11 ms·
Bugger
- nazgulnarsil 13y agoBut this is what I worry about. A competent corrupt government is mostly concerned with crushing its genuine enemies. An incompetent one thrashes around crushing arbitrary people.
- bsenftner 13y agoWelcome to this entire planet. We're so screwed, it's not funny.
- analyst74 13y agoA government branch, when faced with difficult choice of either harming its own budget or exaggerating its legitimacy, will always do the latter. Those who have high enough morale to harm their own interest for public good can only thrive in an environment of lots opportunities. So after making the case that they should be fired, they can find other equal or more lucrative careers.
- Daniel_Newby 13y agoDon't stand near the democracy if you are afraid of stampedes.
- nodata 13y agoNice URL.
- Ygg2 13y agoI admit it is a nice wordplay on "bugs" that spooks use and the very British coarse word - bugger.
- sbirchall 13y agoHaven't read this yet - it's a bit of a long one. But I just thought I'd leave a comment for anyone wondering if this is worth reading. I can categorically say YES, yes, a thousand times yes. Adam Curtis is a master artist of a documentary film maker and everything he has produced is worth combing over in fine detail when alone and feeling introspective or with friends who are curious and open to new and exciting ideas. He will quite simply intrigue the ever loving bejesus out of you and I think the HN crowd (if not already) should be much better acquainted with his work. If you need further convincing (and a shorter read), just check out this interview: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/looking-beneath-the-waves-v10n12 http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/looking-beneath-the-waves-v10...
- Ygg2 13y agoI definitely haven't seen a finer writer or more intriguing than Adam Curtis. Malcom Gladwell comes to mind, but I subjectively like AC bit better. My favorite is the one on the interaction between pets and their owners on TV and how it changed over time. I still would like to see some contra argument, though I doubt I'll find much on HN.
- dmarusic16 13y agoMalcolm Gladwell is a fool. Curtis is better, though far from flawless.
- justincormack 13y agoThe only comparable person in terms of documentary is perhaps Jonathan Meades.
- smutticus 13y agoWhat about Simon Reeve? Maybe not in the same deepness level as Curtis but very much worth watching. Especially if you want to better understand human/nature interactions and how climate change and globilisation are effecting the world's poor.
- coldcode 13y agoIt doesn't matter whether they are any good at catching bad people. What matters is how they impact the lives of good people.
- cup 13y agoI would counter that the real state secret is that the threat of global conflict in this day and age has dimished but the cold war mentality has persisted. Furthermore, people don't care about privacy and are willing to trade liberty for securiy. We like to talk the talk but when the we get to the crossroads the general public is indifferent.
- arethuza 13y agoI'd forgotten about Duncan Campbell until I saw a reference to him the other day on HN. I ended up watching his 1980s documentary from the Secret Society series "In Time Of Crisis: Government Emergency Powers". The described how the UK goverment prepared legislation that would be rushed through in times of crisis. However, as this is held in a perpetual "draft" status this legislation is never really discussed and would be rushed through in Parliament should an emergency arise. From what leaks suggest this draft legislation allowed for extremely widespread and sweeping powers. Perhaps understandable in the context of the Cold War.... Now what I thought was interesting is that I bet those Cold War era Emergency Powers bills are still sitting there in Whitehall waiting to be passed. However, we still don't discuss them and I can see no good reason why not. The documentary is on Youtube - search for "In Time Of Crisis: Government Emergency Powers" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_%28journalist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_%28journalist%2...
- teh_klev 13y agoAnecdotal: Back in 1987, after BBC Scotland was raided over Campbell's [0] "Communications Zircon" [1] episode of the Secret Society series [2], and it being "banned" from broadcast, I attended a semi-secret viewing of that particular episode organised by Richard Kinsey of Edinburgh University. I vaguely remember Duncan being present at the viewing, but it's such a long time ago my memory may have faded. It was one of the most fascinating nights out I've had ever with the venue being populated not just by students and civil liberties folks, but also by Special Branch who were identified and pointed out by our hosts that evening. After the viewing I asked Mr Kinsey for a copy of the programme and it turned up at my parents house in a jiffy bag under the guise of "Disney: Mickey Mouse" on VHS format, it's in a box somewhere. As a fairly active member of Scottish CND, Scotland out of NATO and various other passive lefty groups of the day I kinda miss the cold war protest game. It's a shame we don't hear more from DC these days, but then that's to be expected now that the BBC's journalistic integrity has been compromised by a knackered London SW1 control centre. [0]: http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/biography http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/biography [1]: http://vimeo.com/44948377 http://vimeo.com/44948377 [2]: http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/secret-society http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/secret-society
- chiph 13y agoSo ... they're like any other bureaucrat?
