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."
May they burn in hell. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those demagogical assholes are the worst terrorists of all.
Oh christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there anything that they won't use the 'think of the children' line on?
Pathetic.
There we go. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we know they're desperate, hate the population, and have entirely run out of arguments.
Time to recall this government. Failing that, maybe just kick them some more while they're down. It's what they'd do to us, after all.
Ah yes, (Score:5, Insightful)
The old, "Associate your target with helping pedophiles" approach.
Danger danger! (Score:5, Insightful)
The secret police state is at risk!
consistent much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and sale and possession of firearms enables rapist to threaten and rape children! Yet we don't seem to imply the same logic there. How strange.
Child rape is becoming the new Godwin. Before we know it Glenn Beck will be using it every other sentence as well.
Re:Oh christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll be adding the usual "You are either for us or you are for paedophiles!" line soon enough.
And yet more excused from the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
We've heard from David Cameron that Snowden's leak "damaged national security."
Cameron made veiled threats suggesting he could take the media to court over publishing the leaks.
Government enforcers employed heavy-handed tactics to intercept, detain and threaten those even tangentially connected to the leaks.
Many were forced to destroy technical equipment in a quixotic quest to purge the unpurgeable.
Now, all of that failed. Predictably, this is the kind of horse shit they've resorted to slinging.
Pffft... (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn poop detector is going off again (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see.
"Save the children"? Check.
"Terrorism"? Check.
"For your own good"? Check
If you can't smell the heavy miasma of bullshit wafting off this, you need a new fucking nose.
The Surveillance State is now official (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an interesting twist: instead of claiming spying is essential for the nation's foreign intelligence capabilities and security when faced with nation state adversaries, they are now claiming spying is needed to combat internal, run-of-the mill criminals. So they are basically admitting they are building a surveillance state where every possible law that the leaders imagine can also be enforced.
If we are to configure our society so that every sicko that enjoys child molestation videos in the privacy of his home is immediately apprehended, then it seems to me any type of dissent of conspiracy against the government becomes impossible. Good luck explaining to the public that's a bad compromise.
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The other side of the coin would be an interesting one - perhaps a Freedom Of Information request to GCHQ, to ask how many man-hours as a percentage of their total work is spent tracking and investigating paedophiles. I would wager a lot of money that, if they were to give an honest answer to that, it would be 0. GCHQ are not, and never will be, interested in tracking paedophiles.
And nor should they be, anymore than GCHQ should be going after shop lifters or any other petty criminal.
Their excuse is that they can ignore due-process to accomplish the all important job of maintaining national security. They can do this because the government has passed various "anti-terror" laws which more or less eliminate the need for due process. Unless you're going to start labelling paedophiles, shoplifters, drug sellers, etc. as terrorists (and therefore apply the anti-terror laws) then you're going to have to follow due process, which means warrantless spying seems like its out of the picture...
And yes, I'm aware that all sorts of non-terrorist activities are now being labelled as terrorism just so they can use those broad laws... *sigh*
Re:Oh christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst part is people actually believe them. The security forces have been revealed to be little more than criminal scum, gleefully breaking the law and violating human rights, egged on my the Americans. It's disgusting and I'm ashamed to have them working in my name.
You know what, I think GCHQ might actually be worse than a paedophile, if such a comparison is even possible. The latter ruins a few lives at most, the former has undermined our very democracy and hurt all of us deeply.
The verdict on Edward Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
First, they said he was a traitor.
Then, they accused him of stealing.
Followed closely with the accusation that he has been a Soviet spy.
Now ?
Edward Snowden, according to them, is aiding pedophile and all other sexual perverts, especially those "exploiting innocent children", to evade surveillance by the "GOOD GUYS", namely, the spooks/cops/big brothers.
In other words, Edward Snowden, to some, is a de-human-izer.
Re:And so it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Give it a couple of weeks and Snowden will be labeled a pederast
Doubtful that many in the target audience know what one of those is, considering the trouble they've had with "paedophile" and "paediatrician" in the past.
Thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
For confirming that nothing Snowden has leaked did actually endanger anyone.
Because if it had, we'd be hearing about that 24/7.
Re:Oh christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry - no moderator points today - The answer is bitterly funny, but - unfortunately - also very accurate. Labelling it is "funny" seems like primarily useful to discredit it as a serious answer.
Re:The Surveillance State is now official (Score:5, Insightful)
they are now claiming spying is needed to combat internal, run-of-the mill criminals.
It also seems a little desperate. That argument doesn't have a history of working too well.
