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Britain To Create 2,000-Strong Cyber Force, Boost Budget By £250M (sky.com)

Slashdot reader cold fjord writes: Britain's Ministry of Defence and GCHQ signals intelligence establishment have put forward a plan to increase staff devoted to offensive cyber operations up to 2,000, quadrupling it over current levels. Funding would also increase by at least £250m, according to one source. The initiative comes "amid a growing cyber threat from Russia and after the UK used cyber weapons for the first time to fight Islamic State." General Sir Richard Barrons commented, "By adopting offensive cyber techniques in the UK we are levelling the playing field and providing new means of both deterring and punishing states that wish to do us harm."

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Stalking and Harassment of... by buravirgil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    subjects and citizens, largely men victimizing and predating women, was not sufficient cause to employ a "force", but harm of the nationhood is. I have come to new levels of disdain for bureaucrats of "free market" nations (and many regular folks) who justify the ambitions of trans-national corporations (protected by limited liability) collating and correlating consumer profiles (aka You-Are-the-Product) but insist less developed economies allow such vital statistics be collected by western corporations.

    But of course I support securing admin directories and increasing awareness of manipulation (such as phishing), but as another poster has dismissed the very term cyber as hopelessly dated and ignorant, I am alarmed by the complete lack of specificity by the given descriptions.

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  2. Re:"Cyber", the mark of incompetence... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    After the Snowden leaks anyone with any morals of conscience would have to ask themselves if they could work for GCHQ. This is an organization that wilfully, systematically broke the law for at least a decade and continues to do so. What little we know of their operation is unimpressive and suggests only moderate effectiveness, which the need for a further 2000 staff seems to confirm.

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  3. Re:Russia? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    . . . but then again . . . nobody in the UK besides Theresa May seems to like her Chequers Plan either . . . so maybe she wants to keep an eye on the UK bastards, as well . . . ?

    (what's the spaces between the dots?)

    That aside, yeah no one in the UK really likes it.

    For the vaguely sane, leaving the EU is clearly incredibly stupid and it's clear we're going to much worse under Chequers than we're doing now[*].

    For many Brexiters it's not acceptable because Brexit was supposed to make everything better and it won't. they're stil waiting for a magical solution which makes everything better not worse.

    And for the Jacob Reese-Moggs and Boris "250k is chickenfeed" Johnsons of this world, they simply don't care that a hard Brexit will utterly fuck everyone less rich than them. They see it as a route to power and they don't care how many people have to die for them to get it.

    Thing is though the reception in the UK is barely relevant. No one in the EU likes it either. The May government is very good when it comes to blustering about our "red lines", but they seem to have forgotten that the EU has some too.

    [*] There are some interesting things though, particularly the emphasis on goods rather than services. The UK is largely a financial service economy so that will effectively heavily boos the goods side relative to the services side. That could potentially help with the inequality problems because manufacturing of goods can end up employing a lot of people relative to financial services. However, in order for that work, the Tories would have to be a lot more pro British manufacturing than they've ever been in the past which is deeply unlikely. And the EU will have to agree which they won't.

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