vipers and their lies.
Why do we tolerate those leeching communist government hogs?
What?! Information about dead people can't possibly be useful for investigating/blackmailing/whatever living people. Or even useful for historical accuracy (released or not).
These data sets are so large and collect so much information so indiscriminately that they even include information on dead people
That's probably a good thing because a lot fraud and other criminal actions including passport forgery happens because the bad guys steal dead people's identities. In fact, that would be useful information so I doubt the information has been indiscriminately collected.
Dear GCHQ employee who reads my slashdot posts,
I mean a UK citizen posting to a US based site must be slightly out of the ordinary behaviour worthy of further investigation, right? Anyway I was just after a general evaluation of how you think my posts are. I got a +5 funny once you know.
Thanks,
Yours faithf... you already know my real name and where I live anyway, don't you?
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims remain untracked.
Just to play Devil's advocate a bit here, but isn't this exactly the way the system is supposed to work?
Having information on someone is what puts them in the "no security interest" category, rather than the "unknown" category. In reviewing that information, crimes like copyright infringement may be discovered, and that puts the person in a different category entirely.
Now, if understand the typical Slashdotter's perspective, the government shouldn't be allowed to gather information on people of "no security interest", but they can't know who that is without gathering information. Naturally, then, we will lobby to prohibit all gathering of information, and when successful, we will mock the government's eventual failure to find people who are of "security interest" with their then-nonexistent capabilities.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
This is all the kind of information you need to have a blackmail dossier on someone.
That backbencher asking too many questions? A quiet talk about some of the more sensitive information in his file ought to be enough to shut him up, along with a reminder how awkward explaining that stuff to his wife or constituents would be.
It's not really about blackmail, it's about cooperation, though. Just cooperate with us and we will protect your sensitive information.
European privacy regulations are strong! They protect you from evil US corporations that will show you ads for Angry Birds and lingerie! In Europe, only the government and corporations in cahoots with the government can listen to you, and they have your best interests at heart, as history shows!
(Incidentally, the same shit has been going on in France and Germany.)
"Class Bulk Personal Dataset warrants are removed from the new legislation."????
To be fair, "retard" is becoming about as meaningless a word on the internet as "jew". Though at least there is the irony that you're using a derogatory slur towards the mentally disabled in your argument against derogatory slurs towards the Jewish.
And it precedes the 1990s. Or it least it did when we routinely did this in the 1980s.
However, the scope drastically increased since then. And the retention of data.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If I have nothing to hide, then you have no reason to stalk me. (See what I did there? It works both ways.)
The only differences left between 1984 and modern Britain are the lack of sexual repression, the lack of antiquities dealers in the government pocket (Unless of course all those illegal artifacts coming from the pilfered Middle East are going into lords/politicians homes...), and the lack of visible capture, confessioning, and faked executions of 'political undesirables'.
That said, most of the above mentioned have been left in place because it was discovered that those things help keep the populace complacent while the rest of their less visible rights are trampled upon without respect.
Can't dismiss money in this question. https://scholar.princeton.edu/... And who knows, maybe Americans can limit the way money influences politics? We should try that, instead of going around, whining with "who cares".
With war of aggression in Irak and seemingly a self imposed superpower of hacking computers all around the world as I understand it, UK is just another terrorist state.
States and nobody, should have what I like to call super powers. Neither for war, detention, torture, surveillance or hacking computer systems.
Agent A: "I wanna tell my secret now."
Agent B: "Okay."
Agent A: "I see dead people."
Agent B: "In your dreams? While you're awake? Dead people like in graves and coffins?"
Agent A: "In our database like regular people. They don't relate to each other. They only relate to what they wanna relate to. There's a NULL value in the Dead field."
Agent B: "How often do you see them?"
Agent A: "All the time. They're everywhere."
the records the Holy Spirit has?