Government surveillance

[spoodie]

Actually, that's a stonking idea. And somewhat less likely to put me on a another government watch list.

Fix'd

I know this is intended as a joke, but I find it both sad and maddening. We shouldn't have any fear of doing legitimate things because it could make us the victims of further government surveillance.

[buzzmong]

I agree, but that is a whole other debate. New general thread?

[ProfHawking]

Oh and, yes, f**king terrorists. Making the average shed-tinkerer look suspicious.

[spoodie]

I've split this off, if people would like to continue. I could easily rant away, but I'll let others start/continue to make sure there's interest and no objection to discussing it further.

[Dog Pants]

I see an amount of surveillance as a necessity. The world is not a pleasant place full of kittens and lollipops, much of it has a far larger proportion of people who want to kill you in it than you do in western Europe. How many are here and how much of a threat to the public they are is open to discussion, but I'm pretty sure that the intelligence agencies are more informed about it than any of us. Similarly, how much surveillance they need to keep is also open to interpretation, and the requirement for personal freedom needs to be weighed against the requirement for safety. Both are very important, and everyone has a slightly different opinion on where the balance lies. Either way, those intelligence agencies need to be responsible about who they watch, why they're watching them, and what they do with the data they collect. The line becomes more blurred when you start moving from public safety to law enforcement. Most people would agree that they would want known terrorists to be monitored, but do we need to be mass-monitored in case any of us commit a crime? That becomes a police state, and it's oppressive.

Then there's the methods. Actively watching someone is not the same as recording data about them for reference, should it be needed. Again, the degree to which an individual is comfortable about data being collected about them varies by person. I doubt anyone here would like their browsing history to be archived, but how about the browser history of a habitual paedophile? Probably still not worth it. What about if you knew that your data was anonymous but could still be used to detect the worst kind of criminals? It isn't, but I'd speculate that there's such a huge amount of data out there that nobody is going to be looking at it. Nobody cares.

Personally I don't have much of an issue with the way surveillance is done here, as I understand it. However, I do appreciate the need for opposition to it, for people to be questioning it, because without that resistance it could be untethered, and that could lead to worse things than the occasional psychotic fundamentalist.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

The problem I have is that ultimately we're all being watched online, all the time, having had committed no crimes, nor done anything wrong.

I don't like being followed around shops by security guards for looking shifty, nor do I like the government watching me watching porn. Actually, I do, it feels dirty.

Anyway, point being they're watching 63m people on the basis that tens of people have committed acts of terrorism, and potentially hundreds talk about blowing up busses.

Seems to me like we're being terrorised by the government to reduce our freedoms and our expectation of privacy under the guise of the threat of a big bad wolf.

As an aside, nuclear hospital bird flu ground zero sarin polonium secret plans

[ProfHawking]

A very balanced view DP.

I think it would be naive to think that we could just do away with all of it - no doubt that MI5 etc do indeed catch a fair few people through surveillance. I do worry however about using very broad-spectrum "blanket" recording of our every move to maybe catch what I do believe is actually a very very very small number of individuals who are really "out to get us". Personally, I would have thought that common-sense, targeted surveillance using warrants/court orders would be suitable in most of the serious threats.

I think there is a real danger if we go down the route of blanket surveillance (if we haven't already) of the possibility that whoever is in charge will decide that "now we've got all this lovely data", lets use it to criminalise whoever we want to.
The age old argument of if you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to worry about I think is not a valid argument. Lets face it, everybody has something that they'd rather not be common knowledge, even if its not illegal, it might be embarrassing, or threaten your job, or relationships etc. I'd like to think that our Government (or whichever nameless civil servant in a basement somewhere really has access to the data...) would never go for blackmail etc, but with the data there it would be a temptation all to easy to fall into.
They'll never be able to apply enough manpower to sift through the sheer amount of data that could be/probably is being collected. So it's just being archived off for a rainy day, or being picked at by algorithms that nomatter how well written will never be able to apply proper common sense. When they decide that catching the terrorists and bombers is just too tricky, and decide that today they're going to go after people who watch rapey porn, or like eating dogs, or want an abortion, take various substances, smoke, or go fox hunting... or whatever whoever is in government dreams up next as being suddenly unacceptable in order to gain more votes from daily mail readers - they already have a pre-prepared list of people they can go after. And don't we all love crime reduction lies damn lies stats!

