GCHQ mass spying will 'cost lives in Britain,' warns ex-NSA tech chief

Plans by the UK's Conservative government to legitimize the mass surveillance of Brits won't work, and will cause lives to be lost to terrorism. That's the view of a former senior US National Security Agency (NSA) staffer, who will sound off on blanket snooping at a parliamentary hearing this afternoon (Wednesday). William …

[Mark 85]

He's right... and fighting a losing battle.

I applaud his bravery in the face of what has happened to him and will continue to happen. I'm also surprised that he hasn't been "disappeared" yet. Not only is he speaking out about what many rational people have said but he's doing it very publicly and getting the governments to at least listen to him. I'd like to think that those in in power would see the wisdom of his words but it's probably on the same level of wanting to see a unicorn also.

Those that care about security, know he's right about targeting and massive slurping. Those not paying attention and thinking this through will cause the citizens to pay the price.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: He's right... and fighting a losing battle.

I'm also surprised that he hasn't been "disappeared" yet.

Too conspicuous. & too late.

Must nip these things in the bud:

Need more data, sooner.

[james 68]

Re: He's right... and fighting a losing battle.

Unfortunately there is a huge difference between the governments agreeing to be in the same room as him, and the governments actually listening to him.

What is much more likely is that they will send some low level peons to be in the same room as him for 20 minutes so that they can later say "Hey, look at us, we listened to ALL the viable concerns before steamrolling in a new surveillance society."

[JohnMurray]

Re: He's right... and fighting a losing battle.

You're assuming that the gov is even interested in "terrorists".

Terror[ists] are hardly much of a risk to a government, worrying about an uprising by their own population is much more likely to be central to their endeavors.

And you don't actually know they're indiscriminately slurping all data, you're just assuming it.

Of course, governments never lie....

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: He's right... and fighting a losing battle.

Terror[ists] are hardly much of a risk to a government,

Very true, barring states already teetering on the edge of collapse.

worrying about an uprising by their own population is much more likely to be central to their endeavors.

Well, yes, for weaker governments. In the developed world, they're more likely to be worried about opportunities to make money, to make themselves look good to the uncritical majority of the populace, and to accrue power for its own sake.

At some point, more surveillance becomes its own justification. I dare say we've already passed that point in the US and UK.

[Fraggle850]

Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

What's the betting they'll ignore him? That seems to be the MO, just ask professor David Nutt.

[Thought About IT]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

The power that mass surveillance gives to the spooks and select members of the government makes it highly unlikely that they will take any notice of any evidence of its ineffectiveness against terrorists.

[Dan 55]

FTFY

The power that mass surveillance gives to the spooks over select members of the government...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

The feeling of power

FTFY

If you actually read what he's saying the power to actually achieve anything is being lost because the analysts are burying themselves in crap.

[werdsmith]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

If you want to find a needle in a hay stack, you don't send in a person to sift through the hay with their hands. You just move all the hay past a powerful electromagnet. So GCHQ builds their equivalent magnet for the digital needle, all the bad boys need to do is change to using carbon fibre needles.

Maybe Bletchley Park in WW2 that used listening stations to intercept and record every piece of morse traffic that could be heard on RF is the example they are going by. But what GCHQ and politicians are seeking to legitimise is probably something that they have most been quietly doing anyway, so the real proof of the idea will be in what they've managed to find already. But they won't be able to tell anyone if they have.

[Roo]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

"But what GCHQ and politicians are seeking to legitimise is probably something that they have most been quietly doing anyway, so the real proof of the idea will be in what they've managed to find already."

Yup...

"But they won't be able to tell anyone if they have."

So they say - but in practice there is absolutely nothing but their own hidden motives stopping them from telling folks what they're up to. Essentially the spooks & celebutard politicians are saying "We need mass surveillance, but we can't have any oversight or take any action on the data we gather because it'll tip people off to what we're up to.", which begs the question "If they can't use the data for their stated purposes, why are they collecting it in the first place ?".

Experience has taught me that when people are not presenting a rational case, they don't have a rational case. The reason why they don't have a rational case is that they are either stupid, or hiding something. In this particular case it's clear the intent is to hide their activity and their motives because quite clearly their actions aren't matching up with their stated intent at the moment.

[channel extended]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

I would rather set the haystack on fire. After it burns down the needle is simple to find.

This means collect everything and after the attack find your needle in the data. Save lives, no. Ruin lives and reputations through data leaks, yes. Face it if they knew what they were doing they never would have been put in charge

[Mark 85]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

I think a better analogy than a needle in a haystack is a chunk of chocolate in a septic tank (or treatment plant). Too many folks would think the solution is a bigger magnet. The reality is the good info is indistinguishable from the noise unless you sample every bit.

[Graham Marsden]

@werdsmith - Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

> If you want to find a needle in a hay stack, you don't send in a person to sift through the hay with their hands. You just move all the hay past a powerful electromagnet.

But that assumes that a) there *is* a needle in the haystack and b) you don't have *so many* haystacks that you can actually search all of them.

There's also the small matter of the several attacks over recent years which have been by people who have been known to the Intelligence Services, yet have still been able to perpetrate their attacks...

[Munzly The Hermit]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

It is well known that governments always prepare for the previous war, so are always unprepared for the next.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

The feeling of power

FTFY

If you actually read what he's saying the power to actually achieve anything is being lost because the analysts are burying themselves in crap.

It's a different sort of power.

Surveillance will continue to bring the privileged the power to be voyeurs, the power to spy on their opponents, and so forth. Mass surveillance is largely a cover for that, and an excuse for playing around with lots of resources (and a way to hide even less savory activities in those giant budgets, of course).

