Bulk interception is NOT mass surveillance, says parliamentary committee Parliament's intelligence committee report into security and privacy has concluded GCHQ's bulk interception of net traffic is not mass surveillance, and so permissible. However, it also called for new umbrella laws to regulate the actives of spy agencies and provide greater transparency. The Intelligence and Security …
You are making the classic mistake, and falling into their weasel word trap :-).
The security services try to distinguish between surveillance & collection, you used the phrase "mass surveillance" and they will claim they are not doing that, so where's the issue? Of course the issue is we are not happy with their "mas collection".
If you ban their "mass collection", how do they then get the data they need to perform their duty "which is to observing selected people's actions and communications". I think one of the issues the security services have is bad people will try and hide there actions and communications and the only way to find them is mass collection of data and filter this in a effort to identify only data from identified bad people.
@William 10
> If you ban their "mass collection", how do they then get the data they need to perform their duty "which is to observing selected people's actions and communications".
They can observe selected people using time-honoured techniques: by bugging their phones, their computers and watching their houses. Modern technology means that none of these activities requires a 'spy' to sit in a car across the street for hours on end any more. And more to the point: modern technology means that none of these activities requires a vast, information slurping infrastructure that spans the globe, with everyone's communications being shared amongst the 5 eyes.
"They can observe selected people using time-honoured techniques: by bugging their phones, their computers and watching their houses. Modern technology means that none of these activities requires a 'spy' to sit in a car across the street for hours on end any more. And more to the point: modern technology means that none of these activities requires a vast, information slurping infrastructure that spans the globe, with everyone's communications being shared amongst the 5 eyes."
True.
But that would require judgement of who is a real threat.
They prefer the view of Comrade Stalin "Better a 100 innocent men to to prison than one guilty man goes free."
> The security services try to distinguish between surveillance & collection.
That's fine ... until they look at what they've collected. In that moment, collection and surveillance become one and the same. Did they mention that?
OTOH, if they don't look at what they've collected, they shouldn't waste resources collecting it in the first place. And if they're collecting stuff unnecessarily, they should have their budgets cut (like everyone else).
But anyway, who believes what they say now?
"GCHQ’s systems operate on a very small percentage of the bearers that make up the internet."
Right, more misdirection and sophistry..., I'm guessing that this "very small percentage of bearers" also just happens to carry most of the UK traffic (e.g. just targetting LINX gives access to the bulk of the traffic for the users of over 500 ISPs). Why waste time with the numerous minnows that carry a tiny fraction of the traffic, when a handful of bigger fish give you access to almost everything in the UK?
(And even if every UK ISP were being targetted directly, this would still be a "small percentage of the bearers that make up the [global] internet".)
If the committee actually understands this, then they are being duplicitous, if they don't, then they are incompetent. Neither is acceptable.
Mass collection is not mass surveillance and just saying the two are the same won't cause the government or the courts to believe they are.
I have said before that it's no good complaining about mass surveillance if we want to stop mass collection; the government will otherwise simply continue to say they don't do mass surveillance while continuing mass collection.
"I have said before that it's no good complaining about mass surveillance if we want to stop mass collection; the government will otherwise simply continue to say they don't do mass surveillance while continuing mass collection."
Exactly
And while protestors continue to ignore this subtle (but critical) point the data fetishists can continue to indulge their unhealthy obsession with everyone's information
But when you complain about mass collection, it turns out that they don't do mass collection; but rather "broad-target threat scanning", "situational awareness elevation", or "metadata filtering". Because "It only counts as collection if we store it on archival media; this (meta)data is only stored on SSD's, which are not archival." - The tape backups are part of a different process, and are not used to look at historical data at all (Unless someone thinks their SO's 'old college friend' may have been a bit more).
Hazel Blears said that it's not mass surveillance because the Security Services do not have the ability to monitor everyone's e-mails, web traffic, tweets and so on.
What she did *NOT* say is whether they *would like* to be able to do this and have it on their wish-lists for when the technology improves so that they can!