- sradu 13y agoI've watched / read just about everything created by Adam Curtis. He is a brilliant documentarist. If you have a couple of hours start by watching "Century of the Self" where he tells the history of PR and Edward Bernays. (it's public domain) If you like it then watch "The Trap" and "Pandora's box". "The Power of Nightmares" is also great. Subscribe to Adam's blog. He is able to create brilliant connections which give a whole new perspective on history. Some people I've talked about him told they believe he is a conspiracy theorist however maybe I'm naive but most of the things he says make perfect sense to me. I remember watching "Century of the Self" at 21 and having a tiny 'aha' moment about how things work.
- mbrock 13y agoInterestingly, one of his major themes is that powerful people and institutions are themselves driven by various "conspiracy theories," neuroses, and fiction. In this post, he describes how the MI5 and other spy organizations need ideological support from authors like Le Carre. In "The Power of Nightmares," this is also the primary theme, but focused on the mythical and paranoid ideology that drives the "War on Terror." So, Curtis is maybe not a conspiracy theorist, but a conspiracy theory theorist... I see him as something like a humanist: he wants to the reveal the "humanity" (pettiness, confusion, imagination) of powerful actors which present themselves as serious.
- purephase 13y agoI agree with you. It particularly resonates in this piece as he repeatedly tears into the intelligence services (specifically MI5) as being completely incompetent. I find his work to be a constant reminder of how fallible the human species is, how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise (some are better at it than others) and the utter inanity that it almost always leads to. If only it were humourous endings to these reports.
- spenuke 13y agoAgreed. I was introduced to his work by watching The Trap in a seminar on Michel Foucault, interestingly enough. I was surprised how much depth there was in Foucault's work, despite his reputation as a fudging post-structuralist. Much of it complementary to Adam Curtis's work. One of the important things we find in both (as well as in the last in my trifecta of organizational theory -- The Wire) is that conspiracy theories are almost impossible, because people are mostly either too stupid or too petty and shortsighted to pull off a true Illuminati-style conspiracy. It might be tempting to call Adam Curtis a conspiracy theorist because his notion of how power is distributed and wielded is somewhat arcane -- for instance, it's at first odd to say that the populace is controlled by propping up freedom as the guiding ethos and removing arbitrary forms of control by implementing statistical guidelines, since these things are nominally in place to remove top-down control -- but such analyses, arcane though they may be, are not conspiracy theories, because a conspiracy requires a coordinated effort. Adam Curtis describes situations in which there is no coordinated effort, and no secret cabal. Just struggles of power and agreed upon fields of debate/combat which are then exploited after the fact by those who are able to do so.
- lucaspiller 13y ago"Thousands of Daily Mail readers couldn't be wrong."
- Joeboy 13y agoFor those that don't make it that far through, one of the things that's mentioned that I hadn't heard about before is that in 1982 a GCHQ employee called Geoffrey Prime was caught selling British secrets to the Soviets, not because of the work of the security services but because he confessed after being caught sexually assaulting children whose movements he'd been monitoring via his job.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago>the historian EP Thompson said that really Chapman Pincher was: "A kind of official urinal in which ministers and intelligence and defence chiefs could stand patiently leaking." Wow. I wonder what EP Thompson would say about the media today.
- knotty66 13y agoThat line could be straight out of "The Thick of It".
- confluence 13y agoYou'd be surprised at how many things throughout the world can be easily explained through the lense of utter incompetence. Think of any type of failure out there, and more often than not plain human incompetence is at the centre of it. When you start to understand how utterly incompetent most people are at their jobs, you quickly adopt an almost anti-conspiracy mindset that only changes it's mind based on positive evidence of actual competence. Human error is the number one most common failure mode in complex systems. So before you think conspiracy, think idiocy. > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - Robert J. Hanlon of Hanlon's razor fame (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)
- superconductor 13y agoHey, weren't you telling everyone to vote for Obama 9 months ago? Even after the terrible human rights record he had after his first term? So SHUT UP.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- swombat 13y agoThe danger with this very good article is that it underplays the danger inherent in this system of surveillance. The spooks who put the thing together are the hard-working idiots described here: > I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief. (often misattributed to Rommel, but actually by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord ) What we have here is a band of diligent idiots who, with their persistent, hard-working little hands, are building an apparatus of oppression that will be the wet dream of whatever future tyrant emerges (as inevitably one must, if history is any guide). They form a powerful, hidden, well-funded department of our government, and they are, from the looks of it, largely incompetent, diligent idiots. This article/documentary is very good, but don't think these guys are harmless fools. They are very, very dangerous fools - a danger well above their competence.
