Google and Facebook Can Be Legally Intercepted, Says UK Spy Boss 104
mpicpp sends this news from the BBC:
The U.K. government has revealed that intelligence service GCHQ can snoop on British citizens' use of Facebook, Twitter and Google without a warrant because the firms are based overseas. U.K. spy boss Charles Farr said that such platforms are classified as external communications. The policy was revealed as part of an ongoing legal battle with campaign group Privacy International (PI). PI said the interpretation of the law "patronizes the British people." According to Mr Farr, Facebook, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and web searches on Google, as well as webmail services such as Hotmail and Yahoo are classified as "external communications," which means that they can be intercepted without the need for additional legal clearance."
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I complained to my MP about this. She passed it on to some other ministers and after a few months the reply came back. It was two pages long but could be accurately summarized as "fuck off, pleb".
This is pretty much their attitude. They feel righteous and in their minds every threat is blown out of all proportion and justifies the means.
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Not to worry about Charlie Farr, Ive been banging his wife for two years now and he hasnt detected it. I guess he was too busy reading Facebook.
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You know the US government says stuff like this *all the time*.
How many times have I heard the US gov say it's ok to spy on non-Americans, or even that non-Americans don't have the constitutional right to a trial before they kill you.
Everyone was up in arms over an American that was killed by a drone strike, but those same people shrug when non-Americans are killed by the same drones.
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You know the US government says stuff like this *all the time*.
No way! Two different countries that're both involved in operating ECHELON [wikipedia.org] have been known to make similar justifications for their data-gathering activities?! You don't say!
Seriously, though; are you attempting to imply that it's therefore acceptable for the U.K. to say stuff like this, because the U.S. says it?? If not, what, exactly are you trying to say? Because what you did say clearly came across as a reactionary and poorly-thought-out attempt to divert attention away from the actual matter at hand...
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No, I'm saying it's strange to see this outrage from Americans over something non-Americans have been outraged by for a long time.
It's hypocrisy.
Internal and External Simultaneously (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny that Facebook et al are internal when EU courts want to issue subpoenas or legal rulings, yet are external when the spy agencies want to snoop on them.
Captcha: Gambit
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"Microsoft challenges US gov’t warrant to access overseas customer data"
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
http://www.theguardian.com/tec... [theguardian.com]
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First Amendment to what? (Score:2)
surely any comment made on twitter/fb has protection under the 1st amendment? Of course not, but it'd be good if they followed their own laws now and then.
They are following their own laws: that is quite literally the problem. Despite the best efforts of the US government, and apparently to the surprise of some of its citizens, the US constitution does dot apply to other countries like the UK. It is perhaps even more surprising that it often does not seem to always apply in the US as well but that's a different issue to the one being discussed here.
My guess is that there was probably some Victorian-era law on the books passed back when international commu
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I don't believe it to be that old.
Working purely off my memory here but I am sure that the UK (and in fact most other first world countries) retain the right to intercept any communications that cross their borders. Again working off my memory but I seem to remember that cross border communication intercepts were used in prosecuting the pirate bay founders...
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1994, actually; "Intelligence Services Act (1994)" to be precise. Though GCHQ has been around since the early C20th.
Said act uses wonderfully nebulous language that basically comes down to "we can intercept anything we want because we say so".
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I think you missed his point. GCHQ are saying that as Twitter is a US service its users communications are treated as external. Effectively, even though I am a UK citizen located in the UK my actions on twitter are treated as being external because the service is in Amer
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Aside from "because it suits them" there's no way the government can argue that twitter use is both within their jurisdiction and also that using twitter is 'external'.
Not saying it's right, but prosecuting a UK citizen for what they said on Twitter is not saying that Twitter is within UK jurisdiction, it is saying that regardless of where a UK citizen is, the UK citizen is within UK jurisdiction.
Now, when the UK government demands that Twitter do something about the offending post, that is them claiming that Twitter is within UK jurisdiction.
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[..] apparently to the surprise of some of its citizens, the US constitution does dot apply to other countries like the UK
You misspelled the word "most" ...
Re:Internal and External Simultaneously (Score:5, Funny)
We consider these services to be in quantum hyper-position states until a need is chosen.
