It seems that Snowden really did open up a big can of worms.....

Spy in the pocket tracks every move

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The other side of the coin.......

Jailed for refusing to give up password

"Police called in experts from GCHQ, the government's secret eavesdropping and communications agency, but even they were unable to crack the device."

Doesn't say much for their expert capabilities then, does it?

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From such an "intellectual", that shows your bias. Thank you for that.

GCHQ

"Our heritage can be traced from the tremendous achievements in signals intelligence at Bletchley Park in World War II."

Wasn't that where not only were signals intercepted, but an enormous amount of time & energy spent by people concentrating on cracking those signals?

It would have served the police and security services much better had that info regarding the encrypted device remain secret so that they can crack it and maybe it would've been possible to detect/access/use to their benefit for all our safety.

By entering the public domain, it only serves to let the bad guys know that their security works. Then again, it could be a spoof to let them believe that, but saying that, what with all this openness and transparency, maybe somebody goofed here!

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Encrypted USB sticks are a different matter altogether, and technology has moved on from WWII. But if you think for one moment that GCHQ didn't have the wherewithal to get that data then you are very naive. The only person that has goofed is you.

Not a different matter at all, intelligence is just that. For security services to acknowledge that they were unable to crack one form is quite an eyeopener.

What has your visit to Bletchley got to do with the post?

Naïve, when the police and GCHQ state this?

"Police called in experts from GCHQ, the government's secret eavesdropping and communications agency, but even they were unable to crack the device".

Not so much of an intellectual when all you can do is attack the poster and not the post itself, nothing new there. Next!

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Regardless of politics, intelligence services are needed in today's world. The problem is that it seems our services have gone way over the wrong line.

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Do we really need them? Are we really facing such an existential threat to our national security that we need them? Because I have my doubts. Our national security is not in any danger whatsoever. Sure, there are some terrorists out there that want to kill people. But lets be realistic here, how often have they successfully carried out their plot on Western soil and how destructive has it really been. Yeah, 9/11 was destructive, and that is pretty much the only case of a successful major terrorist attack with loads of casualties. The bombings of London were bad, for sure, and those in Madrid even worse, but only a handful of people died. More people die each year because of violent crime or traffic incidents then people die of terrorist attacks. And those terrorist attacks happened once. Yet we have given the police almost complete free reign to go after terrorists, while their resources to combat unsafe behavior in traffic or tracking violent criminals are much more limited and we have placed all kinds of checks and balances on the police to make sure they don't abuse their authority.

And even then, lets be honest here, what other danger does terrorism pose? If you are extremely unlucky, you die, but what else? Does it mean that if we don't stop them the state will fall? That we are conquered by Islamic extremists? Of course not. Terrorism is the weakest form of organized violence against a state and it has NEVER worked and will NEVER work against a sufficiently advanced state. The IRA didn't succeed, the ETA didn't succeed, the Oklahoma bomber didn't succeed, they changed nothing, they all failed in their mission.

So why do we need Intelligence agencies? Well, alright, maybe a few of them are useful in very limited forms to monitor certain events and support the regular police in their investigation, and I suppose that having one that monitors situation in countries that are not allies is also useful. In any case we don't need them in the shape they are today. I suppose its a good place to reduce some budgets. I'm pretty sure we can do more useful things with all that money.

Up until this point I was warming to you, but you have now totally blown it. I have never heard such utter drivel in all my life!

Puts paid to this then......

Well it was pretty clear to me from the start that you were at Post-Grad level!
It is a pleasure to talk to someone at your level for a change, and someone that obviously knows a heck of a lot more than I do.

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And that is just one individual. How many more like that within politics and the intelligence services?

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No, I stand by my original comment, which referred to EU knowledge, and which is still extant. It is also correct that I was warming to him as a character, but now I have seen a darker and more unpleasant side, and especially regarding international terrorism. I now find it difficult to accept the correlation between the initial semblance of intellectual capacity, and the views that he apparently holds.

My view is that the freedom we have given intelligence agencies is far more dangerous than the actual danger that terrorism poses. Terrorism has become a very emotional concept, all I have to say is that if you look at the facts, terrorists achieved nothing and only did minor damage and people immediately get angry. In terms of damage and lives lost in the west terrorism ranks extremely low on the list. It is far more likely that you die in a traffic accident than in a terrorist attack. Its even more likely that you die of some disease. Yet we chose to give up most of our online privacy, a lot of our offline privacy, a certain degree of freedom of the press and freedom of speech and a wide number of checks and balances that are there to prevent the police from abusing its power all so we can combat 'terrorism'. I'm sorry, but its just utterly retarded to give up so much and spend so much money and resources to combat such a minor threat.

So why do we do that? Because like I said, terrorism has been turned into a very emotionally loaded concept, that clearly prevents a lot of people from wondering why the hell we make such a fuss about such a minor threat.

Obama orders curbs

Bit pointless really.....

"But Mr Obama said he was ending that system "as it currently exists".

He has asked the attorney general and the intelligence community to draw up plans for metadata to be held by a third party, with the NSA requiring legal permission to access them."

And they can be trusted?

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False Flag operations and other ways to destroy peoples reputation

Yep, thats now happening. The GCHQ is trying to influence the way we talk about certain events, as well as ruining peoples reputation if they are deemed troublesome by the secret intelligence agencies. Again, its time to close down the place and use the money we free up by doing something useful, rather than let these fascists go on.

It seems the "special relationship" is thriving.....

...populated by perverts......

"It suggested that sexually explicit content would be captured by the system."

NSA & GCHQ enjoy watching your webcam images

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It seems the "special relationship" is thriving.....

