Edward Snowden Leaks Could Help Paedophiles Escape Police, Says UK Government 510
An anonymous reader writes "Paedophiles may escape detection because highly-classified material about Britain's surveillance capabilities have been published by the Guardian newspaper, the UK government has claimed. A senior Whitehall official said data stolen by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the US National Security Agency, could be exploited by child abusers and other cyber criminals. It could also put lives at risk by disclosing secrets to terrorists, insurgents and hostile foreign governments, he said."
Re:Trains (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, no running without a permit!
You want to apply for a permit for running shoes? You are obviously going to need to submit for a background check, potential criminal!
This just in: Pedophiles often wear shoes. Everyone should go barefoot or be under suspicion of having something in common with one of them...
You sir! Do you have a permit for those genitalia? Oh you didn't know that was a requirement now? Not our problem. We're going to have to confiscate your testicles now.
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Informative)
Nineteen Eighty Four (Score:5, Informative)
Won't someone think of the children (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh christ... (Score:5, Informative)
Not according to the US Census Bureau [census.gov] (see page 24). Somebody lied to you.
Hey, Orwell (Score:5, Informative)
I enjoyed 1984 a lot more back when it was fictional.
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Informative)
That sounds like the Spitzer scandal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer#Prostitution_scandal [wikipedia.org]
Eliot Spitzer was the Democratic governor of New York State, and most Democrats thought he was an effective, aggressive governor, especially when it came to fighting the Republicans.
As a result of the money-laundering provisions of the PATRIOT act, Spitzer's bank reported his money transfers to a federal agency. They were required to report transactions of $10,000 and over, but they chose to also report transactions under $10,000 because they looked suspicious.
It turned out that Spitzer was using that money to pay an escort service -- which is legal in New York State. When the (Republican) federal prosecutors found that out, they started "investigating" and found some theoretical law-breaking because he had ordered an escort not just in New York State, but also in Washington, DC, which made it an interstate matter. Then they leaked the investigation to the press, and the (Republican) prosecutor made a deal with the effective (Democratic) governor that they would drop the prosecution if he would resign as governor. He was replaced in succession by his Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, whom everybody, including Paterson himself, agreed was a nice guy who wasn't an effective (Democratic) governor.
So here's a case where the Republicans used their investigative powers under the PATRIOT Act for a partisan attack against an effective Democratic governor, by leaking accusations of lawbreaking that didn't hold up. (Several other clients were caught in this trap, and none of them was prosecuted -- because they hadn't broken any laws.)
When you give unaccountable spying power to a secret agency, they can and will use it for their own selfish purposes.
The only consolation was that Spitzer had done the same thing himself during his career. A big part of his career was prostitution busts. Tartuffe, anyone?