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Actually in the eyes of the law intent counts. So by his on words he is convicted "GCHQ can snoop on British citizens' use of Facebook and Google". So the intention is not to spy on Facebook and Google, as his distorted claim of legal espionage implies but to "snoop on British citizens' without a warrant. So why the need to 'snoop' on British citizens without a legal trail. Keep in mind this legal trail, establishes why the invasion of privacy is occurring, what evidence is sought, who is seeking it, how i
Re:Internal and External Simultaneously (Score:4, Informative)
This is the UK, not the EU.
This is about UK law and a British intelligence service, not about the EU.
As far as I know Facebook and Google have their European headquarters in Ireland or Luxembourg or something, which is outside of the UK.
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internal when ... yet are external when ...
It's all that damn quantum mechanics double-slit experiment stuff -- is an electron a WAVE or particle? Is the cat ALIVE or dead? Is it HEAD or shoulders? It is INSIDE or outside?
The answer is: it's both! See? That makes everybody in government happy!
Oh, so THAT'S how they do it "legally" (Score:2)
Now this is making more sense. When the NSA says, "we aren't spying on all Americans", it means "WE aren't spying on all Americans, the Brits are, and then we get to see what they collected." So: technically correct, but morally bankrupt.
Is it any wonder that ordinary citizens are cynical about their representatives? Whose interests are they really representing? Not ours, that's for sure.
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That's just what I was thinking: if they're firms based overseas, then they can't force them to disclose SSL keys (making the communication secure-er). They shouldn't be able to force them to do anything, legally.
But doesn't facebook have a UK subsidiary, and offices in the UK (and mirrors, since I'm pretty sure they use CDNs)?
It's Britain (Score:1)
They never had a concept of the individual being anything but a serf to the state. And before people mention the magna carta, that's a document for the nobles protecting them from a tyrant kind.
Just as in WW2, they had laws illegalizing looking for radio transmissions by saying that it's illegal to capture transmissions NOT MEANT for you. And other such hamfisted means. They would have made Dick Cheney proud.
In America that wouldn't fly (up to 40~ish years ago), although our governement has slightly diff
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Gating provided realtime like sorting so only select product was kept. The GCHQ found they where working on local and all the commercial satellite calls.
Domestic material under such a s
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Just as in WW2, they had laws illegalizing looking for radio transmissions by saying that it's illegal to capture transmissions NOT MEANT for you. And other such hamfisted means. They would have made Dick Cheney proud.
Whereas the US just cut the shortwave coils out of German immigrant's radios. The american broadcasts were ridiculously scripted as well.
A lot of stuff 'flew' during the war that people wouldn't normally stand for, like say, internment of 'enemies', food & fuel rations, etc.
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40 years ago the NSA was spying domestically against citizens for political reasons. It's why we had the Church Committee.
misquote (Score:1)
patroniSes
It's the same in Sweden (Score:1)
FRA only interecept traffic passing the boarder.
Oh wow ..
But at least we've always known about it.
Nuh-uh! (Score:2)
Only Americans are allowed to spy on other people because non-citizens have no rights. Not cool if they do it to US.
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Only Americans are allowed to spy on other people because non-citizens have no rights. Not cool if they do it to US.
No you misunderstand.
Legally, GCHQ cant spy on UK local stuff and the NSA can't spy on US stuff. But they can spy on everything not local. And "security agreements" mean they can share information. This way they get to spy without apparently breaking the law.
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So, collectively the US and the UK have decided it is their right to spy on the entire world and share that information among themselves and the rest of the "5 eyes"?
Fuck them all, the rest of the world didn't sign up for this.
So, basically, the US and the UK have given the rest of the world carte blanche to spy on them. Unless they'll somehow claim it's OK if they do it but not for anybody else.
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So, collectively the US and the UK have decided it is their right to spy on the entire world and share that information among themselves and the rest of the "5 eyes"?
Pretty much yes.
Fuck them all, the rest of the world didn't sign up for this.
Never mind the rest of the world, plenty of the population of the US and UK didn't sign up for it either.
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Well, they're pretty much fucked too.
Freedom was a good experiment while it lasted, but if the goal of 9/11 was to shake our entire society ... it succeeded brilliantly.
Pretty much any time the US claims to be the champions of freedom and democracy, you can either start laughing, or start crying. Because they've more or less destroyed it.