...populated by perverts......

"It suggested that sexually explicit content would be captured by the system."

NSA & GCHQ enjoy watching your webcam images

Ooh dear, i hope they don't tell my parents about that thing i did with...never mind!

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

This is the Yahoo Instant Messaging Service that is being talked about. The other live webcam service is Skype. If anyone is stupid enough to use either of those services for pornographic reasons, then they lay themselves open to other unintended people viewing them. For the rest of us having an innocent chat to a friend we couldn't care less.

Speak for yourself. I have innocent chats with friends and I still think the government has no business spying on me. Again, they have completely reversed the burden of proof. It is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but these massive spying operations suggest that western governments regard everyone as guilty until proven innocent.

For those here that are totally neurotic about government surveillance, because obviously they have things to hide, they can carry on looking over their shoulder every 5 minutes, and checking under the bed for spooks each night, and living on tranquilisers. The rest of will carry on living our normal lives, and chatting to our friends.

Who is the neurotic here, people who don't like their privacy getting destroyed by the government, or the government who feels the need to spy on almost everyone because a handful of them might be 'terrorists'? And do these things actually work? No, because so far non of these surveillance programs have captured or prevented any terrorists.

For those here that are totally neurotic about government surveillance, because obviously they have things to hide, they can carry on looking over their shoulder every 5 minutes, and checking under the bed for spooks each night, and living on tranquilisers. The rest of will carry on living our normal lives, and chatting to our friends.

Suggest you re-read your posts, better yet, think before you post......

Some of us hide our hosts because of personal privacy, NOT because we are up to no good.

Then there is the Linux thread where you ran Martin down continuously over the privacy issues, which you gracefully show here.....

For the rest of us having an innocent chat to a friend we couldn't care less.

So, I'll quote you again....

hide our hosts because of personal privacy.

SO which is it? Personal privacy or you couldn't care less? You can't have both!

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@Simon - send 5000 Green Shield stamps in a brown envelope and we'll say no more about it.

I can't afford the postage to 1973!

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

Don't be so naive. Of course you won't hear any government giving details of prevented terrorist plots, they are not that stupid. If they were to outwardly say we foiled the hijack of flight xyz last week due to surveillance, or prevented a bomb on the 8.45 train to wherever, it would give terrorists useful knowledge of what kind or surveillance is being carried out, where, and likely how.

Actually the NSA initially claimed that such surveillance had resulted in them foiling several terrorist plots all around the world. It are the reviews of these programs that say that this is nonsense and that no plots have been prevented, or has resulted in useful intelligence.

Aside from that, there is a difference in saying that these programs work and saying that they resulted in preventing a terrorist attack on flight xyz. You can easily say that something works without going into the specifics that would actually give away details to actual terrorists.

As per usual you are scraping the barrel again trying to pick a fight with me, which as always I'm not interested in. What I'm afraid that you can't have, is the satisfaction of seeing it work.

No need to, your posts show that you enjoying fighting yourself. You are just the type that GCHQ & NSA like employing. A good little puppet.

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There are two points here. The first one is to give a deterrent to both terrorists and fledgeling terrorists, that there is a good chance that they will be caught in the planning stages before an outrage takes place. i.e. we are carefully monitoring all those that have come to our attention as being sympathisers of terrorist activities, and those that socialise and have dealings with such people.

The only problem with this is that the governments aren't monitoring known problematic individuals, they are monitoring nearly everyone. Also, what use is a deterrent if the thing that is supposed to deter people is secret? It could have only been turned into a useful deterrent AFTER Snowden revealed what is really happening.

On top of that, the intelligence agencies aren't just monitoring people, they are actively trying to steer the flow of conversations, trying to influence the framing of issues, conduct false flag operations to discredit individuals they deem problematic, hack into private chats and hack into webcams to peer into peoples room and get close up pictures of over 1,8 million people. Are those 1.8 million people all terrorists or associated with terrorists? NO! They were selected based on how their usernames sound. Oh look, that guy calls himself M4st3RH4ckz0r, that looks suspicious, better hack into his webcam to see if he looks like someone we are looking for. You can't just break into peoples private lives because you think their name sounds suspicious.

Sorry but your argument is insufficient.

Secondly as you say, there are means to say that anti terrorist activities work without giving the game away. Annual reports the 2012-13 is a good read. I am also sure that I heard the Home Secretary say in Parliament within the last 12 months, that a number of threats and attacks on the British mainland had been thwarted in recent times, but obviously he couldn't go into details.

current threat level

Read the report, it doesn't mention anything related to the surveillance operations, while it does mention a number of people were arrested because of basic police work. On top of that, the number of people that were actually arrested in the UK for terrorism charges is around 30 people. Does that number necessitate the surveillance of millions of people? No, it does not, because that is entirely out of proportions to the actual threat. Finally, the problem with such reports is that they cannot be verified because half of the stuff does not get published due to national security. There were mentions of case studies that supposedly showed the use of close cooperation between various intelligence agencies. Sure, but the problem here is that I have to take their word for it because the case study was classified. But I don't trust them so their word is not going to cut it. Especially when you realize that the people that have the ability to classify information are also the ones that have a direct interest in looking good for the oversight committees. So how do we know that they are not just classifying everything that makes them look bad? Or worse, how do we know that those case studies are not just made up nonsense, and the 'its classified information' excuse is just used to prevent people from digging into it and finding out its just nonsense.

And those terrorist threat levels are nonsense. Just look at how vague they are. Substantial? Severe? Moderate? Highly Likely? Possible but unlikely? What does that even mean? Those phrases are devoid of meaning, completely empty.

That sums it up nicely.

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