Beyond that, more surveillance is a kind of Baudrillardian good for the spooks: it doesn't matter whether they're getting real insights or just some simulacrum, because their reward is the sensation of knowledge, not knowledge itself. It assuages the omnipresent dread felt by intelligence organizations in an era of information overproduction, the awareness that it's impossible to keep up. They're institutionally addicted to surveillance.

[Arctic fox]

@ Thought About IT "The power that mass surveillance gives to the spooks"

I believe that the point that the gentleman is making (if I have not misunderstood what he has said) is that it does not, in practice, give them the power that they dream of. In other words indiscriminate mass surveilence does not in fact achieve what they believe it will achieve. IE. They are destroying the temple instead of saving it. What he is saying is that their strategy is stupid and counterproductive. Icon? My reaction to that they, in reality, appear to be intent on demonstrating that it is an almost biblical truth.

[Marshalltown]

Re: The power that mass surveillance gives...

Yet, you have to wonder, just what power that would be. It seems far more likely to result in raised taxes and maybe open a few more government jobs than anything else. Governments consistently tend to regard their own citizens as the biggest threats. The citizenry of course is what the government is exercising power over, the only serious source of funding (and affirmation of status - after all, what goes through a taxman's heart at the end of the day, if he hasn't made someone's life at least a bit more miserable).

[Munzly The Hermit]

Re: The power that mass surveillance gives...

What happened to the concept that the government were the servants of the people? They are there to protect not repress!

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

To be perfectly honest, I don't think the spooks themselves want this mass surveillance either. From their perspective, this is also a lose-lose prospect.

Look at this from the spooks' point of view for a while. They get their mass surveillance law, and within days they get the power and ability to round up trolls, loud-mouthed blowhards, keyboard warriors and assorted noisy plonkers by the dozen (and one look at any unmoderated forum will show up these sorts of people by the thousand). The problem here is that loud trolling isn't actually much of a crime, save against the rules of grammar and politeness. People are rarely physically harmed by words on an internet forum.

Even deluded Walter Mitty types rarely do all that much harm. The likes of the Baron of Castleshortt are harmless nitwits, who provide military forums with much amusement debunking their exaggerated claims, but who are not actually anyone's problem.

Actual terrorists, on the other hand, tend not to make a great deal of noise. They especially won't make much noise after Mr Rehman and his wife both got life sentences for terrorism-related offences, having shot their mouths off on Twitter.

No, what is a lot more likely to happen is that the security services will get swamped with data, fail to spot several serious plots which either go to fruition or are picked up on by the police and stopped, and then the heads of the security services will be forced to resign for incompetence. A few times round the block on that one, and the security services will end up with mass surveillance data that they either don't use, or pay only the most cursory attention to unless a target is clear. In other words, the government legislates to piss a huge amount of money up the wall before tacitly admitting that it was all a waste of time and the old tried & trusted security methods were a lot more useful.

[Wommit]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

@Dr. Dan

Didn't you know that the tinterwebbies are a vast and dangerous place? Just ask Melody, poor soul, she's received PTSD from twitter. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2605888/Woman-claims-PTSD-Twitter-cyberstalking-says-bit-war-veterans.html

[werdsmith]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

@wommit

"Didn't you know that the tinterwebbies are a vast and dangerous place? Just ask Melody, poor soul, she's received PTSD from twitter. "

PTSD?

If she had received an STD from Twitter I would be more impressed.

[Roland6]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

To be perfectly honest, I don't think the spooks themselves want this mass surveillance either. From their perspective, this is also a lose-lose prospect.

This can be confirmed in the way the IPB has been framed, namely, the government want "communication records" retained for a period of time by the communication service providers (CSPs) so that if the spooks and other agencies decide someone is of interest they can go and take look at what they've been doing over the last few months.

We see this in the way CCTV is used: the output from all camera's is recorded and held for a month or so by the operators, if during this time the police want to investigate an incident they can go and browse through the recordings. Obviously, as we've seen with ANPR, if you consolidate the records from individual cameras into a central database (for whatever reason) then people will want to make use of the opportunities such a repository presents.

However, whilst there are things in the IPB that are concerning for various reasons, we do need to watch out for omissions and/or lack of detail and precision because these will be filled in later through the use of Statutory Instruments, which get practically zero Parliamentary scrutiny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

Of course he'll be ignored.

To do anything else would require a government minister, SPAD or senior civil servant (sorry can't remember who uttered the nonsense) to admit their initial uninformed and stupid assessment of the proposal was wrong.

I've never known a government that would rather admit it is wrong than just ploughing on no matter the damage that will be done.

The pointing out of mistakes is for the next government not the current one.

[hplasm]

Looking for Terrorists?

Check your Government.

[The Dude]

Re: Looking for Terrorists?

Terrorism: An ideology positing that the optimum method of governing any population is to frighten and terrorize the population into submission and obedience.

Sound like anyone you know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another motivation?

Mass data collection has nothing to do with crime detection. But it serves the purposes of economic espionage perfectly.

Economic espionage, and the elite few who are granted access to the product of that espionage for self-enrichment, is the root cause of the modern mass surveillance problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

It never was about terrorists, it was always about control of the proles and to locate any of them that dare to have independent thought. Spy on them and keep them happy with pornography and alcohol.

Oppression is freedom.

[Anonymous Coward]

...keep them blissfully pacified and subjugated with invariably illegal "extreme" pornography and alcohol.

