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Government Privacy The Media United Kingdom

Guardian Ignores MI5 Warnings, Vows To 'Publish More Snowden Leaks' 301

dryriver writes in with news that a new round of Snowden leaks may be on the way. "Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger says he plans to publish more revelations from Edward Snowden despite MI5 warning that such disclosures cause enormous damage. Mr Rusbridger insisted the paper was right to publish files leaked by the US intelligence analyst and had helped to prompt a necessary and overdue debate. Mr Rusbridger said more stories would be published in the future as the leaked documents were 'slowly and responsibly' worked through. His comments come after criticism from the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker. Making public the 'reach and limits' of intelligence-gathering techniques gave terrorists the advantage, he said. He warned that terrorists now had tens of thousands of means of communication 'through e-mail, IP telephony, in-game communication, social networking, chat rooms, anonymising services and a myriad of mobile apps'. Mr Parker said it was vital for MI5 to retain the capability to access such information if it was to protect the country. "
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Guardian Ignores MI5 Warnings, Vows To 'Publish More Snowden Leaks'

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  • by HansKloss ( 665474 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:16AM (#45089899)

    I'm so tired of using "terrorist" argument and then, when we give them what they want, they turn around and use new powers on own citizens or to oppress members of minor political parties.

    • by MickyTheIdiot ( 1032226 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:21AM (#45089923) Homepage Journal

      Well, "terrorist" is becoming as generic as calling someone an asshole.

      You took the last bear claw, you terririst!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cold fjord ( 826450 )

        I see that occurring on Slashdot, along with various claims of "everyone's a terrorist" for some reason or another generally involving disingenuous rhetoric. As a rule I don't see that from government. They seem to be a bit clearer about its meaning.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Such as when you become a registered sexual offender because you pissed on a tree on night.

          • Your post give a hint of the right answer: a "registered sex offender" is .... a registered sex offender, not a terrorist.

            • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2013 @10:46AM (#45091645)

              Yes, analogies are not identical. Well done. Have a bikkit.

              However, the term "sexual offender" gives images that do NOT include "pissed on a tree where a police officer could see them".

              Much like those that are called terrorist are not actually what is considered by the people who agreed to the laws to be used against terrorists to be terrorists.

              Such as people whose dogs poop in the streed and don't clean up the poop.

            • by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @11:30AM (#45092241) Journal

              This just in: government gets to decide the meaning of "registered sex offender" and "terrorist".

              cold fjord is happy with the definitions the government uses and presumably thinks that those definitions will never change.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          As a rule I don't see that from government. They seem to be a bit clearer about its meaning.

          I guess that might be considered true, since the government feels that the rules don't apply to them, and that "rule" would be no exception. Or you're ignorant of/ignoring the fact that these endless "anti-terrorist" laws are used more often in the clusterfuck that we call "the war on drugs" than against actual terrorists. And that we've already displayed that the government is happy to bypass the law entirely against "actual" terrorists, even if they're citizens, without even pretending or "plausible denia

          • I guess that might be considered true,...

            ... your observation here seems pretty divorced from reality.

            Make up your mind, it's either true or it isn't. The police and investigative agencies may use some of the powers they are granted by antiterrorism legislation for investigating other crimes,* but that doesn't mean the criminals they are investigating are then necessarily terrorist.

            * You should be clear that terrorist groups often resort to ordinary criminal activity to fund themselves. Examples include bank robbery, kidnapping, extortion, smuggling, and so on. The terrorist group Hezbollah has hundreds

            • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
              Cold the term terrorism is now so diluted it has lost much of its legal meaning. Any local criminal act can now draw on federal funding if carefully presented as terrorism related. The states get nice support for their ongoing and very expensive bank robbery, kidnapping, extortion, smuggling investigations.
            • Make up your mind, it's either true or it isn't.

              Read for context. Doing otherwise doesn't make you look clever, it makes you look like a putz.

              As a rule I don't see that from government. They seem to be a bit clearer about its meaning.

              I guess that might be considered true, since the government feels that the rules don't apply to them, and that "rule" would be no exception.

              Here you go. [wikipedia.org]

        • by dave420 ( 699308 )
          Hardly. The US government in particular has tried to describe acts as terrorism without understanding the motives of the perpetrator(s), which is impossible to do as an act of terrorism is only terrorism if the motive is to coerce people. So no.
        • by Soluzar ( 1957050 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @09:48AM (#45090737) Homepage
          They're very clear on one point. They are entirely clear that fanning the flames of hysteria regarding terrorism will allow them to get away with whatever they want. Including spying on private communications between people who are not and never will be accused of any crime. I don't want them reading my intimate communications with my loved ones. I don't want them reading my flippant communications with my friends. I don't want them reading anything. I don't want them to put my life under a microscope.
        • by Smauler ( 915644 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @09:59AM (#45090883)

          Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, by just about any definition. Doesn't mean he wasn't right.