Actually, I can't think of any example where that argument failed, but plenty where it worked flawlessly: biometric IDs, Internet censorship, perceived violence in games and music, cell phone tracking (drugdealers etc.), anti-money-laundry legislation and many more. Never underestimate the gullibility and political clout of a nation full of semi-literate soccer mums and Joe sixpacks.
Re:May they burn in hell. (Score:5, Insightful)
The average UK citizen will accept, or in fact welcome, pretty much any kind of invasion of privacy by the state if it doesn't inconvenience them in going about their day to day life. So we probably shouldn't be lumping all the blame on politicians for expressing views that match us.
The media also deserves considerable blame. We went through decades of terrorism with the IRA a group that was massively more dangerous, coordinated and smarter than the radicalised Islamists that threaten us now and we carried on regardless. Look up the 1996 Manchester bombing, which I remember vividly, and you'll see how dangerous they were and how recently. But we didn't throw away all our rights and privacy to fight it and we rebuilt the area better than it was before as a massive 'fuck you' to the scum bags that did it. Why are we so afraid of the idiots they call terrorists these days? Because the media constantly barrages us with stories about plots, dangers, threats from around the world like it's some kind of miracle that I've survived the last week.
Clean air and water help paedophiles live longer (Score:5, Insightful)
... so we better get some pollution going.
Re:The verdict on Edward Snowden (Score:4, Insightful)
These wankers in Britsh govt (and civil service) know very well how much are their sleezy sicko tricks are exposed .. so take the usual mud slinging tactic ..
Edward Snowden, you are true hero.
Re:May they burn in hell. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn poop detector is going off again (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK Tories have a long track record of comically wrong policies. Especially May is utterly despicable. Anybody remember the Snooper's Charta? Guess what? GCHQ didn't need it at all. And the Snooper's Charta was killed off(read: tabled) for being too far-fetching. Add to this the abysmal PR campaign where they painted an invitation for illegal immigrants to call a phone number for deportation on the side of lorries. And the text message campaign doing the same. And now they say that unearthing their lack of oversight aids pedos, terrorists and crims.
Where before this their policies seemed to be merely incompetent they now look like acts of malice.
The UK shows the least grace of all parties involved in the Snowden revelations. Pity the country that NEEDS The Grauniad.
Re:The verdict on Edward Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
These wankers in Britsh govt (and civil service) know very well how much are their sleezy sicko tricks are exposed .. so take the usual mud slinging tactic ..
Edward Snowden, you are true hero.
The kind of sleaze like running ads on vans for "illegals" to turn themselves in? If UKIP says something like this is going too far then you know they absolutely crossed all lines including the date-line. Calling them wankers is an insult to all masturbators everywhere.
The Last Refuge of the Scoundrel (Score:4, Insightful)
This reeks of desperation. Whitehall must really be on the backfoot.
Re:Oh christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
NO, you get that the wrong way around
The problem is those evil pedophiles, praying on our children, preferably online.
To prevent that from happening, significant and highly invasive surveillance is needed because those evil pedophiles are so good at hiding their activities.
So it's those evil pedophiles ruining all our lives, not those saints working at GCHQ and NSA and the rest, those glorious people keeping us all safe and protected from those pedophiles, and all we have to do is give them complete insight in all our communications and our private lives. A tiny offer to make, just think of the children!
Full disclosure: I'm practicing for a new career as politician. Aiming for a +5 insightful. As soon as I can manage that, will run for office!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you mean "the down side"? There is no up side.
You can't point at other regimes and decry their dictatorial policies, and then have a secret arm of government of your own acting with the power of all three arms of government, with no oversight or accountability.
Wake up. The dictators aren't in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt or wherever else you may think they are. The most insidious dictators are right here, ruling YOU.
Re:The Surveillance State is now official (Score:5, Insightful)
This post is important. They swore up and down these were emergency, temporary powers needed to combat terrorism. "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
Drug war won't be far behind. These liars already took a law in the 1990s to fight terrorism, swore it would only be used for that, and immediately began using it to spy on and arrest prosaic drug dealers.
They didn't even bother regurgitating the fiction drug dealers were akin to terrorists. They brazenly stated, "Well, the law doesn't specifically state only terrorists.". They wasted no time at all before deliberately abusing their power.
