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British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ
- joshrivers 10y agoThe British are so strange. This kind of abuse of power would never be contemplated by American authorities.
- fredley 10y agoAs a Brit who finds this sort of thing completely scary/abhorrent, I often wonder what it is about our culture that makes this so. I think a big part of it is the class-system, which has its roots in feudal structures from millennia past, and is still very much alive and well today. We all grow up to develop an innate sense of class (I look up to him, I look down on him etc.), and for the majority of people, they do trust the upper classes. The royal family has approval ratings through the roof, we have an Etonian PM and largely Etonian cabinet. We just don't have the same distrust that most countries seem to have. On the ground, this comes across as "well it's probably for the best, they know what they're doing", when trying to discuss matters like these. Also, I'm assuming there's an injunction out about this - can't find it reported anywhere in the UK press.
- alinajaf 10y agoAs a fellow Brit, I find your ability to appreciate sarcasm lacking :)
- sievebrain 10y agoThe UK has never had to deal with a truly oppressive government, at least not within anything like living memory. There's also the problem that nobody outside of the software engineering community really understands what the tech can do, or what GCHQ is capable of. My mother's primary comment on the whole thing was, "well we're much too boring to spy on" and that's a sentiment you see a lot. It reflects a misunderstanding of how cheap it is to create robotic law enforcement on top of the 5-eyes infrastructure.
- JupiterMoon 10y ago> "well we're much too boring to spy on" Have you asked her why her government feels that it is necessary to spy on her if she is so boring?
- newjersey 10y agoI think the narrative is that the government doesn't spy on her. They also would probably say that they take in the fire hose and only access the communications of the bad guys™
- sievebrain 10y agoThe Snowden story was vast and limited to the Guardian. In the UK the other media outlets didn't cover it at all, or actively attempted to undermine the reporting (e.g. with stories planted by the British government that were carefully worded to sound like they were from Snowden even if they weren't). The vast majority of people have not read any of the Snowden leaks and have no idea what they contained beyond "the government spies a lot". So the concept that they might be targeted themselves is just unimaginable to them.
- JupiterMoon 10y agoTell them then!
- _9MOTHER9HORSE 10y ago> There's also the problem that nobody outside of the software engineering community really understands what the tech can do (...) I think that's the main problem. The IPB is all about allowing GCHQ and other government agencies to collect all the data they want, but we shouldn't be worried because there will be "safeguards" against the data being accessed arbitrarily. Those of us who are more technically minded realize that's a false distinction, but most don't.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoIn fact all non-establishment groups - CND, anti-nuclear power protesters, anti-globalisation protesters, trade unions, animal rights activists, UK's own Occupy movement, anarchists, even worthy intellectual left-leaning blogs, and so on - were and are routinely infiltrated and manipulated. There's nominal press freedom, in that it's possible to call politicians rude names. But if your movement or leaders become powerful enough to have a hope of influencing policy and to challenge establishment cash flows and power relationships, expect some blow back.
- lucozade 10y agoThis was news about a year ago. I presume it's in Computer Weekly because the current bill is trying to close some gaps in the Wilson doctrine that were exposed at the time.
- JupiterMoon 10y agoI thought that Wilson doctrine turned out to be nothing? GCHQ said they never respected it and always spied on MPs?
- lucozade 10y agoThat's correct. But MPs thought that it should mean something so they've amended the bill accordingly. That's what's going through Parliament now.
- 7952 10y ago> Also, I'm assuming there's an injunction out about this - can't find it reported anywhere in the UK press. Does this actually reveal anything new? It was previously known that GCHQ were logging email messages, and MPs use email. The story does not suggest that MPs email are exposed to greater scrutiny. The headline in every paper should be "Government fails to use email encryption". If the email is not encrypted it could be read by foreign governments, criminals, or the tabloid press. Implying that an email is less secure because it travels outside the UK is ridiculous. It was never secure in the first place!
