GCHQ Tapping UK Fiber-Optic Cables 157
An anonymous reader writes "According to The Guardian, the UK government is tapping fiber-optic cables that carry global communications and gathering vast amounts of data. The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been sharing the data with its American counterpart, the NSA. 'The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate. ... The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m "telephone events" each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.'"
Re:but why? (Score:4, Interesting)
why is there a "need" for all of this. they arent stopping "terrorism" nor are they really using it in a way thats stopping any major crimes.
I don't mean to defend the program, but what makes you so certain it does not (and cannot) detect terrorist plots? That would be the stated purpose, anyway, and when a plot is detected and pre-empted, they wouldn't publicize how they did it, as doing so would give other terrorists information on how to avoid detection.
Binary thinking is an oversimplification -- it's perfectly possible for a program to be both an Orwellian privacy nightmare AND an effective tool for catching terrorists.
Re:And so (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading history, you frequently come across periods where you wonder "How could people put up with this?" or "Why didnâ(TM)t they just do X" where X is the solution which was eventually reached 20 years later.
Looking at the modern world, I realise I'm living in just such a period. A pity I'm not longer "smart" enough to figure out what the current X should be. I guess I may have been a little too hard on all those "stupid" societies in the past.
Then again, maybe it's not wrong to think that they and we are just, actually stupid.
Shamrock was already taken. No, really (Score:4, Interesting)
Check wikipedia for project Shamrock
"The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA)[2] and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. "
Re:Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
Except the NSA keeps all the encrypted stuff, and then will keep it for 5 years after it is decrypted. What is more correct is to say that the encrypted stuff is temporarily safe until a flaw in the encryption scheme is discovered, or computing power is sufficient to make brute force attacks trivial.
This however exposes the lie inherent to the claim that it is to protect us from terrorism. 15 or 20 year old decrypted data will have no relevance to a terrorist attack happening tomorrow. It's only use may be as background material in a post-attack and post-aprehension trial (as if a fair trial would be allowed).
Re:And so (Score:2, Interesting)
You will not see any widespread outrage until the government tries to use the data they are collecting against someone. It is then and only then that someones 4th Amendment rights come into play. So far there has not been any evidence that information collected by PRISM or by FISA warrants has led to any governmental abuse. Those busy hyperventilating over the recent outing of intelligence activities evidently have not been paying attention. The supposedly secret NSA programs have not been a very well kept secret and was first was reported 11 years ago by the original developer of the NSA software for data capture and analysis. And before everybody storms the barricades venting their outrage of the government they should probably look at similar activities all over the world and see if anything of value was actually gained by standing in the street yelling at people and waving signs. Add to the fact that the vast majority of people loudly protesting never offer an actual and feasible plan of action to make things more to their liking. The world is filled with people who do nothing but bitch and moan about one thing or another while never offering solid steps to correct things.