          "We don't negotiate with terrorists!" is a little bit odd coming from people trying to get their photo next to him.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

            Sinn Fein are the political wing of a terrorist organization, and negotiation with them worked out pretty well. The Taliban are terrorists but if we ever want to sort Afghanistan out we will need to negotiate with them.

            The argument that it encourages terrorism is stupid. Clearly you have to be pretty badly repressed, far worse than the average UK citizen is, before you are willing to murder other people and possibly die doing so. The fact that if you and many others organized into a coherent group (so there

          • by kwbauer ( 1677400 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @02:39PM (#45094625)

            So were the Founding Fathers of the US. Things tend to change when you win.

        • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Re They seem to be a bit clearer
          Not really Cold, when Western govs see a lack of traction for their PR they often have to help things along a bit beyond "rhetoric":
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension [wikipedia.org]
          A study of history will always turn up some interesting actions by governments trying to rule :)
        • by kilfarsnar ( 561956 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @10:30AM (#45091373)

          I see that occurring on Slashdot, along with various claims of "everyone's a terrorist" for some reason or another generally involving disingenuous rhetoric. As a rule I don't see that from government. They seem to be a bit clearer about its meaning.

          You mean like when they consider the Occupy movement, political protests and environmental groups terrorism?

          http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/12/peaceful-protest-treated-as-terrorism-by-the-fbi.html

        • Clearer??? They installed a huge and completely illegal dragnet to spy on virtually every individual on Earth! If they have it so "clear", why aren't they spying ONLY on the guys who fit the definition? Or is the definition incredibly blurred in their minds?
        • by Xicor ( 2738029 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @11:37AM (#45092349)
          no they dont. a terrorist is someone who causes terror in the hearts of a group of people. a terrorist is NOT someone who discloses government information, or hacks government websites to show protest. clearly the government doesnt understand what a terrorist actually is, because they call both snowden and anonymous terrorists, when they are actually just political activists.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:22AM (#45089925)

      "I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."

                                          Joe McCarthy, February 9, 1950

      Some things don't change.

    • by Spottywot ( 1910658 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:33AM (#45090007)
      Especially when they quote bullshit for the reason, i.e. Britain faced one or more terrorist attack per year since 2000 and will continue to do so http://news.sky.com/story/1151954/mi5-boss-warns-of-growing-uk-terror-threat [sky.com]. Now that means that there have been 13-26 attacks according to his figures and we haven't heard of one of them? I remember when the UK really was under the threat of terrorist attacks from the IRA, and though a lot of things were kept secret for obvious reasons during that time, when the security forces scored a major victory or prevented an attack you knew about it. Are they seriously saying that 7/7/2005 was 'the one that got away', and they haven't told us about the others because of secrecy? Just one for an example?
      • Just one? Okay [wikipedia.org].

      • Britain has been facing the constant threat of terrorist attacks since the 1970's, right up until the early years of the 21st century, thanks to the terrorist elements of the Irish Republican Army and other Irish Republican splinter groups. Bombings happened, but even without the all-pervasive intelligence gathering apparatus that is apparently now necessary to track every "terrorist", the British Security Services still did a pretty good job of foiling most of the attacks.

        I say most, not all, and I am not

      • Are you asking us which secret-that-nobody-knows-about terrorist attacks were thwarted by MI5? By definition that question is unanswerable. Besides, this is lunacy. The UK is covered in video cameras. Yet people are whining about GCHQ aggregating their Facebook and Twitter feeds, as if people go online and use social media in order to be somehow private citizens? A better target for the Guardian is the surveillance society in general, not MI5; it's council busy-bodies snooping with town centre cameras
        • A better target for the Guardian is the surveillance society in general, not MI5; it's council busy-bodies snooping with town centre cameras and things like that, not what the intelligence services are getting up to.

          Why not both?

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. And to add insult to the lie, they do not even manage to do anything about what little terrorism is actually there.

      However, I agree that "tremendous damage" is being done, namely to society by concerted efforts to establish a police- and surveillance-state. We had that in Europe in the last century and it took about 80 million dead to deal with it because it was not stopped at the onset. These people are extremely dangerous and need to be stopped. At this time, it may still be possible to do that in

    • by Nyder ( 754090 )

      I'm so tired of using "terrorist" argument and then, when we give them what they want, they turn around and use new powers on own citizens or to oppress members of minor political parties.

      The true terrorist is the USA Government and it's cronies.

  • All of the spy types could meet at Rick's Cafe. Of course Sam won't be there to play that tune, but you can't have everything now, can you? The best alternative might be to have forms of communication directed to a spy central where censors review it for "National Secrets" then pass it on or arrest you!
  • Grauniad (Score:3, Funny)

    by loccohombre ( 148009 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:27AM (#45089959)

    On teh upstart none will byable to hunderstand nethig publishd in their neway

  • MI5 got it wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:29AM (#45089971)

    Security through secrecy = no security.

