Warehouse or No, UK's Expensive Net Spying Plan Proceeds 134
Vincent West writes with this excerpt from The Register: "Spy chiefs are already spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a mass internet surveillance system, despite Jacqui Smith's announcement earlier this week that proposals for a central warehouse of communications data had been dumped on privacy grounds. The system — uncovered today by The Register and The Sunday Times — is being installed under a GCHQ project called Mastering the Internet (MTI). It will include thousands of deep packet inspection probes inside communications providers' networks, as well as massive computing power at the intelligence agency's Cheltenham base, 'the concrete doughnut.'"
Gives Them Something To Do Until the Revolution (Score:4, Interesting)
VPN & SSH (Score:5, Interesting)
Do I miss something or you can completely bypass all of the surveillance by using VPN & SSH connection to a remote country.
Considering that TPB is planing to offer VPN for 4â, getting anonymous on the web will be very easy for people who wants to do so.
Integrity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, so they build this massive surveillance cluster. It can listen in and decrypt all information passing through all the major ISP players. Now that they have this information, it goes... where? These machines sit in between routers and the ISP's backbone (they'd have to). This means that they are connected to the internet and/or they have remote administration capabilities (I'm assuming dedicated machines). They can't keep the information local, that would be asinine. It would only take one leak (and there will be one, because there are people in the government who will not agree with this. A secretary somewhere will get a memo that gets put on the Internet) of either a password, username, or even a hint that there is remote admin possibilities and it will launch the fury of the Internet at large. Machines will be hacked (eventually) and data will be leaked. Some of it will be embarrassing to the people, while all of it will be to the government. Or maybe they have some secure server that the machines VPN into and transmit the databases that way. Who knows how they could 'securely' transfer this information they are getting, but VPN seems an obvious answer at the moment. That means they will need to deploy the VPN server IPs to the IT's in the field; it also means the server configuration is in a manual. If the government employee thinks they can get away with it or if they are an ex-employee... there will be a whistle-blower. Wikileaks, I guess it's UK's turn ^^
GCHQ - mastering the internet (Score:5, Interesting)
GCHQ has two important missions: Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance. Our Signals Intelligence work provides vital information to support Government in the fields of national security, military operations, law enforcement and economic well being. The intelligence we provide is at the heart of the struggle against terrorism and also contributes to the prevention and detection of serious crime. GGHQ supplies intelligence to the UK armed forces, wherever they may be deployed in the world. Information Assurance is about protecting Government data - communications and information systems - from hackers and other threats. GCHQ is heavily dependent on technology in order to execute our global missions. An increasingly rapidly changing digital world demands speedy innovation in our technical systems, allowing us to operate at internet pace, as the information age allows our targets to. One of our greatest challenges is maintaining our capability in the face of the growth in internet-based communications and voice over internet telephony. We must reinvest continuously to keep up with the methods that are used by those who threaten the UK and its interests. Just as our predecessors at Bletchley Park mastered the use of the first computers, today, partnering with industry, we need to master the use of internet technologies and skills that will enable us to keep one step ahead of the threats. This is what mastering the internet is about. GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain, or to target everyone in the UK. Similarly, GCHQ has no ambitions, expectations or plans for a database or databases to store centrally all communications data in Britain. Because we rely upon maintaining an advantage over those that would damage UK interests, it is usually the case that we will not disclose information about our operations and methods. People sometimes assume that secrecy comes at the price of accountability but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, GCHQ is subject to rigorous parliamentary and judicial oversight (the Intelligence and Security Committee of parliamentarians, and two senior members of the judiciary: the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner) and works entirely within a legal framework that complies with the European Convention on Human Rights. The new technology that GCHQ is developing is designed to work under the existing legal framework. It is an evolution of current capability within current accountability and oversight arrangements The Intelligence Services Act 1994 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 underpin activities at GCHQ - both existing systems and those we are planning and building at the moment. The purposes for which interception may be permitted are set out explicitly in the legislation: national security, safeguarding our economic well being and the prevention and detection of serious crime. Interception for other purposes is not lawful and we do not do it. GCHQ does not target anyone indiscriminately - all our activities are proportionate to the threats against which we seek to guard and are subject to tests on those grounds by the Commissioners. The legislation also sets out the procedures for Ministers to authorise interception; GCHQ follows these meticulously. GCHQ only acts when it is necessary and proportionate to do so; GCHQ does not spy at will. 03 May 2009
via http://www.gchq.gov.uk/prelease.html [gchq.gov.uk]
damned if you don't (Score:4, Interesting)
(U) Definitions
(U) aboveground (U//FOUO) A term used to describe extremist groups or individuals who operate overtly and portray themselves as law-abiding.
