Do GCHQ/MI5 etc need more powers to fight terrorism?
Discussion
As with Lee Rigby at least one of the Paris attackers Cherif Kouachi, had already been convicted in 2008 of recruiting for, and then himself attempting to join the war in Iraq in support of Islamists against the allied coalition. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail, which was negated by time spent on remand, and allowed to walk free.
His brother Said, who lived with Cherif had a Facebook page full of pictures of himself with assault rifles and responding will "Allahu Ahkbar" to a picture of an exploding building. Not criminal in itself but given his brother and housemate's past you'd think it might raise some questions.
It now seems that both of them had travelled overseas to train with and support Islamist causes since Cherif's conviction.
I found this out in an idle half hour on Google with no special powers, phone records or private emails. It was in the public domain.
Understand the point about resources being spread thinly and you can't monitor everyone who's ever posted a picture of themselves with a gun, but in my opinion someone who is prepared to travel into a warzone to fight allied countries is a very real menace and should have still been in prison. And while it obviously can't be guaranteed it doesn't seem unreasonable to suppose that had this been the case the other two would not have carried out this attack on their own.
His brother Said, who lived with Cherif had a Facebook page full of pictures of himself with assault rifles and responding will "Allahu Ahkbar" to a picture of an exploding building. Not criminal in itself but given his brother and housemate's past you'd think it might raise some questions.
It now seems that both of them had travelled overseas to train with and support Islamist causes since Cherif's conviction.
I found this out in an idle half hour on Google with no special powers, phone records or private emails. It was in the public domain.
Understand the point about resources being spread thinly and you can't monitor everyone who's ever posted a picture of themselves with a gun, but in my opinion someone who is prepared to travel into a warzone to fight allied countries is a very real menace and should have still been in prison. And while it obviously can't be guaranteed it doesn't seem unreasonable to suppose that had this been the case the other two would not have carried out this attack on their own.
What our security services need is the resources to actively track people who have been training with terrorists or associate with them, and then the ability to round them up before they cause people harm.
The issue is one of political will, not ability.
The lax border controls and control of failed asylum seekers are evidence that the government are not serious, until they actually get serious the security services cannot be fully effective.
The issue is one of political will, not ability.
The lax border controls and control of failed asylum seekers are evidence that the government are not serious, until they actually get serious the security services cannot be fully effective.
^^ I also think it's a case of 'old fashioned police work' as someone once said. I.e. the technology will give you a pointer, but you then have to follow it up with HUMINT. Personally, I think that the services already have the methods needed - they have warrants and RIPA. The rest is up to skilled personnel. Rather, the services are expecting technology to do the job for them and cheaper than skilled individuals, but to do that it needs to invade our every communication. I disagree with this - work with what you have.
Not sure what to make of this. I think the "false flag" title is unhelpful - makes it sound more tinfoil than it necessarily is, but following the interview to it's conclusions, it does make you wonder whether there are some elements of truth to the assertions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JuOH0k_lkg
For those short of time or interest and in no particular order:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JuOH0k_lkg
For those short of time or interest and in no particular order:
- this is about control, especially important in a time of austerity
- this is about a crazy foreign policy where Western governments encouraging the training and mobilisation of rebels in Syria
- this is not about Islam, but a Yemeni/Saudi, Wahabist death cult
GCHQ can't break SSL encrypted communications, so it's easy for naughty people to stay out of sight if they want to. It seems Camoron has finally been told of this, so now he's decided to ban programs that use encryption. For those that don't know, we're not talking obscure, specialist software, but mainstream chat and comms apps that pretty much every digitally connected person uses: WhatsApp, Apple iMessage, Google Hangouts, Microsoft’s Skype.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2868132/uk-prime-mi...
I wonder why the big one - Facebook messaging isn't included? Either Camoron daren't mention one as well used as that, or GCHQ have back door arrangements in place with Facebook already.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2868132/uk-prime-mi...
I wonder why the big one - Facebook messaging isn't included? Either Camoron daren't mention one as well used as that, or GCHQ have back door arrangements in place with Facebook already.
mjb1 said:
GCHQ can't break SSL encrypted communications,
They would say that.http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-the-nsa-and-your-...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-g...
II wonder if anyone would bother to monitor something so old fashioned as a letter.
