MI6 oversight report on Lee Rigby murder: US web giants offer 'safe haven for terrorism'

A Parliamentary report into the murder of off-duty British soldier Lee Rigby by Muslim extremists last year has pointed the finger of blame squarely at "the major US Communications Service Providers", saying that the only organisation which could have prevented the attack was one such internet-media giant. The new report was …

[Gordon 10]

Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

They are effectively saying let's use the tragic death of a soldier to monitor everybody online.

Which is not only disproportionate its fucking scandalous and the people suggesting this should be named and shamed.

[MustyMusgrave]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

The alternative to that Gordon mate, is they'll try and do it anyway, because they're retarded and you've only got to look at some of this stuff that's been disclosed about how they're trawling online video games, like world of warcraft, so in a nut-shell our intelligence agency is sitting on it's arse, playing video games and as to all this it'll stop terrorism and pedophilia, that they're dolling out as an excuse for there behaviour, how does looking at people over there own device discorage pedophilia, surely the opposite is true (case in point: yahoo web cam spying).

This is exactly how the world got led into WWII with Hitler & Roosevelt.

It would make a refreshing change to actually hear of our intelligence services getting off there arse and not sitting on it relying on technology to solve all the problems for themselves, whilst they get a fat pay-check at the end of the month! What ever happened to people solving intelligence matters before computers came along? Instead they bugger the security standards for us all and feed us the same line himmler used with the SS.. "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear!"

[BillG]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

They are effectively saying let's use the tragic death of a soldier to monitor everybody online.

The key word here is EVERYBODY. Follow the money - with the information gained, think of the insider trading government wonks can get away with. Monitoring everyone online is a license to get rich.

[Busby]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Would what they are asking for even be legal under current UK law.

If they are suggesting that technology companies pro actively screen every conversation/post for potential illegal activity and then flag to the relevant local authorities would that not fall foul of RIPA?

Warrantless surveillance of everyone is what caused such a backlash recently these clowns need to stop requesting more powers and get on with their job of protecting the country instead of invading the privacy of every citizen.

[Mike Ozanne]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Well there's a number of issues with the current mound of bullshit that the committee has just pinched out.

Firstly nobody believes for 1 minute that they've actually stopped even 1 terrorist attack using internet surveillance. They have prior form on being crap at what they do and lying about it afterwards.

Secondly, there's an extra-territoriality issue. A US web-co that acquiesces to a UK RIPA order without being served with a valid state or federal warrant will find itself in deep civil and possibly criminal do-do. So they won't do it. How is HMG to obtain the probable cause to ask for a warrant if it doesn't already have access to the content? Cor-blimey they'd have to get off their arses and find some actual intelligence with which to lead the investigation. Requires breaking a sweat and maybe chipping a nail, so we know that will never happen.....

Thirdly, supposing for a moment that HMG and the Fed's persuaded all UK and US providers supplying social pages, forums, message boards, relay chat, newsgroup and mail-list services to monitor *all* traffic at the level where the user location could be determined. And that they mandated that all traffic be in clear. And we managed to either pay the costs or got the ISP's to eat it. Can you conceive of how many stupid things are said/typed on the internet every fricking second that might look suspicious enough to require LEO attention? There aren't enough coppers on the planet to filter down that volume of false positives, even if your automated filtering was 99.9% accurate.

Lets's face it they already dropped tabs on one of these killers, presumably because they don't have the resources to keep live dossiers on the number of possible subjects thrown up by what they've got now.

Fourthly the terrorists will evolve into using crypto and/or artificial lexicons (codebooks) on a more frequent basis and in running there own VPN or message/relay services in non-US/UK jurisdictions.

[NotWorkAdmin]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Absolutely. Countless numbers have died in the name of freedoms we enjoy. To suggest we should throw privacy in the bin is an insult to all of them and all of us.

[P. Lee]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Crime - its the price we pay for not all being in jail already.

Also, its unlikely being in jail stops all crime anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Imagine if they had said the only people who could have prevented the murder were BT and than BT should in future listen in to all of our telephone calls.

[Tom 7]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

BT will respond to this in the same way they would have responded to monitoring all phone calls - with a big fuck off. Can you imagine BT explaining to all its customers there are no longer 11.5Million hotspots for them to use cos they've had to cancel that facility as the cant tell who's using it?

And will they have to change 11.5 million routers?

I imagine it will be cheaper for BT to buy enough MP's votes against this one.

[John Smith 19]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

"Imagine if they had said the only people who could have prevented the murder were BT and than BT should in future listen in to all of our telephone calls."

Patience, citizen, patience.

We can't implement a freedom crime free society overnight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

I heard of a crime being planned in a pub. We obviously need to compel all landlords to record all conversations in all pubs and alert the authorities to any hint of wrong doing they hear (wrong doing will be defined after any event the government needs to shift blame for and will be applied retrospectively).

Strange that they didn't ask why we're happy to put people at risk by stirring up a hornets nest when we get involved in wars which are really nothing to do with us.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Why stop at BT? Better have all the post steamed open while we're at it. And what about those pesky face-to-face conversations? Ban them unless in the presence of an agent

[W T Riker]

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Due process and issue a warrant. Stop blaming someone who provides a social media service for not monitoring everyone and passing on anything suspicious to the appropriate government official, who can sit on it for a month before doing anything about it. If the message was posted as "public" GCHQ can see it anyway. If it was "private" then that is what it should be.....private, just like opening someone else's snail-mail

[Anonymous Coward]

How many clues did they need?

They knew these criminals, they had been alerted before they came back to uk. They picked them up and let them go.