Re:And yet - AKA Slashdots Ohanian moment? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who is supposed to receive this crap-propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Quicly looking at comment section of Telegraph article I see that it propably didn't succeed in indoctrinating anyone. Therefore I'm curious why such a piece of crap has been published at all. Maybe it is not directed to unwashed masses. Maybe it is directed to corporate/bankster/military/intelligence estabullshitment, not ordinary people. Maybe it is some kind of message sent by puppet government and puppet media saying something like: "See, we're (still) loyal. We'll go with you everywhere and we're ready to defend your (dirty) business even to our own detriment. We'll do anything, just give us some convenient, well paid position in your corporations when people throw us out.". I see this as a dangerous precedence. Politicians not afraid of what people think about them will not hesitate to send police or military to beat everyone "to the fuck'n skull" or "disappear" people if ordered so by TPTBs. The same with media: seeing journalists producing such crap without any signs of hesitation I smell crappy soviet-style system of propaganda (which I still remeber as I've spent my childhood in communist Poland).
More likely it's just the Big Lie. Repeat often enough and people will start to believe it (so they hope). Especially when you load it with all sorts of right-minded emotional terms.
After all, you're either with us or you're with the paedophiles.
It worked for Iraq.
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a banker or other criminal type with inside connections to the survellance complex, the up-sides clock into the trillions.
It is only a matter of time before the men in charge of the NSA and GCHQ start getting invited to City dinners, if they aren't there already.
Re:Pedophiles flew the plane into WTC 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Pedophiles and terrorism by now are well understood by governments as the magic keys to sidestep legal protections and process.
See, if you just go straight to sidestepping things, people get upset. But if you say "Zomg the terrorists" or "but, pedophiles" people accept that you're sidestepping things and it's OK.
It's essentially become the point at which you know governments are losing the argument. Because it amounts to the veiled argument of "we're doing this to protect against (terrorists|pedophiles), and if you're opposed to us fighting the (terrorists|pedophiles) then you must be in favor of the (terrotists|pedophiles)"
It's disingenuous in that it basically is used to bully us all into accepting them cutting into our rights and legal protections, because, after all, they're doing it to save us from the (terrorists|pedophiles).
And it's also the point at which all of the other politicians will vote for whatever you're suggesting, and much of the populace will say "well, I'm not a (terrorist|pedophile) so what do I have to hide?".
It is, however, a complete horseshit argument, and a cheap excuse to bypass the controls and protections put in place. But people seem to keep falling for it.
Re:Think of the Children (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. If you think of the children all the time, you're most likely a pedo.
Re:May they burn in hell. (Score:5, Insightful)
As for 'fabulous web-filters'. Yes, we do. One of them is called Cleanfeed. And that started as child porn block. And now it's blocking links to downloads of copyrighted content at the behest of the MPA. I'm not sure what it'll be blocking tomorrow, or next month, or next year. Or why. Oh well. At least it's not a opaque, commercially provided entity with little in the way of oversight or transparency with the power to silently fence off content the powers that be don't agree with. Ah. Hang on...
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're just being a demagogue.
To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".
There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability.
But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.
The blame here I place (as usual) on Congress. If they were exercising responsible, firm, intrusive oversight - with absolute, immediate, and unremitting punishment for the people involved (firing certainly, prosecution as required - and not a bunch of chattering ninnies that have proven their inability to be trusted to keep secrets secret (so as to remain closely advised by the agencies without fear of destroying the value of intel and methods with self-serving 'unattributed' leaks), I don't believe we'd have this problem.
But now we have self-interested politicians, committed to maintaining a political divide and advantage at ANY cost (even to the republic), who thus cannot really be trusted with anything important and who block each other (despite both sides' recognizing the need) from reforming anything substantively. I guess we lose then.
So they admit it is not about terrorism (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US, they keep pointing out that their program is only about terrorism, and only spies on non-US citizens.
Not so in the UK, where the program is apparently about spying on everybody, including Britons, even if no terrorism is involved. That is a significant admission.
Re:May they burn in hell. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, I grew up with the those cowardly shitbags killing innocent bystanders. Don't give me any rhetoric about them fighting any fucking revolutionary war. They lose all rights to be treated as human when, as an organisation, they intentionally set out to kill people as PR "for the cause".
It was well known at the time, and confirmed by Sinn Fein afterwards though never officially "proven", that a huge amount of money was sent from the USA to fund the IRA, it was called Noraid, and it funded them to the tune of millions of pounds. That was American *people* exercising their rights and freedoms to fund an organisation that murdered men, women and children indiscriminately.
The IRA are vermin, scumbags, the leprous weeping sores deep up the arsehole of humanity, and those who made their actions possible by funding them are no better. Just ask the parents of the murdered children how they feel...
Simon.
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Insightful)
If they were exercising responsible, firm, intrusive oversight - with absolute, immediate, and unremitting punishment for the people involved (firing certainly, prosecution as required
While in theory, you're right, in practice, that is unsustainable. You *can* have someone principled and just in power but that is largely an exception to the norm. That position will always devolve and attract the lying cheats who will do anything to attain that power. The reason is pretty simple, the honest man typically has no real desire or need for power and will typically be at a great disadvantage for their unwillingness to cheat to maintain it.