Sober up long enough to have a badthink and the thought police will duly be smashing their way into your home to seize your electronics and uncover the shocking proof of your naughty nature. You'll be quietly and efficiently pariahed into oblivion before you can even say fascism. You scumbag. People like you make me sick.

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Solicitor-astonished-client-s-porn-charges/story-13281946-detail/story.html

http://mylesjackman.com/index.php/my-blog/93-blog-1

etc... etc...

[Chris King]

"Spy on them and keep them happy with pornography and alcohol."

Except they're looking to filter porn, and they're about to tell us to cut back on the falling-down juice too.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Except they're looking to filter porn...

Oh dear! Shirley you've realised the "porn" filters are just a ruse to get the infrastructure and acceptance in place before your benevolent political masters slowly begin "protecting" you from other dangerous types of dangerous thoughtcrime?

[John Smith 19]

So that's what it takes to get a senior ex spook to tell the truth.

Take their security clearance and kill their consultancy business.

Useful to know.

I rather doubt we'd be hearing from him if this didn't happen first though.

As for lawyers...

No lawyer wants to learn about technology. It would hinder their ability to spout such utter bu***hit with a straight face.

[SolidSquid]

Re: So that's what it takes to get a senior ex spook to tell the truth.

It's not an ethics violation if you repeat lies someone told to you, only if you lie yourself. Carefully crafted ignorance can be a very valuable asset for a lawyer in the right fields

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

The man is absolutely right!

As I tell my students over and over again: adding hay doesn't make finding needles any easier. Getting a big magnet by contrast, does. We can only hope the powers that be listen, but I am not holding my breath.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

Burn all the hay, sweep the ash with a giant magnet. Not sure what that analogy translates to in the real world.

[SolidSquid]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

Better data parsing to make extracting the important information easier basically. Which is something they still haven't managed to with the *existing* data loads, so I don't know how they expect to manage it with larger ones

[Kernel]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

"Burn all the hay, sweep the ash with a giant magnet. Not sure what that analogy translates to in the real world."

I am not a metallurgist, but I suspect that a needle is one of those tools that once exposed to a haystack sized fire is no longer particularly fit for purpose.

A bit like the current level of spook agency performance with regard to terror attacks really, so it is quite an appropriate analogy in this case.

[Blofeld's Cat]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

" ... adding hay doesn't make finding needles any easier ... "

Presumably they work on the principle that they will scoop up a few more needles with the vast extra quantity of hay. That way they can claim they are doing something when they stumble across a needle.

I suspect that the needle to hay ratio remains diminishing small, no matter how much hay you collect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

Scan more haystacks, find other needles.

[Charles 9]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

Plus the needles are nonferrous with low melting points, so you can't use magnets or fire.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

Given the increasing public disquiet at mass snooping, it won't be long before the needles are indistinguishable from the straw. That, surely, is the worst aspect of this policy direction -- it creates far more dissent and mistrust than it uncovers.

[Voland's right hand]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

While he is right about the approach proposed in the bill, his alternative is something which is available to superpowers only.

Only USA, China, Russia and Japan have native access to social network and search data. To be more exact: F***book, LinkedIn, Tw*tter, picture sharing and dating sites for USA (as well as the zombie corpses of bygones), Baidu + Ali Baba for China and VK + Yandex for Russia. Japan while not a superpower has had the data for most usual suspects locally for a number of historic reasons.

Smaller countries have no access to such data and can only infer social network relationships out of traffic flow metadata.

So, in fact, if UK is to follow his advice to the letter it has to collect all traffic metadata (not the data, it is irrelevant), run it through a number cruncher the size of the one used by NSA and infer and reconstruct these relationships. Note - I am not advocating this, I am simply analyzing what does it take to implement his proposals.

The other alternative is to do a Russian and force data location in-country which is not feasible as long as UK remains in the Eu. Then you can apply his suggested approach "as is". Though that is least likely to work if the suspects will use an off-shore network which could not care less about the local law.

So while his arguments make sense, they will end up being shot down in the hearings. You need to come up with better arguments which besides technical reasoning also rely on law and fundamental rights (not that we have those in the UK anyway - parliament is sovereign and shall not be bound).

[Otto is a bear.]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

If you need to find a needle in a haystack, you need to look, no matter how big the haystack is, or how many needles and haystacks there are. Not looking won't find the needle.

I doubt the public at large would accept the excuse "It's just too big, so we didn't bother" when things go wrong.

You can never find all the needles, and will always miss some, and there will always be consequences when you miss one. If you fail to look, then the consequences will be much greater. The risk of being caught will deter some, and if there is no risk of being caught, well.......

[amanfromMars 1]

Be Careful What you Wish For when Anything is Possible, and Eminently Probable Imminently

The risk of being caught will deter some, and if there is no risk of being caught, well....... ... Otto is a bear

Well, Otto ....... ideally all being blissful is a Pleasant ComputedD State/Place/Secured IntelAIgent Space would be quite perfect enough to be strangely engaging ..... and something of a virtualised bear marketing space, too, Amigo.

[phuzz]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

To stretch this already pretty broken metaphor a bit further, with more hay, you're going to increase the number of false needles (false positives) that you pick up with your magnet. Perhaps we could say they were bits of metal that were already on the floor of the barn, or that fell of the hay collecting machinery. Either way, they're not the needle you're looking for, but you still have to spend as much time removing them from the big magnet as if they were.