If they did their job rather than rumaging our emails and spying on kids yahoo messenger webcams there would have been better outcome.

The authorities don't need more powers. The need to stop being distracted by face book, and do their job.

[James Micallef]

Re: How many clues did they need?

"The(y) need to stop being distracted by face book, and do their job."

Spot on. They need some more good old detective work, feet on the ground stuff. Yes it's more risky, but that's what spies' jobs are, right? Instead of requesting zillions for new data centres, intercept technologies and military hardware, how about spending some money on recruiting good agents, training them properly, paying them decently and making sure their families are taken care of if the worst should happen?

[scrubber]

Re: How many clues did they need?

The basic argument goes: "we didn't spot this needle in a massive haystack, so we need access to loads more hay to spot needles in future."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How many clues did they need?

they seem to have found the needle, was it, 7 times, and are complaining that they were denied the opportunity to find it again.

off topic, any news re kincora?

[strum]

Re: How many clues did they need?

>The authorities don't need more powers. The need to stop being distracted by face book, and do their job.

Or - if they do their job, and shit still happens, we don't run around in circles looking for someone to blame.

The murderers are to blame. End of story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How many clues did they need?

"They knew these criminals, they had been alerted before they came back to uk. They picked them up and let them go."

So the British security services already knew about these guys and had them in custody, and let them go? And then the Brit spooks have the temerity to say "we could have saved that soldier if you just give us access to everything on Facebook, or force Facebook to crawl through everything their members are posting/sharing."?? SERIOUSLY, DID THAT HAPPEN??

This is just like the Boston Marathon bombers, where the elder Tsarnaev brother/bomber went to Chechnya, met with Chechen radicals, had this meeting reported to the U.S. by the Russians, came home and got interviewed by the FBI about what he was up to in Chechnya, and then was let go. And of course he went on to bomb the marathon with his little brother.

Now, I am not suggesting that we take people like the Rigby murderers or the Tsarnaev brothers off the streets if they can't be charged, but these are the very people who this huge surveillance apparatus should be looking at. If a guy raises all these flags, then get a warrant and look at what he is doing online or through email/Skype/whatever. Don't build this huge fuckin' sigint vacuum cleaner to suck up everyone's activity, and then drop the guys who actually might be doing something, and then complain that you need even more of everyone's communications because you failed to "keep your eye on the ball" that you knew was coming!!

If you read through my posting history, you will quickly figure out that I'm not a huge fan of government agencies in general. Frankly, crap like this is the reason why. Government agencies seem to possess a culture where mistakes like this are tolerated, so they keep happening. Frankly, sometimes I wonder if these agencies could find shit in an outhouse.

[DavCrav]

Re: How many clues did they need?

"If they did their job rather than rumaging our emails and spying on kids yahoo messenger webcams there would have been better outcome."

Just out of interest, what exactly does "doing their job" mean in this context? I don't mean to bring logic into this massive let's-have-a-go-at-the-security-services circlejerk of yours, but people seem to be constantly saying "do their job" a lot, without exactly entailing what that means. They arrested the guy, but didn't have enough evidence to charge him, so they let him go.

At this stage, one of three things can happen.

1) They detain him without charge while they go look for evidence, perhaps indefinitely. Doesn't look so good on a civil liberties front, and 'disappearing someone' seems somehow worse than trawling through Facebook messages.

2) They tail him everywhere he goes. Apart from the fact that it would be ruinously expensive to put 24-hour surveillance on every person MI-5 thinks is dodgy, again I think civil liberties people might not be happy with tens of thousands of policemen tailing (almost exclusively) Muslims.

3) They gather more evidence. This evidence is likely to be electronic rather than physical, as we are only talking about a couple of guys who want to kill someone, not a major terrorist plot. And apparently the good evidence was on Facebook. As the article states, Facebook does not consider itself compelled to respect the UK warrant system, and as many people on here seem to think the UK government and security services should not be allowed access to these things at all without a warrant, which Facebook ignores, so this seems tough.

So, please tell me anyone, how exactly could the security services "just do their job" in this case without infringing on civil liberties? It's one thing to say that the security services shouldn't have broad access to this sort of material, but you then cannot tell them to just "do their job" afterwards, if there is no way for them to gather electronic evidence.

[Anonymous Coward]

MI5 disinformation.

The report points the finger at an "internet company." What a great conclusion for MI5.

The suspect wasn't under investigation at the time but he was before the attack and they did manage to find this conversation after the fact.

Why not name the company or at least publish the transcript ?

My bet is neither exits and they obviously though pointing the finger was too risky in that the truth would come, showing the report for what it truly is, a cover up.

[Evan Essence]

Re: MI5 disinformation.

Repellent finger-pointing shits.

[Dan 55]

Re: MI5 disinformation.

The report was written by the ISC whose chairman is Malcolm Rifkind.

Judging by Rifkind's previous form, it was never going to be anyone in the intelligence or security services' fault.

[John Smith 19]

Re: MI5 disinformation.

"Why not name the company or at least publish the transcript ?"

Named as "Facebook."

[Anonymous Coward]

MI6 report concludes MI6 blameless

[Ossi]

Not an MI6 report. Can you read?

[ItsNotMe]

Re: "Not an MI6 report. Can you read?"

"MI6 oversight report on Lee Rigby murder:..."

@Ossi...yes he can. But apparently the author of the story cannot.

[Sir Alien]

Obviously govenment is just trying to pass the buck.

Okay so the TERRist has a hotmail account and the government can now see everything. BUT the suspected terrorists post nothing of the kind to each other using their hotmail. Instead they use a peer to peer instant messaging client that uses public/private keys to encrypt their direct communication with each other.

