6 ms·
Britain's GCHQ agency denies wiretapping Donald Trump
- paulajohnson 10y agoIts curious that the GCHQ statement doesn't actually contradict Trump. Trump claims he was wiretapped before the election, but GCHQ have denied spying on him when he was president-elect, i.e. after the election.
- chenelson 10y agoGreat point. Logically, all was denied is 5-eyes not under FISA.
- ealexhudson 10y agoTrump's tweet was, "Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory." "just before" reads to me as the starting point in his accusation, not the ending point?
- mcintyre1994 10y agoI wouldn't try to read anything logical or coherent into that tweet, Sean Spicer has been trying to walk it back and say it's just about surveillance in general and wasn't specifically about Obama.
- jacques_chester 10y agoUnlike some European powers, I suspect that Her Majesty's Government has some institutional awareness that interfering in US politics can go awry.
- 7952 10y agoAll it really says is that they were not asked to perform wiretapping by Obama. They could still have been collecting data as part of their normal duties.
- fahadkhan 10y agoDon't think this would be within GCHQ's remit, more MI6.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 10y agoWhy - doesn't GCHQ do SIGINT and SIS (AKA MI6) does HUMINT? NB I don't think they did snoop on Trump, but if anyone was going to do it from the UK it would presumably be GCHQ.
- louthy 10y agoGCHQ is signals intelligence, so if he was tapped, it was probably by GCHQ. But let's face it, he wasn't, Trump is an imbecile that is just parroting right-wing media accusations.
- tankenmate 10y agoYou kind of have to wonder if Trump is even aware of the implications and consequences of what happens when POTUS spouts off completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. You have to wonder if he fully groks that he isn't "just some rich guy" any more.
- SideburnsOfDoom 10y agoThere's GCHQ's usual silence - at most they say "we don't comment, can neither confirm nor deny, etc." There's a denial. And there's saying it's "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" which goes beyond a mere denial. For GCHQ, this is very strong language.
- bayes 10y agoYou're probably right - although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue. GCHQ could believe that (although they happen to be true) it's nonsense and utterly ridiculous for commentators to be asserting so without any evidence, and it would be much better for everyone to ignore the accusation.
- SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago> although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue. I would think that "nonsense" implies "untrue". I.e. it is "The subset of untruths that also are logically inconsistent" We are splitting hairs of the fine parsing of the wording from GCHQ, when words of any kind are highly unusual.
- sealjam 10y agoI think saying they're "nonsense" is saying they're untrue.
- masklinn 10y ago> isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue. It's way beyond just stating that they're untrue.
- jgrahamc 10y agoI'm British, we don't like to overstate things. When you see GCHQ call something "nonsense" and "utterly ridiculous" you can be assured that they are denying it. And I think there's something more. I would read into their statement that they are very angry.
- grabcocque 10y agoThe State Department has issued an apology to GCHQ via diplomatic channels. Which is unprecedented. The US should not be needing to apologise to one of its closest allies, ever. I agree with John Gruber on this, POTUS's allegations are the actions of a man whose elevator does not go all the way to the penthouse of Trump Tower.
- uegwqhugehoq 10y agounpresidented
- MisterWebz 10y agoThe State Department has issued an apology to GCHQ via diplomatic channels. Do you have a source for this?
- TYPE_FASTER 10y agohttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/17/us-makes-formal-apology-britain-white-house-accuses-gchq-wiretapping/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/17/us-makes-formal-a... "Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said. General McMaster contacted Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister's National Security adviser, to apologise for the comments. Mr Spicer conveyed his apology through Sir Kim Darroch, Britain's US ambassador."
- MisterWebz 10y agoHere's another quote from the article: Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said. It's based on an anonymous source. Here's another quote from that same article: "Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice - he used GCHQ." So we're going to discard what several anonymous sources said, but we will believe what some other anonymous source said?
- grabcocque 10y agoBear in mind, Trump has already rescheduled a state visit to the UK leery of the reception he's gonna get from British people, whose attitude towards him could be described as "lukewarm" at best This sort of thing most certainly won't help.
- techterrier 10y agocrowds as far as the eye can see, waving the flag and chanting 'Oi! Trump! Wanker!'
- arethuza 10y agoOff topic: ~15 years ago a colleague stayed in a small town in Colorado where everyone seemed to use "wanker" as a term of endearment. My colleague, being from the UK, was surprised to be greeted with the statement "Oh you're from the UK you must be a wanker". Apparently this was caused by the local policeman being from the UK and he'd been going round using the term for years and the locals had interpreted it as something nice.
