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From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities

450 points by jakobdabo 11y ago

cryoshon 11y ago
Yep. Why do you think they're tracking porn habits, if not for blackmail material? There's no legitimate reason why a government needs to know anything about citizens sexual preferences or habits, but such information is perfect for shaming or threatening. I will note that the collection and analysis of this sort of information far surpasses anything envisioned in dystopian fiction or actually practiced by the likes of Stasi/KGB during the worst of times. EDIT: there were actually a bunch of documents published with this article. I'll check those out then re-comment.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  It can be useful for blackmailing prominent figures of adversarial foreign regimes, though to be fair Britain's spies will have to sift through their own Parliament first.
ionised 11y ago
I've never been so ashamed to be British. These last few years have really started to wear me down. The indiscriminate mass-surveillance, the savaging of our public services by an obviously corrupt government, the blatent hyprocrisy of our foreign policy, the repeated and unfettered fraud of the City of London financial sector that has yet to see anyone prosecuted or any institution meaningfully punished. I really hate this place.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Given how much British politicians seem determined to make life shitty for anyone making less than six figures, you'd think they'd at least let people spend what idle time they have high on drugs instead of questioning a system that seems intent on shredding the middle class.
- branchless 11y ago
  Just get out. However this ends it's not a happy ending. The UK establishment are nuts.
  - MrZongle2 11y ago
    The American establishment isn't much better.
  - voidz 11y ago
    Get out? To where?!
    - fencepost 11y ago
      Well, there's Canada..... Where the Harper government is in the process of eliminating all historical archives and scientific libraries... Australia? Hmm, wasn't there something about data retention? And maybe Western Australia trying to change the laws so protestors would have to prove that they weren't about to do something illegal when they were arrested? New Zealand? Baaah.
      - ansible 11y ago
        Don't forget the moves towards Internet censorship in Australia too. Aside from lots of sheep, what's wrong with New Zealand?
        dombili 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
        fencepost 11y ago
        Along with the items already noted, it's also pretty small and I'm not sure how many immigrants they accept though I think there's something about Commonwealth nations and immigration that might help.
        11y ago
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Every country in the Five Eyes is doing this, and many if not most who have the money to fund this kind of thing are doing it. Move to Greece. They can't afford surveillance.
  - pakled_engineer 11y ago
    CSEC (Canada) is up to the same shenanigans, approx zero politicians are talking about reigning in the surveillance state in any meaningful way during the election right now so it will keep on rolling. I often talk to people who have no idea who Snowden is, nor have they ever heard of CSEC.
- buffoon 11y ago
  Perhaps I'm older than you but it's been the same in my mind since the 1980s at least. My father informs me earlier. At least we have the joys of privatized services now (I'm serious). They are an order of magnitude better than the public railway, gas and electricity infrastructure we had. Controversially perhaps, I've had much better service from the NHS since they moved to a service model. I'm not ashamed of my identity at all.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >They are an order of magnitude better than the public railway Order of magnitude more expensive, maybe. Better? No.
    - buffoon 11y ago
      The first 15 years of my life in the 1970s and 1980s was spent going in and out of London to various hospitals on trains. No. Absolutely not. It's much better now. Orders of magnitude better. Every train was late. There were engineering works overruns every Monday and weekend service was so bad you might as well walk. And no not more expensive. People couldn't afford the train then and regularly took the inferior busses. If you went long distance, it was coach. Either way you were doomed to a face full of diesel fumes from a Paxman or a Leyland and spend the entire day with your nose running black snot. Incidentally this is what killed my father; he was a bus driver.
- dingaling 11y ago
  Plus we ( the UK ) have now jumped onboard with remote drone assassination of UK citizens abroad. Even though there hasn't been a death penalty on the statute books since 1998.
- godgod 11y ago
  I've never been so ashamed to be an American. These last few years have really started to wear me down. The indiscriminate mass-surveillance, the savaging of our public services by an obviously corrupt government, the blatent hyprocrisy of our foreign policy, the repeated and unfettered fraud of the Washington D.C. financial sector that has yet to see anyone prosecuted or any institution meaningfully punished. I really hate this place.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  You should read more history. We have been awful for 100s of years. Just in the 20thC we destabilised the Middle East, exploded bombs in pubs in Eire to drum up discontent, jailed the innocent, protected the powerful, destroyed our own manufacturing in favour of financial services, exported asset stripping to the US..... The list could go on. Your shame is proportional to your knowledge, the level of reprehensible action is a constant.
- notNow 11y ago
  I've never been so ashamed to be British. The "illustrious" colonial and expansionist history of the British empire wasn't enough to tip the scales for you before?
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Why should we be ashamed of something that was done before we where born, should the Germans still be ashamed for world war two, should US citizens still be ashamed for what the US Army did, should the Italians be ashamed for what the Romans did, the French be ashamed for what Napoleon did?. I accept our history, I'm not ashamed of it, it's history and I wasn't there. However I am ashamed to be British for the things we currently do.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  Britain has a history of far worse things. I find the lack of awareness of Britains brutal past in the UK to be terribly disturbing. Morally it has one of the most repulsive histories of countries on earth yet all we hear from politicians is about British values as if they are some kind of goal to look up to. The superiority complex prevalent in British political discourse has no foundation yet is rolled out time and time again.
logn 11y ago
Selectors accept wildcards: https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/mutant-broth1.png https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/mutant-brot... I wonder what this query returns: _@_ or: _._._._ And the justification textbox has a default width that accommodates about 7 words. At one point in the article it says the domain of a logged website is considered metadata but the path (full URL) is considered content. However, this screenshot shows a logged HTTP GET including its full path: https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/cryptome.png https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/cryptome.pn... "When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has 'a light oversight regime.'" ... and UK is one of the US's Five Eyes partners, so the US has a light oversight regime, in effect. At least the GCHQ shows some honest self-awareness in naming their surveillance apps. Karma Police. For a minute here, it seems like the intelligence agencies have lost themselves. http://genius.com/Radiohead-karma-police-lyrics http://genius.com/Radiohead-karma-police-lyrics ... I particularly like the last comment on the page analyzing the song, which begins, "This song is about the projection of guilt onto the Other", and concludes: "Prisoners, soldiers, soldiers' victims; these are all sacrifices, onto which we project our guilt, so that we can be saved."