<sarcasm>

So obviously now that they can chat in secret it must obviously be large corporations fault.

</sarcasm>

1. ISP can't see a thing other then source/destination. Can somewhat but not completely be hidden by TOR

2. There is no large corporation to blame as they are not using server-side services. Nothing to trawl through.

3. Unless they have broken TLS/SSL keypairs some how then they cannot view the contents of the data unless they get hold of each of the private keys from the individuals.

4. It does not require very much knowledge to use encrypted chat clients. Just a few internet searches to see what programs + features are available and that is it.

I am all for nailing these terrorist rats to a wall but simply passing the blame just goes to show how little they care and simply want a nation of blanket monitoring. The government needs to take responsibility for their own inaction.

- SA

[Ben Tasker]

Re: Obviously govenment is just trying to pass the buck.

No need for peer 2 peer, run it through facebook or Google Chat but use a client that adds a layer of crypto (so all FB/G see is base64 encoded ciphertext).

I already do exactly that routinely when discussing anything I wouldnt be happy publishing on the nightly news :)

[Stretch]

Re: Obviously govenment is just trying to pass the buck.

TLS has been totally broken for many years.

[Ben Tasker]

Re: Obviously govenment is just trying to pass the buck.

True, but why use TLS?

Once you've created a client that can do OTR, it's not that bit a step to have it use PGP instead ;)

[Sir Alien]

Re: Obviously govenment is just trying to pass the buck.

SSL/TLS was more meant as a general term even though many implementations are known to be useless. I should have replaced it simply with keypair encryption of some sorts. Regardless with very little effort, anyone can do completely encrypted communications directly to each other which simply overrides whatever MI6 have said. It is not the fault of big providers but the lack of action on the governments part.

- SA

[Ben Liddicott]

A secret policeman in every internet chatroom

Like the pubs and bars of Europe in 1900. Say the wrong thing ("effin' government, hang them all") and you'll be spending some time awaiting trial...

The prosecution will be dropped of course. The process is the punishment.

Yes, it is interesting that they said it... The assault on free speech continues... never let a good tragedy go to waste...

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: A secret policeman in every internet chatroom

eg the good soldier schweik (a good read BTW), arrested for mentioning a portrait of the kaiser was fly blown.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: A secret policeman in every internet chatroom

The secret police are too busy under activists' duvets to hang around in chatrooms

[tfewster]

> "However, this company does not appear to regard itself as under any obligation to ensure that its systems identify such exchanges, or to take action or notify the authorities when its communications services appear to be used by terrorists."

So, if I post on Farcebook, "gonna kill a soldier", FB are expected to check if I'm on a government watchlist? I could be talking about a video game, so looking for keywords is a really stupid way to do it. (Echelon, ANFO, jihad,...)

> " none of the major US Communications Service Providers (CSPs) regard themselves as compelled to comply with UK warrants ..."

Damn right they shouldn't, unless they have a UK branch. But I expect if they passed the suspects name to the NSA, the info would soon be handed over.

The whole Fusilier Rigby tragedy has been warped by the Government and security services to advance their own agenda, while denying any responsibility. Whether or not you regard the killers as terrorists, terrorists have won.

[Keith Langmead]

A rod for their own backs

"However, this company does not appear to regard itself as under any obligation to ensure that its systems identify such exchanges, or to take action or notify the authorities when its communications services appear to be used by terrorists."

To my mind the issue (aside from jurisdictional issues) is that they're now complaining about behaviour that the Government created. Unless things have change, my understanding is that so long as these companies DON'T actively monitor what's being done on their services then they're safe from responsibility, just as long as they act when notified of an issue. If on the other hand they do ANY monitoring and for instance censor certain posts, then they lose that protection and are deemed responsible for what's written on their systems.

With rules like that (which the government put in place) why would any provider act any differently? There's zero incentive for them to do a little proactive monitoring or censoring etc. There's no legal mechanism for taking a best effort approach and being let off if you miss something (which realistically is bound to happen regardless of how hard they tried). Far easier in terms of both cost and legal liability to do nothing at all.

[Peter2]

Re: A rod for their own backs

No, this is still the case and outright absurd.

However, IIRC the problem was created by a court ruling, not by legislation.

[Anonymous Blowhard]

False Positives?

The "significant" messages were only seen after the crime had been committed; but assuming the Security Services (I'll abbreviate to SS from now) had access to *ALL OF THE INTERWEBS* what would have happened? Here are the options:

1) These criminals were the only people on earth muttering about "killing a soldier", so they're easily spotted online and the SS saves the day!

OR

2) There are thousands of similar threats made all the time, but most of these are idle bluster, so the SS doesn't have the manpower to follow them all up and the result for the unfortunate victim is the same as if we had never relinquished our right to privacy.

OR

3) Same as 2) and the criminals realise they need to communicate secretly, so they migrate away from the mainstream services, or even not bother advertising their plans online at all?

Which scenario is most likely?

[dogged]

Re: False Positives?

or...

4) They probably said it but both were practically illiterate in English so it could have meant something completely different and none of the keywords were triggered.

[phuzz]

Re: False Positives?

Or 2a) it also picks up the millions of people saying things like:

"Hey Sam, fancy playing some CounterStrike tonight? I'm going to play as a terrorist because I want to kill lots of soldiers tonight lol"

(or 3b the terrorists just make sure they include the words "game" or "play" in their communications)

[Anonymous Blowhard]

Re: False Positives?