The blame here I place (as usual) on Congress.
That's disingenuous. Best you can do is blame the population for not offering principled people who run for office, or in the rare cases where this happens, blame the population for not supporting those guys in favor of the typical establishment stooges.
Even that isn't fair though... Would you risk of life-destroying consequences that rocking the boat too much in congress will most likely bring down upon you? Would you go head-up against the intelligence agency that can pull out or simply fabricate information to publicly humiliate and destroy you if you so much as threaten them? And even if none of that would stick, are you game to find out what other tricks those guys have to take you out of the picture? Would you wish it on someone else?
The bottom line is this: You didn't follow - or hold your politicians to - the constitution (that thing meant to limit the power of government). You now have a government with so much power that it can destroy anyone or anything threatening to take it away. And by 'you' I mean the population of the US.
Don't feel too bad about it though... You at least *have* a pretty good constitution to return to, hard as that goal may be to reach. The rest of the world isn't so lucky.
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont give a **** how important you think it is, when those that engage it step over the line, its time for sunshine sanitation.
As a third party reader, I see the two of you as being in violent agreement. I read one comment about "absolute, immediate, and unremitting punishment" for abuse, and another about "step over the line", and they agree.
I agree too. The *biggest* problem in the NSA fiasco, just as it was in the financial fiasco and the CIA-agent-disclosure fiasco, is that somebody wasn't taken out and shot for treason. Perhaps multiple somebodies. Destroying trust in the financial system, destroying trust in the lawful exercise of legitimate police powers, destroying trust in society as a whole - these are treasonous offenses against the very fabric of our nation that far outweigh any of the money and information involved.
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're just being a demagogue.
To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".
There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability.
But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.
If I had to choose between living in 1984 -- which is what we're doing -- and the consequences of not having any secret spying at all, I'd go with the consequences. I think I'm more likely to be arrested for expressing my Constitutional rights than I am to be killed by terrorists.
Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score:5, Insightful)
That's disingenuous. Best you can do is blame the population for not offering principled people who run for office, or in the rare cases where this happens, blame the population for not supporting those guys in favor of the typical establishment stooges.
How do you blame people when they are intentionally mislead, uninformed, and outright lied too? The take over of journalism started a long long time ago, and the last of the "journalists" for large print and television happened decades ago. You could blame the people that ignored the laws that allowed the monopolization of media in the 70s maybe, but corrupt journalism was rampant in the 60s even without monopolization.
People warned us that when the AP becomes the only source of "News" we are fucked, but those voters didn't even know that there were laws being cooked because the "News" prevented those laws from becoming public knowledge. If you didn't pay attention to comedians like George Carlin you simply didn't know.
Hell, if the Internet was censored as people in power want, you would still not know about any of these programs.
I agree that it's disingenuous to blame just congress, but it's just as disingenuous to blame a public that has no knowledge unless they are actively seeking it. It should bother you that "News" agencies collaborate and release stories that the administration approves of. It should bother you that instead of Television "News" programs talking about real issues, the programming focuses on celebrities first, propaganda second, and misinformation third.
The answer goes back in time and requires us to cut the strings tying all of these agencies together. Media monopolies need to be broken up, and journalism needs to once again become journalism. With an informed public we have a chance for reform. With an ignorant public there is no chance of reform, it will just be a few people that see reality bickering on sites like Slashdot.
Re:And yet - AKA Slashdots Ohanian moment? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty of propaganda articles making it to Slashdot, but I don't think this is an example of what you're saying it is. The general "Slashdot hive mind" mentality is not friendly towards claims of "oh noes, think of the pornchildren!" being used to suppress information. As a piece of propaganda, this article is guaranteed to backfire (as demonstrated by all the upmodded comments in this thread). No one here is being swayed to the conclusion "Snowden helps pedophiles"; the only message coming across is "Whitehall officials are lying liar scum."
To spot a real propaganda article, look for pieces that harness the "groupthink" to produce a positive reception for some corporate agenda (rather than producing a near-unanimous backlash against the article claims). This article is simply ordinary tabloid clickbait for the Slashdot audience. The propaganda work was the original Telegraph piece linked, aimed at an audience who are terrified of the lurking pedos they've been trained to fear --- those are the people intended to be deceived by the crap coming out of Whitehall.
Re:The verdict on Edward Snowden (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they can immigrate on a visitor or temporary visa or something. Do it legally.