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You are correct, pretty much all spying at GCHQ is aimed at friendly competition in the business arena (and politics) and has nothing to do with 'hunt the bin L

You are correct, pretty much all spying at GCHQ is aimed at friendly competition in the business arena (and politics) and has nothing to do with 'hunt the bin Laden', 'kiddy porn' and all those things that they say they do. Even during the Cold War the bulk of operations were directed at allies and customers for the arms trade, not the Soviet Union. There is some dangerous thinking going on with this assumption that 'we must let our spies bug everything and everyone, including our allies' that should not be glossed over. There is the 'copying homework problem' that we all know from school. If you spend all of your efforts copying the efforts of others (whether it is a school assignment or a business proposal) then this really can be to your own detriment. It is far better to do your own work and then to compare with others to see if you have missed something. Starting with the work of others and changing a few details doesn't get you top grades or the contract. It is a risky strategy. Another problem with over-reliance on spying is that this is actually being done by a defence contractor who may not have your best interests at heart. A large part of the GCHQ infrastructure is put in place by American companies and they are upstream. Imagine you are trying to sell bombs to Saudi Arabia, representing the interests of British companies and doing your best to secure jobs for people in your constituency. If the defence contractor doing the spying services also have bomb factories in the USA then there is a conflict of interest going on, they have visibility on what deal is being proposed and can make sure their competing offer gouges the Saudis but does not appear to be based on insider information. Spying also has a chilling effect and targets of spying efforts can go quiet if they know that too many walls have ears. If you were a European company would you prefer to deal with your European neighbours, getting bids from France, Germany or Spain (for example) or would you want to have known snitch-countries bidding too? The Five Eyes run the risk of just being left out of the running as untrustworthy, particularly in countries outside the Anglo-Saxon world.