She also displayed her fine committees understanding of the issue (while laughing almost constantly throughout and generally making light of the situation) by explaining in a condescending way to those worrying that the agencies were slurping all of our data, that:
"the internet consists of over 100,000 fibre optic cables and the agencies can only access a few of those".
Well colour me reassured and relieved.
It beggars belief that these ill educated (at least in IT) people are making decisions about all of our lives.
When the phrase 'sleepwalking into dictatorship' is used, Blears is a really cracking example of how it comes to pass. She has far too much power (frankly anything beyond deciding which soap to use in the Parliamentary toilets would be too much) wedded to an almost total dearth of understanding of the workings of the subjects on which she so confidently pronounces. And while she's an especially fine example, parliament is stocked to the nines with a whole load more of ignorant, egotistical muppets.
Not a huge surprise the police, security services and businesses simply run rings round them all and basically do what they want without let or hindrance.
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Or a slightly more modern interpretation (heavily influenced by the original): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKL_I4pJs84
Capt. John Sheridan: "And, uh, when exactly did all this happen?"
Julie Musante: "When we rewrote the dictionary. "
"GCHQ is not collecting or reading everyone’s emails: it does not have the legal authority, the resources, or the technical capability to do so"
Probably not, maybe not and hahahaha, yeah right. If they can intercept the email package enough to store the metadata they can store the rest of it too, and unless you're using PGP on your emails that means they can read them.
In fairness they probably *aren't* reading them all, but from what this committee says (and other similar ones have said), they don't consider automated scans in place of humans to be "reading". While still fitting to most of this, GCHQ could scan all emails, find any with red flags and then only store those ones until they get a warrant to read them. After all, it's now an investigation into the person who sent them, so they have grounds to get a warrant and to store it.
Right, the red flag being that it's not the 538925th copy of some spam mail. This way they can easily claim to not store most of the email traffic. Surely, advanced algorithms can be used to filter out other trivial dross ("I'll be late tonight, darling" and similar) and they'll be left with the truly dangerous original thought crimes.
The committee established that "bulk interception cannot be used to search for and examine the communications of an individual in the UK unless GCHQ first obtains a specific authorisation naming that individual, signed by a Secretary of State".
Unless one of our Special Relationship® partners happens to do the bulk interception/collection on our behalf.
An independant report finds that all politicians are sincere, hard working philanthropists.
An undercover investigation reveals that the Pope is really a Level 8 Scientologist.
And Jordan publishes her PhD. thesis on 'Assessing the holistic effect of radical feminism on men's perception of relationships in the modern paradigm'...
The committee established that "bulk interception cannot be used to search for and examine the communications of an individual in the UK unless GCHQ first obtains a specific authorisation naming that individual, signed by a Secretary of State".
Summarized with "yes we can do that if the right person pushes the right buttons but trust us!".
Thereby misunderstanding the majority of the resistance against this mechanism: that its presence becomes already the abomination because only a slight change in legislation or national emergency level could easily change this "signed" procedure. The only proper protection against this is then by not having the infrastructure at all as it will take a lot of time building one from scratch. It's the same with nuclear weapons as there's only way to make sure one doesn't end up using them in ways that will extract a price too big to pay.for all.
"This new legal framework should be based on "explicit avowed capabilities", together with the authorisation procedures, privacy constraints, transparency requirements, targeting criteria, sharing arrangements, oversight, and other safeguards that apply to the use of those capabilities."
Yes, and and prior to Snowden we were told that mass surveillance and interception was not actually happening and where it was required, that any requirement for it was actually covered by a legal framework. Except it was happening, and it wasn't covered by anything other than a tangled web of supposed regulations, with none of them tested legally.
Overall, the problem here is that the public no longer believes anything these people say. Last I heard it was government by democracy, not dictatorship. Has it changed?
"Has it changed?"
My Mum always put the moment the switch flipped as that day in the late 90's when the Chinese president turned up and, immediately before he arrived to visit Blair, the police parked three vans in a position to obscure a bunch of 'Free Tibet' protesters from his sight.