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I have two takeaways from this piece: 1: We should never assume any online activity isn't being tracked by someone. 2: The above doesn't give the government a pass on due process when citizens choose to avoid tracking by encryption or otherwise.
- LouisSayers 11y ago
  Except where they have a warrant and reach their dirty little fingers into certificate authorities. Unless you're doing key exchange yourself I would assume nothing is truly private.
  - M2Ys4U 11y ago
    They don't need warrants. They'll just hack in like they did with Belgacom. And even if they don't, they won't get a warrant. They'll get a certificate from the relevant politician that'll authorise them to do it.
cynoclast 11y ago
"HERE WAS A SIMPLE AIM at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.” Jesus fucking christ.
- clort 11y ago
  Heh, not trying to be pendantic because I actually thought that first sentence didn't make much sense.. there is a graphic T on the left, so it actually read "There was a simple aim"
  - godgod 11y ago
    Thank you GCHQ.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
junto 11y ago
Ladies and gentlemen. This is how you do blackmail, corporate espionage, and sway politicians on a truly industrial scale. Want to push a bill through the House of Commons to curb GCHQ's powers? Think again Mr. Politician. Someone might just leak your sexual deviances to the newspaper.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  I think we're due for a second sexual revolution, one where we once and for all settle our relationship between individual, society, and sex, where the only reason you should be concerned with someone else's consensual behavior is if: 1: You're banging them 2: You want to bang them 3: It's your kid and they're underage.
  - mkaziz 11y ago
    I'd correct #3 to *they're underage.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - herge 11y ago
    Tell that to everyone who clicked on a tabloid headline about David Cameron and a pig's head.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      Cameron is still in power. Considering what his government gets up to, it's completely clear he has no conscience at all.
      - blibble 11y ago
        GCHQ and MI5 have been up to this sort of thing for decades. I don't expect it'll ever change, as by the time someone's made it to high office, then the agencies will have collected enough material to keep them quiet and on side.
branchless 11y ago
I love the way this article cites loop-holes. These guys do whatever they like. They have no mandate and they do it anyway with the blessing of politicians who then pretend to be concerned. For me as a Brit the UK establishment is the biggest threat to people in the West. I really hope the UK has a big financial crash and the resulting chaos leads to a full regime change. The UK really scares me a lot more than Isis.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  The trouble is that any regime change could be worse and the full tools of oppression are already built...
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Could be worse, could be a lot better. We are in diminishing returns for how much worse our government could be without going outright "pick up that can" authoritarian. The list of scandals, corruption, privacy invasions and out right shittiness just goes on and on. To echo the GP, I worry alot more about what the politicians are up to than I do terrorists.
venomsnake 11y ago
But Snowden is the criminal. So do the brits have all my porn records or only the porn I watched in the last 60 days? The article didn't make it clear.
mavdi 11y ago
With all honesty, if you're a programmer or a hacker working for GCHQ (I'm certain there are some of you around here) you should really bury your head in shame. No excuses, you are simply disgusting.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  A fat paycheck and job security can do wonders in solving those pesky cognitive dissonance issues.
  - pen2l 11y ago
    That's true. Truer than people would think. The funny thing is, I've seen the very people who were passionately against these things join these organizations, because they pay well. I don't entirely fault them -- gotta put food on the plate.
    - forgotpwtomain 11y ago
      I don't excuse them in the least, there is no one working a programming job that can't afford to "put food on the table" -- independent of their employer.
      - pen2l 11y ago
        > there is no one working a programming job that can't afford to "put food on the table" -- independent of their employer. Okay, see, you are just wrong there. I personally know about 5 people who are crazy good programmers (systems programming and all) who have been unable to find jobs. They say they have trouble finding employment because of their age... time commitments (can only put in 40 hours, need to take care of kids), etc. It absolutely is the fact that some of these people take these jobs because they pay competitively and meet with their requirements. I know this because I personally know some of them and they told me exactly this.
        fit2rule 11y ago
AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
I wonder if Radiohead would be disgusted to find that their song title had been appropriated for this kind of alarming surveillance.
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  They approve...
multinglets 11y ago
The solution is for everyone to mess with their signal-to-noise ratio. Make alts. Tell lies. Use VPNs. Encrypt trivial conversations. Use steganography for real secrets. If they like the job security, give them their damn job security by giving them nothing else.
- Asparagirl 11y ago
  Alternately, you can take the attitude that you will practice radical transparency in your online and offline preferences and habits, so there's nothing to potentially blackmail you with because you live your life unashamed. I mean, personally my initial reaction when I first heard about the early Snowden leaks two years ago was "welp, hope the NSA enjoyed reading all that Tony Stark/Bruce Banner fanfic as much as I did."
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    If this the case for you then please walk down the street naked whilst reciting your banking password... I doubt you want to do that. Everyone has something to hide.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Absolutely disgusting.
crimsoneer 11y ago
Just to clarify, these are all currently metadata, right? Eg, this stuff is, in theory, not linked to any individual people without a warrant/authority?
- azakai 11y ago
  They mention mass tracking of cookies from sources like google, yahoo, reddit, youtube, etc. - those might technically count as "metadata", but they are used to track individuals.
  - crimsoneer 11y ago
    I'd be fascinated as to how that's justified legally. Mass tracking has been accepted by the high courts, but the moment you start tracking individual users, you need some sort of warrant or RIPA authority.
    - M2Ys4U 11y ago
      >I'd be fascinated as to how that's justified legally. They don't feel the need to justify it legally, especially when oversight is sitting down with the head of GCHQ over dinner and asking if there's anything dodgy going on. >Mass tracking has been accepted by the high courts By the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, maybe - but that's not a real court and it's barely part of the court system at all.
      - kwhitefoot 11y ago
        Not to mention that it can either be 'mass' or 'tracking' not both, at least not with the implied meaning that 'no individual is tracked'. Tracking is by definition of an identifiable group or individual. If you can't be sure that the track you are looking at refers to the same individual throughout its length then you are not tracking, at least not successfully. Conversely if you are tracking you cannot reasonably also claim that you don't know who you are tracking except in the trivial sense that you, perhaps, don't know their name or some other attribute; although you could look it up.
rconti 11y ago