[Charles 9]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

But at the same time, to stretch the metaphor, even further, there are highly explosive needles in with the bunch, and if one of them slips through and then blows up, there's going to be an ungodly amount of finger-pointing straight at you for not spotting it in time, even though there's really no practical way to separate them out before they go off, so The State is kinda tasked with a nigh-impossible task by the people, yet when (not if) things go boom, they get the blame regardless.

[Danny 2]

Re: The man is absolutely right!

I did once try to look for needles in a field after something went boom.

When the Lockerbie disaster happened the police warned people away from just one section of countryside because the flight was seemingly carrying a cargo of needles, the warning being that people could accidentally stand on them and hurt themselves (no mention of the still flaming wreckage). Needles are a low-value item never normally transported by air, and there was some suggestions by relatively sane people that they were "flechettes" and part of awful munitions that were being secretly transported and may have caused the explosion.

One easy way to test this theory would be to find either a needle or a flechette in the fields using a metal detector, so I consulted with a 'detectorist' I chanced upon on scanning a beach, and tried to gain access to the area. I was unsuccessful, partly I think due to state action.

On a differing related subject, I was aware that Depleted Uranium was regularly used as ballast on many large aircraft, so when 911 occurred I phoned the airlines to ask if it had been present on the New York flights, as this would have a serious impact on the residents and first responders health. I got no reply but a swift visit from a lost american tourist, in a town where no american tourists had been lost before or since. And now the NY first responders are all dying of cancer while their medical support is a political football as highlighted by Jon Stewart.

[frank ly]

Straws in the wind

"A few months later Binney was arrested at gunpoint by the FBI while in the shower, and other NSA staff who had raised similar questions were also collared by the Feds."

Punishment arrests. This shows how it will go in the UK as things 'progress'. (Should I be posting as AC via a Tor browser?)

[Teiwaz]

Re: Straws in the wind

""A few months later Binney was arrested at gunpoint by the FBI while in the shower, and other NSA staff who had raised similar questions were also collared by the Feds.""

Clearly a form of Terrorism. I know in the US, arrests often have to happen at gunpoint because of the 2nd amendment, but in the shower? (Do they have waterproof guns?, gun dish next to the soap dish?)

[Dan 55]

Re: Straws in the wind

Was he disabled at the time? If so, it adds even more class to the proceedings.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Straws in the wind

AC via Tor browser from public wifi spot with one-time generated account using a burner phone bought with cash. Got to be thorough with these things after all

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Straws in the wind

..public wifi..

Don't forget to randomise that MAC on boot and disable IP6

[Charles 9]

Re: Straws in the wind

If you're that paranoid, don't forget to check all your chips...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Straws in the wind

What makes you think that this is not the norm today?

Piss off Whitehall sufficiently and they will make your life interesting (to say the least).

[Chris G]

Terrorists?

I don't think they will pay him much attention because terrorist are not the only reason the government wants RIPA, what he suggests is far less unwieldy although still a massive amount of data. The main thing as far as terror and crime fighting is that it allows more resources to scrutinise a more likey source of useful intel.

Dragnet fishing just means you scrape up everything and then have to spend a great deal of energy looking for the smallest sprat.

I think the government should rename it 'Grim' RIPA as it will be the death of privacy in Britain.

[P. Lee]

Re: Terrorists?

> terrorist are not the only reason the government wants RIPA

Terrorists don't harm the government at all. In fact, they are likely to help them, by uniting the populace behind them.

Expense scandals, on the other hand, that terrorises governments. Exposing illegal mass surveillance programs, that terrorises governments.

That is what cannot be allowed.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Terrorists?

If a few extra terrorists deaths is what it takes to protect our government from expense account investigating journalists, environmentalists, unions and other clear and present threats to their seats then we have to take that risk.

[Anonymous Coward]

Write it down and ignore it!

[Anonymous Coward]

NO! NO! NO!... It *IS* because terrorism. Honest.

What did you think would happen after you insisted we spent ten years shocking and aweing those raghead cities into rubble in your name? Didn't you realize the survivors would be upset? Of course they're angry.

You're lucky you've got us to protect you.

Don't forget to vote now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, all they need to do is watch BBC News to spot the terrorists

They can't even manage to do that

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/12081552/new-jihadi-john-Siddhartha-Dhar-isil-terrorist.html

[kmac499]

The Politicians Imperative..

The MPs making up any incumbent government repeatedly recite the mantra "The first job of government is security" Presumably they mean to protect us from being shot or bombed, but having promised to protect us, If we were to be regularly shot or bombed they would be shown to be completely impotent.

Which is why they have increased spending more on the terrorist defences than flood defences.

As with so many other 'difficult' decisions the (un)concious bias of a politician will include a large dose of self preservation over evidence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The Politicians Imperative..

The MPs making up any incumbent government repeatedly recite the mantra "The first job of government is security"

Don't forget this has the support of both Cameron's NuLabourTory government, and the shambolic zomby party that leads Her Majesty's Opposition.

But your point that government claim they want to protect us is wholly correct. So no matter whether the threat is paedophiles, drugs, terrorism, climate change, the Russian bogeyman, luckily our politicians have all the answers (despite being provably wrong on almost everything else that they say, do or touch).

[Seajay#]

Right answer, wrong reasons

I don't want all our internet connection records collected either but there is nothing more annoying than someone agreeing with you badly.

If he thinks he can get good surveillence data by using "rules to smartly select data from the tens of terabytes flowing by," then clearly you could get the exact same data by collecting everything then applying the rules retrospectively. With the added bonuses that you can apply those smart rules to historic traffic and that retrospective filters run in your super-dooper data centre can be much more sophisticated than ones which you want the ISPs to run for you in their networking kit.

