5 ms·

Perhaps it's because the people of Oman deserve to know what secret endeavors their government allows in their name. Perhaps it's because the people of the UK

by kyboren 12y ago

Perhaps it's because the people of Oman deserve to know what secret endeavors their government allows in their name. Perhaps it's because the people of the UK deserve to know what secret endeavors their government embarks on in their name. Perhaps it's to prove a point about the free press after an episode of shameful intimidation by government. Or perhaps it's, as El Reg wrote, because the UK government claims their adversaries, both nation-state and non-state actors, already have access to these documents and it's only 'we the people' who have been left out.

nbevans 12y ago
I'm a Brit and I'd rather not know what our government does to maintain our national security. At least not in situations like this when knowing about it means that it undermines the ability of that asset. It's one thing for this American Snowden to assault his own country's practices, since they have a constitution that is arguably being violated. But it's entirely another for him to assault the UK and for which does not have a constitution that's being violated and even if it did he is not a British citizen anyway so it should not concern him.
- pizza234 12y ago
  If "maintain national security" means preventing terroristic attacks, then the appropriate way is first of all to stop invading foreign countries (or supporting their invasion). The fact that "this" Snowden published Britain related documents should concern british citizens very much, because shows how tightly the contry is connected to USA, and how the wrongdoings of the latter will (and did) fall back on the former. Accepting/supporting surveillance strategies today, both internal and foreign, has more to do with totalitarian and imperialistic objectives more than security itself.
- chippy 12y ago
  Firstly, burying your head in the sand will not make it go away. Secondly, the article explains that by their own admission the UK government have said that "knowing about it" today means no undermining of anything at all. It's important to remember that the news story has been buried for some time by our newspapers though. The only people who don't know about it are the public. Thirdly, in response to your last paragraph, I have no words... Edits - I am a brit
- nbevans 12y ago
  Firstly, burying my head in the sand implies that I would want it to go away. I don't really mind how much we snoop on terrorist hotbed countries, to be completely honest? Secondly, yes the press has been gagged for some time but it was still Snowden that leaked it all in the first place. I don't think you have a point here. My taxes fund things like this and it pisses me off, slightly, that some American has effectively limited the "return on investment" we are now going to get from it.
- mafribe 12y ago
  I'm not a Brit and I'd rather know what your government does to violate my human rights. There are about 60 millon Brit and approx 7 billion non-Brits. Surely, if you believe that all humans share equal rights, the rights of the latter group outweigh, for simple quantitative reasons, those of the former, especially in the light of the dreadful record of UK secret services collaboration with imperialism, not to mention the recent collaboration in the assault on Irak which left, by conservative estimations, a six-figure of people dead.
  - leaveyou 12y ago
    "if you believe that all humans share equal rights". In practice it doesn't matter what he or most of the British citizens believe. It doesn't matter even what the British people in power believe or what they say publicly they believe. What matters is what those Brits in power do and especially what they REALLY do (in secret). If it's not already obvious, for British gov, ALL the humans don't share much rights. Same for US gov, no matter what they say. Not even their own citizens don't share many EQUAL rights. And judging only from what we know they did (declassification/archives), we can go on and say the same thing about almost any government. In secret you have no rights at all unless you have real means (position, influence, money, an army?) to defend them yourself. Therefore appealing to human rights and especially equal rights for non-citizens is quite naive in my opinion.
