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Short term gain for long term pain from the security services here. Journalists and researchers into Islamic groups like IS, should be left in peace to carry o

by junto 11y ago

Short term gain for long term pain from the security services here. Journalists and researchers into Islamic groups like IS, should be left in peace to carry out research into how these militant groups operate and function. The security services have struggled to make inroads on these groups. Unable to place effective spies and get Intel, especially on home grown cells. Journalists therefore provide a double function in these challenging times. They provide the public with valuable insights into the psyche behind these groups, and in parallel they gain important access to people in these groups that no one else can. The flip side of this coin, is that journalists need to be acutely aware that they are not used as an IS marketing and propaganda platform. If journalist fear arrest from the state in order to divulge their sources then these groups stop talking to them. My gut feeling is that this was exactly the security services intention. The article hints at the journalists links to an alleged pro-militant employer, so it is quite possible that they view him as a sympathiser. One needs to understand the psyche of people who work in the security services and special branch. They are very polarised in their beliefs and their opinions. They tend to be racist, xenophobic and have a tendency to group people in tidy mental boxes. They see the world in black and white. There is no grey. They are massively insular and have very much an "us and them mentality". They have comparatively a large amount of power, and enjoy using it. They know that they can bend rules like this and will only get a public slap on the wrists and a quiet pat on the back from their superiors. Therefore they know that they can for a warning shot across this young Muslim journalist's bow, and get away with it. My two cents.