These agencies have all the incentive in the world to "encourage" popular websites (bbc.co.uk perhaps) to make their cookies particularly detailed and leaky.
acd 11y ago
This is also how you decloak users from VPN, first you profile their online behaviour without vpn, track cookies and graph site visits. Then when people use vpn you still see and track their identity.
heurist 11y ago
There's a huge economic incentive in having this data available - predict markets, sell or provide predictions to businesses, understand what your citizens are thinking at any point in time... Facebook, twitter, et. al. are all sitting on gold mines as well. Ignoring the privacy concerns (which are substantial) this would be an amazing set of data to work with. I'm not surprised there are people willing to do this. An interesting article [1] was published in Nature a few days ago. I haven't read the entire paper yet but the abstract claims, "group-level ability to produce complex innovations is maximized when social information is easy to acquire and when individuals are organized into large and partially connected populations." Imagine the innovations and industries that would be created if all the information governments and corporations are sitting on were freely available. I hope there will eventually be a broad 'free data' movement. If Google and Facebook are secretly pushing propoganda that privacy is dead (as stated in some conspiracy theory I recently saw on HN), and if these campaigns work, then the public will eventually not mind having their data open and available. But they should mind that it's all locked behind closed doors. Data is power! Do we want these massive corporations or governments to have so much power over the economy? Should they hinder social and technological progress by keeping their data unavailable? I have no answers but I think these problems will grow in time. [1] http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9398.epdf?shared_access_token=yJOtLFlNNS_IfWp7euQPrtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MvQ0FUG1dCDOKxBE_POWNPMiP1CverdZ95VFKJiIndDRw-u8n5b_kk6j_4inTe_-aBd9RAU_6AQawhdEGUPM_Bn7ASXW-q-aqfnS1lzFjnm57djcNDok8Peien0Gt4NZ0%3D http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9398.epdf?shared_access...
- legel 11y ago
  You bring up two very interesting and powerful phenomena: "siren servers" and "social physics". The first term is used by Jaron Lanier to describe computer systems that, like "sirens" of the sea, lure everyone into their beautiful environs, collect all of the data on them, and statistically model all of this data in ways that effectively master the nature of this individual - her beliefs, her abilities, her emotions - until ultimately that individual is made both completely vulnerable and completely powerless. Lanier's book is intentionally provocative and controversial, while rather intelligent and compassionate in its spirit, and I recommend checking it out: http://www.amazon.com/Who-Owns-Future-Jaron-Lanier/dp/1451654979 http://www.amazon.com/Who-Owns-Future-Jaron-Lanier/dp/145165.... The second term comes from a talk at Google in 2014 called "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBl0ttu-Ow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBl0ttu-Ow) by MIT Professor Sandy Pentland. He describes research supporting the recent Nature publication you link to on social and cultural progress, which concludes that our connectivity - free and fast flow of data on networks, people on roads, goods and services across nations, etc. - is our greatest economic and social virtue. His statistical modeling results really strongly show - "like a law" - that the more connected we are, the wealthier we are as a society. It's really interesting to consider how we could concentrate on using all of the data and models to make deep positive impacts on our society, while respecting our human dignity. To quote Pope Francis's address to the U.N. today: "Integral human development and the full exercise of human dignity cannot be imposed. They must be built up and allowed to unfold for each individual, for every family, in communion with others, and in a right relationship with all those areas in which human social life develops – friends, communities, towns and cities, schools, businesses and unions, provinces, nations, etc."
nota_bene 11y ago
I'm done writing stuff online. Good luck to y'all.
dotBen 11y ago
Does the fact that GCHQ have been able to scrape cookies from Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, CNN, BBC, Channel 4 indicate that https encryption has been broken? In many cases of the above sites, authenticated requests (ie those with cookies) are made via https and so they would not have otherwise had access to the plaintext version to extract the identifying usernames/etc.
- stordoff 11y ago
  Do all of those sites only send cookies over HTTPS (or did they at the time the GCHQ document was written)? I know, for example, that the Amazon homepage is sent in the clear - is that sufficient to ID the user? My gut reaction is that HTTPS isn't generally broken (though is probably susceptible to implementation flaws and targeted attacks to e.g. steal a priv. key) or we'd have seen more direct evidence in the leaked documents. That said, given the volume of documents that remain unpublished (or even unleaked), and the time that has passed since they were written, it's difficult to say for sure.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    The trouble with https is that if you control the certificate authorities you can easily beat https. I don't see how the NSA doesn't control at least some certificate authorities and they work closely with GCHQ (even paying the UK money to fund some of these programs).
- M2Ys4U 11y ago
  How many of those sites actually run over HTTPS? Reddit doesn't by default, neither do WordPress installs, CNN the BBC or Channel 4.
misiti3780 11y ago
"Black Hole contains data collected by GCHQ as part of bulk “unselected” surveillance, meaning it is not focused on particular “selected” targets and instead includes troves of data indiscriminately swept up about ordinary people’s online activities. Between August 2007 and March 2009, GCHQ documents say that Black Hole was used to store more than 1.1 trillion “events” — a term the agency uses to refer to metadata records — with about 10 billion new entries added every day. " I wonder if this "black hole" is backed by a huge HDFS cluster? When I was working in government consulting a few years back I used to alway see job posting at Fort Meade for Hadoop experts, and I know the government is (or was) a customer of Cloudera as of 2009. Incidentally, Amazon created a separate cloud service like EC2 for government data a few years back also I believe. I assume the NSA must be utilizing Hadoop, HDFS, Impala and/or Facebook Presto - or have a system they built internally but never released that can processing and store data at the same order of magnitude. If these documents are all true and we assume they are currently collecting more, not less data, then they were in 2012, then they are probably storing more data than Facebook/google on a daily basis EDIT - i guess the might not be storing as much data as Facebook or google because this sounds like mostly text, no images or video. It still must be a shitload of data though! I also realize that GCHQ is not the same thing as the NSA, but I assume they are doing similar things with similar size data sets Thoughts?
- nhf 11y ago
  This presentation (GCHQ) specifically notes use of HDFS and Hadoop to process data: https://theintercept.com/document/2015/09/25/gchq-analytic-cloud-challenges/ https://theintercept.com/document/2015/09/25/gchq-analytic-c...
  - misiti3780 11y ago
    thank you!
deleted 11y ago
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FooNull 11y ago
Absolutely disgusting.
rl3 11y ago
>Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps. I always figured virtual geo-fencing of online maps usage was probably a thing.
plg 11y ago
So Tor? Tails?
qiqing 11y ago
Can you imagine if the GCHQ had a breach and all the dirt on all everyone they spied on suddenly became public?
- facetube 11y ago
  You won't have to imagine – if NSA and GCHQ continue on their current course, it'll eventually happen. It's only a matter of time.
