Apparently, Jacqui Smith’s supposed climb down on gathering all of our communications information wasn’t actually a climb down at all. What a surprise…
SPY chiefs are pressing ahead with secret plans to monitor all internet use and telephone calls in Britain despite an announcement by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, of a ministerial climbdown over public surveillance.
I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised. These people seem to think they are above democratic accountability and that they run the country. Maybe they already do…
GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, is developing classified technology to intercept and monitor all e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions in Britain. The agency will also be able to track telephone calls made over the internet, as well as all phone calls to land lines and mobiles.
The £1 billion snooping project — called Mastering the Internet (MTI) — will rely on thousands of “black box” probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure.
So covertly, indeed, that it made the Sunday Times. I thought spying was supposed to be carried out in secret, so that no one knew what was going on. I’m missing something here:
The top-secret programme began to be implemented last year, but its existence has been inadvertently disclosed through a GCHQ job advertisement carried in the computer trade press.
Not only are these people rampant control freaks who fail to understand their rightful place as our servants, they are arrant incompetents to boot. And they propose collecting sensitive personal information on all of us? They honestly believe they have not only the moral authority, but the requisite level of competence to ensure that such information remains confidential and not subject to abuse? Seriously?
I am not guilty of any offences (that I know of, with so many new laws on the statue book, it can be difficult to tell), I am not planning any offences, nor have I any plans to blow myself up on a train station. So, therefore, my communications information; with whom, where and when, is none of GCHQ’s business and I will do everything in my power to keep it that way. Whatever tools are available to make their life more difficult and my information more secure, I will use – and I doubt that I will be the only one. I will do it for one simple reason; it is none of their business and I do not answer to them; they answer to me and I am displeased with their impertinence. Okay, that’s two reasons, you get one for free.
LR, you said it best with ‘If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, the last thing you want to do is build a bigger haystack’ (or words to that effect).
Yup, that too. That’s the practical argument against this behaviour. There is also the moral one – they should not even be proposing this project because it is unethical. Their own moral compass should be telling them this.
They don’t have a moral compass. They are totalitarian freaks.
To be fair, my tongue was planted firmly in my cheek when I typed that.
I don’t blame those working at GCHQ or the other spy departments, they are charged with protecting us and will do whatever they believe they need to do. All organisations are subject to group think and they are no different; They will build their empires, protect their budgets, elbow each other out of the way to gain favour and promotion. They will even get to the point where they, as a group, believe that they know best and will run out of control.
Its all about supervision and we have known this for centuries. This is why we have civilian control of the armed forces and police. It is how we control them and keep them in check. We, or those we elect, set their aims, challenge their strategy and control their budgets.
And there’s the rub, not only is there no effective civilian control it is far worse – we have a bunch of politicians who are hell bent on encouraging them. They believe the scare stories, pay the spies what they want, change the rules that protect us at the behest of the spies without effective debate and justify what is going on.
It has become even worse than the sins of omission. The intelligence services were dragooned into to justifying going to war, against what appears to have been their better judgement. With this example they know that they have political masters who are a moral vacuum that sucks the integrity out of all that surround them.
We need a Parliament of MP’s who have integrity, independence and the balls to stand up to the executive and that won’t happen while we have the corrupt party system and payroll vote.
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Ever since World War One the ‘spooks’ have considered themselves qualified to exercise surveillance over their political ‘masters’. You have only to read Peter Wright’s “Spycatcher” to see what they are capable of. And Thatcher strained every nerve to prevent its publication!