It can't possibly be the case that mass spying will cost lives because it can give you the exact same data (or better) as his solution. Possibly what he means is that the availability of the data encourages fishing expeditions which can distract analysts from more productive work. That may or may not be true, I suspect that no-one on here has access to the stats which could tell us the answer. Even if it is true that is surely best solved by improving processes at GCHQ, and by empirically testing which forms of analysis are most productive.

The reason we shouldn't collect all those records is because we think that privacy is a thing worth having. Nonsense like his distracts from that core argument and provides a nice straw man for the pro-surveillence community to knock down.

[Nigel Whitfield.]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

I think the availability of the data may encourage the mindset that "if only we look hard enough, we'll find something here to stop XYZ."

The security services - and their masters - will be so enamoured of their latest, very expensive toy, that it will consumer resources, and there will be less for proper intelligence, whether that's sifting targeted data, or actual on-the-ground work, which is likely to be far more useful.

The most successful (ie in terms of terror and deaths caused) terrorist group we've ever seen in the UK operated for about 30 years, and managed in that time to murder a sitting MP in the HoC car park, and a member of the royal family. They twice managed to come close to murdering a Prime Minister.

And they did all that without the internet or even widespread availability of mobile phones.

[Charles 9]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

Then again, the plods were similarly handicapped. Plus, IIRC, the opposition had a lot of sympathizers because they had a political grudge. When they figured out a way to resolve the political conflict, the organization lost most of its mission, thus why you don't hear from them these days.

Al Queda had the advantage that they controlled a sovereign state that effectively gave them a safe haven. Attacking them would mean an act of war that only an atrocity like 9/11 could justify.

But what happens when you're up against a nihilist organization whose justification for total war is your mere existence?

[Nigel Whitfield.]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

Yes, the plods were indeed similarly handicapped. But the point is, surely, that for all the talk about how important it is that we have ever more surveillance, people seem to have forgotten that the vast majority of the terrorist attacks in the UK (and Europe) have, historically, been carried out in a pretty low-tech manner.

Even in Paris last year, it was noted that unencrypted SMS was used, not things like WhatsApp.

It would be quite possible for those planning terror to go back to secret words whispered in pubs, notes carried by small kids on bikes, small ads in a newspaper, or whatever other ways they used to do these things.

Obsession about the electronic surveillance - and throwing all the money at it - runs the risk of leaving none for the real human intelligence that will be needed to thwart those who aren't stupid enough to ask on Twitter where they should put their bombs.

[Danny 2]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

True, but they did have funding from the US, partly raised by Republican Congressman Peter King.

[amanfromMars 1]

Immaculate AI Conception ...... urVirtual Confection for Vorsprünge durch Technik

Can you imagine how far they have progressed with free access and expert practice in all of todays made readily available communications toys. Nigel.

Do you think now they be a Quantified Quantum Force ....... Free Roaming Organisation with EMPowering Design on Bigger Beta Picture Controls for Primed Timely Presentation in/at Prime Times and in MainStream Media.

And would/could that be akin to a novel type of Divine Roman Intervention?

[Seajay#]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

Nigel,

You're right to say

"I think the availability of the data may encourage the mindset that "if only we look hard enough, we'll find something here to stop XYZ.""

but an even stronger motivator is "If something happens and it is later discovered that we had records of the perps visiting www.HowToJihad.com but didn't do anything about it, we're in trouble. Therefore, we had better look at everything we collect, even though that wasn't the original plan and isn't very effective."

That's why you need the top brass in the security services to be strong enough to say to their analysts "Just do your job the best way you can, don't worry about public opinion I'll take the flak.". Hard to find people like that, but it's possible.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

"collecting everything then applying the rules retrospectively"

I took his argument to be that the useful intelligence is not in the stuff that can be collected en masse. You get it only if you pull resources away from the mass slurp and put them into picking targets and following them more closely. If that is the case, there can be no "retrospectively" and the mass slurp costs lives because (believe it or not) the spooks' budget is finite.

[Charles 9]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

But doesn't that present a Catch-22? How do you know who to pursue if you don't have trails to follow? Especially with lone wolves who have little to no connections of any sort?

[Roland6]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

re: Needle in a haystack

I think this is where many are going wrong, they are looking for the needle (which may have properties not too dissimilar to Schrödinger's cat) rather than doing the sensible, namely: when a needle is found, try and determine who put it there and try and prevent it from happening again!

Hence, we don't need the spooks to actually concern themselves with the hay in the haystack but to monitor who is accessing the haystack; because if there is a needle in the haystack, it will eventually be discovered by making itself known.

[Charles 9]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons

But by that time it's too late because odds are the way it makes itself known is by exploding. As for trying to figure out who put it in there, odds are there will be no trail because the needle was inserted, say, by people dressed all in black that have no distinguishing features, or from below where cameras don't reach and is impractical to prevent. Or it may have been shot in from a distance: too many opportunities to do this undetected. IOW, find the needle and it barely tells you anything, and you can't figure out who put the needle there. Meanwhile, there are still loose haystacks out there that may also have explosive needles out there, which is why the plods insist on increasing the hay to search: to find the rogue needles.

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons - Lone Wolves

"Especially with lone wolves who have little to no connections of any sort?"

Lone wolves can do very little damage, and are irrelevant. They are not worth searching for, since there are too few of them, and their efficiency is small. The claim to prevent the unlikely and the ineffective (which describes all terrorism in the West, really) is the excuse for this data-collection crap, when really the only logical reason for it is to control the populace.