    Also, the Snowden leaks mostly show that it's more honest citizens than terrorists who should be concerned about ubiquitous surveillance. Cue 1984 references...

    In a sense, Bin Laden got what he wanted: he didn't want to hurt western societies directly, he wanted to get western societies to collapse into dictatorships by giving the initial push (9/11) that would allow mostly-democratic governments to slowly turn nasty with a good reason.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      well security might mean also getting away with murder and for that secrecy is pretty useful..

  • Hey Bro! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FilmedInNoir ( 1392323 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:29AM (#45089979)
    T1: RU rdy for the big boob
    T2: Wat? lol
    T1: Bomb stupid spell chk
    T2: Tot Bro got packback rdy
    T1: YOLO for Allah!
    T1: Rmbr, post pic or it didn't happen!

    Is it like that? Do terrorists txtmsg each other like teenagers?
    • I think today's (and just today's) vernacular is:

      totes = totally
      instapic it = put a picture on instagram

  • by rvw ( 755107 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:31AM (#45089993)

    despite MI5 warning that such disclosures cause enormous damage to their image

    FTFY!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:33AM (#45090003)

    Causes damage ? Sorry for having a different point of view but uncovering the disgusting acts of espionage on the population is a public service showing us how our free world is being transformed by the crooks and criminals we elected. The ones that should be jailed are the officials that led us down this path. They do not want to protect us , they want to protect their asses from being landed in a cold cell.
    They are NOT working in our interrest, they are working against the People trying to get a better grip on our lives making us better slaves for our masters.
    Fuck em . Publish all you got , get those bastards in jail or execute them. If some of them happen to get killed , so be it , they have waged a war on the People and they knew that the path they led us on was a dangerous one.

    let em deal with their mess , i got no pity whatsoever.

  • by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:33AM (#45090005)
    I can't imagine the number of careers being destroyed with each leak. I suspect that in the healthier democracies the very organizations doing this spying will be largely dismantled. The real question, that should not be answered by anyone in the spying business, is whether these revelations are resulting in a greater good?

    Quite simply the people behind the curtain have long had an attitude of the end justifies the means, so now in exposing them they are getting a taste of their own medicine. The other core pillar of the spying business is that information is power; well by exposing the spies themselves we give power back to the people of the various democracies in question.

    But what really boils my butt is that any foreign spy or "actor" who was using any electronic system without assuming that they were being monitored is a fool. And anyone that foolish probably didn't pose much of a threat. From what I gather Osama was found as they tracked the couriers who physically carried messages, which means that he was off the grid as far as his trail was concerned. But the people who do still use electronic communications were people like you and me, combined with organizations and governments who trusted the rest of the world.

    So how many trade negotiations were done while the US listened in on the other side figuring out their negotiating positions, how many companies like Siemens might have had business deals or trade secrets handed over to us contractors?

    But then it gets potentially worse: How many times did say a Canadian go to negotiate a trade agreement only to find that they had a recording of him and his mistress? How many times did a politician who was causing problems have a tipped off reporter show up for a rendezvous with his mistress? Or even to have the troublesome politician's election strategy handed over to his opponent? Or to have his secret PAC supporters suddenly withdraw their support?

    If they are willing to lean on a company that "buys its ink by the barrel" how little reluctance would they have to twist democracy to their needs?

    So my guess is that it is not the real baddies who have gone silent but the diplomats, politicians(both domestic and foreign, and large international businesses that are going silent. Personally if I ran a company like Siemens I would be locking up the communications and computer system tighter than a drum.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The "greater good" is we now know most hardware and the big brands are junk. Their coders, testers and engineers are too trusting or fake.
      If an intelligence agency can get in, so can any other friendly intelligence agencies, people who where with friendly intelligence groups and now work for cash, people who can afford to hire ex intelligence agency staff, foreign front companies who can exploit weakness for national gain, crime or blackmail.
      Everything you want good generational encryption for has be red
  • Wrong optics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:33AM (#45090009) Homepage

    The spies whine and spin it their way. If what they were doing was so innocuous, uncontroversial and even beneficial then they would be happy to be praised in the press. The fact is what they ware doing is deeply offensive to a large segment of society and they wish to hide it.

    As to whether the terrs benefit or not, only the stupid ones might and they probably aren't reading. The non-stupid terrs have known about surveillence since before Echelon and adjust accordingly. They won't even infer any limits because they know the release is vetted to be incomplete.

    The real effect of Snowdens releases is to confirm the tinfoil-behatted. Many fringe people have been saying much the same thing for 10+ years and been dismissed as lunatic paranoids. Now it appears they were right. Many people have egg on the face (congentially oblivious).

