News GCHQ releases first open-source project on GitHub

This is getting like whack-a-mole.

 

Now ask yourself: how is GCHQ held accountable by the law?

Our difference in opinion lies in the fact that I'm coming at this as a psychologist and (therefore) sceptic. You are coming at it as a geek: purely rational. You reason: our real physical safety is more important than a few emotional sensitivities around the culturally relative notion of privacy, right? And you would be right, if you were dealing with a purely rational system. But people aren't rational so GCHQ isn't, and the behaviour of the people they surveil isn't.

People are messy; their lives are, their psychology is, and hence human systems are. Most people are motivated to behave themselves mainly by social scrutiny. You can't trust GCHQ like you could trust a machine. They need to be publicly accountable, and by their nature they mostly aren't, so their power needs to remain curtailed.

 

I would disagree, a closer analogy would be a policeman detaining everyone leaving a shop and writing down everything they have in their possession just in case the shop finds out during the end of the month stock take that someone stole a Snickers.

No because the customer is anonymous, it would be very different if you were forced to leave your name and address or other form of identification before being allowed in the shop.

Wouldn't it be better to use their resources in looking and listening to the people that they have reasonable grounds to suspect of doing something wrong, rather than the current scattergun approach?

Whatever happened to the presumption of innocents and having reasonable grounds?

 

My straw man senses are tingling again.

The answer is: by the ISC. (It's on the GCHQ FAQ.)

 

No straw man here: it's a pertinent point. Members of the ISC are appointed by Parliament and the Committee reports directly to Parliament. The Committee may also make reports to the Prime Minister on matters which are national security sensitive.

Note the absence of legal process. No public accountability. As I said: GCHQ is a governmental, hence political body.

You don't want to give people elected by an electorate non-consensual power over that electorate, because that negates the whole thing. And the electorate cannot give valid and informed consent without knowing what the elected powers are getting up to: hence public accountability.

 

As an aside, I find it amusing that you say I'm "approaching this like a geek".

Just because a man wears a raincoat, it doesn't mean it's raining.

 

Well, it can also mean he's a flasher. Or selling dodgy watches.

 

If that's the case then why (afaik) have all known attacks been carried out by people that were already known to the security services? If all their trying to do is protect us they don't seem to be doing a very good job.

Shouldn't that same law apply to security service though, if we throw away due process and the rule of law it seems we're no better than those that wish us harm, IMO our legal system is what sets us apart from the barbaric acts carried out by other "societies"

 

If they're not trying to protect us, why did they know who these people were? To send them Christmas cards?

They should be accountable by law, yes.

 

You seem hung up on the idea of oppression and protection as mutually exclusive mechanisms. If you were confined to a solitary cell inside a guarded prison, you would be very well protected, you would also be incredibly oppressed.

 

Well, there's a thing. We don't know whether they did know them, or are just pretending to after the fact ("Oh, them? Yeah, we suspected they were up to no good..."). I mean, what makes them look less incompetent? Remember: national security is all about showmanship. Terrorism, military retaliation, who you quietly 'disappear' and who you put on public trial and execution.

But I'm not that cynical. I'm sure that GCHQ did know them and did in fact prevent a number of terrorist attacks that we don't even know of. But they also have, so far, been unable to provide a compelling argument for why they should have unfettered access to all our private data to find bad guys when they failed to prevent an attack by those who they most definitely did know to be bad guys. I suspect more information about the general population is not the problem, but resources to perform focused surveillance on known suspects' activities is.

The point is: they aren't. So should we be giving them more power on the promise that they'll only use it for good, honest guv?

 

Pizza time folks. It's been fun.

Stay safe and remember, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you!

 

Hey, my pizza isn't poisoned.



Just kidding. Enjoy your pizza! Add a soft drink and it's the perfect meal: some fast release sugar, some slow release carbs and some fat for long term storage.

 

They knew who these people were after the fact, they had all the information they needed but failed to act on it, it's no good looking back through records and piecing things together afterwards, the idea is to stop them before they carry something out.

After most terrorist attacks they tend to look back through the data and come to the realisation that it was fairly obvious the perpetrators were going to do something, they just failed to act.

While i don't expect you to bother watching it a lesser know whistle-blower called William Binney described how after he left the NSA and after the 9/11 attacks he pieced together information from open sources (publicly available searches) of the attackers organising the attacks, the Paris attackers used SMS, the scum that killed Lee Rigby posted his desire to slaughter a soldier on his Facebook page.



It's not a lack of information that's the problem, it's having so much that they seem paralyzed and keep failing to act.

And presently from what we know their not.

 

More than likely its GCHQ pissing on his head and telling him its raining.

 

Thought I'd bring Gareth's back doors back into the conversation to lighten the mood. Especially now he's getting an extra one.

 

There's talk he may actually be half cyborg you know.

 

Guys, just ignore Yadda. He hasn't provided a factual statement to any of your arguments, but instead pointed the accusatory finger that you are paranoid...

Bleh, and now on to the actual article. Gareth did you have a look at the Issues with the Github project:
https://github.com/GovernmentCommunicationsHeadquarters/Gaffer/issues

Looks like it might become a breeding ground of trolling... :L ah the internet...

 

Ooo. Another one joins the echo chamber.

What have you guys done with all the non-conspiracy theorists on here? Have you frightened them all away?