The crap we get now is Blairs real legacy, including the mindset of the apologists that have followed in his wake.
Parliament's intelligence committee report into security and privacy has concluded GCHQ's bulk interception of net traffic is not mass surveillance, and so permissible.
Also, In other news...
We're not at war with Eurasia, we're at war with Eastasia, We've always been at war with Eastasia.
War is Peace
Ignorance is Bliss
That last one is the most important...
Clearly, the members of your "parliamentary committee" are graduates of the Antonin Scalia Governmental School of Semantic and Logical Dissonance. Fuckwits!
Do people really think their email is being read? Let's take a conservative estimate of 40M active email accounts in the country. You could put 10 thousand spooks in a huge room and they'd still each have to read 4000 people's email every day. The idea just doesn't make any sense at all. More likely, the only way to get the 0.0001% of emails you want is to catch everything and then discard the majority long before it reaches anything human. Not so different to real policing - coppers walk around with their eyes open whether a crime is in progress or not.
Sorry,
It is different. Coppers don't walk around watching everybody and everything with a nearly infallible, digital storage medium and memory which they can then use to:
1) Correlate patterns (who you see, who you speak to, what you read, where you shop, what you buy, what you write in emails, facebook, sms etc).
2) Drag that information up years later to build a case against you.
3) Perhaps modify the data to build up a case against you, once everyone has accepted 2).
4) Give that data to anyone with enough clout or money who can then use it against you.
It's hard to imagine we might all one day be living in a police state with no civil rights (some think we do already) where this nightmare becomes reality. But unbridled. unregulated information gathering and control is the first step towards that nightmare.
We must never let that happen.
Don't forget that once a power base gets in that doesn't like you, they can access all that data and those tools. Imagine what a Stalin or Hitler would have done with that kind of power. Look what they managed to do without it. Then tell me you still feel comfortable with that possibility.
These "elected" idiots who think we need more bulk/mass collection/surveillance need to be shown the door. They are not fit to be running a democratic state. These are evil people who either do not understand the consequences of their decisions or don't care. Vote them out, now, before it is too late.
The problem is that, in order to make it palatable, they have built the apparatus of mass surveillance, under the guise of counter-terrorism. However, other than mere hearsay, no proof has been provided that such apparatus has prevented a single terrorist incident.
Therefore, the logical conclusions we might draw are:
1 - The apparatus is ineffective and a waste of taxpayer's money
2 - The primary function of the apparatus is not the prevention of terrorism
Is it intelligent of Security and Secret Intelligence Services to allow and assist politicians and Parliamentarians in the scam of running the country and phorming future policies which fail expensively?
Methinks such is a folly for fools to follow and useless tools to maintain and sustain.
What say y’all?
[NB … let it be known that there be no padlockable red North Face bags here.]
It may be folly but it keeps the Security and Secret Intelligence Services gainfully employed and also keeps their bosses in power. However, in the timescale of civilizations, it's a drop in the bucket and they too shall pass into the pages of history. What will come after is a different question that many will not be prepared for the answer. I believe "this won't end well" is a good answer.
@YAAC; "It also encourages ordinary people to think..."
...about the possible consequences of saying this or that, to censor themselves, and to generally conform and toe the "party line". The holy grail of a totalitarian state.
"It's a good thing," you say?
Is Hansard mass surveillance of MPs activities?
Or is it just bulk interception of what they spake in t'ouse while in formal capacity?
(this isn't going as I thought it would - the point I am trying to make is that bulk interception is not mass surveillance but it does have potential to be both surveillance and bulk surveillance and targetted surveillance (did I tell you I can't count?))
The statements on Page 25 give the game away. ISTM that 'haystack' sources can not be effectively searched for 'needles' unless he entire 'haystack' is collected and examained. If you ignore any part of the 'haystack' you run the risk of missing all the 'needles'.
Is this initial 'sifting' not effectively mass surveillance?
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