So, why pay UK taxes? (Score:2)
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The level of ignorance in that article is amazing. Google does pay taxes, but it also shifts the vast majority of income that is arguably earned in the UK to Ireland. Sales to British companies made by British salespeople, working in Britain, are reported as sales made in Ireland. That's the issue.
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The level of ignorance in that article is amazing. Google does pay taxes, but it also shifts the vast majority of income that is arguably earned in the UK to Ireland. Sales to British companies made by British salespeople, working in Britain, are reported as sales made in Ireland. That's the issue.
If the contracts are signed in Ireland, and both parties agree that the terms of the contract are to be governed by the laws of Ireland, then they are made in Ireland. It's the same reason Apple has its call centers in Ireland, and the same reason contracts between French companies and Google are executed in Ireland. If you want them executed in your EU member country, match the Ireland corporate tax rate, or quit whining when companies follow the rules of "least money into government pockets", and said g
Re:So, why pay UK taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the contracts are signed in Ireland, and both parties agree that the terms of the contract are to be governed by the laws of Ireland, then they are made in Ireland.
They are not signed in Ireland they are signed in the UK where both parties live and work. You should not be allowed to just arbitrarily decide which countries laws apply when everything is taking place in the UK unless you are going to give individuals the same power and I can go shopping for the country with the lowest income tax rate too. The problem is that large, international companies can afford enough lawyers that they twist laws into knots to get out of paying their share of society's infrastructure costs.
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You should not be allowed to just arbitrarily decide which countries laws apply when everything is taking place in the UK unless you are going to give individuals the same power and I can go shopping for the country with the lowest income tax rate too.
And in fact, you can. It's not anyones fault that you are not personally a multinational organism by nature, and that in order to do this, you'll have to physically relocate to Ireland, rather than merely relocating your consciousness to your body already living in Ireland. Sucks to be made out of meat, I guess.
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...and that in order to do this, you'll have to physically relocate to Ireland
The point is that the people making the deal are not physically located in Ireland. The negotiation, sale etc. is all taking place in the UK. They then twist the law to the point where they can legally claim it took place in Ireland. Also while you might be able to decide whose laws are used to negotiate disputes regarding the contract you cannot decide whose laws apply to taxation resulting from the contract.
They are following the absolute letter of the law and using it to get around their social resp
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The point is that the people making the deal are not physically located in Ireland. The negotiation, sale etc. is all taking place in the UK. They then twist the law to the point where they can legally claim it took place in Ireland.
Nobody cares about the people doing the negotiation. The contracts are not between people, they are between companies, or at best, between people and companies, and what matters is where the contracts are *executed*.
Also while you might be able to decide whose laws are used to negotiate disputes regarding the contract you cannot decide whose laws apply to taxation resulting from the contract.
Actually, you can. And companies do. Because nations let them do so. Because it's in the nations best interest to get some of the take, rather than none of it.
They are following the absolute letter of the law and using it to get around their social responsibilities to support the society in which they operate which is immoral, or to put it another way evil. So I'm guessing they have had the same lawyers figure out how to get around their "do no evil" rule.
First, I'm guessing we are now specifically talking about Google's "Don't be evil" motto, which is specifically a reference to the Chi
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First, I'm guessing we are now specifically talking about Google's "Don't be evil" motto, which is specifically a reference to the Chinese wall between advertising income and search results
What? No, Google's motto is to do with doing good for the world rather than take short term gains, see this [wikipedia.org]. Not paying taxes and forcing others to pay more to cover the shortfall is precisely taking a short term gain and causing others pain. Sounds pretty close to the definition of 'evil' to me.
I'd argue that Google has done a better job in terms of the social contract than those elected to govern.
Really? You mention surveillance of citizens which is exactly what Google does for economic gain. They also do what Google thinks is good for society which is not the same as what people think is good for society.
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First, I'm guessing we are now specifically talking about Google's "Don't be evil" motto, which is specifically a reference to the Chinese wall between advertising income and search results
What? No, Google's motto is to do with doing good for the world rather than take short term gains, see this [wikipedia.org]. Not paying taxes and forcing others to pay more to cover the shortfall is precisely taking a short term gain and causing others pain. Sounds pretty close to the definition of 'evil' to me.
You realize quoting back at me the link I used to prove you wrong doesn't prove you right, right?
I'd argue that Google has done a better job in terms of the social contract than those elected to govern.