- JupiterMoon 10y agoBear in mind that MP's correspondence with their constituents is being hoovered up as well. Yes @gov.uk to @gov.uk could be encrypted but constituent to MP email is in some ways more sensitive to GCHQ snooping. The solution remains political.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago> we have an Etonian PM and largely Etonian cabinet This is about money and class. It takes a lot of family money and a sense of extreme security (which comes from class) to tell your son - "Hey, you should become a politician." And for the kid... who knows what kind of mindset it required? Arrogance, winners mentality, thick skin... The kids I grew up with never had those ideas put into their heads. Hell, most of the kids I grew up with, the parents thought I was bonkers for wanting qualifications, one of the mums told me "In our family, we don't bother with exams and all that rubbish."
- Fej 10y agoI hope you're being sarcastic? NSA was caught snooping in a Supreme Court justice's data. (I think it was before he was on the Supreme Court, but nonetheless.) I find it unlikely that they're not intercepting American legislators' data, along with everyone else's.
- lamby 10y agoBrit here. Another interesting angle/reflection is that if this was happening in China then there would be a shitstorm here..
- andy_ppp 10y agoThe Chinese directly sensor and tell you what you can and can't do. In "democratic" countries anything that changes the status quo or stands up to power puts you at risk of being targeted; maybe you'll end up in a relationship with a state official or maybe you'll be goaded by someone into breaking the law. Maybe you'll never be able to trust anyone ever again.
- cm2187 10y agoThere are many things that are curious in the UK legal system. This week, a guy has been sentenced to 30y in jail for gun trafficking. I'm not condoning gun trafficking but in my book smuggling is much more venial offense than rape or murder, and smuggling items that are not even illegal in countries like the US. I am sure many murderers took a lot less than that. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36446462 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36446462
- hartpuff 10y ago> There are many things that are curious in the UK legal system. This week, a guy has been sentenced to 30y in jail for gun trafficking [...] items that are not even illegal in countries like the US If you tried to smuggle this: http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/0B22/production/_88505820_88505817.jpg http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/0B22/production/_... and this: http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/11A62/production/_88509227_88505906.jpg http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/11A62/productio... into the USA, you'd be facing about 630 years in jail, not 30.
- cm2187 10y agoMy point is that you wouldn't even need to smuggle it in the US, like you wouldn't even need to smuggle alcohol in the UK or pot in California.
- jdietrich 10y agoWe do things differently here. As a result, we have only had one mass shooting incident in the last 20 years. Our per-capita murder rate is about 1/4 that of the US. We had three fatal police shootings last year, one in 2014 and none in 2013. You might not like it, but we do. Our system of gun control is overwhelmingly popular. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5 http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/fatal-police-shootings
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- mtgx 10y agoI'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not, but they most likely are: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/04/nsa-wont-say-whether-it-spies-on-congress/comment-page-1/ http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/04/nsa-wont-say-whethe... And let's not forget this one: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spying-senate-staffers http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spyi... I'm not sure why people still give spy agencies the benefit of the doubt, when they are almost always caught with lying. Skepticism for what spy agencies have to say should be the default in everyone's minds, especially in policians' minds. Unfortunately, those very same politicians who are supposed to "oversee" the spy agencies are the ones cheering for them the most.
- lucaspiller 10y agoThis coming to light is a good thing, because the MPs will finally be scared enough to do something pro-privacy and stop all the anti-encryption nonsense.
- pilif 10y agoYeah. It will be fixed by making it illegal to access politicians data. They need privacy. Normal people need security, so this clearly doesn't apply to them. /s
- s_q_b 10y agoIf you read down a bit, you'll notice that that's exactly what they're calling for: increased protections for "MPs, lawyers, and journalists." This is like when Diane Feinstein was shocked and appalled that the CIA hacked the computers being used to investigate them. Politicians are either not intelligent enough to understand that they've given away include their own privacy in their Faustian pact, or... Well, we're already too far gone. Assuming ignorance, the politicians are the first natural domestic targets of a surveillance apparatus. How do they not realize that?
- joshfraser 10y agoUnfortunately the GCHQ has a ton of blackmail material on all of those MPs to shut them up if they get too loud.
- jessaustin 10y agoThis is the only motivation that has ever mattered for domestic surveillance in any nation: control.