davesque 11y ago
Absolutely disgusting.
zenocon 11y ago
It sucks that it has come to this. I am afraid to do certain types of searches. The other day, I wanted to learn more about "Azan" -- the Muslim morning call to prayer that is often broadcast over loudspeakers from a mosque. I find the topic interesting and started poking around, but it landed me on several websites that made me start to feel uncomfortable that I was going to incite some trigger. I'm betting most people in my neighborhood aren't searching for this information, and I don't really want to be flagged. Pre-Snowden, I wouldn't have given it a second thought and thought it ridiculously paranoid. Now, I am very careful how I use the computer when it is connected to the wider network...and I think this is really sad and Orwellian.
akshatpradhan 11y ago
This has to be the nail on the coffin. They're spying on our porn. Those are personal details about myself I would never share with anybody and wouldn't want anybody to know. Fine, keep an image of my penis, but knowing details about my porn usage?
- 36erhefg 11y ago
  Well, most people share more with Google (search text) that with their closest friends. And most of them are just fine with that. Until of course they are in the spotlight. Since that almost never happens, we have this privacy apathy going on.
raspasov 11y ago
Slightly off topic, but recently watched Citizenfour - great documentary about Snowden and why he chose to reveal all of this information. It has real footage of Snowden himself right before the leaks, communicating via PGP with journalists, etc. Even though I already knew most of the stuff, rehashing it all over again makes it so much more impactful. Overall, highly recommended for anyone who cares about our world now and in the future. P.S. The government's idea that by somehow ingesting all of this data and effectively spying on everyone collectively will somehow protect us the helpless citizens sounds pretty bonkers (to use an UK phrase) to me. It's all just wasteful money spending as usual. Stop the scaremongering.
MichaelMoser123 11y ago
When comparing GCHQ or NSA, who is the spookiest of them all? Which one of them is sucking in more information and who does more with that info ? my impression is that there is less institutional oversight over spooks in the UK than in the US, is that true ?
- ionised 11y ago
  Snowden claimed that the UK's surveillance operations were a lot more severe than the US, basically due to a much weaker oversight framework. The US might have a secret court with secret judges but all it takes for surveillance to be signed off on in the UK is the signature of a minister in the currently governing party.
caf 11y ago
It would be nice if web browsers had an option to "only send cookies on HTTPS". Also: "MEMORY HOLE"? Someone seriously approved that as a code name?
- adeelx 11y ago
  Already available, secure cookies: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SecureFlag https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SecureFlag
  - AgentME 11y ago
    That's a setting for webservers to set on cookies.
  - caf 11y ago
    I am aware of that, and it's not what I'm talking about. That has to be set by the site to be effective. I'm suggesting a global setting in the browser that means it won't send any cookies to any plain HTTP site, regardless of what the site says. If enough people enabled an option like this, sites would have to move to HTTPS if they wanted to reliably use cookies, which doesn't seem problematic.
zby 11y ago
This is just the beginning - the problem we are facing are the digital personal assistants. They are like servants - but their loyalty is first to the corporation that runs the server not to the user. This is where the really rich data will come from. And the data will be useful in all kinds of criminal investigations - there will be more and more legitimate cases and there will be no will to limit it. https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/we-ve-got-this-whole-unicorn-thing-all-wrong-3f3d108cc71d https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/we-ve-got-this-whole-unic... - see how useful the assistants can be - people will use them
deleted 11y ago
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cm2187 11y ago
The comparison with the Stasi is usually perceived as a Godwin point, but I think it is now a very reasonable comparison. I am amazed and honestly surprised how easily the secret services turned against their own population in the world's oldest democracy. It happens slowly and like the boiling frog we won't realise we are in a totalitarian regime until we're there.
- rakoo 11y ago
  > The comparison with the Stasi is usually perceived as a Godwin point I don't see how, the Stasi was Communist, not Nazi. Perhaps you're thinking about the Gestapo.
te_chris 11y ago
Worst part of all this? It's not a feature on any of the major british news outlets. Go look for yourself.
- igravious 11y ago
  Let's make a list of the UK[0] press and see who reports. Correct as of 6pm GMT Sept. 26th. The story is just breaking but only the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror have reported it so far. I'll probably be on a nice list now having made all those searches : ) Advice on how to search The Sun's website welcome. - The Sun[1], can't find a search box - Daily Mail[2], yes! - Daily Mirror[3], yes! - Evening Standard[4], no - Daily Telegraph[5], no - Daily Express[6], no - Daily Star[7], no - The Times[8], no - i / The Independent[9], no - Financial Times[10], no - Daily Record[11], no - The Guardian[12], no [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Unit... [1] uh [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?sel=site&searchPhrase=gchq http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?sel=site&searchP... [3] http://www.mirror.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionId=219&publicationName=mirror&sortString=publishdate&sortOrder=desc&sectionId=69&articleTypes=+news+opinion+advice&pageNumber=1&pageLength=5&searchString=gchq http://www.mirror.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionI... [4] http://www.standard.co.uk/search/site/gchq http://www.standard.co.uk/search/site/gchq [5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/search/?queryText=gchq&sort=recent http://www.telegraph.co.uk/search/?queryText=gchq&sort=recen... [6] http://www.express.co.uk/search/gchq http://www.express.co.uk/search/gchq [7] http://www.dailystar.co.uk/search/gchq http://www.dailystar.co.uk/search/gchq [8] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?querystring=gchq&p=tto&pf=all&bl=on http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?querystri... [9] http://www.independent.co.uk/search/site/gchq http://www.independent.co.uk/search/site/gchq [10] http://search.ft.com/search?queryText=gchq http://search.ft.com/search?queryText=gchq [11] http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionId=3156&publicationName=dailyrecord&sortString=publishdate&sortOrder=desc&sectionId=3151&articleTypes=+news+opinion+advice&pageNumber=1&pageLength=5&searchString=gchq http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSec... [12] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/gchq http://www.theguardian.com/uk/gchq
robk 11y ago
Seems like I should turn On open access for my wifi router to pollute these results by running am open hotspot.
machiaweliczny 11y ago
I have one question. Any idea how they can extract cookie data from encrypted connections?
nly 11y ago
Well sites like YouPorn, RedTube and PornTube etc, despite being ridiculously popular, haven't deployed any kind of TLS. They don't care about your privacy. It's low hanging fruit... far too tempting for the likes of GCHQ, with their capabilities, to just ignore. If you don't want people spying on your porn habits then boycott sites like this. And if you're running a porn site, consider going HTTPS only, turning off access_logs (or purging them regularly), and providing a Tor hidden service.
gopowerranger 11y ago
People jumped down my throat, here on HN, whenever I brought up this very fact over the last couple of years so I find it interesting to see it reach the top. I guess we have to rotate targets more slowly over time.
jjuhl 11y ago
Sickening.