@phuzz

Exactly my point; unless there is a new tag in HTML 6 like <explicit_real_threat> then it's going to be impossible to pick up the "real terrorist" threats from the innocent "I'm blowing off steam" posts.

(Feel free to argue if "explicit_real_threat" should be implemented in CSS, but mind your manners or we'll be in Gitmo before you can say "orange onesie")

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: False Positives?

"I'm off to bomb the base."

Am I going to:

a. Blow up some military base.

b. Have a dump.

c. Play a 90s disco track at high volume

GCHQ: we'd better bring him in there's a million to 1 chance he's gonna take a dump - that's a biological weapon of mass distruction.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: False Positives?

Feel free to argue if "explicit_real_threat" should be implemented in CSS

Neither HTML (organization) nor CSS (presentation). It's clearly part of that Semantic Web thingy Sir Tim is always going on about. So it should be done with RDF.

I suggest <rdf:Statement rdf:sense="literal" rdf:threat="terrorism">I'm gonna do something bad</rdf:Statement>. MI5 should feel free to propose that to the W3C.

[G Murphy]

Jump on the privacy bandwagon

and miss the most salient point: "none of the major US Communications Service Providers (CSPs) regard themselves as compelled to comply with UK warrants"

This isn't campaigning for mass surveillance, it's a legitimate concern that suspected criminals under investigation will have their court issued warrants ignored by US firms.

[zebthecat]

Re: Jump on the privacy bandwagon

Too right they don't.

Would you expect UK providers to comply with warrants from the USA? Russia? North Korea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Jump on the privacy bandwagon

zebthecat; The UK already send UK citizens to the US with minimal fuss, or did you miss that point? So your point was?

[Ben Tasker]

Re: Jump on the privacy bandwagon

Which isnt entirely unreasonable. They're not under the jurisdiction of the UK courts after all.

We all cry foul when some numpty US judge assumes his jurisdiction extends into other countries, can't see a logical reason for what the SS are suggesting being any different. Plenty of emotional arguments, sure, but very little logic.

Even if they all caved an answered every warrant, all the terrorists have to do is switch to communicating through a SILC server, or even just use Facebook chat, but with an OTR client and suddenly the SiS can't see anything, again.

The status quo will likely be maintained, whether or not our privacy gets invaded (again) on a massive scale

[Ossi]

Re: Jump on the privacy bandwagon

I'm afraid Lewis Page has deliberately misled and really played to the commentard orchestra in this place. Look at his part:

"So there you have it. In the view of the ISC - and evidently, the view of the British spooks - US internet companies are under an obligation of some kind to monitor their users for evidence that they are about to commit acts of terrorism. At the moment, indeed, in the view of the British spook community, such firms are a "safe haven for terrorists".

The interpretation that the ISC and spy agencies are under an obligation to monitor their users is entirely Lewis Page's. The report report simply notes that they don't feel themselves under any obligation, and what the consequences could be (it even carefully notes that they're unintended)

Lewis then goes on to say:

"The British intelligence community also believes that the Prime Minister should "prioritise this issue"

Thus suggesting that "this issue" refers to the monitoring of users. In fact, in the report, it refers to warrants not being complied with by US companies.

Well done Lewis. The swivel-eyed commentards here will love you.

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: Jump on the privacy bandwagon

down voted, but love "playing the commentard orchestra"

<looks for pink oboe \>

+1

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: Jump on the privacy bandwagon

Poor form to insult us just because we don't agree with you. I would never resort to calling you, for example, a fat-headed twangler

[Red Bren]

Re: Jump on the privacy bandwagon

Isn't the answer to get MI6 to apply for a search warrant from the relevant US court? Of course that would involve due process, probable cause and an undeniable audit trail, and if there's one group keener than terrorists to hide their tracks, it's spooks.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the real purpose but lets suppose it is ...

I don't think that's the real purpose. Anyway, I don't think terrorist would use smart douche phone or useless social networking to communicate effectively. They would rather create a robust and encrypted INET/INET6 protocol to communicate without touching the web.

[PCS]

What the hell does Teresa May want? Row upon row upon row of Chinese employed to monitor *every* social network posting throughout the entire planet???

1984 is looking more and more realistic nowadays.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: 1984 is looking more and more realistic nowadays.

Its happened we are already in it - if you use Electronical devices you are part of the 1984 group/band.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: RE: 1984 is looking more and more realistic nowadays.

I think we left 1984 behind some time ago. In the book, there was only video cameras and microphones, so a 'miscreant' had to be actively planning/doing something in order to get picked up.

With the current setup, everything you do, search for, and purchase online is monitored, as well as every payment that goes through your bank; which I find much more scary. Not only is there much more personal infomation being rummaged through; but it would appear that the rummaging is being done by humourless twats with no sense of perspective. Thus someone is arrested for jokingly threatening to blow up Robin Hood airport while actual terrorists fall though the cracks.

Frankly, they should learn to manage the powers they already have competently before asking for more. Also, they would benefit from looking up the fucking phrase 'due process' before continuing...if they hadn't begun with the stance that everyone is a criminal, then they might find a public that is more willing to assist them. Also the "sod the law; we're going to hoover up everyone's private info anyway" attitude is sending out the wrong message anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: RE: 1984 is looking more and more realistic nowadays.

I'm gonna

<CRYTPO>

G7Xdhrj F69qexDiFjjy

</CRYPTO>

Robin Hood Airport if they don't get their shit together.

(Be late).

[hapticz]

20-20 hindsight, nearly perfected!

ahhhhhh, shoulda seen this one coming, they just T-Boned us and took us completely by surrrprize! golly gee whillikers, how we gonna look now? these mooslioids are a sneaky bunch, willing to do whatever the 'man' back home approves! they do anything to get respect and recognition, be a part of the big shebang, feel like they is wanted, loved and OBEYED.