[Charles 9]

Re: Right answer, wrong reasons - Lone Wolves

Did Timothy McVeigh and company have any conspirators when they bombed Oklahoma City. What about Ted Kaczynski? The worst school massacre in American history was committed by a single disgruntled farmer who used his tools of the trade. A single rogue pilot can subdue his copilot and crash a jet (we have one confirmed instance and one probable).

You say lone wolves do little damage. I say their capabilities can only increase, meaning you have to pay attention to them or one day they WILL do something catastrophic, like singlehandedly bringing down a skyscraper.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already happening

Bit late for all this ... Already happening !

Remember, virtually no one believed what was really going on till Snowden leaked.

[amanfromMars 1]

Hello Brave New WWWorlds ...... I Kid U Not

Is it so/too hard to comprehend and virtualise the SMARTR Fact that valid intelligence agencies with services should be heavily into the presenting and product placement of new engaging intelligence developments which are IntelAIgently Designed to usurp and capture SMARTR hearts and minds rather than mindfully hunting for those which are mindlessly terrifying and terrorised ‽ Or possible only for a few?

El Reg (in its commentard role as a remote virtual proxy) would ask ....... Does Blighty or any Executive State Administration for that matter, [whoever/whatever they would be], experiment to lead with such AI ProgramMING ........ Mined IntelAIgent Networking Games?

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Hello Brave New WWWorlds ...... I Kid U Not

Well, the guy that owns Le Livre des Visages announced just the other day that he wants to "dabble" in AI this year. Given the potential (mis)uses that's just as scary as Cheltenham et al doing it.

[Fraggle850]

@ allthecoolshortnamesweretaken Re: Hello Brave New WWWorlds ...... I Kid U Not

I appreciate your cross-referencing Go Zuck Yerself's AI aspirations but the story to which you refer is presumably the one where he wants a home AI to pander to the needs of Zuck, his good lady and the little Zucker? Mucho AI-goodness has been hurled at Facebitch's servers for quite some time, also Google and no doubt every other valley startup with any significant amount of data. (I quite liked the dreamy/nightmare artworks churned out by iterative AI image recognition as Google's AI tried to identify objects in pictures, BTW)

AI is NOT the problem, the problem is what data government and commercial entities have that they can apply AI techniques to.

PS Nice to see amanfrommars chiming in with his usual unitelligible stream of what appears to be English but defies any attempts to parse - one day I WILL understand him and the revelations of his occult knowledge will raise my consciousness to a higher level (or the space aliens will come and take me home or whatever...)

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Hello Brave New WWWorlds ...... I Kid U Not @atcnwt

Well, the guy that owns Le Livre des Visages announced just the other day that he wants to "dabble" in AI this year. Given the potential (mis)uses that's just as scary as Cheltenham et al doing it. ..... allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Hi, allthecoolshortnamesweretaken,

Although not exactly a busy crowded Cloud Space, there be lots of supporting inter independent networking players with novel features to enlighten futures, with options to better beta steer future direction with .... well, apparently an AI Steering Committee Internetional. Quite what Cheltenham types, if they be there at all, plan to be doing in there, with anything like that, for impact in perceived real live scenarios/media hosted tales, is an altogether quite different question to be asked, if they would be doing it to maintain and retain both national and international security with novel bundling of distressing securities/bonded junk.

That ambitious privacy toolset aside, Chaum is also building into PrivaTegrity another feature that’s sure to be far more controversial: a carefully controlled backdoor that allows anyone doing something “generally recognized as evil” to have their anonymity and privacy stripped altogether. ....http://www.wired.com/2016/01/david-chaum-father-of-online-anonymity-plan-to-end-the-crypto-wars/

[chivo243]

Sums it up, no BS

In other words, crucial intelligence will be lost in the noise...

There aren't enough trustworthy people to trawl through the amount of data collected. It's only after someone has raised a flag for some reason that their data will get singled out, and then it's probably too late.

[Captain DaFt]

Re: Sums it up, no BS

"There aren't enough trustworthy people to trawl through the amount of data collected. It's only after someone has raised a flag for some reason that their data will get singled out"

And promptly ignored. The French attack, the Boston Bombings, etc, etc. Someone always seems to have spotted and warned about the perps before hand, but were promptly ignored.

Why? Well the cynical might say that stopping an attack just gets spooks an "Atta boy! Job well done", while a successful attack causes panic and gets spooks more license, power, and funding.

[Eclectic Man]

Privay versus Safety?

Although the published first priority of government is the protection of 'the people', every government's real priority is to remain in power for as long as possible. (c.f. Robert Mugabe, Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair etc.)

The bad publicity attending any terrorist killing in the UK, is what they are trying to avoid, and to be seen to taking every possible measure to prevent terrorist activity (short of actually having a humane and equitable foreign policy, of course). Hence the bulk collection of data, so that the PM, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Met Police Chief Commissioner of the day can honestly say:

"We did everything we could to prevent the recent outrage, but, unfortunately, although in retrospect we had the data indicating that these people were a risk, the system was too short-staffed / overwhelmed to catch this one, but hey, we did stop 27.759 other atrocities which you never heard of because the trials were held in secret and we can't talk about them."