JoeSmithson 8y ago
Why do you think that "pretty much all spying at GCHQ" is related to business/politics? Do you actually have a reliable source for that?
- Theodores 8y ago
  As you can appreciate it can be hard to get reliable sources when the Official Secrets Act is involved. But I do have something for you in the public domain. Quick question though - did the STASI spy on NATO countries? Yes. Was their primary mission domestic control and keeping tabs on the domestic population? Yes. Is it reasonable to think that the UK/USA spy agencies were any different? Did they spend time monitoring the Soviets? Yes. Did they spy on Arthur Scargill and the miners? Yes. What about Greenpeace? Yes. Fundamentally the miner's strike was an existential threat to the ruling elite whereas the Soviets weren't ever going to invade. Hence the mission creep. Furthermore, if you do have mates from school days that do work there and, after plying them with lots of alcohol in an effort to find out more, you soon realise that they are all working in isolation, not knowing much about the big picture. There are only 'tells' such as their reason for doing the work. Yet amongst the tells a picture emerges, for instance overall capabilities or that your friends aren't actually working on the things in the mission statement. For a while the war on 'kiddy porn' was an acceptable reason for working there alongside fighting organised crime and The War Against Terror. But when you examine these noble efforts you soon realise that a little bit of a fig leaf is being presented. GCHQ are not the ones unearthing the Panama Papers, the 'kiddy porn' mission ended up becoming regular police work rather than what the UK needed GCHQ for and then The War Against Terror certainly was not anything that the public were led to believe, despite the public diplomacy that existed at the time regarding 'intercepted intelligence chatter'. Now is not the time for in-depth discussion on this latter aspect, however, you can check how 'intelligence' was gathered during the war, for instance the 'Dodgy Dossier' that Tony Blair prepared for Iraq, that was based on some paper found in the public domain by Number 10 and 'sexed up a bit'. So, on to what is available in the public domain. A good place to start is with Duncan Campbell, the investigative journalist that brought knowledge of ECHELON to the world. This is now a long time ago and very much from the Cold War. The report made for the European Parliament is a very good place to start, here is a little overview of that: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_AffaireEchelon-EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_Affaire... If you then dig a little bit deeper and read the testimony of whistleblowers that spoke to Duncan Campbell you will find that there is much to support my assertion. There is one story that almost made daylight concerning Menwith Hill, a listening station that was supposed to be pointing east. There weren't Russian voices coming in over the ether, however, there was the voice of Strom Thurmond, a big believer in the war machine and a congressman definitely in the pockets of the arms companies. Despite this GCHQ were doing the listening for their counterparts on him, who was as trustworthy as you could have wished for and definitely not a Soviet asset. In war you do not have complete information and reliable sources of what is going on in other people's kitchens. However, if you study what is in the public domain and do a little bit of asking around then you can get a glimpse of what is going on. History is important too, with the UK there is the former empire and the 'Special Relationship', both shaping what the doughnut is really about.
Kalium 8y ago
> If you were a European company would you prefer to deal with your European neighbours, getting bids from France, Germany or Spain (for example) or would you want to have known snitch-countries bidding too? Unless we are to pretend that only the Five Eyes do spying, I would assume that France, Germany, and Spain all have competent intelligence systems and thus the result is probably more or less a wash. It may also be worth considering that there could be a difference to be distinguished between noting that a given practice is common and endorsing it. The former is an observation, the latter a judgment call. It may even be possible to offer the former without weighing in on the latter, though some will tend to interpret this as a statement of enthusiastic endorsement. Perhaps I failed to season what I thought to be clearly phrased as observations with sufficient qualifiers? If so, please accept my humble apologies for misleading you by being unclear.
- Theodores 8y ago
  Although Russia has plenty of satellites in orbit, do other nations have fleets of Hubble grade satellites pointing downwards as per UK/USA? Nope. Okay, telecoms now go by cable, but do countries in mainland Europe have cables reaching out across the world leading back as happens in the UK? Nope. When it was just phone lines all cable for communication across the British empire led back to England, if you wanted to place a call from country A in Africa to country B in Africa it would not take a direct route, it would go to England first with a nice BT switchboard operator connecting the call. This infrastructure was built upon over time to have the fibre optic magic we have today. Much has changed but this inheritance from history is not to be overlooked. If a European company on the continent is trying to get a trade deal with a country that was formally coloured pink then that call is likely to be routed through Five Eyes comms, not some dedicated fibre. Clearly France have plenty of cables going across the border to Germany, but not to Australia. Every king since the beginning of time has had his spies, there is no country on the planet that does not have some capability. However, The Five Eyes operation is on an entirely different scale to what nations outside of UK/USA have. Essentially the other three eyes are only there due to geography, they are lesser partners without the need or resources to participate at the level that the other two do. The UK is also a junior partner, the reason GCHQ is so big is that there are laws in the US that are there to prevent the three letter agencies spying on the domestic population. GCHQ does that for them and has been built with the help of US contractors. It is one and the same operation with conflicts of interest on occasion - Airbus for instance. I know it sounds wrong but I sometimes wish there was more spying going on from countries outside of Five Eyes. It would at least be possible to keep US/UK politicians a bit more honest if other countries has a bit more of an appreciation regarding what is going on. The reality though is that other countries just do not have the resources, people, skills, technology to do that. They buy the stories Washington and London tells them with no inside information to give them a more informed view.

JoeSmithson 8y ago

Why do you think that "pretty much all spying at GCHQ" is related to business/politics? Do you actually have a reliable source for that?