petewailes 11y ago
I'm fairly certain you don't actually know anything like enough people who work for any of the security services in the UK to make this an informed opinion. Because you couldn't be more wrong. A populist viewpoint with no basis whatsoever in reality. Not surprising, but disappointing. For the avoidance of doubt, no, I don't support what's happened here. It's ill-judged (no pun intended) to say the least.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > A populist viewpoint with no basis whatsoever in reality. What you just said serves no purpose. Can you please provide sources and alternative viewpoints people can actually discuss, rather than belittle someone for commenting on a story?
  - wisty 11y ago
    I think it's wrong to just categorise law enforcement as a bunch of racists. Especially in the UK (cough Rotherham). It's also a bit strange to hear someone accusing the police of all being black and white thinkers, who like putting everyone in little boxes, enjoy using their power, and being extremely insular. You could say the same about the kind of progressives who think all police are racists. There probably is an element of truth, in that law enforcement does have black and white thinking. If someone is a suspect, they can act like it's their job to haul them in at all costs, unless breaking the rules would hurt the case. Yes, it's an adversarial legal system, but sometimes the police and prosecution can seem to lack discretion. Also, the amount of funding they have to clamp down on terrorism is quite disproportionate. There's a lot of police tracking down a tiny number of needles in a haystack, so anyone who looks remotely like a terrorist risks being treated as a suspect.
  - petewailes 11y ago
    Happily. http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-secret-service http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-s... http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/3180 http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/3180 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/forget-bond-mi5-wants-cat-loving-twentysomethings-424915.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/forget-bon... For starters. They're not normal people, in that they're recruited by elitist institutions from other elitist institutions. Not dissimilar to how branches of our industry work, although the profile for who they want is somewhat different. But for the most part, in terms of personality, they're fairly normal people. There aren't any mustachioed villains sitting around wondering how best to abuse their powers. Yes, there's some who enjoy wielding the power they have, but the same is true in business, and doctors like performing surgery. Mischaracterising people like this does no service to the reader, no better than people who take controversial political figures and characture and demonise them. In the end, it just makes for a lower level of discourse and a worldview lacking in nuance. Ironically, what the poster was complaining about.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  A predictable response from a supporter of the military-industrial complex. Those who use secrecy to rule deserve the right to neither.
- junto 11y ago
  First hand actually, although granted, the culture might have magically changed over the last 15 years.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Good thing that you added nothing to the discussion then
johncolanduoni 11y ago
> One needs to understand the psyche of people who work in the security services and special branch. I'm curious as to how you came to know enough people in the intelligence community to come to this conclusion. I don't see any public evidence of any of what you are talking about, even in cases like this or the nastiest of the Snowden revelations. I could easily see these actions as those that are not power hungry, and who do not spend their time sitting in leather chairs and petting cats menacingly. People rarely cast themselves as the villains of their life story, and I could definitely imagine this resulting in people in the security services following this logic: 1. We are the good guys. 2. More information always means we can better do our job. ∴ grab the laptop, mass wiretapping, etc. Now, I don't agree with second premise at all, and I think the first premise overextends "we" to all the people in your organization, now and in the future. But I do think that it is possible many of the people at the NSA, GCHQ, CIA, etc. are actually good people, even the one calling the shots in situations such as this. If your plan for opposing their actions is to assume that they are twirling their mustaches as we speak, and they are not in fact twirling said mustaches, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. In this case, putting Polonium-210 in strategically placed jars of mustache wax will not work, and neither will trying to expose them as evil power brokers. Vilifying your enemy may help if you're planning on military warfare against them, but if your plan is more reasoned understanding those you oppose is likely more useful.
- junto 11y ago
  I answered this below, but the environment may well have changed for the better from 15 years ago, but I doubt it. I obviously didn't mean to imply that the security services are "spending their time sitting in leather chairs and petting cats menacingly". They are busy people. They have somewhat a limited number resources at their disposal (unless Downing Street have a crisis on their hands that makes them look bad in the eyes of the public) and they are required to maintain a control on the country's security. When you work day-in day-out on actual, but mostly perceived threats, you have a tendency to evaluate people quickly and then categorize using learned and automatic cognitive processing methodology. I.e. "Threat, no threat, suspicious, flagged, threat, no threat" etc. As an example: 20-30 years ago all people entering the UK from Eire or (especially) Catholic northern Irish were considered potential threats. It didn't matter if you had intel on a person or not, the suspicion was still there based on their passport. You still had real Irish intel came from paid informants, so we would know who the problem people were and would watch them from the moment they landed. Ideally we didn't lose them whilst they were here otherwise we have scenarios like lorry bombs going off in Canary Wharf. Now we've moved on from "the Irish problem", and the Irish intel desks are almost all disbanded. All the resource has been moved onto Islamic fundamentalism and a bit is maintained on watching the Russians. In between the Irish Peace Accord and 9/11, when we ran out of things to do, there was some focus on internal radicals like the Animal Welfare groups. It sounds clichéd, but you need to have a target group, or where are you going to spend next year's budget? I'm not taking away that they are good people in the security services, but their insular jobs lead them to be an insular group of people. Much of what they do is never seen by the public. When you hear of a group of people arrested under the Anti-terrorism legislation, more than likely there was a credible threat. How they do their job is often sailing close to the wind. When it comes to the blanket surveillance, there are obvious benefits to the security services and maintaining the security of the country. It is a very very useful tool. It is unfortunately not beneficial for any other purpose, and is contrary to our beliefs concerning privacy and a right to live without being persistently monitored when innocent. I also forgot to note earlier, but there is somewhat a difference between desk officers (intel analysts) and operational officers. Operational officers are even worse, but they are constantly dealing with people that are dangerous and real threats to the public and the officers. They have to compartmentalise in order to save their own lives. Any law enforcement officer that carries a gun will tell you that.
duckmysick 11y ago
> One needs to understand the psyche of people who work in the security services and special branch. They are very polarised in their beliefs and their opinions. They tend to be racist, xenophobic and have a tendency to group people in tidy mental boxes. They see the world in black and white. There is no grey. They are massively insular and have very much an "us and them mentality". They have comparatively a large amount of power, and enjoy using it. Are there any experiments and research on this subject that I can read about? Preferably published in a peer-reviewed journal. Anything that could be reproduced. Because if we want to make an informed decision about policies, we need more than personal anecdotes. Let's see how an example research would look like. Ideally, we would have a control group consisting of a random sample of the general population. Then we would compare them with the members of the security services and see if there are any differences in behavior. We could give both groups a questionnaire with dozens of statements and a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree) or observe them in an interactive situation. If their answers have more 1s and 4s than the control group, then maybe they are more polarized. It's not perfect; there's a risk of self-reporting bias and the observer effect, but it's a start. Maybe there's public data like aggregated reports that would help eliminate said biases. If there's a difference in behavior between the security personnel and the public, we will have new questions. Is this behavior consistent across all representatives of the security industry? Are they equally racist, xenophobic, and insular in both private and public sector? What if we compare members of the security services in different countries? Are they just as racist in Canada as in the UK, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, or Brazil? What if we compare it with the experience? Are people who work for over 10 years in the security services more insular than those who worked there less than a year? Do they become more insular as they work longer or is just the industry that attracts such individuals? Do they share similar characteristics with other groups who enjoy comparatively a large amount of power, like CEOs, politicians, or judges? The only experiment that comes to mind is the Stanford prison experiment. But that was more about authority than security services per se. And if my memory serves me right, there was nothing particular about racism or xenophobia. Plus, it has a fair share of controversy.