[zebthecat]

Ludicrous

Blaming the (unnamed) service provider is like blaming the Royal Mail if they had used post to communicate.

This was a human intelligence failure by the security services of they want to find someone to blame.

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: Ludicrous

lest we forget, the general post office was given a monopoly in 1600 and dot in order to facilitate spying by the govt on its subjects.

[PCS]

Does anyone have a public vpn address for China?

I may as well get some practice in before the rest of the world goes in the same direction....

[Graham Marsden]

"could have supplied intelligence which could have saved Rigby"

Note the two uses of the word "could". Not "would", just "could".

Well so could have MI5 not deciding that the killers were not a "major threat" despite knowing about them since 2010, but, of course, anything that can be parlayed into an excuse to monitor and track us even more is just a really good thing as far as the Security Services are concerned...

[Crisp]

So basically, what the ISC are saying is...

That websites that could be used for messaging ought to be reading every single message that passes through it and then reporting on the correspondents to the authorities.

That's just absurd. Has the ISC any idea how complex it is for a computer system to glean the semantics of a message? It's hard enough for humans sometimes.

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of people a year die from terrorist attacks and it's like - monitor everything, get rid of privacy.

Thousands die on the roads in car accidents - do nothing, that's normal.

Are we trying to save lives ultimately or is it really about controlling people and what they do?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

"950 deaths took place in police custody, 317 following a police pursuit, 112 were the result of a road traffic incident involving a police vehicle and 54 were police shootings."

[phuzz]

Still, you have to hand it to the armed response unit, when presented with two guys who were clearly a dangerous threat, they neutralised the threat, but only wounded them so that they could still stand trial.

Perhaps some US cops could do with learning how to do that?

[bitmap animal]

"Thousands die on the roads in car accidents - do nothing, that's normal."

What do you mean "do nothing". Seat belts, air bags, crumble zones, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, Tufty Club,drink drive limits, speed limits, driving tests.

Yup, nothing being done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean 'crumple zone' there perchance? A crumble zone is that area of the kitchen I'm not allowed in while the pie is cooling...especially if I'm holding any kind of cutlery.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Ban Father Ted

In 2009 2 soldiers were shot by religious extremists while collecting a pizza.

The same religious extremist group that MI5 and it's predecessors had been watching for 100 years

It's highly likely that these religious extremists watched Father Ted

[Lamont Cranston]

Re: Ban Father Ted

Careful now.

[Nya]

Re: Ban Father Ted

Feck off!

[Crisp]

Re: Ban Father Ted

Down with that sort of thing!

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: Ban Father Ted

that would be an ecumenical matter.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Ban Father Ted

Surely the lesson here is to ban religious extremists from collecting pizza?

Of course, if the UK had a proper pizza-delivery network like the US does, this tragedy could have been averted. It's all in the infrastructure.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thousands die on the roads in car accidents - do nothing, that's normal."

The person on the street would feel the effect of a restriction on using cars immediately. However - the threat to their lives from surveillance is a future possibility. The generation that would understand the dangers from experience is dying out.

Most humans are apparently not very good recognising a risk in the future - nor at evaluating the probabilities. After a rare train accident many people switch to the comparatively much riskier car.

[Anonymous Coward]

"One of the great lessons of his (Solzhenitsyn's) life and work is that the only thing ensured by giving up freedoms for a greater good is that the greater good will be evil when it arrives and the freedoms will be impossible to retrieve."

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

When it's finally too late to do anything constructive people will probably wake up. By then the only thing they could do is go on strike and collapse the financial system - how likely is that do you think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Article unclear

This paragraph from the ISC quotation: " We have looked at this issue more broadly and discovered that none of the major US Communications Service Providers (CSPs) regard themselves as compelled to comply with UK warrants ... "

So, what the security services appear to be pointing out is they think US companies may not be responding satisfactorily to UK warrants, correct? If so, the question is whether any warrants were issued in the first place, and if they followed proper form.

Unfortunately, from the selective quotations in the article it's not entirely clear whether the report is merely dealing with a technical point, or squarely trying to shift the blame.

Call me naïve, but I would need to have a more complete view of the facts before forming too strong an opinion.

[Vic]

Re: Article unclear

So, what the security services appear to be pointing out is they think US companies may not be responding satisfactorily to UK warrants, correct?

No, not at all.

What the statement says is that US companies do not consider themselves to be under any compulsion to comply with warrants issued by a foreign power. And that's as it should be.

Whether or not the companies in question do comply with any such warrants - and whether such compliance might or might not be satisfactory in the eyes of the UK authorities - is not mentioned.

it's not entirely clear whether the report is merely dealing with a technical point, or squarely trying to shift the blame.

Yeah, it is. It couldn't get much clearer...

Vic.

[Anonymous Coward]

God help these clowns...

...if they discovered Yahoo or YouTube comments,I guess there would be about 10,000 pre-crimes committed every day that would have to be reported. Hope they have enough staff.

Feel free to give them the information they need, all of it, after all, having the information presented to them prevented Pearl Harbour and 9/11 didn't it? oh wait...

[Robert E A Harvey]

Re: God help these clowns...

TBF, the world might be a better place with most Youtube, Daily Wail, and similar commentards locked up. Not necessarily safer, but definitely better.

We are just fine, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: God help these clowns...

Just wait until they discover /b

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: God help these clowns...

don't think they've got a live feed from my workplace. yet...