TL;DR
Police/MI5 etc can already legally surveil genuinely suspicious targets using wiretaps/courts etc. There should be no need for blanket recording of everybody's actions to build up an archive, ready to pick from as and when required/desired.

[Dog Pants]

The problem I have is that ultimately we're all being watched online, all the time

they're watching 63m people

You really think there's anywhere near the resources to do that? Imagine how many people it would take to do it, how shitty a job it would be to watch millions of people posting shite on Facebook? If you mean passive data collection then maybe, but if so then you're exaggerating with the statement above.

I'd like to think that our Government (or whichever nameless civil servant in a basement somewhere really has access to the data...) would never go for blackmail etc, but with the data there it would be a temptation all to easy to fall into.

I'd be more concerned about that data being lost or stolen. I'm sure they keep it under good security, but nothing is infallible. Imagine if the next Edward Snowden released your dirty secrets onto the wild internet, or criminals got hold of it and sold it off to whoever had a nefarious requirement for it?

whatever whoever is in government dreams up next as being suddenly unacceptable in order to gain more votes from daily mail readers

Politicians. They have the potential to be worse for you and me than the Edward Snowdens, criminals and terrorists put together.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

The problem I have is that ultimately we're all being watched online, all the time

they're watching 63m people

You really think there's anywhere near the resources to do that? Imagine how many people it would take to do it, how shitty a job it would be to watch millions of people posting shite on Facebook? If you mean passive data collection then maybe, but if so then you're exaggerating with the statement above.

Not having access to the systems they're using, I'm guessing they're pretty broad scoped, so like likelihood of anyone's Facebook post going through one of the systems is fairly high.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Looking at internets...

The Guardian claims that no distinction is made in the gathering of data between private citizens and targeted suspects.[3] Tempora is said to include recordings of telephone calls, the content of email messages, Facebook entries and the personal internet history of users.

It also mentions 200x10 gigabit links into the interpipes.

While human eyes might not be looking at what we post, it seems like their systems just suck everything up and nose through it for interesting words.

[Joose]

Not having access to the systems they're using, I'm guessing they're pretty broad scoped, so like likelihood of anyone's Facebook post going through one of the systems is fairly high.

Stuff going through a system != stuff being looked at. To illustrate the point, lets say you are given computer based superpowers that lets you look at the contents of any hard drive in the world. Does that mean you will be looking at *every* hard drive in the world? Or will you not waste your time looking at the hard drive of some boring office computer when you could be looking at celebrity sex tapes and government secrets?

The question isn't "could the government be looking at all my shit?" Its "why would the government be looking at my shit when they could be looking at something more interesting to them?" You and I are just not that interesting.

[Dog Pants]

Fuck, ninjad by Joose. I'll post it anyway.

If nobody's looking at it then you aren't being watched. You might be being recorded, although I find it hard to believe they record everything that everyone does, but you're exaggerating for effect when you say we're being watched all the time. Really, where's the justification for that kind of activity? Why would anyone want to spy on normal people? If you think the government is interested in your day-to-day activities then you have delusions of grandeur. If you're concerned about stuff being recorded about you that could be used against you unfairly one day, then I'd agree that you have legitimate concerns and that we only disagree on the scope of it.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

You're absolutely right.

However, I'm personally not a fan of the idea that I only have a vague illusion of privacy because I'm uninteresting.

It's not that we're all, always being watched/monitored/recorded/logged/observed, whatever you want to call it.

It's that they /can/ do it, perhaps not even intentionally (as suggested by the guardian), we've had people charged for tweeting stupid things (I'm thinking bombing of airports, not asking if dogs have brains) unintentional observation of ridiculous hyperbolic messages is a possibility, hopefully unlikely though.

[buzzmong]

Excellent. Bear with me as this is a bit of a tangent and hastily mind dumped, but I feel a lot of this ties in with social expectations as well and a change in health and safety culture, not just a security thing. It's global as well.

A good example is chemistry kits for kids, in the 50's you could readily purchase them with radioactive materials, and/or with a sizable quantity of rather dangerous chemicals. Now, they're all pretty much "safe" and use benign chemicals which don't do much apart from stain.
As time has progressed, society in general seems to have become more risk adverse, leading to a reduction in percieved danger and things being made safer.