by junto 11y ago

petewailes 11y ago

I'm fairly certain you don't actually know anything like enough people who work for any of the security services in the UK to make this an informed opinion. Because you couldn't be more wrong. A populist viewpoint with no basis whatsoever in reality. Not surprising, but disappointing. For the avoidance of doubt, no, I don't support what's happened here. It's ill-judged (no pun intended) to say the least.

scrollaway 11y ago
> A populist viewpoint with no basis whatsoever in reality. What you just said serves no purpose. Can you please provide sources and alternative viewpoints people can actually discuss, rather than belittle someone for commenting on a story?
- wisty 11y ago
  I think it's wrong to just categorise law enforcement as a bunch of racists. Especially in the UK (cough Rotherham). It's also a bit strange to hear someone accusing the police of all being black and white thinkers, who like putting everyone in little boxes, enjoy using their power, and being extremely insular. You could say the same about the kind of progressives who think all police are racists. There probably is an element of truth, in that law enforcement does have black and white thinking. If someone is a suspect, they can act like it's their job to haul them in at all costs, unless breaking the rules would hurt the case. Yes, it's an adversarial legal system, but sometimes the police and prosecution can seem to lack discretion. Also, the amount of funding they have to clamp down on terrorism is quite disproportionate. There's a lot of police tracking down a tiny number of needles in a haystack, so anyone who looks remotely like a terrorist risks being treated as a suspect.
- petewailes 11y ago
  Happily. http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-secret-service http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-s... http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/3180 http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/3180 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/forget-bond-mi5-wants-cat-loving-twentysomethings-424915.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/forget-bon... For starters. They're not normal people, in that they're recruited by elitist institutions from other elitist institutions. Not dissimilar to how branches of our industry work, although the profile for who they want is somewhat different. But for the most part, in terms of personality, they're fairly normal people. There aren't any mustachioed villains sitting around wondering how best to abuse their powers. Yes, there's some who enjoy wielding the power they have, but the same is true in business, and doctors like performing surgery. Mischaracterising people like this does no service to the reader, no better than people who take controversial political figures and characture and demonise them. In the end, it just makes for a lower level of discourse and a worldview lacking in nuance. Ironically, what the poster was complaining about.
fit2rule 11y ago
A predictable response from a supporter of the military-industrial complex. Those who use secrecy to rule deserve the right to neither.
junto 11y ago
First hand actually, although granted, the culture might have magically changed over the last 15 years.
raverbashing 11y ago
Good thing that you added nothing to the discussion then

johncolanduoni 11y ago

> One needs to understand the psyche of people who work in the security services and special branch. I'm curious as to how you came to know enough people in the intelligence community to come to this conclusion. I don't see any public evidence of any of what you are talking about, even in cases like this or the nastiest of the Snowden revelations. I could easily see these actions as those that are not power hungry, and who do not spend their time sitting in leather chairs and petting cats menacingly. People rarely cast themselves as the villains of their life story, and I could definitely imagine this resulting in people in the security services following this logic: 1. We are the good guys. 2. More information always means we can better do our job. ∴ grab the laptop, mass wiretapping, etc. Now, I don't agree with second premise at all, and I think the first premise overextends "we" to all the people in your organization, now and in the future. But I do think that it is possible many of the people at the NSA, GCHQ, CIA, etc. are actually good people, even the one calling the shots in situations such as this. If your plan for opposing their actions is to assume that they are twirling their mustaches as we speak, and they are not in fact twirling said mustaches, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. In this case, putting Polonium-210 in strategically placed jars of mustache wax will not work, and neither will trying to expose them as evil power brokers. Vilifying your enemy may help if you're planning on military warfare against them, but if your plan is more reasoned understanding those you oppose is likely more useful.