[Clamps]

one slight flaw

The problem with this mass pro active survelillance plan by ISPs and other big companies is that is still relies on one thing - the terrorists announcing what they are going to do. I'd imagine once this is in place they will stop doing that.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to admire the sheer ruthlessness of the Gov, MI5.etc.

From what i've heard so far it seems that the security services had these people in their sights and were watching over them up to a month before the kill, at which time they stopped.

It seems the security services knew this was a done deal and waited for the two men to kill a serviceman. They then waited, in the long grass, until today when, with the help of the Tories, they can now move in for the kill on any form of privacy we might still have. They in fact sacrificed one of their own to achieve their aims. This reminds me of the Omagh bombing, when the police were tipped off about the bomb but kept quiet and let it detonate and kill all those innocent people.

[bitmap animal]

Re: You have to admire the sheer ruthlessness of the Gov, MI5.etc.

or perhaps they were watching hundreds of potential suspects and made the wrong choice by stopping watching these ones. Perhaps the resources were diverted to something else that did not and can not make the headlines.

[Vic]

Re: You have to admire the sheer ruthlessness of the Gov, MI5.etc.

or perhaps they were watching hundreds of potential suspects and made the wrong choice by stopping watching these ones. Perhaps the resources were diverted to something else that did not and can not make the headlines.

That would mean that they are far more keen to destroy our liberties than to admit to a cock-up.

We all screw up from time to time. The Public would accept the occasional mistake, particularly at a time when resources are tight. But the Security Services don't seem to worry about the cost to us, as long as *they* don't have to lose face. And that's not acceptable.

Vic.

[scrubber]

Pre-Crime

If you've pondered nothing wrong you have nothing to fear.

[breakfast]

Was it terrorism?

If people go out of their way to identify and target members of the armed forces in an attack, is that not an act of war rather than terrorism?

[Nick Kew]

Re: Was it terrorism?

Agreed.

Also, killing a soldier fits uneasily with the word "murder": that way leads to branding all those very old men who defeated Hitler as murderers. Surely "treason" would have been the appropriate name for the crime, if the trial had had anything to do with "justice".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Was it terrorism?

It was certainly murder. They weren't in an army, wearing uniforms, taking part in any government sanctioned action etc. Not same as the fight for survival against Hitler.

Were they terrorists? They had no declared membership AFAIK. They essentially gave themselves up after and made no effort to escape and repeat their crimes. If all terrorists did that it would be great.

[wolfetone]

Yeah

Because Google has been around for centuries allowing people to murder, rape, pillage everything in their way. It's a well known fact that upon landing on American soil, the early Quakers were using something called "The Facebook" and "Googol" on something called "The Amazing Autonomous Perpetual Machine". With this, they managed to rape, murder, destroy Native Indian plantations.

And it's also a well known fact that the British Navy used Twitter to locate the Belgrano and sink it.

Remember kids, the Internet makes evil people do evil things. You'll only be safe if you let strangers spy on you.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Yeah

Oi! Quakers took no part in slaughtering native American populations, that was the Puritans who left England because they were prevented from enforcing their bigoted beliefs on other people, so went off to the colonies where they had the "freedom" to impose their beliefs on other people, even going as far as *KILLING* Quakers who stood up against them. Do a websearch for "Mary Dyer".

[wolfetone]

Re: Yeah

Well GCSE History taught me that Quakers from England went to America, further enforced by Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine".

So please direct your corrections to Tony Blair (Honerable T**t) and Michael Moore PLC.

Cheers.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Want to have the cake and eat it, do we?

This complaint, that if only they knew they'd have prevented it and they didn't know because those bad American ISPs did not tell them ahead of time - is it coming from the same group people who already have the ability and actually have been caught reading people's emails and watching private videos whenever they feel like it?

And now they missed some would be terrorast's forum post or email or whatever and it's somebody else's fault?

I think if the head of GCHQ would be automatically given an hour of pillory every time somebody's head's cut off in the middle of London, we will never hear about that terrorism thingy again.

[Nick Kew]

Newspeak too

Not only does this look (as everyone has pointed out) like a big red flag for Orwellian surveillence.

But this use of the word "terrorism" is also pushing us one step further into Orwellian Newspeak. Back in the days of the IRA, the word "terrorism" implied a threat to innocent civilians. Yet now they're using it to describe an attack on a military target, where the perpetrators went to considerable lengths to make it clear that they were no threat to any civilians.

Oh dear. Time to get downvoted here.

[bitmap animal]

Re: Newspeak too

This is incorrect. The IRA have long been described as a terrorist organistaion, they killed many solders in Ireland and on the mainland in addition to the civillians. You are trying to persuade people the meaning of the word has changed - perhaps you are an Orwellian agent trying to change history.

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: Newspeak too

indeed. and machine gunning /was/ once considered rather unsporting.

as the man says, bring on the down votes.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

From the BBC > They [the findings] include:

- A four-month delay in opening an investigation into Adebolajo following his return from Kenya in 2010. He had been arrested in the African country after apparently preparing to fight with Somali militant group al-Shabab

- An eight-month delay before Adebowale was first actively investigated in 2012

- An application for intrusive surveillance on Adebowale in 2013 took "nearly twice as long as it should have"

- Had the original target been met "these further intrusive techniques would have been in place during the week before and on the day of the attack"

But with all that the Facebook, apparently, is to blame. Oh, LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But with all that the Facebook, apparently, is to blame."

Oddly enough, Facebook is the only one who was not in the room at the time these conclusions (damning Facebook) were arrived at. Funny how that works.