Theodores 8y ago
As you can appreciate it can be hard to get reliable sources when the Official Secrets Act is involved. But I do have something for you in the public domain. Quick question though - did the STASI spy on NATO countries? Yes. Was their primary mission domestic control and keeping tabs on the domestic population? Yes. Is it reasonable to think that the UK/USA spy agencies were any different? Did they spend time monitoring the Soviets? Yes. Did they spy on Arthur Scargill and the miners? Yes. What about Greenpeace? Yes. Fundamentally the miner's strike was an existential threat to the ruling elite whereas the Soviets weren't ever going to invade. Hence the mission creep. Furthermore, if you do have mates from school days that do work there and, after plying them with lots of alcohol in an effort to find out more, you soon realise that they are all working in isolation, not knowing much about the big picture. There are only 'tells' such as their reason for doing the work. Yet amongst the tells a picture emerges, for instance overall capabilities or that your friends aren't actually working on the things in the mission statement. For a while the war on 'kiddy porn' was an acceptable reason for working there alongside fighting organised crime and The War Against Terror. But when you examine these noble efforts you soon realise that a little bit of a fig leaf is being presented. GCHQ are not the ones unearthing the Panama Papers, the 'kiddy porn' mission ended up becoming regular police work rather than what the UK needed GCHQ for and then The War Against Terror certainly was not anything that the public were led to believe, despite the public diplomacy that existed at the time regarding 'intercepted intelligence chatter'. Now is not the time for in-depth discussion on this latter aspect, however, you can check how 'intelligence' was gathered during the war, for instance the 'Dodgy Dossier' that Tony Blair prepared for Iraq, that was based on some paper found in the public domain by Number 10 and 'sexed up a bit'. So, on to what is available in the public domain. A good place to start is with Duncan Campbell, the investigative journalist that brought knowledge of ECHELON to the world. This is now a long time ago and very much from the Cold War. The report made for the European Parliament is a very good place to start, here is a little overview of that: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_AffaireEchelon-EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_Affaire... If you then dig a little bit deeper and read the testimony of whistleblowers that spoke to Duncan Campbell you will find that there is much to support my assertion. There is one story that almost made daylight concerning Menwith Hill, a listening station that was supposed to be pointing east. There weren't Russian voices coming in over the ether, however, there was the voice of Strom Thurmond, a big believer in the war machine and a congressman definitely in the pockets of the arms companies. Despite this GCHQ were doing the listening for their counterparts on him, who was as trustworthy as you could have wished for and definitely not a Soviet asset. In war you do not have complete information and reliable sources of what is going on in other people's kitchens. However, if you study what is in the public domain and do a little bit of asking around then you can get a glimpse of what is going on. History is important too, with the UK there is the former empire and the 'Special Relationship', both shaping what the doughnut is really about.

Kalium 8y ago

> If you were a European company would you prefer to deal with your European neighbours, getting bids from France, Germany or Spain (for example) or would you want to have known snitch-countries bidding too? Unless we are to pretend that only the Five Eyes do spying, I would assume that France, Germany, and Spain all have competent intelligence systems and thus the result is probably more or less a wash. It may also be worth considering that there could be a difference to be distinguished between noting that a given practice is common and endorsing it. The former is an observation, the latter a judgment call. It may even be possible to offer the former without weighing in on the latter, though some will tend to interpret this as a statement of enthusiastic endorsement. Perhaps I failed to season what I thought to be clearly phrased as observations with sufficient qualifiers? If so, please accept my humble apologies for misleading you by being unclear.

Theodores 8y ago
Although Russia has plenty of satellites in orbit, do other nations have fleets of Hubble grade satellites pointing downwards as per UK/USA? Nope. Okay, telecoms now go by cable, but do countries in mainland Europe have cables reaching out across the world leading back as happens in the UK? Nope. When it was just phone lines all cable for communication across the British empire led back to England, if you wanted to place a call from country A in Africa to country B in Africa it would not take a direct route, it would go to England first with a nice BT switchboard operator connecting the call. This infrastructure was built upon over time to have the fibre optic magic we have today. Much has changed but this inheritance from history is not to be overlooked. If a European company on the continent is trying to get a trade deal with a country that was formally coloured pink then that call is likely to be routed through Five Eyes comms, not some dedicated fibre. Clearly France have plenty of cables going across the border to Germany, but not to Australia. Every king since the beginning of time has had his spies, there is no country on the planet that does not have some capability. However, The Five Eyes operation is on an entirely different scale to what nations outside of UK/USA have. Essentially the other three eyes are only there due to geography, they are lesser partners without the need or resources to participate at the level that the other two do. The UK is also a junior partner, the reason GCHQ is so big is that there are laws in the US that are there to prevent the three letter agencies spying on the domestic population. GCHQ does that for them and has been built with the help of US contractors. It is one and the same operation with conflicts of interest on occasion - Airbus for instance. I know it sounds wrong but I sometimes wish there was more spying going on from countries outside of Five Eyes. It would at least be possible to keep US/UK politicians a bit more honest if other countries has a bit more of an appreciation regarding what is going on. The reality though is that other countries just do not have the resources, people, skills, technology to do that. They buy the stories Washington and London tells them with no inside information to give them a more informed view.