- pjbster 10y agoAside: where on the scale of U.S. epithets would the term "wanker" fall? Would "cock-sucker" be about right? (I got asked this very question by an American relation a few years back.)
- arethuza 10y agoI think that's one for "Ask HN" :-)
- jadell 10y agoAs an American somewhat versed in British TV and movies, I always assumed wanker to be more equal to "asshole" or "son of a bitch", something you call your friends when they've done something bone-headed or mean-spirited. Definitely below "cock-sucker" in severity and far, far below "motherfucker".
- TorKlingberg 10y agoFor me, it's not that I have complete faith in the morality of Obama, NSA & GCHQ. It's that Trump has not presented any evidence for his claims, even circumstantial. If he believes something, there should be a reason for those beliefs, and he should be able to present it. There is no point debating someone who refuses to support their stance.
- coldtea 10y ago>For me, it's not that I have complete faith in the morality of Obama, NSA & GCHQ. It's that Trump has not presented any evidence for his claims, even circumstantial.* Whether Trump, Obama, Clinton or even Pailin had said it, and whether they gave evidence or not, it's obvious that it happens. Not from an smoking-gun evidence based standpoint, but from a knowing history, and people, and such agencies priorities and how lose their leashes are standpoint. When it comes to such agencies, evidence is the last thing one would find. It's not like their advertise their operations except in extreme fiascos. But such wiretapping is completely in agreement with the essence of what they do.
- DanBC 10y agoHang on. Trump's claim is not "GCHQ spied on me" - I agree this is the kind of thing that spy agencies do. Trump's claim is "GCHQ spied on me not for the UK gov, but for Obama". It's ridiculous to think GCHQ did this.
- TorKlingberg 10y agoI cannot base my beliefs about specific events on my general sense of what kinds of things happens. To take an example claim: "Trump is getting money that are essentially bribes from a Brazilian oil company." That feels plausible to me, and fits my general view of Trump and the world. But I don't believe it's true, in fact I just made it up.
- coldtea 10y ago>I cannot base my beliefs about specific events on my general sense of what kinds of things happens. Lacking concrete evidence, that's exactly the kind of thing you should base your beliefs of specific events on.
- Kenji 10y agoWhy would anyone ever believe what an intelligence agency says? This would be akin to listening to a snake oil salesman about the qualities of snake oil. EDIT: My point is much larger than whether or not they wiretapped Donald Trump. My point is that what an intelligence agency says about what it's doing is completely irrelevant because it has very low correlation to what they actually do.
- paulgb 10y agoSuppose it is true that they wiretapped him. Then Trump has every incentive to prove it so, at huge risk of embarrassment to them. They could easily say "no comment" and nobody would blink an eye. So why actively lie about it?
- danbruc 10y agoWhat is even the problem here? Why shouldn't the GCHQ wire tap the US president? At best you could complain about US intelligence agencies if they used foreign intelligence agencies to circumvent restrictions on targeting US citizens. But foreign intelligence agencies spying on US citizens, especially politicians and not average citizens? No matter whether it is the GCHQ, Russia or somebody else, that is simply their job, especially since the US itself doesn't care much about friends and enemies in this regard.
- krapp 10y agoThe problem is Donald Trump appears to have made the whole thing up, and then committed the government's time and money to chasing after his paranoid fantasies. It's as if he watched Star Trek, then demanded an investigation into Romulan incursions into the Neutral Zone.
- DanBC 10y agoTrump isn't just claiming GCHQ spied on him. He's claiming GCHQ spied on him because Obama asked them to.
- cpncrunch 10y ago>Why shouldn't the GCHQ wire tap the US president? Because it would be highly embarrassing for the UK if that actually happened, and would severely damage the special relationship.
- danbruc 10y agoWhy would that be embarrassing for the UK? Maybe you could call it embarrassing for US counter intelligence but even there it only seems justified if it would be done in a blunt manner and still go unnoticed. I won't dispute that it would not be good for the relations between the US and the UK, on the other hand the US doesn't care much either when it is spying on allied leaders. So the UK spying on the US president seems fair game under current circumstances.
- cpncrunch 10y ago
- cpncrunch 10y agoNow that Trump has severely pissed off every intelligence service, what consequences do you think this will have? Will they be more hesitant to share intelligence with him?