[R Arrowsmith]

I notice the report didn't name Facebook but it took no time at all for Facebook to out themselves, kind of makes you think Facebook don't care if people know that they don't routinely spy on people

wonder why that is

[Anonymous Coward]

So they have 6 months data retention? They listen to every bit of info travelling in and out of the UK, they knew these people and had investigated them 7 times, they cancelled surveillance 1 month before the attack was committed and yet somehow it's the fault of an email provider in another fraking country?

We're not that stupid, it's a pathetically weak attempt to pass through even more monitoring for things they will continue to claim they are unable to prevent due to not having enough powers. This is nothing more than desire to control the internet, and it is in full swing.

[Spoddyhalfwit]

Ban knives

I'm a bit surprised our government haven't mentioned the irresponsible behaviour of the kitchen knife manufacturers and sellers. They made and sold these knives to killers, for money, they sit there in their big houses with no concern that they were selling murder weapons.

It's time to ban knives. Eat bread rolls or buy ready sliced bread. There is no reason in this day and age to own a knife.

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: Ban knives

they pretty much have, even a penknife will get quizzical looks from the filth these days and I believe (don't go to law on this) they're entirely legal.

[Steven Raith]

Re: Ban knives

Folding knifes with a blade under 3" in length are technically legal, but if you have one in public and the police ask, if you can't justify it to a reasonable degree you might get taken down the station for a chat.

[Vic]

Re: Ban knives

Folding knifes with a blade under 3" in length are technically legal, but if you have one in public and the police ask, if you can't justify it to a reasonable degree you might get taken down the station for a chat.

I'm not aware of any length of knife that is actually illegal, but anything that can be construed as a weapon might get a polite enquiry from the Bill, with a rather less polite one if you don't come up with a reasonable explanation.

I once had a conversation[1] with a cop outside a kebab shop. I was trying to find out whether the law would allow me to buy one of the long blades they were using to shave the "meat" off the stock. The practical upshot was that it was perfectly legal, but if I waved it around, I'd almost certainly be in deep, deep trouble...

Vic.

[1] I was quite drunk at the time. He was very patient :-)

[its_1984]

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Also according to the speech by Theresa May, the new Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill would "require internet providers to retain Internet Protocol - or IP - address data to identify individual users of internet services" - https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretary-theresa-may-on-counter-terrorism

The only way I can understand how to identify individual users to IP addresses is complete lock down of all communication devices such that they will only run (via TPM) government approved code. It will be against the law to connect any device to the "internet" unless it is approved for connection and you will have to use your unique (government supplied) ID to use the device. It will be against the law also to let anyone else use the device with your ID. If foreign companies will not control content at the whim of the British government then obviously for the good of the people all communication needs filtering when it enters or leaves the country. Don't think about setting up your own clandestine radio transceiver as the TV licence detector vans will also be looking for unauthorised radio, especially from devices not licensed, design approved that are running approved software. Anything less than this has so many holes in it that it's not worth doing and even with this extreme policy will it stop 'hidden' communication?

But wait what about post and parcels, shouldn't we also have a comprehensive filtering scheme in place as well for physical communication?

If the above comes to pass, the Chinese authorities may will be jealous and ask the British government for advice. It would make the great firewall of China look like an exemplar of liberalism.

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

you are a civil servant and ICMFP.

[Anonymous Coward]

One soldier got murdered, so now a whole country needs to have their comms tapped

Next week, everyone gets an RFID chip implanted in their butts, because I heard this girl from Sheffield got kidnapped.....

What happened to Lee Rigby was barbaric, but its pretty damn disproportional to say that social media and IM providers should be tapped in order to (and this is total bullshit that it will work) prevent that from happening again. And of course, the 5 Eyes being what it is, if the GCHQ or some other agency in Britain is given this power tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow the security establishment in Canada/U.S./Australia/New Zealand will all effectively have it too, through their good buddies in the GCHQ or Whitehall.

[h4rm0ny]

Is the ISC staffed entirely by morons?

I know the answer, of course. It just has to be asked. Idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

they're not morons

"Government agencies seem to possess a culture where mistakes like this are tolerated, so they keep happening. Frankly, sometimes I wonder if these agencies could find shit in an outhouse."

Marketing Hack has got it exactly right. The intel experts in MI6 now seem to have mastered the art of deflecting reponsibility for their own failings, in much the same way that the US military, in particular the NSA, were able to do after 9/11. Of course they had company in the CIA (no pun intended) and at least two Presidential administrations.

The irony is, of course, that mistakes are always made. Intel gathering is hard. Crafting an adequate response to each threat revealed by any given piece of intel is even harder. There is no such thing as 100 percent perfection in those kinds of efforts. We all know and accept that.

The very best IT admins are the kinds of people who, in the midst of a shit storm, will readily admit to their mistakes in order to prevent further harm, *to get the job done*. Officials at MI6 and other intelligence agencies could learn a thing or two from that.

[Tom 7]

Re: they're not morons

Intel gathering is hard? No its actually easy - its filtering it for useful information that is hard. Collecting every last bit of information going just makes it even harder.

[h4rm0ny]

Re: they're not morons

>>"The very best IT admins are the kinds of people who, in the midst of a shit storm, will readily admit to their mistakes in order to prevent further harm, *to get the job done*. Officials at MI6 and other intelligence agencies could learn a thing or two from that."

But we have what I call a Daily Mail society in this country - we (as a nation) do not tolerate failures. Once the gutter press get hold of something they demand a head. MP loses his temper with someone and calls them a pleb? Dragged through the gutter and their political career on the line. Someone murdered on the street in a million to one event? The press want a head for their pike. Anything the press get hold of the pressure on the government to deliver a response his huge. MI6 can't simply say "we missed something, but mostly we're pretty good at this" because they'd be torn apart from the press that want their mournful and contrite confession and - preferably, someone to hound out of their job.