450 points by jakobdabo 11y ago

Yep. Why do you think they're tracking porn habits, if not for blackmail material? There's no legitimate reason why a government needs to know anything about citizens sexual preferences or habits, but such information is perfect for shaming or threatening. I will note that the collection and analysis of this sort of information far surpasses anything envisioned in dystopian fiction or actually practiced by the likes of Stasi/KGB during the worst of times. EDIT: there were actually a bunch of documents published with this article. I'll check those out then re-comment.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
It can be useful for blackmailing prominent figures of adversarial foreign regimes, though to be fair Britain's spies will have to sift through their own Parliament first.

ionised 11y ago

I've never been so ashamed to be British. These last few years have really started to wear me down. The indiscriminate mass-surveillance, the savaging of our public services by an obviously corrupt government, the blatent hyprocrisy of our foreign policy, the repeated and unfettered fraud of the City of London financial sector that has yet to see anyone prosecuted or any institution meaningfully punished. I really hate this place.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Given how much British politicians seem determined to make life shitty for anyone making less than six figures, you'd think they'd at least let people spend what idle time they have high on drugs instead of questioning a system that seems intent on shredding the middle class.
branchless 11y ago
Just get out. However this ends it's not a happy ending. The UK establishment are nuts.
- MrZongle2 11y ago
  The American establishment isn't much better.
- voidz 11y ago
  Get out? To where?!
  - fencepost 11y ago
    Well, there's Canada..... Where the Harper government is in the process of eliminating all historical archives and scientific libraries... Australia? Hmm, wasn't there something about data retention? And maybe Western Australia trying to change the laws so protestors would have to prove that they weren't about to do something illegal when they were arrested? New Zealand? Baaah.
    - ansible 11y ago
      Don't forget the moves towards Internet censorship in Australia too. Aside from lots of sheep, what's wrong with New Zealand?
      - dombili 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
      - fencepost 11y ago
        Along with the items already noted, it's also pretty small and I'm not sure how many immigrants they accept though I think there's something about Commonwealth nations and immigration that might help.
      - 11y ago
Zigurd 11y ago
Every country in the Five Eyes is doing this, and many if not most who have the money to fund this kind of thing are doing it. Move to Greece. They can't afford surveillance.
- pakled_engineer 11y ago
  CSEC (Canada) is up to the same shenanigans, approx zero politicians are talking about reigning in the surveillance state in any meaningful way during the election right now so it will keep on rolling. I often talk to people who have no idea who Snowden is, nor have they ever heard of CSEC.
buffoon 11y ago
Perhaps I'm older than you but it's been the same in my mind since the 1980s at least. My father informs me earlier. At least we have the joys of privatized services now (I'm serious). They are an order of magnitude better than the public railway, gas and electricity infrastructure we had. Controversially perhaps, I've had much better service from the NHS since they moved to a service model. I'm not ashamed of my identity at all.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >They are an order of magnitude better than the public railway Order of magnitude more expensive, maybe. Better? No.
  - buffoon 11y ago
    The first 15 years of my life in the 1970s and 1980s was spent going in and out of London to various hospitals on trains. No. Absolutely not. It's much better now. Orders of magnitude better. Every train was late. There were engineering works overruns every Monday and weekend service was so bad you might as well walk. And no not more expensive. People couldn't afford the train then and regularly took the inferior busses. If you went long distance, it was coach. Either way you were doomed to a face full of diesel fumes from a Paxman or a Leyland and spend the entire day with your nose running black snot. Incidentally this is what killed my father; he was a bus driver.
dingaling 11y ago
Plus we ( the UK ) have now jumped onboard with remote drone assassination of UK citizens abroad. Even though there hasn't been a death penalty on the statute books since 1998.
godgod 11y ago
I've never been so ashamed to be an American. These last few years have really started to wear me down. The indiscriminate mass-surveillance, the savaging of our public services by an obviously corrupt government, the blatent hyprocrisy of our foreign policy, the repeated and unfettered fraud of the Washington D.C. financial sector that has yet to see anyone prosecuted or any institution meaningfully punished. I really hate this place.
SixSigma 11y ago
You should read more history. We have been awful for 100s of years. Just in the 20thC we destabilised the Middle East, exploded bombs in pubs in Eire to drum up discontent, jailed the innocent, protected the powerful, destroyed our own manufacturing in favour of financial services, exported asset stripping to the US..... The list could go on. Your shame is proportional to your knowledge, the level of reprehensible action is a constant.
notNow 11y ago
I've never been so ashamed to be British. The "illustrious" colonial and expansionist history of the British empire wasn't enough to tip the scales for you before?
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Why should we be ashamed of something that was done before we where born, should the Germans still be ashamed for world war two, should US citizens still be ashamed for what the US Army did, should the Italians be ashamed for what the Romans did, the French be ashamed for what Napoleon did?. I accept our history, I'm not ashamed of it, it's history and I wasn't there. However I am ashamed to be British for the things we currently do.
rorykoehler 11y ago
Britain has a history of far worse things. I find the lack of awareness of Britains brutal past in the UK to be terribly disturbing. Morally it has one of the most repulsive histories of countries on earth yet all we hear from politicians is about British values as if they are some kind of goal to look up to. The superiority complex prevalent in British political discourse has no foundation yet is rolled out time and time again.

logn 11y ago

Selectors accept wildcards: https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/mutant-broth1.png https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/mutant-brot... I wonder what this query returns: _@_ or: _._._._ And the justification textbox has a default width that accommodates about 7 words. At one point in the article it says the domain of a logged website is considered metadata but the path (full URL) is considered content. However, this screenshot shows a logged HTTP GET including its full path: https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/cryptome.png https://firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/09/cryptome.pn... "When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has 'a light oversight regime.'" ... and UK is one of the US's Five Eyes partners, so the US has a light oversight regime, in effect. At least the GCHQ shows some honest self-awareness in naming their surveillance apps. Karma Police. For a minute here, it seems like the intelligence agencies have lost themselves. http://genius.com/Radiohead-karma-police-lyrics http://genius.com/Radiohead-karma-police-lyrics ... I particularly like the last comment on the page analyzing the song, which begins, "This song is about the projection of guilt onto the Other", and concludes: "Prisoners, soldiers, soldiers' victims; these are all sacrifices, onto which we project our guilt, so that we can be saved."

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

I have two takeaways from this piece: 1: We should never assume any online activity isn't being tracked by someone. 2: The above doesn't give the government a pass on due process when citizens choose to avoid tracking by encryption or otherwise.