  - nbevans 12y ago
    Well the Brits care way way more about Iraq and the Chilcot Inquiry than they do about invasions of their own privacy by their own government. What does that tell you? At least we have our priorities in order.
- a3n 12y ago
  To siblings: I don't think nbevans is burying his head in the sand. I think he means that the assets are more effective if they're secret, and he would prefer them to be effective. As for the second paragraph, the more cooperation between intelligence systems, the more benefit for each system as well as the more risk to each when one is compromised. I imagine this is a demonstration of the violation of some rule of compartmentalization in intelligence theory. If you don't want to get any American damage on you, don't run with Americans.
  - ttctciyf 12y ago
    I agree with your analysis of nbevans' post, but another valid reason not to know might be simple embarrassment at the incompetence of the secret state. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER for an eye-opening read, for example. Of course, if the British secret state is in fact a highly competent totalitarian entity aiming at hiding their powers, that might be just exactly what they'd want you to read.. :) Seriously for a moment though, I think the article, though well worth reading, kind of misses a significant point that protecting us from the Communist Threat (sorry, the Islamist Threat, nowadays) is not the be-all and end-all of MI5 &co's raison d'etre. I believe a significant part of their resources has, at least for the last 50 years or so, been aimed at suppressing non-criminal organised domestic dissent, and ensuring the continued dominance of the traditional rulers of our nation. For examples, tapping CND's telephones, involvement in smearing the Wilson government, infiltration of trade unions and the labour movement, etc. etc. none of which groups posed any serious criminal threat to "the establishment." I suspect a detailed accounting might find a good deal more success in those activities than in the ones alluded to in Curtis' post.
  - nbevans 12y ago
    I could not agree more. I'm staggered I've been down voted into oblivion for actually holding an opinion. I bet the down voters aren't even Brits so they don't even understand my point of view. We suffered massively from American foreign policies in recent decades and we continue to suffer from, in this case, "renegade" NSA agents that defect to Russia and upload all British secrets to the internet.
- SEMW 12y ago
  > UK and for which does not have a constitution that's being violated I'm a Brit too. The idea that we don't have a constitution to be violated is ignorant nonsense. It's true, we don't have a nice convenient piece of paper with 'The UK Constitution' at the top. The UK constitution is mostly common law (recorded in caselaw -- decisions by judges) with common law principles such as the rule of law and access to justice (e.g. ex p Withham), together with a bunch of 'constitutional statutes' (in the Metric Martyrs sense - e.g. the Bill of Rights, Acts of Union, and more recently the ECA, Human Rights Act, etc), constitutional conventions (written and unwritten), and international treaties (the EU treaty, the ECHR, etc.). The UK has been ruling actions of the executive illegal under our constitution since longer than the US has existed. E.g. Entick v Carrington [1765], which was cited as the inspiration behind the fourth amendment. If you want to learn more, try Peter Leyland's "The constitution of the United Kingdom".
  - arethuza 12y ago
    There is also a fairly comprehensive Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King...
KaiserPro 12y ago
perhaps they know that the public don't give a shit, and this'll be lost on the noise of other news.