We are not a society that allows imperfection (in other people, of course). Buy a copy of the Daily Mail and read it whilst repeating to yourself "2nd most popular newspaper in the UK" repeatedly.

First is The Sun, btw. Third is The Mirror. We all live in Salem now.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE. Re. they're not morons

Simple enough, they are employing Aspies now for this or so I hear.

And stoners, seems that they were not interviewing some very smart people because of their previous history despite quite a few being genius level.

A lot of smart people end up on the wrong side of the law due to lifestyle choices, in some cases relatively mild stuff like TWOC and driving offenses can debar, same as with other public sector jobs.

Yet another reason to abolish criminal records for "spent" offenses after say 5 years provided the ex-con has done some community service or something to fit the crime (cough rubbish picking or changing elderly people's smoke alarm batteries /cough)

[Anonymous Coward]

STREET THUGS TERRORISTS USE US THIRD PARTY SERVICES

Only street thugs terrorists use US SOCIAL NETWORKING to communicate. By fact, the real top terrorists of jackals would use simple to make encryption protocols at the TCP Stack without having to do anything with WWW or any application based protocols.

The internet is not indexed by google surveillance and they should not promote gov secured backdoor to third party douche services because of few street thugs morons, who knows what if they were set-up by the same people looking for an excuse.

A lot of good and bad people communicate on their own computer network without any help from any country's third party communication services. It's very easy to program encryption based protocols using standard computer languages on standard Operating Systems (OS) interfaces without the help of company based systems like Apple and Microsoft. So common, don't be a faggot, we (you and me, not terrorist please don't shoot me) all know you are better than that.

[Simon Harris]

Re: STREET THUGS TERRORISTS USE US THIRD PARTY SERVICES

" It's very easy to program encryption based protocols using standard computer languages"

Shhh... that's dangerous talk - if the powers that be see that we'll all need to apply for government approved licences and background checks before we're allowed to sit in front of a compiler.

[J.G.Harston]

Cameron: "Internet companies must report these (terrorist) communications"

So, where the f**** are the hundreds of thousands of job vacancies for the people to do all this monitoring? Yet again, Cameron promising the world, but actually talking complete shit.

[earl grey]

so-called "intelligence" community

We just admitted we're incompetent nincompoops. have some sympathy and do our work for us.

[John B Stone]

SNAFU

So hindsight bias turned up to 11 when looking at someone else to blame and that will lead to more budget being allocated (and possibly employ a few reg readers). Even if plausibility doesn't withstand even mild analysis.

Hindsight bias turned down to zero when looking at if it was self to blame.

Situation normal for pretty much any organisation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next: outlaw cryptography

The one after: outlaw steganography

Good luck morons

[John Sanders]

I can not believe any of this.

So they behead a soldier in the middle of the street in plain daylight.

But they or their ideology can not be mentioned.

So we need to invent a blame, (The internet obviously)**, and at the same time because we can not mention they, we need to spy on everybody.

This is another iteration of: "We can not mention they, so in the airport we will check poor 80 years old Margaret in the name of random search, just in case they accuse us of looking at they"

** Politicians can nor can not control things depending on what they need, when they can not control they obviously have to overreach.

:-(

[Simon Harris]

Those soldiers are gonna be toast soon...

and then I'm going to dunk them in my egg.

and as for predictive text - how many tea drinkers will be banged up because they thought they'd typed 'I could murder a cuppa'?

[Benjol]

If they really believe that, I've got an algorithm for predicting FOREX which they may be interested in...

[Phil_Evans]

It was them, sir!

Isn't it, though? A report that labours on the shortcomings, laziness, bureaucracy and incompetence of Inspector Gadget. A clear trail of missed opportunities that are painted as 'would not have prevented'...', um, ah.yer but no but, IT WAS THEM!! The organisation (Facebook in all but name) that shifts Petabytes of drooling and cretinous opinion on an open data network! *They* should have done our jobs. THEY could have prevented Rigby's death by telling us things.

I just can't find the words to describe my incredulity. Like they couldn't describe the characteristics of a duck when they see one.

[Anonymous Coward]

People are missing the point

Facebook already scan their systems for 'terrorist' activities (whether you agree with that or not they can legally do so if they want)

They picked up this guy and banned him for 'promoting terrorism'

They then didn't take any further action like tell the police.

If you owned a bar and genuinely did think there was someone planning to murder someone (enough to ban them) don't you think there would be at least some moral obligation if not legal to do something about it

[JaitcH]

Rifkind - the Man Who Never Saw a Warrant Application He Couldn't Approve

Rifkind, the sad excuse for a former Tory minister, should accept that the UK has no powers over corporations operations not in it's judicial reach. And this includes most of the US social service sites.

His position is that Facebook should operate under UK laws in the US, where web site operators are treated like Common Carriers and are not responsible for the content of communications.

He doesn't expect BT or some other Telco to be responsible for communications, so why should companies in other jurisdictions?

[Stevie]

Bah!

"the only organisation which could have prevented the attack was one such internet-media giant"

When an intelligence organization makes this sort of astounding claim, one must worry on a number of levels, not the least of them being the concern over the culture of sanctioned electronic knicker-sniffing that seems to have replaced that of actual intelligence work in the post wuhwuhwuh world.

You want to spy on Facebook, that's fine by me, but you should do it the traditional way - illegally and shamefacedly.