LouisSayers 11y ago
Except where they have a warrant and reach their dirty little fingers into certificate authorities. Unless you're doing key exchange yourself I would assume nothing is truly private.
- M2Ys4U 11y ago
  They don't need warrants. They'll just hack in like they did with Belgacom. And even if they don't, they won't get a warrant. They'll get a certificate from the relevant politician that'll authorise them to do it.

cynoclast 11y ago

"HERE WAS A SIMPLE AIM at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.” Jesus fucking christ.

clort 11y ago
Heh, not trying to be pendantic because I actually thought that first sentence didn't make much sense.. there is a graphic T on the left, so it actually read "There was a simple aim"
- godgod 11y ago
  Thank you GCHQ.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

junto 11y ago

Ladies and gentlemen. This is how you do blackmail, corporate espionage, and sway politicians on a truly industrial scale. Want to push a bill through the House of Commons to curb GCHQ's powers? Think again Mr. Politician. Someone might just leak your sexual deviances to the newspaper.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I think we're due for a second sexual revolution, one where we once and for all settle our relationship between individual, society, and sex, where the only reason you should be concerned with someone else's consensual behavior is if: 1: You're banging them 2: You want to bang them 3: It's your kid and they're underage.
- mkaziz 11y ago
  I'd correct #3 to *they're underage.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- herge 11y ago
  Tell that to everyone who clicked on a tabloid headline about David Cameron and a pig's head.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    Cameron is still in power. Considering what his government gets up to, it's completely clear he has no conscience at all.
    - blibble 11y ago
      GCHQ and MI5 have been up to this sort of thing for decades. I don't expect it'll ever change, as by the time someone's made it to high office, then the agencies will have collected enough material to keep them quiet and on side.

branchless 11y ago

I love the way this article cites loop-holes. These guys do whatever they like. They have no mandate and they do it anyway with the blessing of politicians who then pretend to be concerned. For me as a Brit the UK establishment is the biggest threat to people in the West. I really hope the UK has a big financial crash and the resulting chaos leads to a full regime change. The UK really scares me a lot more than Isis.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
The trouble is that any regime change could be worse and the full tools of oppression are already built...
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Could be worse, could be a lot better. We are in diminishing returns for how much worse our government could be without going outright "pick up that can" authoritarian. The list of scandals, corruption, privacy invasions and out right shittiness just goes on and on. To echo the GP, I worry alot more about what the politicians are up to than I do terrorists.

venomsnake 11y ago

But Snowden is the criminal. So do the brits have all my porn records or only the porn I watched in the last 60 days? The article didn't make it clear.

mavdi 11y ago

With all honesty, if you're a programmer or a hacker working for GCHQ (I'm certain there are some of you around here) you should really bury your head in shame. No excuses, you are simply disgusting.

rdtsc 11y ago
A fat paycheck and job security can do wonders in solving those pesky cognitive dissonance issues.
- pen2l 11y ago
  That's true. Truer than people would think. The funny thing is, I've seen the very people who were passionately against these things join these organizations, because they pay well. I don't entirely fault them -- gotta put food on the plate.
  - forgotpwtomain 11y ago
    I don't excuse them in the least, there is no one working a programming job that can't afford to "put food on the table" -- independent of their employer.
    - pen2l 11y ago
      > there is no one working a programming job that can't afford to "put food on the table" -- independent of their employer. Okay, see, you are just wrong there. I personally know about 5 people who are crazy good programmers (systems programming and all) who have been unable to find jobs. They say they have trouble finding employment because of their age... time commitments (can only put in 40 hours, need to take care of kids), etc. It absolutely is the fact that some of these people take these jobs because they pay competitively and meet with their requirements. I know this because I personally know some of them and they told me exactly this.
      - fit2rule 11y ago

AdmiralAsshat 11y ago

I wonder if Radiohead would be disgusted to find that their song title had been appropriated for this kind of alarming surveillance.

madaxe_again 11y ago
They approve...

multinglets 11y ago

The solution is for everyone to mess with their signal-to-noise ratio. Make alts. Tell lies. Use VPNs. Encrypt trivial conversations. Use steganography for real secrets. If they like the job security, give them their damn job security by giving them nothing else.

Asparagirl 11y ago
Alternately, you can take the attitude that you will practice radical transparency in your online and offline preferences and habits, so there's nothing to potentially blackmail you with because you live your life unashamed. I mean, personally my initial reaction when I first heard about the early Snowden leaks two years ago was "welp, hope the NSA enjoyed reading all that Tony Stark/Bruce Banner fanfic as much as I did."
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  If this the case for you then please walk down the street naked whilst reciting your banking password... I doubt you want to do that. Everyone has something to hide.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

Absolutely disgusting.

crimsoneer 11y ago

Just to clarify, these are all currently metadata, right? Eg, this stuff is, in theory, not linked to any individual people without a warrant/authority?

azakai 11y ago
They mention mass tracking of cookies from sources like google, yahoo, reddit, youtube, etc. - those might technically count as "metadata", but they are used to track individuals.
- crimsoneer 11y ago
  I'd be fascinated as to how that's justified legally. Mass tracking has been accepted by the high courts, but the moment you start tracking individual users, you need some sort of warrant or RIPA authority.
  - M2Ys4U 11y ago
    >I'd be fascinated as to how that's justified legally. They don't feel the need to justify it legally, especially when oversight is sitting down with the head of GCHQ over dinner and asking if there's anything dodgy going on. >Mass tracking has been accepted by the high courts By the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, maybe - but that's not a real court and it's barely part of the court system at all.
    - kwhitefoot 11y ago
      Not to mention that it can either be 'mass' or 'tracking' not both, at least not with the implied meaning that 'no individual is tracked'. Tracking is by definition of an identifiable group or individual. If you can't be sure that the track you are looking at refers to the same individual throughout its length then you are not tracking, at least not successfully. Conversely if you are tracking you cannot reasonably also claim that you don't know who you are tracking except in the trivial sense that you, perhaps, don't know their name or some other attribute; although you could look it up.

rconti 11y ago

These agencies have all the incentive in the world to "encourage" popular websites (bbc.co.uk perhaps) to make their cookies particularly detailed and leaky.

acd 11y ago

This is also how you decloak users from VPN, first you profile their online behaviour without vpn, track cookies and graph site visits. Then when people use vpn you still see and track their identity.