by kyboren 12y ago

nbevans 12y ago

I'm a Brit and I'd rather not know what our government does to maintain our national security. At least not in situations like this when knowing about it means that it undermines the ability of that asset. It's one thing for this American Snowden to assault his own country's practices, since they have a constitution that is arguably being violated. But it's entirely another for him to assault the UK and for which does not have a constitution that's being violated and even if it did he is not a British citizen anyway so it should not concern him.

pizza234 12y ago
If "maintain national security" means preventing terroristic attacks, then the appropriate way is first of all to stop invading foreign countries (or supporting their invasion). The fact that "this" Snowden published Britain related documents should concern british citizens very much, because shows how tightly the contry is connected to USA, and how the wrongdoings of the latter will (and did) fall back on the former. Accepting/supporting surveillance strategies today, both internal and foreign, has more to do with totalitarian and imperialistic objectives more than security itself.
chippy 12y ago
Firstly, burying your head in the sand will not make it go away. Secondly, the article explains that by their own admission the UK government have said that "knowing about it" today means no undermining of anything at all. It's important to remember that the news story has been buried for some time by our newspapers though. The only people who don't know about it are the public. Thirdly, in response to your last paragraph, I have no words... Edits - I am a brit
nbevans 12y ago
Firstly, burying my head in the sand implies that I would want it to go away. I don't really mind how much we snoop on terrorist hotbed countries, to be completely honest? Secondly, yes the press has been gagged for some time but it was still Snowden that leaked it all in the first place. I don't think you have a point here. My taxes fund things like this and it pisses me off, slightly, that some American has effectively limited the "return on investment" we are now going to get from it.
mafribe 12y ago
I'm not a Brit and I'd rather know what your government does to violate my human rights. There are about 60 millon Brit and approx 7 billion non-Brits. Surely, if you believe that all humans share equal rights, the rights of the latter group outweigh, for simple quantitative reasons, those of the former, especially in the light of the dreadful record of UK secret services collaboration with imperialism, not to mention the recent collaboration in the assault on Irak which left, by conservative estimations, a six-figure of people dead.
- leaveyou 12y ago
  "if you believe that all humans share equal rights". In practice it doesn't matter what he or most of the British citizens believe. It doesn't matter even what the British people in power believe or what they say publicly they believe. What matters is what those Brits in power do and especially what they REALLY do (in secret). If it's not already obvious, for British gov, ALL the humans don't share much rights. Same for US gov, no matter what they say. Not even their own citizens don't share many EQUAL rights. And judging only from what we know they did (declassification/archives), we can go on and say the same thing about almost any government. In secret you have no rights at all unless you have real means (position, influence, money, an army?) to defend them yourself. Therefore appealing to human rights and especially equal rights for non-citizens is quite naive in my opinion.
- nbevans 12y ago
  Well the Brits care way way more about Iraq and the Chilcot Inquiry than they do about invasions of their own privacy by their own government. What does that tell you? At least we have our priorities in order.
a3n 12y ago
To siblings: I don't think nbevans is burying his head in the sand. I think he means that the assets are more effective if they're secret, and he would prefer them to be effective. As for the second paragraph, the more cooperation between intelligence systems, the more benefit for each system as well as the more risk to each when one is compromised. I imagine this is a demonstration of the violation of some rule of compartmentalization in intelligence theory. If you don't want to get any American damage on you, don't run with Americans.
- ttctciyf 12y ago
  I agree with your analysis of nbevans' post, but another valid reason not to know might be simple embarrassment at the incompetence of the secret state. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER for an eye-opening read, for example. Of course, if the British secret state is in fact a highly competent totalitarian entity aiming at hiding their powers, that might be just exactly what they'd want you to read.. :) Seriously for a moment though, I think the article, though well worth reading, kind of misses a significant point that protecting us from the Communist Threat (sorry, the Islamist Threat, nowadays) is not the be-all and end-all of MI5 &co's raison d'etre. I believe a significant part of their resources has, at least for the last 50 years or so, been aimed at suppressing non-criminal organised domestic dissent, and ensuring the continued dominance of the traditional rulers of our nation. For examples, tapping CND's telephones, involvement in smearing the Wilson government, infiltration of trade unions and the labour movement, etc. etc. none of which groups posed any serious criminal threat to "the establishment." I suspect a detailed accounting might find a good deal more success in those activities than in the ones alluded to in Curtis' post.
- nbevans 12y ago
  I could not agree more. I'm staggered I've been down voted into oblivion for actually holding an opinion. I bet the down voters aren't even Brits so they don't even understand my point of view. We suffered massively from American foreign policies in recent decades and we continue to suffer from, in this case, "renegade" NSA agents that defect to Russia and upload all British secrets to the internet.
SEMW 12y ago
> UK and for which does not have a constitution that's being violated I'm a Brit too. The idea that we don't have a constitution to be violated is ignorant nonsense. It's true, we don't have a nice convenient piece of paper with 'The UK Constitution' at the top. The UK constitution is mostly common law (recorded in caselaw -- decisions by judges) with common law principles such as the rule of law and access to justice (e.g. ex p Withham), together with a bunch of 'constitutional statutes' (in the Metric Martyrs sense - e.g. the Bill of Rights, Acts of Union, and more recently the ECA, Human Rights Act, etc), constitutional conventions (written and unwritten), and international treaties (the EU treaty, the ECHR, etc.). The UK has been ruling actions of the executive illegal under our constitution since longer than the US has existed. E.g. Entick v Carrington [1765], which was cited as the inspiration behind the fourth amendment. If you want to learn more, try Peter Leyland's "The constitution of the United Kingdom".
- arethuza 12y ago
  There is also a fairly comprehensive Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King...

KaiserPro 12y ago

perhaps they know that the public don't give a shit, and this'll be lost on the noise of other news.