    • by asylumx ( 881307 )
      Did it really take a lunatic to see that the gov't was doing this? Everyone (outside of slashdot) was OK with it when Bush was president and the patriot act was passed, why be so against it now? IMO Snowden didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, and I don't know why people are calling him a hero or traitor now when he hasn't really done anything good or bad.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Yes think of the academics and tutors who churned out gifted generations who never thought to study the hardware firms develop, buy, sell and use.
      So trusting in gov standards, other brands and their own bosses. Was it peer pressure, the cash or fear?
    • The spies whine and spin it their way. If what they were doing was so innocuous, uncontroversial and even beneficial then they would be happy to be praised in the press. The fact is what they ware doing is deeply offensive to a large segment of society and they wish to hide it.

      One thing we need to realize, is that it's not the spies, it's their handlers. Homeland Security in the US is completely owned by large corporations that get most of their expenditure. Remember, most spooks are contractors now. They are not even government employees. I suspect that MI# is a bit different, with the money being handles more by the old school network of people with titles, but the result is the same. If the spies are embarrassed, they lose their cash cow.

  • I would assume that MI5 is staffed by reasonably competent folks. If they are curious enough about viewing their philosophy at work, they only need look at the western part of Pakistan, or what I affectionately refer to as the, "Paki Bad Lands." There, Ignorance is their god.
  • by Severus Snape ( 2376318 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:43AM (#45090085)
    Is there anything real terrorists didn't know before that they know now? It is in the public domain the laws like The Patriot Act means the American government can go to Google and ask for the emails from whatever account they want. Of course they are going be using services out with America and her allies control. All these leaks have shown is the general public is the real enemy of the state.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Just the citation needed to enrage sockpuppets and their simplistic "saving the world" rants.
      Beyond that any well read person could be expected to understand what was done during WW2 to Germany/Japan encryption and later ECHELON.
      All we know is the constant drive to domestic surveillance legality and desire to see a lifelong "locked box" used in US courts.
      Something many in the US and UK have been attempting for decades.
    • by dave420 ( 699308 )
      I think what it really shows is that GCHQ/NSA/MI5/SIS are using everything at their disposal to do what they have been tasked to do. I don't agree with it, as the real possibility of innocent people being caught in their online trawling is clearly going to increase the more it goes on, with the real possibility of hit squads/drone strikes/kidnapping coming their way. My real fear is if they concentrate too much on the internet, they cease performing actual intelligence work as they rely too heavily on int
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:44AM (#45090091)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • no thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @08:53AM (#45090155)

    I fear my Government more than I fear terrorists.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I don't think the maybe 20-30 active terrorists on this planet can do any real damage. Even 9/11 was peanuts compared to the damage that is being done to civil society by the US administration alone. And 9/11 was a complete fluke, only possible because of the utter incompetence of the relevant TLAs and a lot of luck on the side of the perpetrators.

      Oh, wait, the relevant TLAs are still incompetent at preventing terrorist successes. They so far have only stopped "terrorist" plots that they themselves manufact

    • Good citizen! Fear and obey!

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @09:08AM (#45090273)

    A police-, surveillance- or totalitarian state is the most despicable and repulsive form of human organization in modern times. It does more damage than anything else, except maybe total war. What the NSA and their friends in the UK are aiming and preparing for is exactly this however, thinly veiled with a ridiculous claim of "fighting terrorism". We had these tendencies in Europe last century. Nothing was done to stop them, and it finally took two world wars and a cold war to get over them. The latter brought the human race to the brink of extinction several times.

    Anything is better than something like that happening again. I really hope they publish everything and make it count.

  • by acb ( 2797 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @09:26AM (#45090451) Homepage

    Hope the Guardian has good offsite backups outside the UK, and preferably a backup newsroom in, say, Reykjavik or somewhere they can use.

    I can see this ending with the Met Police and special forces (under MI5 command) raiding the offices, making sure nobody takes anything out and then torching the whole place with very carefully placed thermite charges.

  • Seriously, Wikileaks, release the key to the insurance file already. There's no reason not to at this point.

  • by GodfatherofSoul ( 174979 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @12:06PM (#45092733)

    If you work there, you'd better not have a secret cocaine habit or stripper girlfriend on the side. If there's the slightest bit of dirt on you, they're going to out you. I've got a lot of respect for that paper going on under what has to be some frightening pressure.

  • by lennier1 ( 264730 ) on Thursday October 10, 2013 @01:41PM (#45093923)

    After the smear campaign the UK government and their willing accomplices at the Daily Fail are running I'm glad they're actually beginning to ramp it up instead of backing away:
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2450291/The-Guardian-produced-handbook-help-fanatics-strike-will.html [dailymail.co.uk]

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