- lvs 10y agoAs said by an MP in the article, the solution is simply to add special protections for politicians.
- beedogs 10y agoDemocracy these days seems to be more and more illusory. I'm willing to bet these same MPs will help make the IP Bill become law, anyway.
- andy_ppp 10y agoGosh, this is absolutely shocking. Anyway, who fancies a cup of tea and a war in the Middle East.
- halviti 10y agoAccording to her e-mails and public statements, I believe you are speaking about Hillary Rodham Clinton.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- themartorana 10y agoShadow government is shadowy. Lawmakers with nannies are toothless... Lawmakers with overlords are nothing.
- alephu5 10y agoWhat if there are terrorists in parliament? How will the security agencies be able to find them if they are allowed privacy?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- joliya65 10y agoWhat, you don't remember that time when they said "when privacy violations happen, it is not an “active intrusion” because the analyst reading or listening to an individual’s communication will inevitably forget about it anyway"? That's oversight you can take to the bank!
- Harry101 10y agoIt's surprising to most Yanks, but Britain is the most heavily surveilled western country. It's much worse there it is in the US. (So far.)
- wavefunction 10y agoActually it's a common trope. That and the idea that much of England and Europe have been conquered by slavering Muslim hordes intent on instituting Shari'a. The second is more due to American tabloids
- jessaustin 10y agoWhat, the National Enquirer? Weekly World News? I'm not an avid reader, but I can't recall any articles about Norbert Hofer in those publications...
- peteretep 10y agoThis is a dreadful article, and the title is deeply misleading. Literally the only information this article contains is that MPs use Office365 and MessageLabs. That they've felt the need to clarify, right at the end of the article: > Computer Weekly also points out that we have not made > any suggestion in this story that GCHQ “routinely > reads” MPs’ emails. I would say that is exactly the suggestion that the verb "accesses" makes.
- cm2187 10y agoSo you are suggesting that accessing metadata about emails (senders, recipients, subject) is by no mean relevant? I think in 90% of the email traffic, the content can pretty much be inferred from the subject, and that's intended, it is meant to refer precisely to the most important point of the email. And the sender/recipient/other emails give you the context. In my book that pretty much qualifies to accessing emails.
- peteretep 10y agoNo, I'm suggesting that we already knew the NSA and GCHQ were doing mass data collection. The article headline - and its very existence - suggests that politicians were being targetted, or there was some suggestion that GCHQ agents are reading politicians email in particular. That the published had to clarify (at the end, ad views already banked) that they didn't mean the emails are being read tells you that the article is woefully unclear. Neither is true: all the article actually says is that digital communication in the UK is being collected for possible future analysis, and because parliamentarians are in the UK, their data is included. Next up: ALL POLITICANS ARE TIME-TRAVELLERS[1] 1: They can go forward in time at the same speed as everything in their immediate vicinity
- cm2187 10y agoYou can argue that it is a way to spin it, but if the aim is to make politicians react, I don't think it's bad to tell them: all emails, including yours, are monitored.
- cm2187 10y agoBut surely this is a tiny fraction of the email traffic? Chances are anyone sending an email from a gmail to a yahoo address, the email will not even transit through the UK, and if it does it will pass through encrypted. The spam and commercial emails are more likely to be unencrypted, but even then chances are an amazon order confirmation to a gmail address will not even transit through the UK. So outside of PRISM-like pull methods, this mass monitoring is becoming increasingly toothless, isn't it? [edit] and I am unfairly picking on amazon. I just checked, they do use TLS on their mailer. Let's stay Eurostar, ebuyer or disqus who do not seem to have heard of TLS.
- peteretep 10y agoSo there are two problems: A) There's reason to believe commonly used encryption is broken. The Snowden documents suggested VPNs in particular had been poorly set up, which allowed their encrypted traffic to be sniffed. There will be more things we currently believe to be encrypted and are not B) Session cookies and tracker cookies make it easy for your HTTP requests to be linked back to you
- cm2187 10y agoHTTP? I am talking about email traffic.
- london888 10y agoI trust GCHQ more than some MPs.
- nxzero 10y agoWho watches the watchers watching the watchers? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custode...