heurist 11y ago

There's a huge economic incentive in having this data available - predict markets, sell or provide predictions to businesses, understand what your citizens are thinking at any point in time... Facebook, twitter, et. al. are all sitting on gold mines as well. Ignoring the privacy concerns (which are substantial) this would be an amazing set of data to work with. I'm not surprised there are people willing to do this. An interesting article [1] was published in Nature a few days ago. I haven't read the entire paper yet but the abstract claims, "group-level ability to produce complex innovations is maximized when social information is easy to acquire and when individuals are organized into large and partially connected populations." Imagine the innovations and industries that would be created if all the information governments and corporations are sitting on were freely available. I hope there will eventually be a broad 'free data' movement. If Google and Facebook are secretly pushing propoganda that privacy is dead (as stated in some conspiracy theory I recently saw on HN), and if these campaigns work, then the public will eventually not mind having their data open and available. But they should mind that it's all locked behind closed doors. Data is power! Do we want these massive corporations or governments to have so much power over the economy? Should they hinder social and technological progress by keeping their data unavailable? I have no answers but I think these problems will grow in time. [1] http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9398.epdf?shared_access_token=yJOtLFlNNS_IfWp7euQPrtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MvQ0FUG1dCDOKxBE_POWNPMiP1CverdZ95VFKJiIndDRw-u8n5b_kk6j_4inTe_-aBd9RAU_6AQawhdEGUPM_Bn7ASXW-q-aqfnS1lzFjnm57djcNDok8Peien0Gt4NZ0%3D http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9398.epdf?shared_access...

legel 11y ago
You bring up two very interesting and powerful phenomena: "siren servers" and "social physics". The first term is used by Jaron Lanier to describe computer systems that, like "sirens" of the sea, lure everyone into their beautiful environs, collect all of the data on them, and statistically model all of this data in ways that effectively master the nature of this individual - her beliefs, her abilities, her emotions - until ultimately that individual is made both completely vulnerable and completely powerless. Lanier's book is intentionally provocative and controversial, while rather intelligent and compassionate in its spirit, and I recommend checking it out: http://www.amazon.com/Who-Owns-Future-Jaron-Lanier/dp/1451654979 http://www.amazon.com/Who-Owns-Future-Jaron-Lanier/dp/145165.... The second term comes from a talk at Google in 2014 called "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBl0ttu-Ow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBl0ttu-Ow) by MIT Professor Sandy Pentland. He describes research supporting the recent Nature publication you link to on social and cultural progress, which concludes that our connectivity - free and fast flow of data on networks, people on roads, goods and services across nations, etc. - is our greatest economic and social virtue. His statistical modeling results really strongly show - "like a law" - that the more connected we are, the wealthier we are as a society. It's really interesting to consider how we could concentrate on using all of the data and models to make deep positive impacts on our society, while respecting our human dignity. To quote Pope Francis's address to the U.N. today: "Integral human development and the full exercise of human dignity cannot be imposed. They must be built up and allowed to unfold for each individual, for every family, in communion with others, and in a right relationship with all those areas in which human social life develops – friends, communities, towns and cities, schools, businesses and unions, provinces, nations, etc."

nota_bene 11y ago

I'm done writing stuff online. Good luck to y'all.

dotBen 11y ago

Does the fact that GCHQ have been able to scrape cookies from Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, CNN, BBC, Channel 4 indicate that https encryption has been broken? In many cases of the above sites, authenticated requests (ie those with cookies) are made via https and so they would not have otherwise had access to the plaintext version to extract the identifying usernames/etc.

stordoff 11y ago
Do all of those sites only send cookies over HTTPS (or did they at the time the GCHQ document was written)? I know, for example, that the Amazon homepage is sent in the clear - is that sufficient to ID the user? My gut reaction is that HTTPS isn't generally broken (though is probably susceptible to implementation flaws and targeted attacks to e.g. steal a priv. key) or we'd have seen more direct evidence in the leaked documents. That said, given the volume of documents that remain unpublished (or even unleaked), and the time that has passed since they were written, it's difficult to say for sure.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  The trouble with https is that if you control the certificate authorities you can easily beat https. I don't see how the NSA doesn't control at least some certificate authorities and they work closely with GCHQ (even paying the UK money to fund some of these programs).
M2Ys4U 11y ago
How many of those sites actually run over HTTPS? Reddit doesn't by default, neither do WordPress installs, CNN the BBC or Channel 4.

misiti3780 11y ago

"Black Hole contains data collected by GCHQ as part of bulk “unselected” surveillance, meaning it is not focused on particular “selected” targets and instead includes troves of data indiscriminately swept up about ordinary people’s online activities. Between August 2007 and March 2009, GCHQ documents say that Black Hole was used to store more than 1.1 trillion “events” — a term the agency uses to refer to metadata records — with about 10 billion new entries added every day. " I wonder if this "black hole" is backed by a huge HDFS cluster? When I was working in government consulting a few years back I used to alway see job posting at Fort Meade for Hadoop experts, and I know the government is (or was) a customer of Cloudera as of 2009. Incidentally, Amazon created a separate cloud service like EC2 for government data a few years back also I believe. I assume the NSA must be utilizing Hadoop, HDFS, Impala and/or Facebook Presto - or have a system they built internally but never released that can processing and store data at the same order of magnitude. If these documents are all true and we assume they are currently collecting more, not less data, then they were in 2012, then they are probably storing more data than Facebook/google on a daily basis EDIT - i guess the might not be storing as much data as Facebook or google because this sounds like mostly text, no images or video. It still must be a shitload of data though! I also realize that GCHQ is not the same thing as the NSA, but I assume they are doing similar things with similar size data sets Thoughts?

nhf 11y ago
This presentation (GCHQ) specifically notes use of HDFS and Hadoop to process data: https://theintercept.com/document/2015/09/25/gchq-analytic-cloud-challenges/ https://theintercept.com/document/2015/09/25/gchq-analytic-c...
- misiti3780 11y ago
  thank you!

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

FooNull 11y ago

Absolutely disgusting.

rl3 11y ago

>Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps. I always figured virtual geo-fencing of online maps usage was probably a thing.

plg 11y ago

So Tor? Tails?

qiqing 11y ago

Can you imagine if the GCHQ had a breach and all the dirt on all everyone they spied on suddenly became public?

facetube 11y ago
You won't have to imagine – if NSA and GCHQ continue on their current course, it'll eventually happen. It's only a matter of time.

davesque 11y ago

Absolutely disgusting.

zenocon 11y ago

It sucks that it has come to this. I am afraid to do certain types of searches. The other day, I wanted to learn more about "Azan" -- the Muslim morning call to prayer that is often broadcast over loudspeakers from a mosque. I find the topic interesting and started poking around, but it landed me on several websites that made me start to feel uncomfortable that I was going to incite some trigger. I'm betting most people in my neighborhood aren't searching for this information, and I don't really want to be flagged. Pre-Snowden, I wouldn't have given it a second thought and thought it ridiculously paranoid. Now, I am very careful how I use the computer when it is connected to the wider network...and I think this is really sad and Orwellian.

akshatpradhan 11y ago

This has to be the nail on the coffin. They're spying on our porn. Those are personal details about myself I would never share with anybody and wouldn't want anybody to know. Fine, keep an image of my penis, but knowing details about my porn usage?