Really? You mention surveillance of citizens which is exactly what Google does for economic gain. They also do what Google thinks is good for society which is not the same as what people think is good for society. Google is not elected by, nor accountable to, the people of the UK and worse, is in fact a foreign corporation with interests that may diverge greatly from those of the UK. I will grant you that I tend to agree with a lot of Google's aims (other than immoral tax evasion) but people have no control over this and it could change in a second with a new CEO.
Google gather information in *aggregate*. It does not spy on individuals specifically. And yeah, Google does what Google thinks is good for society, rather than what "people" think is good for society. For example, the "people" who make up the Taliban believe that women shouldn't learn to read, and if they do anyway, they should be stoned to death, and that everyone should live under Sharia law, and that blow
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>You should not be allowed to just arbitrarily decide which countries laws apply
It's a long-established principle that you should be able to decide, as part of a contract, how disputes relating to the contract should be resolved. That includes things like alternative dispute resolution (arbitration, clerical courts, spinning a bottle...) as well as a national jurisdiction.
However, this only applies to the two parties.
You can't arbitrarily decide how a third party (such as the government of the country in
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Blame your politicians, not the companies they are actually encouraging to behave in this way.
I will admit that this was my first reaction upon hearing it too - blame the politicians for not having set up laws to stop this. However when you think about things more it is extremely hard to come up with any rules to fix this unless you tax the revenue of companies rather than their profits. I don't see anyway that you can easily differentiate between a genuine expense for a company vs. a profit moving expense designed to make the purchasing company unprofitable while making the selling company profita
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Wow, I always thought Forbes was a fairly professional business oriented publication like The Financial Times, but if their writers can't even grasp the difference between revenue and profit and show absolutely no understanding of the fact that taxes are paid before profit what hope is there?
I guess I'll avoid Forbes in future, I didn't realise it was quite such an amateur and clueless operation.
As for your point, well 1000101, it's really quite simple. An overseas company is defined as one that doesn't hav
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And to add insult to irony, even though both tomes are approaching 100 years in age, neither one has passed out of copyright protection into the public domain. Isn't THAT depressing?
I worry about the blowback on this... (Score:2, Insightful)
I worry about the blowback on this. Not just the hardened diaper snipers (the hardcore CP guys who will not turn on each other because no prosecutor will ever cut them a deal, ever) will still be tough to prosecute, but now everyone and their brother will go that route and be equally as hard to catch, be it true crimes like CP and explotation of children or other offenses (extortion, blackmail, etc). TrueCrypt may no longer be developed, but it is going to be the de facto encryption standard for a long ti
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You round up everybody of interest to a concentrated, secure, remote location?
Track their sloppy spies and work back?
You find the enemy locals in neutral countries, befriend and rendition them. The offer of total collaboration is then the only option.
Before the "internet" it was one time pads, radio i.e. real people finding other people. If hi tech nations have bet all on signals intelligence that was th
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And then you'll get all kinds of fun new ways to get sent to jail like 'unauthorised use of encryption' and 'accessing the Internet anonymously'.
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be it true crimes like CP
True crimes like looking at images.
Does anyone really get emotional about that 'for the children' garbage? I just can't fathom how stupid people are.
Post Office and Telephone Calls? (Score:1)
Mail and telephone calls from off shore are also external communications.
What's their status?
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Every call to or from Ireland was 'collected' as the tech of the day allowed.
Your off shore call would have to find someones telco network.
Mail was fair game after Defence of the Realm Act 1914, you had a HOW (home office warrant) for ~MI5. Indian Police Intelligence, SIS, General post office censors i.e. mail was always in play before and after WW1.
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I think that's the problem, I think this law was enacted in an era where off-shore communications were rare, such that any mail sent to somewhere like Russia during the cold war might be a bit suspicious. Although not everyone, not by a longshot, the ratio of legitimate overseas communications to subversive ones would have been much lower when this law was written. There was also no trivial way to blanket intercept all postal mail, open it, and record it automatically without greater risk of the recipient a
Guy Fawkes (Score:2)
I foresee an uptick in the sales of Guy Fawkes masks, and it isn't even November.
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state of affairs (Score:4, Funny)
These are the kinds of politicians that need to be excised from their positions, regardless of party or affiliated ideology. They are supposed to treat their positions as duties, not twist the law to justify committing 'end justifies means' immoral acts out of self interest.
