That there Edward Snowden is a good fella and this filum just won an Oscar…

such a sloooooow film

I have been called paranoid and labelled a tin foil hat wearer for years. Same people now say snowden is a traitor and deserves everything he gets. Why does no one have a problem with the inescapable survailence of innocent people?
Funny how the post is now the most secure form of communication.

^^ totally agree.

Which does lead one to wonder what people would think if post was opened, scanned, saved and checked against other mail?

Related: I was at a conference earlier this week considering consent, privacy, digital technology and more people-friendly ways of managing these (versus unreadable T&Cs). One study mentioned while we are chatting during a break is whether would people would rather give up their individual vote or their washing machines. Guess which from those sampled? Given problems of comprehending democracy, what chance for privacy comprehension in abstract digital networks?

The Royal Mail was established and given it’s monopoly solely so the King ( Charles II I think) could read his subjects nail if he wanted to.

I’ll try and watch this on catch up but at nearly two hours it’s far too long and shown from 23:05 to 1am on a school night. I posted a PSA in the OSCARs thread FWIW (not much !)

Why does no one have a problem with the inescapable survailence of innocent people?

Every email, phone call and text message you send is already recorded and retained. The issue is whether only the phone company/ISP should see that or whether the security services can see it carte blanche or whether they need specific judicial approval on a case by case basis.

Security expert on TV last night pointed out Snowden could have made his same overall revelations without sending 50,000 highly sensitive UK security documents to various journalists. The result of this has been numerous people and organisations which where being monitored by the security services have “gone dark”.

Snowden is now holed up in Russia, that Bastian of human rights and free speech which is currently invading the Ukraine and covertly threatening the Baltic states.

Its interesting to hear the parents of the 3 teenage girls who’ve gone to Syria say they should have been stopped and their activities online picked up/monitored. When it suits people want surveillance, the question is “when does it suit”.

Snowden and the Citizenfour guys did an AMA on Reddit a couple of nights ago. Worth looking out, interesting reading.

It isn’t a question of surveillance versus none, but proportionality and the type of surveillance. Many of the most ardent campaigners recognise that surveillance is required but what they call for is surveillance of the bad guys/gals instead of the good ones. This means using intelligence (i.e. following up links and connections) and legally gaining intercept warrants when required.

If you’re interested, I spell out many of my thoughts here in dialogue with the UK ICO.

Everybody’s phone calls are being recorded ? Now that I doubt, although transactional data is retained. So GCHQ can find out who you spoke to, but not what you said, unless you have been targeted.

The Police have long been abusing RIPA/RIPSA to get warrants to do just that, it appears.

@hels, its all digital data and can be held in compressed form. How long the phone companies retain the conversation for I couldn’t tell you, so you could well be right about the phone records in terms of the conversation.

@saxabar, thanks for that link will take a look

Ed snowden is a true balsy hero, we need more like him and nations of people with the backbones to stand up against all this crap they throw at us in the name of ‘defence/safety/security’ utter bullshit.
I dread to think how bad the next few generations are going to get ‘it’ 🙁 im glad im old.

We all use the internet and those companies record everything we do in order to better sell advertising. It amazes me people are OK with that but somehow the security services are pure evil. See my point earlier about how the parents of the three Bethnal green teenagers wished the security services had been watching them more carefully.

@lawn – the vast majority of the information Snowden disclosed was classified communications between US diplomats and from within the military. He could have released the fact that the US and CCHQ had access through social media and phone companies without releasing the rest.

@jambalaya – there are deffo criticisms to be made of the ad industry, but the Snowden leaks are of a different order. Data collected by advertisers is non-personal and aggregated. Personal data is difficult for them to manage because of tight restrictions on data processing.

On another note, while we do not know how many attacks indiscriminate surveillance stops, we can tell whether perpetrators of actual attacks were known to security services or not. The proportion is high. The problem isn’t that security services are “malevolent”, but rather that they have kit that allows them to collect all of the data all of the time. Societally this isn’t on, but when tasked with stopping attacks one can see the appeal. That’s why clear accountability and transparent procedures are required.

On the three Bethnal green teenagers point, I haven’t read/seen the family’s appeal, but to blame the state for their children’s behaviour seems weird. One can point to UK foreign policy, but that’s another story…