junto 11y ago
I answered this below, but the environment may well have changed for the better from 15 years ago, but I doubt it. I obviously didn't mean to imply that the security services are "spending their time sitting in leather chairs and petting cats menacingly". They are busy people. They have somewhat a limited number resources at their disposal (unless Downing Street have a crisis on their hands that makes them look bad in the eyes of the public) and they are required to maintain a control on the country's security. When you work day-in day-out on actual, but mostly perceived threats, you have a tendency to evaluate people quickly and then categorize using learned and automatic cognitive processing methodology. I.e. "Threat, no threat, suspicious, flagged, threat, no threat" etc. As an example: 20-30 years ago all people entering the UK from Eire or (especially) Catholic northern Irish were considered potential threats. It didn't matter if you had intel on a person or not, the suspicion was still there based on their passport. You still had real Irish intel came from paid informants, so we would know who the problem people were and would watch them from the moment they landed. Ideally we didn't lose them whilst they were here otherwise we have scenarios like lorry bombs going off in Canary Wharf. Now we've moved on from "the Irish problem", and the Irish intel desks are almost all disbanded. All the resource has been moved onto Islamic fundamentalism and a bit is maintained on watching the Russians. In between the Irish Peace Accord and 9/11, when we ran out of things to do, there was some focus on internal radicals like the Animal Welfare groups. It sounds clichéd, but you need to have a target group, or where are you going to spend next year's budget? I'm not taking away that they are good people in the security services, but their insular jobs lead them to be an insular group of people. Much of what they do is never seen by the public. When you hear of a group of people arrested under the Anti-terrorism legislation, more than likely there was a credible threat. How they do their job is often sailing close to the wind. When it comes to the blanket surveillance, there are obvious benefits to the security services and maintaining the security of the country. It is a very very useful tool. It is unfortunately not beneficial for any other purpose, and is contrary to our beliefs concerning privacy and a right to live without being persistently monitored when innocent. I also forgot to note earlier, but there is somewhat a difference between desk officers (intel analysts) and operational officers. Operational officers are even worse, but they are constantly dealing with people that are dangerous and real threats to the public and the officers. They have to compartmentalise in order to save their own lives. Any law enforcement officer that carries a gun will tell you that.

duckmysick 11y ago

> One needs to understand the psyche of people who work in the security services and special branch. They are very polarised in their beliefs and their opinions. They tend to be racist, xenophobic and have a tendency to group people in tidy mental boxes. They see the world in black and white. There is no grey. They are massively insular and have very much an "us and them mentality". They have comparatively a large amount of power, and enjoy using it. Are there any experiments and research on this subject that I can read about? Preferably published in a peer-reviewed journal. Anything that could be reproduced. Because if we want to make an informed decision about policies, we need more than personal anecdotes. Let's see how an example research would look like. Ideally, we would have a control group consisting of a random sample of the general population. Then we would compare them with the members of the security services and see if there are any differences in behavior. We could give both groups a questionnaire with dozens of statements and a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree) or observe them in an interactive situation. If their answers have more 1s and 4s than the control group, then maybe they are more polarized. It's not perfect; there's a risk of self-reporting bias and the observer effect, but it's a start. Maybe there's public data like aggregated reports that would help eliminate said biases. If there's a difference in behavior between the security personnel and the public, we will have new questions. Is this behavior consistent across all representatives of the security industry? Are they equally racist, xenophobic, and insular in both private and public sector? What if we compare members of the security services in different countries? Are they just as racist in Canada as in the UK, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, or Brazil? What if we compare it with the experience? Are people who work for over 10 years in the security services more insular than those who worked there less than a year? Do they become more insular as they work longer or is just the industry that attracts such individuals? Do they share similar characteristics with other groups who enjoy comparatively a large amount of power, like CEOs, politicians, or judges? The only experiment that comes to mind is the Stanford prison experiment. But that was more about authority than security services per se. And if my memory serves me right, there was nothing particular about racism or xenophobia. Plus, it has a fair share of controversy.