Politicians can only publically accept zero fatality rates for terrorist incidents on their home territory, so they want to be seen to be doing everything possible (even if with a little thought it is counter-productive), because DC will not stand up at the Tory Party conference and say :

"We must balance public safety with public privacy. I am happy to accept that on average 3.5 people will be killed in terrorist incidents in the UK in the next 5 years because the benefit to society of the government not keeping bulk data on everyone's use of the Internet means that criminals will have greater difficulty in accessing that data thereby resulting in a lower crime rate and actually probably saving 35 lives over the same period."*

(*I have no idea of the relevant statistics, I made up the numbers as a 10 to 1 ratio for impact. Hive mind of el Reg, please advise on the true values.)

[Danny 2]

Re: Privay versus Safety?

My hive mind is failing me. There was a great quote in a Guardian book review that agreed with your statement from an English earl at the time of the French revolution. It stated that he would rather have a score of cut-throats in London than suffer the mass state terrorism and surveillance endured in France.

Except that is just the gist because every time I go searching for it I get redirected to Google CAPTCHAs, despite my other googling working fine. So I guess that quote has been deemed inconvenient. Of course the actual quote never mentioned state terrorism, because at the time all terrorism was by the state against its own citizens. That was such an inconvenient word that it's very meaning has been changed.

[Orwell]

Is terrorism the reason or the excuse...

For Mass Surveillance?

Some would say that terrorism is the best thing that's happened to our paranoid government.

What's for sure is that anyone who wants to hide can. It's only the idiots or the rest of us who will be watched.

[Stevie]

Bah!

Ah, the Cheyney-Bush System rears its head again:

"Is what I've already decided to do a good idea?"

"Nosir!"

"You're fired."

[Mike Bell]

Goof performance

I just watched Binney's testimony on Parliament TV, and a bloody good job he made of it. He didn't paint a pretty picture of the NSA and hammered home the point that's where the UK is headed.

But his concerns are going to fall on largely deaf ears.

[Mike Bell]

Re: Goof performance

Typo: Good performance

[happy but not clappy]

Lives are lost...but do they matter to the powers?

Don't forget, we are collateral damage to the powers that be.

What they expect, evidently, is not to prevent attacks (though they would love to have that too and spend a fortune trying), but the ability to find perpetrators and bring them to justice after the fact, and their friends, and anyone else who was nearby at the time, in a form of judicial drone strike of a wedding party.

The fact that this also kills the false-positives is really not something they care about. Thus anyone who has ever downloaded the ancient and largely shite anarchists' cookbook becomes a terrorist, and goes to jail, and so on. It is the very definition of thought crime. Which is kinda scary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly the UK government doesn't care if people die as long as they aren't important people, look at how many people on benefits killed themselves after being sanctioned for trivial reasons, or disabled people after their support was denied because they took 30 minutes to crawl up a flight of steps and were therefore deemed fit for work or failed and were classed as a no show & denied DLA.

Secondly bulk or mass surveillance of the general population has five eighths of four fifths of f*ck all to do with preventing terrorism, it's more about monitoring the law abiding and keeping them in line through fear of making a mistake, the bad guys can easily get round these things by making plans in person, using dead drops and all the other cold war methods you can get from reading John le Carré. There is always something an otherwise law abiding person can be charged with if the authorities look hard enough, there are a lot of laws on the statutes, can you guarantee you haven't broken one of them ? So the IP bill is more about making people keep their heads down so the authorities won't take an interest & go digging through their history.

The UK has apparently been collecting and analysing bulk data for years, the IP Bill is merely legitimising activities that are ongoing. More and more evidence suggests the NSA have been doing the same to the USA since before 9/11 & the French have been bulk surveilling their population since Charlie Hebdo, possibly even before that given the speed at which they got the scheme working.

The problem is that bulk surveillance doesn't work against terrorism, GCHQ were hoovering up data well before the 7/7 bus bombing, The French security services monitored every electronic communication before the Paris atrocity, the Americans were actively watching the terrorists who committed 9/11 and the NSA were probably watching everyone else as well. So either bulk data surveillance doesn't work in preventing terrorist acts or these events were allowed to happen for reasons known only to the security services, which frankly is unthinkable outside of Hollywood. None of these events are good reasons for increasing the surveillance of the vast majority of law abiding people, however that's what they have been used for.

[Roland6]

The problem is that bulk surveillance doesn't work against terrorism, GCHQ were hoovering up data well before the 7/7 bus bombing, The French security services monitored every electronic communication before the Paris atrocity, the Americans were actively watching the terrorists who committed 9/11 and the NSA were probably watching everyone else as well. So either bulk data surveillance doesn't work in preventing terrorist acts or these events were allowed to happen for reasons known only to the security services, which frankly is unthinkable outside of Hollywood.

Well with respect to 7/7 we know that some had been noticed by GCHQ, but for whatever reason they weren't being closely monitored. We also know that as a result of GCHQ's bulk data repository they were able to go back in time and relatively quickly identify others who were now "person's of interest".

[Anonymous Coward]

He's wrong and in denial

No single security monitoring system can catch all criminal and/or terrorist activities. Computers scanning electronic communication however is not only useful, it's vital to everyone's national security. The naïve perspective that the authorities care about you is false unless you are a crim. You simple don't matter in the big scheme of life to authorities if you are not a crim.

Without the scanning of vast volumes of electronic communications in the digital world we live in today, more people will die, more terrorism will occur and more personal damage will be done to people's lives be it theft of their bank funds, hacking of their homes and cars, disablement of municipal infrastructures and much more. Until someone comes up with a better system, scanning along with a lot of manpower performing investigations, the bad guys are in charge and gaining more power weekly. This is no joke. Governments don't want the populace to understand how bad digital crime is and will be in the future as will terrorism - because we simply have insufficient systems to deal with the problem. If there is nothing stopping evil people they will exploit the system and they have been doing so for quite some time.