AA999 said:
Do GCHQ/Mi5 need more powers, meaning more intrusion of british public privacy?..... no they don't. What the UK needs is proper effective border control and an effective immigration policy.
Think about it - three of the four 7/7 bombers were British, born here. Their parents emigrated, came here in good faith and have been law-abiding citizens so far as I know. That their sons turned out to be terrorists is absolutely nothing to do with immigartion or border controls.longblackcoat said:
Think about it - three of the four 7/7 bombers were British, born here. Their parents emigrated, came here in good faith and have been law-abiding citizens so far as I know. That their sons turned out to be terrorists is absolutely nothing to do with immigartion or border controls.
An immigration system with admission based on minimum levels of education, ability to speak English and earning potential would actually have kept out the majority of Muslim immigration since 1970 so not entirely sure what you are basing this on.RobinOakapple said:
It takes at least 4 people in shifts to watch 1 person around the clock, and that's before holidays, illness etc. Plus they would need cars, communication, central control etc. It's no wonder that so few people get watched full time, it would simply cost too much.
Bringing a note of reality to the proceedings.The fact that many of these attackers were known to security services is a sign they were doing their job. Simply knowing someone is a violent extremist does not give them a magical power to prevent them performing a terrorist attack.
If there are, say, 50,000 potential terrorists in the UK then we would need to employ 250,000 people to watch them full time.
Gargamel said:
Think most of us believe they do what they like anyway.
I think most of us were OK with the idea of GCHQ or MI5 looking at phone records, emails etc. But the Snoopers charter was basically allowing councils, police and quite low levels the ability to put a trace/contact log on indiviudals. That was a nonsense, went far to broad.
It is not like the Brits are even particularly hysterical about Terrorism, we are all fairly sanguine/stoic.
Politicians shouldn't build up the risk in the public's mind.
I think most of us were OK with the idea of GCHQ or MI5 looking at phone records, emails etc. But the Snoopers charter was basically allowing councils, police and quite low levels the ability to put a trace/contact log on indiviudals. That was a nonsense, went far to broad.
It is not like the Brits are even particularly hysterical about Terrorism, we are all fairly sanguine/stoic.
Politicians shouldn't build up the risk in the public's mind.
This will get misused by power mad little idiots in councils etc, just like everything else that seems a good idea gets misused.
RobinOakapple said:
It takes at least 4 people in shifts to watch 1 person around the clock, and that's before holidays, illness etc. Plus they would need cars, communication, central control etc. It's no wonder that so few people get watched full time, it would simply cost too much.
Much better to push them under a bus, off a railway platform, over a bridge parapet, down a stairwell. I always thought that what (properly) secret services did.longblackcoat said:
Think about it - three of the four 7/7 bombers were British, born here. Their parents emigrated, came here in good faith and have been law-abiding citizens so far as I know. That their sons turned out to be terrorists is absolutely nothing to do with immigartion or border controls.
I think your logic jump is less standing than mine.Think about this - I don't think it would be too far out of the reaches of reality to assume that a number of whom have immigrated to the UK have brought their ideology to a number of british born (who have strong cultural connections with middle-eastern lands) who all to easy accept their imported views on the world and form anti-western tenancies. Especially in city areas whereby the clashing of communities and dis-trust has formed from recent years of rapid community change by Labour's 'open door' policy on bringing as many to the UK as they could attract.
Also, the hundreds of illegal and unaccounted for migrants that have found their way in to the UK who's ideologies are totally unknown. Thanks to an ineffective border control.
Fittster said:
Important bit from that article: If your company has set up the proxy correctly you won't know anything is off because they'll have arranged to have the proxy's internal SSL certificate registered on your machine as a valid certificate. That one relies on the user's machine being compromised, by having the intercept proxy installed as trusted so the browser doesn't spew warnings about the certificate. Now in a corporate environment it may be compromised by the IT department under the direction of management, so they can read your online banking passwords (if they do, they should tell you this to my reading of RIPA).
It's not breaking encryption, it's fooling the user into believing the encryption is using the destination's key pair, not a key pair inserted by a proxy.
GCHQ cannot brute force a modern key pair.
...maybe not, but what they can do (and did) is influence key design decisions to put vulnerabilities into commercial encryption.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/d...
Google for 'BULLRUN'.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/d...
Google for 'BULLRUN'.
Edited by Tonsko on Tuesday 13th January 15:39
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