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These are the kinds of politicians that need to be excised from their positions, regardless of party or affiliated ideology.
I've always believed that anyone who actually wants to work in politics should be automatically disqualified from the position on the basis that they are clearly degenerate.
Legal... (Score:4, Insightful)
American citizens (Score:2)
And, of course, they can snoop on American citizens on google and facebook, as well as for all other communications in Great Britain because the Americans are foreigners.
When you have five eyes, and each eye is in a different country, it's quite easy to work around those pesky "no watching yourself" laws.
Of all the arseholes we've had in the British govt (Score:3)
... Charles Farr is the worst. Maybe even worse than Blair.
He is the main driving force behind the Snooping Charter, both under Brown.. and resurrected under the Coalition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Remember, these were the powers he was pushing for whilst the NSA was reading our FB accounts and email, had compromised elliptic curve cryptography etc. GCHQ was recording our phone calls and even webcam images.
Art.12. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Score:2)
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
http://www.un.org/en/documents... [un.org]
Universal means it is about all humans, not only Anglo-saxons, British or US citizens.
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Key word that you failed to highlight - "arbitrary". Changes the meaning of that sentence a *lot*.
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A declared "right" is useless unless it is recognised and enforced. Who's going to do it?
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If there is a criminal activity, then a judge must look into it and give a permission to search the Gmail account of a particular individual. It is as simple as that.
https (Score:2)
This brings me to the question: how secure is https these days?
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Against the average Joe, fairly secure. Against the wrong people? Not even a speed bump. HTTPS works using Public Key encryption, not Secret Key encryption. That difference makes all the difference - Public key encryption is used to generate Secret keys, which are then used to pass information back an forth securely.
The problem is that Public key only depends on mathematically hard problems to make is secure (it's a hard math problem to break it, but not anywhere near impossible)
"Google" not outside UK (Score:2)
However the Google pages that get returned by all UK ISPs are in the UK, because those ISPs use DNS hijacking to return their own servers' IP addresses (with a nice Google skin) whenever UK citizens ask for Google, and those servers are in the UK.
As to why they do it, something to do with complying with UK censorship legislation.
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Can be "intercepted"? (Score:2)
The FSA vs OathBreakers (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem here is one of The FSA vs OathBreakers. Those in the F_ree S_hit A_rmy want youtube channels and free email and that crappy webpage on facecrook. The OathBreakers don't give a f**k about the rule of law. My personal oppinion is that if you publish to a website you don't actually OWN, then you
A. have to trust said company, not so incompetent to expose your database tables accidentally, or maliciously, or secretly.
B. anything actually published is now in the public "somewhere" if not archive.org, *.cache.com ; If the Oath breakers want to collect that "published data" without a warrant who cares.
C. The FSA wouldn't be here if they paid for their own websites. WHY DO YOU HAVE ACCOUNTS ON THESE WEBSITES STILL? WHY?!
anyway, you know how the latest in that Stingray ( http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/judge-allows-us-marshals-seizure-of-stingray-records-dimisses-lawsuit/ ) ordeal with the ACLU getting end-run by the US Marshalls well now then
A. Whoever has the data can manipulate/ cleanse it / further deny it - fsck all burn in hell you backstabbing piece of dung fsck OathBreakers )
B. WHY do you PAY for a god dammned phone still?! WHY?! Go buy a HAM RADIO for god sakes, learn electronics, pay for something that is going to last your lifetime and can be either sold at Estate Sale or Passed down to your children when you die. All you young ass idiots, do you know back in the 60's we didn't have no fucking mobile phones, you had to find a PAY PHONE BOOTH. You had to coordinate when people would be around--to even answer the phone sometimes. Phone Tag. You all don't seem to grasp that. You are allowing "a Luxury" , a Convienence, a NON necessity to steal your fscking data!!
C. This stops overnight when nobody will buy their god damn phones or deal with these fscking communications companies gone fascist. IF nobody has a fscking AT&T account, AT&T doesn't get paid, enough time and eventually NO MORE AT&T at all. Unless AT&T want to spend their own money to stay lit -- make no mistake they have a LOT of money.
Somewhere down the line, Government has tossed the rule of law out, this is the neucleous for all this grief. Banksters are propped up by NSA spying, and nothing is sacred anymore with this fscking Extra Constitutional HORSESHIT.