- mcantelon 13y agoThe movement to undermine US freedom and privacy has been focussed and well-funded since 9/11, under both Bush and Obama and involving more than just the NSA. If it's the work of idiots, they are very hard-working, successful idiots as they've managed to wrest considerable power from a nation of hundreds of millions, assuming control of the world's foremost superpower.
- swombat 13y agoAccording to this article, in the UK they've been at work since 1914. They are very hard-working, of course: they're on a mission to save the world!
- sillysaurus 13y ago
- hedgew 13y agoTo summarize: "The terrible truth that began to dawn in the 1980s was that MI5 - whose job it was to catch spies that threatened Britain - had never by its own devices caught a spy in its entire history."
- walshemj 13y agohey right I believe you and price philip is realy a lizard man from plant zog Karl Hans Lody is but one example
- 3pt14159 13y agoThe truth is somewhat in the middle. I've worked with a couple ints and a couple of their bosses. Some are hyper competent, some are effectively the equivalent of people that "play business" by forwarding technical "advisories" to non-technical people. So yeah, it's a range of skills and dispositions, at least from what I've seen.
- speeder 13y agoI think it is also very sad, that the things that KGB traitors did tell western people that KGB do, people don't believe, maybe because it worked as KGB intended (search around for Yuri Bezmenov interview... amazing)
- Buzaga 13y agoThat explains why the guy who made the Facebook Event of 'spook spotting walk' in Brittain after the news that there was NSA personnel working there got inquired about his intentions! Idiots.
- walshemj 13y agoyeh right in reality there was a concerted effort by N the German navel intelligence to recruit and run spies in the UK. A number of them where caught bang to rights both pre and during ww1. hes right that Quex caused more harm than good but hey its the daily mail see the recent hysteria about opt in to porn which is David Cameron jumping the the DM's tune
- wslh 13y agoSo, at the end if, now, intelligence agencies are spying retrieve information from Google et al and analyzing it with algorithms that are already in the public domain why they need a large budget or a budget at all?
- Ygg2 13y agoUgh, op here. Why was title changed? It's less informative now :(
- pearjuice 13y agoSEO, click-through rate et cetera
- sillysaurus 13y agoHacker News isn't even listed on search engines because it disallows Googlebot.
- pearjuice 13y agoIt is definitely listed.
- sillysaurus 13y agoHm, that's a recent change, then. HN wasn't listed just a week or two ago.
- simonbrown 13y agoI've been using Google to find things on HN for a few years. The file from January 2013 appears just as permissive: http://web.archive.org/web/20130109093744/http://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt http://web.archive.org/web/20130109093744/http://news.ycombi...
- sillysaurus 13y agoI have been too. I was surprised to find that HN didn't show up on Google a couple weeks ago. Yes, it looks like I was wrong. No, pg isn't changing titles because of SEO.
- 542458 13y ago
- known 13y ago"If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in." --Alexander Warbucks
- _quasimodo 13y agoSince i'm not using Flash anymore i wasn't able to watch the videos, but from the descriptions in the article i believe they would have added a lot to the text. Appearently BBCs 'iPlayer' does support https streaming (for their iOS App), but only if you have an Apple signed client certificate. :(
- Kliment 13y agoYou might find http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html helpful then
- _quasimodo 13y agoYes, thank you :)
- jwcrux 13y agoOff topic, but am I the only one who noticed "spies aren'y" in the image?
- rmc 13y agoAnother example of MI5 dropping the ball was in the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s. The "old" IRA was able to infiltrate it, execute various secret agents, manage to convince them that the IRA had much more guns and men then it actually did, etc.
- DanBC 13y agoWhich is weird when we compare that to the STEAKKNIFE[1] infiltration of the IRA. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeknife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeknife) [1] I like this convention of putting everything secrety in capitals.
- rmc 13y agoDifference of about 50→100 years there.
- junto 13y agoInterestingly, an Irish passport still gets the highest scrutiny at British borders, significantly more than say an Iraqi, Iranian or Libyian. That little bit of info surprised me recently.
- rmc 13y agoDepends. Ireland & the UK are in the "Common Travel Area", which is basically a mini-Schengen passport free zone. You can land in a UK Airport after flying from Ireland and just walk straight out without showing anyone your passport. Likewise you can drive into the UK (into Northern Ireland) and there is no border control. The only way you know you've crossed a border is the change in speed limit signs.
- marshray 13y agoIs this article returning a Server Error page for anyone else? Whereas the others by this same author are not.