Alongside that, there also seems to have been a shift in general views which equates that doing something dangerous = generally bad and that tasks should only be done by qualified people in controlled conditions. In keeping with the chemisty sets, this means doing it in a commerical or educational lab, not at home.

It's not too big of a leap that, partially guided by the various media outlets, then people doing things which could be dangerous or relating to dangerous activities and are not doing them in the controlled way are possibly bad people.

This then becomes fear of a possibilty and people generally want to not be afraid of things. Knowing that people are being monitored by someone allays those fears, and who is better placed to be that someone than a part of the Government?

Of course, people should then quite rightly fear just how far that monitoring goes, but at the same time are stuck in a cycle where they fear the monitoring, but fear more the possibility of something happening should the monitoring stop.

Arguably you could also claim that fear is the control tool used by people in power, but I think it also comes from human self doubt, they just harmonise nicely.

[spoodie]

Fear is a big part of the justification. I did some research and in the last 20 years less than 80 people in the UK have died in terror attacks, that goes back to the days of the IRA. We're all far more likely to die from disease or an accident, even an accident in your home. Yet the government and media exaggerate the risk in order to manipulate fear. Relatively speaking we live in a very safe country. If you want an idea of real terrorism threat you just have to look at places like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Attacks in those places are frequent enough that they're not widely reported here.

So we get to have millions or even billions of our tax pounds spent on a system designed to record our every online move. Thanks!

There's a few problems here. What happens when this data is abused, lost, stolen or just incorrect. Abuses have been confirmed by the NSA, individuals using their unrestricted access to monitor people they know for personal reasons. If your data in incorrect or altered you may get to stay in detention without charge for days, months or years.

And the 'bad guys' don't have their communications out in the open like everyone else. To solve this the NSA and GCHQ have been working on undermining security online, which we all rely on. HTTPS and SSL sessions can be compromised, at least some major commercial products have backdoors. It's likely Microsoft products have these, among other companies. What happens when these vulnerabilities are found by criminals and hostile foreign nations?

I realise there's some need for spying, unfortunately. But this blanket surveillance is way over the top and the potential for abuse is more scary to me than the threat of a terror attack.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxuYt7iBijQ[/media]

[Dr. kitteny berk]

GCHQ Also has fairly decent access to TOR now, apparently.

Significant because for a long time TOR has been used by reporters, embassy workers etc in less understanding countries to communicate without getting strung up for misbehaving.

Admittedly, it's also got a massive, dodgy as fuck userbase too.

[ProfHawking]

I realise there's some need for spying, unfortunately. But this blanket surveillance is way over the top and the potential for abuse is more scary to me than the threat of a terror attack.

Exactly this. I think the chances of being burned by duff info that some gov department blunders onto a laptop left on a train, than actually being terrorised. Terrorists, despite the name, don't actually terrify me. They're incredibly rare, and many of them frankly seem incompetent idiots. (Trying to blow up cars with gas cylinders, lightbulbs etc)

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Terrorists, despite the name, don't actually terrify me. They're incredibly rare, and many of them frankly seem incompetent idiots. (Trying to blow up cars with gas cylinders, lightbulbs etc)

I suspect the problem is most terrists are working for some ideal or another, rather than just being mad engineers.

Deciding you want to blow up a plane with a shoe because your god will like it, then guessing how to make a shoe bomb doesn't work that well in general.

Deciding you want to build a perfect shoe bomb, and then testing it on a plane full of nuns and kittens is a lot more likely to work.

[spoodie]

GCHQ Also has fairly decent access to TOR now, apparently.

I do enjoy the code name 'EgotisticalGiraffe'. Sounds like the sequel to 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'.

This is only applicable if the user is using an older version of the Tor browser bundle with the vulnerability in the version of Firefox supplied with the bundle. And I think you'd need to visit a specifically prepared sites, which performs the attack. Tor will tell you if it needs updating when it starts.

Tor is still the best option for using as an anonymising proxy and the more people that use it the better for privacy on the Tor network. Especially if they run a relay as well.

[Dog Pants]

We seem to have pretty much reached an equilibrium. I have a theory (one I don't think I've shared actually) that everyone pretty much argues the same thing, they just make their argument differently because they see the world differently.

The TOR thing is interesting. I like that it exists, but I can also see why they want to crack it. For me, I'm more concerned about companies than government. Google, if you're reading this, fuck off.