36erhefg 11y ago
Well, most people share more with Google (search text) that with their closest friends. And most of them are just fine with that. Until of course they are in the spotlight. Since that almost never happens, we have this privacy apathy going on.

raspasov 11y ago

Slightly off topic, but recently watched Citizenfour - great documentary about Snowden and why he chose to reveal all of this information. It has real footage of Snowden himself right before the leaks, communicating via PGP with journalists, etc. Even though I already knew most of the stuff, rehashing it all over again makes it so much more impactful. Overall, highly recommended for anyone who cares about our world now and in the future. P.S. The government's idea that by somehow ingesting all of this data and effectively spying on everyone collectively will somehow protect us the helpless citizens sounds pretty bonkers (to use an UK phrase) to me. It's all just wasteful money spending as usual. Stop the scaremongering.

MichaelMoser123 11y ago

When comparing GCHQ or NSA, who is the spookiest of them all? Which one of them is sucking in more information and who does more with that info ? my impression is that there is less institutional oversight over spooks in the UK than in the US, is that true ?

ionised 11y ago
Snowden claimed that the UK's surveillance operations were a lot more severe than the US, basically due to a much weaker oversight framework. The US might have a secret court with secret judges but all it takes for surveillance to be signed off on in the UK is the signature of a minister in the currently governing party.

caf 11y ago

It would be nice if web browsers had an option to "only send cookies on HTTPS". Also: "MEMORY HOLE"? Someone seriously approved that as a code name?

adeelx 11y ago
Already available, secure cookies: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SecureFlag https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SecureFlag
- AgentME 11y ago
  That's a setting for webservers to set on cookies.
- caf 11y ago
  I am aware of that, and it's not what I'm talking about. That has to be set by the site to be effective. I'm suggesting a global setting in the browser that means it won't send any cookies to any plain HTTP site, regardless of what the site says. If enough people enabled an option like this, sites would have to move to HTTPS if they wanted to reliably use cookies, which doesn't seem problematic.

zby 11y ago

This is just the beginning - the problem we are facing are the digital personal assistants. They are like servants - but their loyalty is first to the corporation that runs the server not to the user. This is where the really rich data will come from. And the data will be useful in all kinds of criminal investigations - there will be more and more legitimate cases and there will be no will to limit it. https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/we-ve-got-this-whole-unicorn-thing-all-wrong-3f3d108cc71d https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/we-ve-got-this-whole-unic... - see how useful the assistants can be - people will use them

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cm2187 11y ago

The comparison with the Stasi is usually perceived as a Godwin point, but I think it is now a very reasonable comparison. I am amazed and honestly surprised how easily the secret services turned against their own population in the world's oldest democracy. It happens slowly and like the boiling frog we won't realise we are in a totalitarian regime until we're there.

rakoo 11y ago
> The comparison with the Stasi is usually perceived as a Godwin point I don't see how, the Stasi was Communist, not Nazi. Perhaps you're thinking about the Gestapo.

te_chris 11y ago

Worst part of all this? It's not a feature on any of the major british news outlets. Go look for yourself.

igravious 11y ago
Let's make a list of the UK[0] press and see who reports. Correct as of 6pm GMT Sept. 26th. The story is just breaking but only the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror have reported it so far. I'll probably be on a nice list now having made all those searches : ) Advice on how to search The Sun's website welcome. - The Sun[1], can't find a search box - Daily Mail[2], yes! - Daily Mirror[3], yes! - Evening Standard[4], no - Daily Telegraph[5], no - Daily Express[6], no - Daily Star[7], no - The Times[8], no - i / The Independent[9], no - Financial Times[10], no - Daily Record[11], no - The Guardian[12], no [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Unit... [1] uh [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?sel=site&searchPhrase=gchq http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?sel=site&searchP... [3] http://www.mirror.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionId=219&publicationName=mirror&sortString=publishdate&sortOrder=desc&sectionId=69&articleTypes=+news+opinion+advice&pageNumber=1&pageLength=5&searchString=gchq http://www.mirror.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionI... [4] http://www.standard.co.uk/search/site/gchq http://www.standard.co.uk/search/site/gchq [5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/search/?queryText=gchq&sort=recent http://www.telegraph.co.uk/search/?queryText=gchq&sort=recen... [6] http://www.express.co.uk/search/gchq http://www.express.co.uk/search/gchq [7] http://www.dailystar.co.uk/search/gchq http://www.dailystar.co.uk/search/gchq [8] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?querystring=gchq&p=tto&pf=all&bl=on http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?querystri... [9] http://www.independent.co.uk/search/site/gchq http://www.independent.co.uk/search/site/gchq [10] http://search.ft.com/search?queryText=gchq http://search.ft.com/search?queryText=gchq [11] http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSectionId=3156&publicationName=dailyrecord&sortString=publishdate&sortOrder=desc&sectionId=3151&articleTypes=+news+opinion+advice&pageNumber=1&pageLength=5&searchString=gchq http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/search/simple.do?destinationSec... [12] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/gchq http://www.theguardian.com/uk/gchq

robk 11y ago

Seems like I should turn On open access for my wifi router to pollute these results by running am open hotspot.

machiaweliczny 11y ago

I have one question. Any idea how they can extract cookie data from encrypted connections?

nly 11y ago

Well sites like YouPorn, RedTube and PornTube etc, despite being ridiculously popular, haven't deployed any kind of TLS. They don't care about your privacy. It's low hanging fruit... far too tempting for the likes of GCHQ, with their capabilities, to just ignore. If you don't want people spying on your porn habits then boycott sites like this. And if you're running a porn site, consider going HTTPS only, turning off access_logs (or purging them regularly), and providing a Tor hidden service.

gopowerranger 11y ago

People jumped down my throat, here on HN, whenever I brought up this very fact over the last couple of years so I find it interesting to see it reach the top. I guess we have to rotate targets more slowly over time.

jjuhl 11y ago

Sickening.