(U) alternative media (U//FOUO) A term used to describe various information sources that provide a forum for interpretations of events and issues that differ radically from those presented in mass media products and outlets.
(U) hacktivism (U//FOUO) (A portmanteau of "hacking" and "activism.") The use of cyber technologies to achieve a political end, or technology-enabled political or social activism. Hacktivism might include website defacements, denial-of-service attacks, hacking into the target's network to introduce malicious software (malware), or information theft.
Re:Spambot (Score:4, Interesting)
What I want to know is what attacks are they making on Tor? Presumably they aren't blowing a billion or two on something so easily foiled.
Re:Fight back (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I have a request to all of bot-net operators out there: redeem yourselves.
There is a thing you can do to pay for your sins and help rescue the future of free speech and unrestricted communications: Use your botnets to spread false positives!
Make sure that every PC that you have a bot on has: a) random political messages, b) random terrorist messages, c) random child pornography, d) random pirated media, e) any other "taboo" crap like cartoons of the "prophet" Mohammad.
Ensure that your bots create credible traces in history caches of web browsers, email clients, deleted files on the file system etc.
If all the millions of infected PCs out there are treated like that, you will make witch hunts and mass persecutions impossible, or at least short lived after every second judge and politician or their family member is caught in the net.
Do this and I will forgive you all the spam. Hell, I will go out and order random crap from spa... err "offers"!
Re:Fight back (Score:3, Interesting)
You can already frame people by simply sending them an email with a large attachment consisting of random numbers. In the email just write something like "here's that 5yr old I was telling you about, usual password. thx for the pics you sent" and wait for the Paedofinder General comes to arrest them. The police demand the password to the encrypted attachment, victim claims not to know it and is charged under RIPA and goes to jail for a couple of years, branded a paedo for life by the gutter press.
Re:Spambot (Score:1, Interesting)
They can sniff the exit node traffic, but they will not know where the traffic originated from. Furthermore, they will probably say tor is p2p and classify its use similar to using a torrent, in which case its use will end up being illegal.
Re:Spambot (Score:3, Interesting)
Tor is still plain text, it just needs the cash and mind set to watch.
GCHQ just has to litter the UK with Tor help.
Then crunch the numbers.
http://zfoneproject.com/about.html [zfoneproject.com] might be a bit more 'fun'.
But with laws to allow backtracking and remote keylogging when you become of interest, there are other ways around any software solution.
Re:Lab Gov heading for defeat (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever heard that phrase "lies, damned lies and statistics"? Your are basing your argument on one poll, and worse than that a poll in a newspaper.
On the Andrew Marr show in the BBC yesterday, in a poll of polls Labour were still ahead and an election would likely either keep them in or create a hung parliament. You can find a poll to say whatever you like.
One thing is for sure though. No matter what poll you look at, even if not in the lead Labour are not that far behind the Torys. All governments are at their lowest point mid-term, so to have a realistic chance the Torys need to be way ahead at this point.
Unfortunately idiots like you who spout off about "NuLab" and "ElGordo" and have been whipped up into a frenzy of hatred by the likes of the Daily Mail are unable to look at things rationally or apparently even remember what things were like in the 80s and early 90s. I'm no fan of Labour but I can remember what the alternative is like.
For non UK readers even more info (Score:2, Interesting)
The second part is just nonsense though, the kind of tripe put out by the Daily Mail.
Presumably you are referring to this Mail article [dailymail.co.uk] which is in fact referring to a Daily Telegraph interview [telegraph.co.uk] with Lord Ashdown the former leader of the Liberal Democrats? This has also been reported by the Times [timesonline.co.uk] and the Independent [independent.co.uk], making your comment somewhat disingenuous.
The Labour Party won't split into two, no one (except Daily Mail writers) is even suggesting that.
According to the Telegraph article Lord Ashdown is suggesting just that. Of course no one knows just yet how many Labour MP's have discussed this yet, but a huge election defeat may make this happen.
The UK does not have massive debt, it's actually still a lot lower than most other developed counties (including France, Germany and Japan). It's big by our standards but put in perspective it's not particularly unusual, in fact our previous low levels of government borrowing were unusual.
The Labour government has been spending like a drunken sailor in port. This has been widely reported both in the UK and abroad. While the UK may have less government debt than other nations the next UK government is going to have to cut back on spending on a large scale.
At the moment a poll of polls suggests that the Labour party would remain in power were an election called tomorrow
Please provide a link to the poll you refer to.
I'm no fan of labour, and Jacqui Smith is a particularly nasty, authoritarian powermonger, but I try not to delude myself by believing everything I read in the right wing press.
I go further and view all press reports with scepticism.