As a society we are desperately behind the crims who are in control at the moment. This is a war we can't afford to lose but we are losing it. Those who constantly complain about invasion of privacy have yet to provide any alternative solution that is more useful and less invasive. If you leave your house, use a PC or a phone then your privacy has already been compromised by security systems intended to protect you. Everyday we see the benefit of these surveillance systems as more crims are caught and prosecuted. You may not read about all of these events but they happen daily and serve to illustrate just how bad the situation really is.

[Graham Marsden]

Re: He's wrong and in denial

> As a society we are desperately behind the crims who are in control at the moment.

Yes, the ones in control are the politicians and the Media Barons who decide what we are or, more importantly, are not allowed to read and see. The Big Busineses who tell our "elected" representatives how they should run the country and how if they would pass a certain law it would be to everyone's benefit (and here's a nice lucrative Directorship for you).

> You may not read about all of these events but they happen daily and serve to illustrate just how bad the situation really is

HOW can they illustrate *ANYTHING* if we can't read about them? The Government and the Security Services might claim that they've prevented X many attacks, but without anything to corroborate such assertions, they are just meaningless BS.

PS: Oh, and your post might have had more credibility had you not posted as an Anonymous Coward...

[sysconfig]

@Graham Marsden - Re: He's wrong and in denial

"Yes, the ones in control are the politicians and the Media Barons who decide what we are or, more importantly, are not allowed to read and see."

Just like the BBC doesn't mention yesterday's hearing at all. Not a single word on their website. In fact, they mention NSA and GCHQ and the IPB (in all sorts of spellings) rather rarely. Shocking how little their search produces.

[Vic]

Re: He's wrong and in denial

Everyday we see the benefit of these surveillance systems as more crims are caught and prosecuted

"And to prove my point, I would like to call to the stand my surprise witness - the Ghost The Never Lies."

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Claiming that there's lots of evidence, but we can't see any of it because $reason is extremely unconvincing.

Vic.

[Graham Marsden]

Binney has previously described as "absolute horse shit"...

... claims by the UK government's lawyers that the huge volumes of data collected by the intelligence services won't be readable at the point of inception.

But, but... Matt Bryant disagrees with him, so he *MUST* be wrong!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What if governments themselves create terrorist organisations..?

Think this is far fetched - think again..! See the link below.

How is it that since 9/11 we have gone from 1 to 5 or 6 terrorist organisations to "worry" about.

So obviously mass surveillance is NOT working.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/05/15/us-intelligence-officer-every-single-terrorist-attack-in-us-was-a-false-flag-attack/

Who is financing the terrorists...?

http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1191-disclosure-showdown?showall=&start=1

[fajensen]

They don't know any better

.... and those who do know, don't care! A Circus needs a bunch of clowns!!

"BUGGER - Maybe the real state secret is that the spies aren't very good at their and don't know very much about the world"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but not for the same reason.

As the ability to identify nutters increases, so does the ability to manage them, but there's still a critical failure point. But in an invasion, (which is not the word I'd like to use, but what's happened in recent years to Europe is indistinguishable from the definition of it,) eventually the demography changes, and before you know it, solving the problem has to be done overtly regardless..

Politicians would simply rather pretend there wasn't a problem, as it stops their free lunches, and as such are always pre-disposed to leaving the problem to someone else to solve later.

But the demographic shift we have is more akin to cancer than a wound.

Can anyone imagine a thousand coal miners sexually assaulting all the women in Angel Tube station, and then the BBC cover it up?

We are in a high risk strategy based on our ability to reduce the number of religious affiliates, and all I've seen is the behaviour of the deluded genuinely believing that we can turn jihadists into charity workers, retrying with more and more resources, over longer and longer timeframes. We are betting on our ability to turn people into Atheists faster than they can breed, and immigrate, while still allowing them to teach their children their view point.

As with all things, a stitch in time saves nine, but I'm wondering exactly what has to happen before the west addresses reality. The problem is that we are shrinking as the problem is growing, population share being a zero sum game. We are in trouble, and anything that deceives government and politicians into putting off addressing the problem is in my opinion, now, counter productive.

I'm terrified there's a whole load of people in senior positions who genuinely don't believe there has to be a line in the sand, or their wish to be able to blacklist while opinion-leech the few thousand people they keep on file for expert opinions to provide to government without paying them is blinding them to the fact that their new power will only delay to address the problem until there's too many people here to fight.

[Eclectic Man]

When they really should be monitoring ...

.. the financial services.

Of course the regulators were warned about Bernie Madoff several times before his Ponzie scheme failed, and our very own LIBOR fixers got away with it for ages.

Why is it that only people who let off bombs and carry guns and knives should be caught and not the rich financial whizz-kids in the City of London?

(I think I may have just answered my own question there.)

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to data, bigger isn't necessarily better.

But we must never let the bleeding obvious get in the way of a good marketing slogan.

[polymorphic perversity]

It's not how big your data is, it's what you do with it

L'esprit d'escalier.

[Xian]

Bill Binney is a joy to watch. A down to earth, selfless and fearlessly incisive warrior in thought and action in every forum I've observed to date. Query: Whats the name of the female rep to Bills right who required Mr. Binney to qualify (without hesitation) that recent preceding RIPA testimony from UK law enforcement and UK IC cybersecurity experts supporting continuing and expanded bulk collection was (at best) misinformed and ($$$ much than likely $$$) deliberately misleading?

Thanks in Advance